Bodybuilding Comp Mistakes That Cost You Placings

Welcome to video 3 and mistake number 3. Mistake number 3 is solely focusing on how you look. Now, this one might seem counterintuitive because obviously a comp is completely about how you look on the show day. In fact, you get judged upon how you look, right? Now, the reason why I say this is a mistake is because just focusing on how you look puts the blinkers on and you miss key things, key things. And the 2 real, I suppose, ways that I think about this of why it's harmful if you just focus on how you look is there's a physiological aspect to it which absolutely can impact the level of results that you get because you miss things from a physiological aspect, but also the psychological aspect which can be damaging, more mental health stuff, right? So I'm going to talk about both. Let's start with the easy one, which is the physiological side of things, right? So if you only focus on how you look, you are going to miss important biofeedback markers that are gonna inform decisions that you can make towards your training and nutrition. Now you heard me speak about in video 1 about biofeedback markers and why they are tremendously important in terms of making decisions. 'Cause again, I have an axiom that I like to share with a lot of clients, which is healthy people look good, but there are a lot of people who aren't healthy that look good, right? So basically you can calorie deficit your way, you can cardio your way to looking kind of good, right? You know, everyone can do that, but that doesn't mean you're healthy. Healthy people will look good, but there are a lot of people who look good that aren't healthy, right? So we wanna respect from a physiological aspect, we wanna respect things that are gonna overall improve our health, right? So if we're long-term calorie deficit, we might be lean, but again, our health might be suffering. So, and how could it suffer? Well, here I like to define it and I'm gonna use this model that I've put in the Enterprise Fitness User Manual. And I've also got it in the Enterprise Diet, which is the book you can check out as well. You can actually download this manual, the digital version on the Enterprise Fitness website in our resource section. And there are other markers here, but these are the 7 main ones that we use from a physiological perspective and why we don't just wanna focus on how we look, right? Because again, how we look is a byproduct of what we do. So if you remember, like in this manual, we talk about the be, do, have formula and the whoopee goal setting formula, which is at the top you have your identity and then you have beliefs and values, and then you have your skills and skillsets. Then the skills and skill sets transition to your behaviors and behaviors transition to the results that you have, right? So in saying this, we don't just wanna focus on how we look 'cause how we look is the end goal. We wanna focus on how we get to the end goal 'cause that's gonna be far more healthy mentally and physiologically as well, right? So in saying that, the areas, the 7 areas we've got here is total calories. Now obviously total calories are important to manage and maintain in terms of hitting a body composition goal, but so is gut health. So we can have the right calories, we can be in a deficit, but if our gut is shot to pieces, we're not gonna be assimilating, we're not gonna be digesting as well, we're gonna be bloated, we might even be constipated. All of which is gonna detract from our health. And I can tell you, you know, if you've got a constipated person who's trying to compete versus someone who's regular, if you have someone who has bad gut health versus someone who has good gut health, the whole process is gonna be a lot harder with someone with bad gut health. So again, it's not just focus on how I look because how you look could be detracting from your overall health. Particularly with gut health. Then we have food quality. Now food quality is gonna interact with all the other areas, particularly total calories and gut health. Now, if you're eating better quality food, then usually the better quality food isn't gonna be, you know, it's gonna be a packet of potato chips, right? If you're eating potatoes, there's obviously less calories than say a packet of potato chips, for example. So the more nourishing, the more nutrient dense your foods are, the more it's gonna help your cause. Lifestyle. Lifestyle is a big one, and I do see people who get into comp prep, and I have seen it, I have seen it a few times where people get blinkers on and they do anything they can to look a certain way, including performance-enhancing drugs, and that it starts to detract from their life. Remember why you started competing. It was to add value to your life. If competing or the way you look becomes the thing and the guiding light, then you're going to judge yourself, which then marries into the physiological— sorry, marries into the psychological aspect of this. You're going to derive the value of who you are as a person by the way you look. And the way you look in your head, you might look great one day, you might look not so good the next day. It's gonna go up and down. And particularly as you're going towards a comp, it's gonna be incremental changes. It's not gonna be exponential changes. And what I mean by that is you're not gonna start dieting in week 1 and try and be ready for week 12 and you're gonna be, you know, 6-pack shredded abs ready to jump on stage in the first week. It's going to take time. And with that, the more you see yourself, obviously you're seeing yourself change, you're not gonna think there's much change. Whereas, you know, you have a friend, you don't see for 6 weeks, you diet, they're gonna be like, wow, you've lost all this weight. Because to them it's gonna be exponential, to you it's gonna feel incremental. So from a lifestyle perspective, you don't wanna get bogged down in just thinking, okay, this is how I look, this is how I look, 'cause it's gonna detract from other areas as well. You wanna make sure you keep those demons at bay. Next one is training. Training is absolutely gonna impact the way you look, and obviously you wanna enjoy your training, especially if you're gonna compete. Then we have our macronutrient profile, which I spoke about in video 1. That's absolutely gonna be important in terms of getting you up on stage. And sleep, sleep is a big one. And if you do have issues sleeping, and this is where people can look fantastic and have absolutely terrible sleep, we wanna respect sleep because sleep is gonna impact your mood, it's gonna impact sex drive, it's gonna impact things like insulin sensitivity, it's gonna impact recovery. And one of the things that I like to use to measure sleep is the Oura Ring, which you can— I've spoken about Oura Ring quite a lot in, in my book as well. But Oura Ring, basically, long story short, you have your autonomic nervous system. You've got your parasympathetic and your sympathetic. Parasympathetic is your rest and digest. Sympathetic is your, you know, your fight or flight. In saying that, when you— you've got a thing called heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is measuring the beats within the beats. The more variable your heart rate is the healthier you are. Now again, the reason why this is relevant is we can completely focus on how we look. We can do a, you know, mad training session, we have a week of awesome training, and our heart rate variability can be completely shot. And we can think next week we're gonna do another hard week of training, but we actually need more time to recover. So this is where, from a physiological aspect, including other markers other than just the weight on the scales, how we look, but looking at things like heart rate variability, heart rate, resting heart rate, digestion, looking at sex drive, looking at energy, mood, lifestyle, our impact, all these things, this is gonna actually help us get up on stage. 'Cause I guarantee you that if we respect things like heart rate variability and our autonomic nervous system, that is gonna— as I spoke in video 1 about biofeedback markers, if we can use these biofeedback markers in terms of our plan to help us look better, absolutely we're gonna look better. And this is the same reason why I recommend people getting bloods and blood testing and using those labs to decipher and say, oh, these are the supplements we should use because these are deficiencies. If we can fill in the gaps of deficiencies in say people's blood work and analyze that from an optimal perspective rather than absence of disease perspective, we're absolutely gonna be able to help people get better results. Hence coming back to the accent that I used before, which is healthy people look good, but there are a lot of people who look good that aren't healthy. So this is how the factoring in more of the physiological aspects, not just how you look, is absolutely gonna help you look better. So don't just focus on how you look. Now, let's talk about, I said a lot then in a very short period of time, but now let's talk about the physiological aspect. Physiological aspect is again, the mental health stuff. If we just as people focus on how we look and how we look becomes, so in this user manual, and I've spoken about this in other videos as well, this thing called the DILTS model. DILTS model is identity, beliefs and values, underneath beliefs and values, our skills and skill sets, our behaviors, and then our behaviors give you the result, right? If we, from a psychological aspect, if we are just focusing on how we look, which is the result aspect, is the environment, is the have aspect, we're not really focusing on who we need to become to look that certain way. And things are always gonna operate, who we are as people is gonna give us the outcome. And we're not gonna automatically get the result of looking a certain way, if that makes sense. We need to bring in and instill these habits of who we're trying to become on a daily. I am a healthy person who eats healthy foods that build and nourish my body that is kind of the meta program, that is the code to look the way you wanna look rather than I'm six-pack abs 24/7, 365 days a year because then it becomes about the thing, if that makes sense, which then can very much you ascribe because there's gonna be some days where you look in the mirror and you feel that you look great and there's gonna be other days where you look in the mirror and you feel like I'm having a fat day and these things that aren't kept in check, that's what's gonna determine your emotions along the way. And what I'm saying is that shouldn't be the thing that determines your emotions along the way, because if it is, on the days that you feel quote-unquote fat, you're not going to feel motivated towards working hard. And on the days that you feel like you look great, you're going to be super motivated to working harder and training harder. But both of those things are just perspectives that aren't really going to inform the right— there's not the right information to inform the decisions that you want to be making to get to your goal. So this is where, from a physiological aspect, you need to take a step back, look at competing, look at training as a part of your life, not your whole life. And even if you do this, it's super important, super high on your values, you still want to take that step back and look at ways this enjoys— you enjoy it and looking at some of those other factors to improve. And also implementing in your training, not just the fat loss side of things, but the performance side of things. So a goal that I like to give a lot of people, particularly those who are looking to lose weight, is a chin-up goal. And the reason for a chin-up goal, there's two ways to do a chin-up. You either lose body fat, you get lighter, or you get stronger. You're gonna do both. And if you're thinking about both, getting stronger, that means you've gotta eat enough to fuel your workout, but not so much that, you know, you're gonna put on weight. So you need to eat on that kind of cusp of optimal. And if you think about it like that and you focus on a performance goal rather than how you look, even those other psychological, sorry, physiological aspects that I spoke about, they're gonna inform these decisions as well. There's a lot there in that video. You probably might even need to watch it again, but I hope that you have enjoyed this, this 3-part series on the biggest mistakes that competitors make. It's been my honor to present this to you. I hope we meet in person. If you are thinking about training with us at Enterprise Fitness, absolutely reach out. You can reach out to us on email. You can reach us through our website. You can reach us, just reply back to this email. If you wanna stay in contact with me, best way is to hit me up on Instagram or TikTok if you're on TikTok, but Instagram, my handle is @MarkOttobre, very, very easy to find. Also check out my book, "The Enterprise Diet," and that will be available depending on when you're watching this, it might already be available on audio, but we plan to get the audio up of that as well. We've got heaps of stuff on YouTube, podcasting, all of that good stuff. Hope to see you in the studio at some point and meet you in person. Until we meet, make sure you train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.