What are you going to do with your off season?

by Jodi Jones, Cathy Savage Fitness

Are you going to waste this time fighting with yourself day in and day out saying the same ole', "I blew it, so now I'm just going to eat blah, blah, blah." Or, are you going to maximize what little time you have and FOCUS for the next season?

My biggest problem is getting everyone to realize how little time there is in the offseason…it is over before you know it. The most effective thing that you can do in the offseason to better manage your competitive career…is goal setting and planning. Decide right now, "If I was to fast forward to next November and look back at the 2008 season, what would *truly* make me happy?" This question is so important and so profound that many of you are going to miss it because of its simplicity. Your answer is going to shape your offseason more than you know. Here is how:

LOWER BODY: My goal for the offseason is to fix my lower body. Ok, you have your work cut out for you. First of all, lower body takes about 18 to 24 mos to "fix". Less time if all you are doing is reducing the size. For most of you, though, you need to increase your upper body size as much as you have to reduce your lower body so you have dual work. DUE DILIGENCE is what I recommend for you. CONSISTENCY. Stick to your workouts like glue, lose the processed food, stop looking for the miracle exercise because there isn't one, stop running, get on a track and run some sprints. Lift so heavy that the big guy in the gym asks YOU for a spot!

LEANNESS: I really want to be super lean next season…Ok, if you are semi lean, looking to get leaner I need two things from you: a clean offseason and an increase in cals. If you think that you can eat your show cals now for weeks on end and get leaner and leaner you are going to ruin your chances of leaning out. (Please note: You cannot be lean, eating 700 to 900 cals, doing oodles of cardio and think you are going get leaner. How can you drop your cals more? Where can you go from there? 3 hours of cardio per day? 600 cals? Smelling your food? You must raise your cals in the offseason and then drop them again to get more out of your body. The trick here though is to raise your cals without gaining any weight. So you do it S-L-O-W- L-Y.) …

MUSCLE: I want to add some muscle. Ok, if you think that you are going to add major size in 8 weeks, it's not going to happen. At best we might get 2 quality pounds of muscle on you. We need way more time than that, we need to stay FOCUSED that whole time AND you need to eat like a pig and sleep like a sloth. Can you stick to it? LMK 'cuz I'm not going to feed you more and send you to bed if you are not going to lift like a psycho and eat as clean as a newbie two weeks out from show. It could get ugly. (Running and hiding as I type!)

…Please. If you do nothing else for the offseason, decide (and stick to it) what you want for your 2008 season.