Before & After Pics...

I have something really cool that I want to share with you...

You may remember a few months ago I sent out an e-mail newsletter about a special contest that my friend Jeff Anderson was promoting for "Average Joe's" to see who could lose the most bodyfat and transform their bodies in 90 days with his "Military" Fat Loss Program "Combat The Fat".

(And to make the competition even more exciting Jeff has put up $1000 of his own money as a cash prize for the winner!)

Over 30 average Joe’s and Jane’s entered the competition and trust me these folks are NOT fitness models or professional athletes, they are average everyday people of every AGE and BODY SHAPE who just wanted to lose bodyfat, build lean muscle, and get in shape.

Well, the "Combat The Fat" challenge has come to an end and the contestants have just submitted their "before & after" pictures and every single one of them made some amazing progress...

But we are asking you if you could help us out by visiting
http://www.leehayward.com/go/before_after_pics.htm
and cast your vote for who you feel has made the BEST "before & after" fat loss transformation.

Jeff and I are NOT the ones doing the judging... You Are!

We have left this task is left open for people like YOU to submit your vote for the man and woman who you feel has made the best transformation!

Click Here To see the "before & after" pics and cast your vote!

Let us know who you feel has made the BEST fat loss transformation and who you feel is deserving of the first place $1000 cash prize award!

It will only take a couple minutes of your time to look at all the photos and submit your vote so go check it out NOW (before you forget), ok?

Again, here is the link to see all the "before & after" transformations...

http://www.leehayward.com/go/before_after_pics.htm

all the best,
Lee Hayward

Crazy Video Clip Of Guy Walking On Broken Glass On Venice Beach

This is a crazy video clip that I took with my digital camera of a guy walking on broken glass on Venice Beach in California. If you want to know how to make some tax free cash money... this is it... LOL

Back home from LA…

I had an absolute blast down in LA last week. Loved every minute of it and got a taste of what it’s like to live the California bodybuilder lifestyle for while. Worked out on Muscle Beach, worked out in Gold's Gym Venice, ate a “bodybuilders lunch” at the Firehouse restaurant.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Firehouse, it is just down the street from Gold’s Gym and they actually have a “Bodybuilders Menu” section where you can order low fat, high protein bodybuilding foods right off the menu like egg whites, grilled chicken, steamed veggies, oatmeal, whole grain high protein pancakes, etc…

My post workout meal was what they call the bodybuilders lunch, which was 6 oz. of grilled chicken breast and a big bowl of pasta with marinara sauce. It is a simple meal, but that’s the whole point, because not many restaurants let you order healthy low fat foods right off the menu.

Saturday and Sunday I attended the Internet marketing seminar, which was the real purpose of the trip. There were approx. 600 Internet business owners from all over the world in attendance. I learned a ton of valuable information that will not only help take my business to the next level, but more importantly help me provide you with more valuable information that you can use to help take your physique to the next level.

I’m going to be doing a lot more interactive training and using things like online instructional videos, online training seminars, teleclasses, etc. that you can watch and participate in so you can learn exactly what to do in order to build lean solid muscle, burn stubborn bodyfat, and get in your best shape ever.

Bodybuilding and fitness training is a very visual thing. You will be able to learn a lot more from more multi-media based training information where you can actually see how to do things, rather then simply reading text. So you can keep an eye out for that stuff over the coming weeks.

Here are some more pics taken from down in LA…

Pumping Up On Muscle Beach…

My girlfriend Patricia and I arrived in Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon. We had a good trip, but it’s one heck of a long flight from Newfoundland to LA… the actual time spent on the plane was over 10 hours!

We got up early this morning and spent the whole day on Venice Beach… It was awesome, I loved every minute of it, except for the sunburn :-(

I’ve never seen so many hippies, weirdos, wackos, and sun worshipers in my life LOL… it is the ultimate beach bum lifestyle. If you’ve never been to Venice Beach, you’ll have to plan a trip someday and add it to your places to visit list.

We walked the whole length of the strip, sunned our buns on the beach, and the best part… we had a workout in Muscle Beach weight pit… it was awesome, after all this place is the Mecca of bodybuilding, there is a lot of history on Muscle Beach, practically everyone who is (or was) anyone in the sport of bodybuilding has worked out there at some point.

Here are some pics from Venice Beach that we took today…
You can click on the images to view a larger version of the pic.

Heading To Sunny California…

Tomorrow morning I'm going to be flying to Los Angeles for an Internet marketing seminar. I'm really looking forward to it because I've never been to California before.

The actual seminar itself isn't until next weekend, but I'm getting there a few days earlier so I can make a little holiday out of it and enjoy some fun in the sun.

Here in Newfoundland all we have been getting is fog and rain for the past several days.

On my things to do list I've got planned to get in a workout on Muscle Beach and also at Gold’s Gym Venice so I can act out my own little "Pumping Iron" fantasy... I just watched the Pumping Iron movie a few days ago for the 1000th time so I'm all "pyched up" and ready to go hahaha...

Heck, I might as well give Arnold and Franco a call and see if they are up for a workout... LOL

I will be taking loads of pics and posting them up here when I get back.

Getting back to normal…

I’ve started toning down on the junk food eating. I pretty much have the cravings out of my system now. And I’m getting back on a sound eating plan.

I’ve put on about 15 lbs. since the contest. Now that may seem like a lot, but compared to the rebound that some people go through it is really not that much. I know guys who have literally gained upwards of 30 lbs. in the matter of 2-3 days after a contest. This is caused from the extreme rebound of being so depleted and dehydrated and then cutting loose and eating and drinking everything in sight.

I started back working out on Wednesday. For the next month or two I’m not really going to push myself too hard, I’m going to go through an “active recovery” training phase to give my body a break from the rigors of contest prep. And then gradually build up to a heavy off-season training routine.

A big mistake that a lot of novice weight trainers make, especially younger guys who are really full of motivation to make gains as fast as possible is that they never give their body any down time or active recovery training. They just want to go hard-core “balls to the wall” all the time. But the body just doesn’t work that way and eventually you’ll burn out, overtrain, and probably get injured.

You’ll make much better (and faster) gains over the long term if you purposely have cycles in your training where you push yourself hard for about 8-12 weeks and then back off for a few weeks and before building back up to a new peak in training intensity. That’s one of the benefits of competition training because it purposely forces you to cycle your training.

No body can operate at 100% intensity all the time, regardless of how motivated you are, the body does need some down time to rejuvenate, recover, and prepare for the next growing phase. It works similar to the seasons in nature… The spring and summer months are the peak growing time, then things slow down in fall and winter months.

"Junk food pyramid"

This is how bad I was after the show… I actually did a google image search for a “junk food pyramid” and then made up my mind to eat every single piece of junk food that was on the list… hahaha

Well, as of last night (after my post workout trip to Dairy Queen LOL) I officially crossed everything off of my junk food list.

It is insane how much junk food you can tuck away after a bodybuilding show…
Just to give you an idea, this is what I ate last night.

I had a post workout protein drink at the gym.

Then I went to Dairy Queen and had a chili cheese dog, fries, root beer, and DQ blizzard.

Then I went to the Tim Horton’s drive through and got 20 timbits which I ate while driving home.

Then when I got home I ate a protein bar because I was still hungry, I still wasn’t full and I could have eaten more, but I decided to stop at that and not be too much of a pig… LOL

Here is my "junk food pyramid"...
I actually ate everything on the list and a few extra things as well...

Bodybuilding Contest Pictures…

It’s been a busy weekend and I’m still trying to get back into the swing of things and catch up with all my work, e-mail, back orders, etc. I’ve currently got over 500 unanswered e-mail in my inbox so if you are waiting on a reply from me, please be patient :-)
I’m knocking them off one at a time and I’ll get around to answering your e-mail.

As for the contest results I won the Heavyweight class so I’m pleased with that. The overall was won by the light-heavyweight winner.

I have to admit, I wasn’t at my personal best. My conditioning wasn’t as sharp as it was in my last competition back in November. But hey, you aren’t going to hit a home run every time. While I don’t like to make excuses for things, the fact of the matter is that I did have some extra challenges this time around that I didn’t have to deal with for my past shows.

My muscle tear back in January certainly didn’t set things up good from the start, because between January and March I was literally going through the motions with my workouts using not much more then the weight of the machine handles for a lot of exercises.

Then about a month out from the show I pulled my left quadriceps muscle while training legs and I couldn’t even walk without pain for over 2 weeks, so that meant 2 weeks of no cardio when I normally average an hour of cardio per day during my contest prep. That alone could have been a big reason why I came into the show a few pounds too heavy and never made the light-heavyweight class like I had planned to do.

And finally a week out from the show my girlfriend's dad passed away and that just drained us all emotionally and put a lot of stress on the whole family with the funeral and all that stuff.

Even though I never cheated on my diet, etc. I really feel that the emotional stress of it all hurt my conditioning. I normally take it easy and try to keep things as stress free as possible the week before a contest, but this time around I certainly couldn’t do that. I found it very hard because we were close with her dad.

But I still followed through with everything and competed in pretty decent shape despite of everything… Another show in the books, and another trophy on the mantel… that brings our total number of bodybuilding trophies up to 23. It is a nice little collection that I’m quite proud of :-)

If you ever stop by anytime for tea and crumpets, you’ll definitely be getting the tour of the Hayward Bodybuilding trophy collection LOL

Anyway here are some pics from the show, the individual ones were taken from my posing routine and the group pics are from the overall…

You can click on each of the pics to get the full size view, and then use your back button on your browser to return to this page.

I’m competing as a heavyweight…

The weigh-in for the competition was last night (Friday at 7:00 pm) and I knew I was going to have to “make weight”. I cut back on my carb intake and upped my fat intake on Friday to help reduce some water retention. I cut my water intake around noon. And I also went to the sauna before the weigh-in to try and sweat out some extra water.

I’ve never had to use the sauna before to make weight because I was always well within my desired weight class. But holy crap did I ever sweat like an SOB in the sauna!

I thought I was pretty dry to begin with but I spent at least 20 minutes in the sauna (i.e. go in for 7 or 8 minutes, come out and cool off, go back in, come out and cool off, etc.). And afterwards I had veins and striations running from head to toe that I never seen before, it was crazy!

Anyway I went on to the weigh-in from there, not eating or drinking anything in hopes of making the light-heavyweight class which is 198 lbs. But when it was all said and done I weighed-in at 201 lbs. so I’m going to compete as a heavyweight.

I guess from now on I’ll always be competing as a heavyweight in the future and work on moving up in that weight class, because I don’t plan on getting any smaller :-)

It could actually work out good for me because my biggest competition in the show is a light-heavyweight guy. So now we’ll most likely win our weight classes and go on to the overall in the night show. This tends to work in my favour because I generally sharpen up a fair bit between the pre-judging in the morning and the finals in the night.

Anyway, I’m going to slap on another coat of pro-tan and get ready to head to the pre-judging…
If I get a chance to post any pics today I will… But if I don’t have time I’ll post them up after the show.

It’s been a stressful week…

Like I mentioned in my last post my girlfriends dad passed away this Saturday past and the whole thing has really been tough…

I’m normally pretty good with stuff like this and handle it as well as anyone can be expected to, but for some reason this one hit me hard and I found it very emotionally draining.

Again no doubt the whole stress of the bodybuilding competition this coming Saturday and being so depleted is taking its toll. But we were also quite close with her dad and he died much too young (only 61 years old).

Anyway the funeral was this afternoon, and after it was all over I felt a big feeling of relief. He can rest in peace, and we can now start to move on with our lives…

I’m actually going to head to the gym now after I write this and do my last weight training workout before the competition. I’m looking forward to it, both as a form of stress relief, and afterwards I can start my “carb up” for the show so I’m really looking forward to actually eating some carbs after several weeks of nothing but protein and veggies.

One of the readers asked a question in reply to my last post:

“With the body only able to store so much glycogen and most of that stored
in the liver do you feel the carb loading helps ? Whats your take on Fat loading
?”

Well, I pretty much cover the whole idea behind carb loading in my last post, so I won’t go into detail about it here. But the bottom line is that it does work.

You can even try it out for yourself...
Just go 10 days or more without eating any starchy carbs at all (i.e. just eat protein and green veggies) then do a 3 day carb load where you eat 400+ grams of starchy and simple carbs per day and you’ll quickly see how effective the whole process is. After the 3 day carb load your muscles will feel like they are on bust and you’ll be much fuller and stronger in the gym.

Fat loading works as well, it goes good with carb loading. I’ll actually eat slightly fewer carbs on Friday afternoon before a Saturday show and increase my fat intake mainly from red meat and peanut butter. This helps fill out the muscles even more and avoids some of the excess water retention and bloat that high carbs can sometimes cause.

But honestly the whole thing is not an exact science, some people will react differently to how it all works. It just comes down to a lot of trial and error. I’ve personally been competing and experimenting with this for 13 years so I have a pretty good idea of how my body reacts to carb depletion, carb and fat loading, etc.

It’s been a tough weekend…

Down to less then a week out from the NLABBA Provincial Bodybuilding Championships and we had an unexpected misfortune this past weekend…

My girlfriend’s dad passed away the past Saturday morning… now we did know it was going to happen eventually because he had been diagnosed with cancer, but we didn’t expect him to leave us so soon. While there is never a “good time to die”, this is certainly some extra stress that I wasn’t planning on dealing with right now.

As anyone who has ever competed in bodybuilding knows, the last week before a show is difficult enough as it is because you are not operating at 100% mentally or physically due to being so depleted, eating a low carb diet, etc. And of course dealing with the death of a loved one is never easy, so combining both of them together is just a double whammy. It has really taken the wind out my sails so to speak.

As for my training, etc. at this stage of the game I’m doing “depletion” workouts for the next few days. Doing sets of 15-25 reps with light to moderate weights. The purpose of this is to deplete the muscles of glycogen and then when I increase my carb intake for a few days before the show the muscles will over compensate for the depletion and absorb even more glycogen then normal. Creating a fuller look in the muscle bellies.

My diet is very strict at this stage, I’m just eating beef, chicken, fish, green veggies, and protein drinks. No starchy carbs at all. On Wednesday I’ll start eating starchy carbs.

I’m also drinking more water then usual this week in order to get the body used to flushing out high volumes of water. Then I’ll cut back on my water intake drastically on Friday afternoon (before the Saturday show). When this happens the body will still be peeing out the water at the same rate, but I won’t be putting the water back in. So it will pull the excess water from under the skin creating a tighter, harder look for Saturday.

I took some pictures Monday night while I was practicing my posing. I’m pleased with my progress thus far, but I’m looking and feeling quite flat at this stage due to lack of carbs in the system.