Maura Gay Delaware Open Prep Journal

Blog 1: 8 weeks out

Hey everybody! My name is Maura, and I’m a figure competitor from Pennsylvania. I’m currently 8 weeks out from the NPC Delaware Open, which will be held on August 10th. This is a hometown show for me, so I’m super excited to hopefully have my friends and family in attendance.

This past week I started carb cycling. I’ve found in the past that my body really responds well to carb cycling, and I felt that it was time to reincorporate it into my nutrition plan. Right now I’m doing four low days, two moderate days, and one refeed per week, scheduled according to what muscle groups I’m training on that particular day. My nutrition follows the principles of the Intermittent Feast, which is an approach made popular by CPT Nate Miyaki. My meals during the day consist of protein and fat, with most of my carbs coming in at night.

My weight training stays heavy pretty much all the way through my prep. I have a little bit of powerlifter in me that has to be satisfied every time I lift. I prefer to lift heavier for fewer reps. This week just so happens to be a max effort week, so I’m a very happy camper. I weight train five days per week, one muscle group per day. I train very early in the morning due to my job (well before the sun comes up), and I try to keep my workouts to under an hour.

As far as cardio goes, I tend to stay far, far away from anything remotely steady-state, and very rarely go over 20 minutes. I love doing strongman work for conditioning, but now that I’m home for the summer, I don’t have access to the prowler, tires, farmer’s carry bars, and battling ropes at my university’s gym. I do, however, have access to a sled, which is seriously awesome. Aside from the sled, I like to go to the track on the weekends for sprints and stadium stairs, or I’ll go to “The Wall,” which is a relatively short hill with a 26.1% grade. At this point in my prep, I’m doing cardio two days per week, 10-20 minutes per session.

So that’s a little overview on me and my training and nutrition. I’ll be keeping you updated with at least weekly blogs as I come up on my show!