Basic to Bikini: Week one and everything before it

I, like many, am a walking contradiction. I hate garlic but love garlic bread. I hate onions but love pickled onions. I’m incredibly easy-going but need to know all the details before I make a decision. I’m laid back but also a bit of a perfectionist.

Before saying yes to competing, before even agreeing to working with my coach, it was important for me to find out some of the finer details about competing. I wanted to know the ins and outs of the competitions. I had contacted a few people and their advice was ‘get a coach’. For me, this was a no brainer – of course I would get a coach – but this wasn’t the advice I needed. I didn’t want to waste a coach’s time if I decided I wasn’t going to compete, and besides, I didn’t even know what a coach would actually help me with. I had so many darn questions: does a coach help me from start to finish? When do I register? Is there a timeline for specific events eg, when do I buy my bikini? Is there a checklist of things I should make sure I have/do prior to comp? How much does it cost? What league? The list goes on and on. Now, I didn’t, and still don’t, have answers to all those questions, but I knew enough to say yes.

To get some answers, I reached out to good ol’ social media and put a call to help out there (SOS – I’m drowning in unhelpful websites with the opposite of information overload). Here’s what I found out:

When it comes to what league, I really only looked at IFBB and WBFF, and my initial impression was that WBFF was a more ‘fun’ competition (not in the way that people don’t take it seriously, but that you have more flexibility over your bikini, posing etc, so it allows you to have more fun) while IFBB was very much the professional sporting league. If IFBB is ‘corporate’, WBFF is a fun PR/events company. Know what I’m saying? This was my own opinion though. When someone reached out to me on social media to help answer my questions, they explained that generally speaking, WBFF is more expensive because you have to buy an evening dress, a red carpet dress, higher fees and much more, and there’s no competition in the state I live in so there would be travel costs etc. I had already decided on IFBB at this point but this new knowledge helped.

I had decided to enquire with a coach after deciding on the league. I wanted to go with a coach who lived in the state as me but there’s nothing stopping anyone from going with a coach who lives somewhere else. For me, it was more about convenience and building connections considering it’s my first comp. I had to banish the idea of feeling silly for asking ‘dumb questions’ when I enquired because if I didn’t, I’d still be very confused. So any questions you have for your coach, make sure you ask!

When I look back on this now (only a few weeks later) I realise that I didn’t have all the answers before I said yes but I just had a feeling. I knew in my gut that I would find out everything else I needed to know as time goes on. It’s not possible to have all the answers, you just need to know enough to be comfortable in making a decision. Some advice: get a coach. I know, I hate me too. If you are getting a contest prep coach (and that’s the key point, get a contest prep coach), they will help you through everything.

So now I’m about to conclude week one of coaching. It hasn’t been a time of tremendous change – as I’m sure you can imagine – but it is very obvious I’m embarking on a huge learning journey. It has become apparent to me that my perfectionist mindset, which I’ve spent a lot of time working on, is very much still alive and kicking. Perhaps you never really get rid of it, you just learn how to deal with it, and that’s ok. What isn’t ok is allowing that mindset to impact my journey. I’m spending a lot of time worrying over how I make sure I get the exact calories and macros (I want it to be 100%, I want to be perfect at it), and if I wasn’t conscious of this perfectionist mindset, I might just use this as an excuse to not do it at all because hey, if it’s not perfect, if I mess up a bit, I shouldn’t do it right? No, wrong. It doesn’t have to be perfect for you to do it, you just have to do it and accept that you will learn, you will get better and you will be ok.

Before starting your coaching, I encourage you to consider what bad habits or thought patterns you have that could led you to self-sabotaging. It’s best you identify these straight away so that you can recognise when it’s happening and act accordingly.