The tough times are over, for now. It’s time to look back and take stock. I competed in four competitions this spring season of 2013: LELKV, EKV, the Baltic Match and the European Championships.
Writing this here at the “Vila Tulip” hotel in Moldova today, I can look back and honestly say it was a successful season. And although emotions were running high immediately after the European Championships results came out, overall I’m happy with my result. I did well!
Of course, there’s always room for improvement, but sometimes you have to pause or even take a small step back before you can take two steps forward again. There were 15 men in my category, and I finished ahead of 8 of them, placing 7th overall.
As for making the final, of course it’s a shame I missed out by such a narrow margin, but I’m no longer upset about it. I’ve analyzed it, thought it through, drawn my conclusions and taken stock.
Placings in bodybuilding depend on such subjective criteria that it’s often hard to understand what was missing, why you didn’t make it through, and so on. You simply have to accept it and keep striving. But I believe that accepting your result, finding motivation in it to move forward and learning from it are also among the hallmarks of a great athlete.
Besides, if you set aside the agreed cutoff for the final after the top six men and consider the size of the category, I did very well. You could probably find dozens of examples of World or European Championship winners and silver medalists who didn’t even come close to the final at their next major competition. Naturally, emotions run high straight after a competition, and you start asking what was missing, what you could have done better, and so on. That’s human, understandable and even to be expected. Otherwise, I wouldn’t care about what I do and would have no ambition at all, which wouldn’t be normal either.
And we are talking about the European Championships, after all. You have to explain these things to others, but you also need to remind yourself. The standard was high overall, especially among the top competitors. Although I was more dissatisfied at first, before seeing the photos, having seen them I can say that my conditioning was good and I have no reason to fault my preparation.
I won’t deny that I missed Silvar (Silvar Rückenberg — ed.) terribly. Preparing for competitions together has brought us so close that here in Moldova I felt as though part of me was missing. On the surface, everything seemed to be in place, and I have nothing bad to say about the team. But there are tiny, invisible details that only Silvar knows to pay attention to, and they can have a very significant effect on my confidence and, through that, everything else.
These may be minute details that others don’t notice or consider important, but simply attending to them or resolving them is enough to make me better, more confident and stronger as an athlete. In any case, I have a clear plan: if my autumn preparation gets me into at least the same condition and our national team takes part in the World Championships in Austria, I intend to find the resources, whatever it takes, to bring Silvar along. Let’s see what happens then…
Receiving my bronze medal from the 2011 Classic Bodybuilding World Championships gave me a boost. It meant a great deal to me, and I’m certainly grateful to Ott and the federation for that. Ott did everything he could to make sure the IFBB officials remembered my medal. The IFBB is such a large organization, and awarding a medal after the event to a man from Rakke probably isn’t something that readily stays on their minds.
Of course, I’m also grateful for such a welcome and for being remembered. This kind of recognition and warm reception even leaves me a little embarrassed — thank you! As Silvar wrote, although it’s a tiny disc of metal, it still marks and symbolizes a long period of my life (18 years) filled with hard work and effort.
I won’t pretend otherwise: being the first man outside the final and missing out by so little was hard to take at first, especially as all our other men made it through. Naturally, reaching the final feels good. You’re in high spirits and even more motivated for the next day, because the competition practically starts all over again. Having missed out, though, I felt awful, unwanted and unnecessary. It was as if the four of us had been waiting for a train at the station: Ott, Raigo and Rain got on, but I was left behind. Have you ever missed a bus or a train? How did you feel? And you’d already been waiting 4 hours for that “train,” with another 6 hours until the next one — you see what I mean?
But as the saying goes, “To get better in your discipline, or in sport in general, you also have to lose sometimes and not always get what you might want.”
The products in Moldovan shops are fairly similar to ours. I had a bit of a dilemma trying to find local treats to bring home for the children, because at first glance there didn’t seem to be much that was different: the same old Snickers, Milka and Mars. Why bring a Snickers all the way from Moldova to Estonia? Still, I did find a few different things: various instant coffees, some perfume and Moldovan sweets. One interesting find was a local curd snack, in a rectangular 100-gram pack. It was very tasty and cost 4.20 — rather like 4 kroons and 20 cents back when we still used kroons.
The flight back to Estonia
On the way home, we played a few games of “Durak” at Chişinău airport. We managed a couple of games before an airport security guard came over and told us we weren’t allowed to play cards. There you go. The return flight and connections went smoothly too. A lovely surprise was hearing from Silvar that he’d decided to drive from Tartu to Tallinn especially to meet me. When I pointed out that there was no need and asked him to think how much it would cost, he simply replied, “Some things in life matter more than money…”.
It’s good to be home. For now, the focus is still on eating more substantial meals. I’m not going completely overboard, but I’m not really restricting anything either, and I’m certainly putting away plenty of food. On Wednesday, I already did 2 x 20 km bike rides outdoors. On Thursday, I did 25 minutes on the stationary bike and 2 km of sled dragging with 50 kg. On Wednesday morning, after the first 20 km ride and a trip to the toilet, my weight was already up to 96.8 kg (+5 kg in four days). On Thursday morning, it was 96.0 kg. We’ll see where this goes; hopefully the cravings will ease soon. Even while I was still in Moldova, I was thinking about workout plans for a new strength training cycle. I have several ideas about how to start again, but I’ll definitely need to take it easy for 1 – 2 weeks.
Diet and training. Here are the numbers for the final 35 days before the European Championships:
Protein: 327 grams per day = 1308 kcal (41%)
Carbohydrates: 257 grams per day = 1028 kcal (33%)
Fat: 91 grams per day = 819 kcal (26%)
Average daily calorie intake: 3155 kcal
That was my macronutrient breakdown for this contest prep. These numbers give me several things to think about. My calorie intake seems about right; if my energy expenditure is more or less the same during my next prep, I’ll probably keep my average intake around 3000 kcal. One thing I’ll definitely try next time is increasing the proportion of carbohydrates at the expense of protein. I have one goal in mind: I want to feel significantly better during my next diet than I have on previous ones. That leaves just one question: how will reducing my protein intake affect my muscle mass and my ability to maintain it? Still, I believe that replacing 50 – 75 grams of protein with carbohydrates shouldn’t do much harm, while the extra 50 – 75 grams of carbohydrates would probably make a considerable difference to how I feel. In fact, feeling better with the extra carbohydrates might even allow me to reduce my daily calorie intake somewhat. There’s also a little room to reduce my daily fat intake by around 20 – 30 grams, which would bring my total calorie intake down a little too. But if I feel reasonably okay and I’m losing weight at the desired pace, then what difference does it make how many calories I’m dieting on? Ott and I talked quite a lot about these things too. I’ll try making a few changes next time and see what happens. Above all, this is necessary because I simply can’t keep dieting so frequently when it leaves me feeling this rough and depleted. It takes an enormous toll on my quality of life and the people around me. We’ll see whether this approach gets me into contest shape, and how it goes.
I think the average numbers for my next prep could look something like this. Compared with my figures for this spring season in 2013, carbohydrates would be up by + 12%, which could already make a substantial difference to how bearable the diet feels.
Protein: 250 grams per day =1000 kcal (35%)
Carbohydrates: 325 grams per day = 1300 kcal (45%)
Fat: 65 grams per day = 585 kcal (20%)
Average daily calorie intake: 2885 kcal
I averaged 5 strength training sessions a week and, overall, did relatively little cardio. I did very little in the final 3 weeks, although I had increased it for a while before the Estonian Cup to get my weight moving down. Whenever I did cardio, though, I kept a close eye on the volume to make sure it wasn’t excessive enough to start dragging my strength down. In fact, my strength barely dropped at all—perhaps by about 5% at the end, in the last couple of weeks.
The team. We worked well together and helped each other out. Ott looked out for all of us, whether that meant asking about an item in a shop or successfully fighting to get my medal back. On our final morning before flying back to Estonia, he treated us to a fantastic breakfast—thank you for that. His competitive experience is formidable: Moldova marked his hundredth competition. I’m still hoping to read an article looking back over that long competitive career and bringing it all together.
Overall, our little Estonia’s national bodybuilding team finished in 12th place out of 28 countries. Considering those countries’ populations and the sizes of their teams, that is an outstanding result—outstanding!
Until next time, and thank you to the athletes’ families, fans and supporters…
Read about the past in Janar’s forum.
Author: Janar Rückenberg
Come and train! ArtGym
