The Mind Performance Health Podcast
MPH is a personal training studio located at Rouse Hill, Sydney NSW Australia that has been helping clients achieve transformations with their physique, health and fitness goals.
Our team has created this podcast to share insights on various topics that can influence your body, health and fitness transformations. These topics include:
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The Mind Performance Health Podcast
Training Tips for Bikini and Wellness Athletes
Ever wondered how to train like a champion in different bodybuilding categories? Tune in to our latest episode of the Mind Performance Health Podcast where we promise you'll gain insights into the distinct training and posing strategies required for bikini versus wellness competitions. Dana, an accomplished bikini competitor, shares her inspiring journey as she transitions to the wellness category, detailing the dramatic shift in her training regimen from avoiding direct quad work to training them three times a week. We also delve into the role of genetics and discuss the varying standards across federations like IFBB and ICN.
In this riveting conversation, we break down the specific training splits and posing techniques for both bikini and wellness categories. Learn how bikini competitors focus on sculpting glutes, hamstrings, shoulders, and back while wellness athletes prioritize building dominant quads. Dana offers firsthand insights into how each category demands different posing adjustments to highlight or minimize certain body parts. Whether you're an experienced competitor or a newcomer to the bodybuilding scene, Dana's experiences and tips will provide you with valuable knowledge to refine your physique and presentation for your next competition.
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Bikini versus wellness. What's the difference with the two type of different physiques? Welcome to the Mind Performance Health Podcast. My name is Michael and I am joined by bikini. Now new wellness competitor, dana. What's happening, dana? How are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm good.
Speaker 1:I'm good. This is going to be a really cool episode today, because you're going to have a lot of insight on this, because we're going to talk about the bikini physique. But what's the difference between a bikini physique and the now growing popular wellness physique as well? Because you've got experience. The reason I say that is because you've been a bikini competitor for many years, since the age of 16, all right, and now you're moving into the wellness category. So I want to hear your insights and we'll cover a bit of the strategies we are doing to shape the two different physiques, or what's the difference between the physiques that we use with our methods. But firstly, talk to me what's been happening in your world?
Speaker 2:nothing. We are probably what four weeks out now from the first or the second comp of this season, wollongong show. So four weeks out now I think I'm starting to feel it a little bit, but not crazy, I wouldn't say anything crazy. I feel, like I've been in I don't know I've died more before. This is like I don't want to say a walk in the park, but it's just, I don't know, different, just different.
Speaker 1:Brain fog where are we sitting? Level one to ten super brain fog where are you at?
Speaker 2:Honestly, I would say a solid five.
Speaker 1:Five, so not too bad, we're surviving.
Speaker 2:I still know where I park my car.
Speaker 1:That's when you know things can get like when you lose your car or keep your boots open or anything like that. That's when it can get hard. But what about cravings? Where's your cravings at?
Speaker 2:cravings not too bad yeah, we're sitting good really not too bad. I feel like we've done this a lot we've done this quite a, quite a lot.
Speaker 1:Um, considering, like I'm only 21, um we've done a couple competitions that's pretty much five years of competing now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so not too bad. I feel like I'm enjoying this one more.
Speaker 1:Why would you say you're enjoying this one more compared to the others?
Speaker 2:I think it's maybe just the excitement of it, of something, of knowing that this is different, I'm going to like a different category. It just feels almost all different, even though it's the same concept. Right, you train, you diet, you do cardio, you get the brain fog, that's all the same. But I guess almost the excitement of it all and almost just the unknown of like, okay, I'm going to get on stage, you know, different category, different expectations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's exciting. No, I'm very excited to see you go on stage, especially for making a debut in wellness, because we've seen your physique totally change. Yeah, we went from doing no quad work, no direct quad work for many years me even saying don't go on the stepper, no leg extensions, no, no squats To all of a sudden. I mean, how many days are you training your quads at the moment?
Speaker 2:Three, three days, three, three times a week, and I'm like on the stepper on the quads. Yeah.
Speaker 1:As many sissy squats as you can yes, stairmaster, four times yeah. Totally different approach, and we've done that because we need a certain physique for you to be competitive in that division, which we're doing, you know. So let's get into it. And for the audience, Dana talk to me.
Speaker 2:Bikini versus wellness. What's the difference? The difference in terms of what they're looking for. I feel like bikini is a much. It's a very balanced physique. You are looking for an hourglass shape, so shoulders to glute ratio is the main focus and, to be honest, to do bikini you have to be quite, quite small, quite tiny almost, I would say, whereas in wellness it's more so. You want your lower half to be much, much bigger than your top, so it's unmatched, almost.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're talking about two different kinds of physiques, balance, symmetry, proportion, and you're going to have different judging criterias along with this as well. But you're right, usually with bikini, a bit more petite in the lower body, not as overpowering with the quads or development in the lower body. Different federations as well. Ifbb has a lot more conditioning and muscle mass versus something like ICN bikini. Yeah, Would you agree? Obviously?
Speaker 2:Oh 100%.
Speaker 1:Which you've had both experience with. So genetics, right, you agree.
Speaker 1:Obviously 100 um, which you've had both experience with so genetics right now, your genetics may be the ceiling on what potentially your physique can look at, look like at its best and at its worst. Right, because your genetic, you can't out train your genetics to a degree, for some ladies, through my experience, will have more genetic disposition, uh, disposition to having larger quads, yeah, you know. And then if we're doing bikini, in those cases we need a certain look so we may not put as much volume or priority on that area, because we need to get it more in balance. But would you not agree sometimes with wellness, like for yourself, you you had great quads, but we didn't train them, we wanted to bring them down, but as soon as we started to introduce some volume again they blew up. They did, you know. So that's your genetics too. So we're just enhancing what you have. Um, now, wellness, what are we looking for with the wellness? Physique wellness. So you said body like more of a dominant lower body. Yeah, when you say dominant lower body, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:Mainly quads.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So mainly like you want to have big quads, you want to have that outer sweep Big glutes as well to match the quads Bigger.
Speaker 1:Just overall, yeah, yeah, overall more mass good, but we're still chasing the conditioning as well, right, yeah um, we don't want to just have overpowering lower body, but our conditioning is not on point too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, and conditioning is going to be important for either category, whether it's bikini or anything. Um, now we'll touch on posing and all that in a second as well, but what would you say? So we covered that training. We're doing more frequency on the quads, all right. What about nutrition? What have we had to do with food to actually build more muscle mass, to shape up the physique? Because, like I said, we didn't have the quads there for a period of time. Like we had them there, but they weren't focused on. So what have we had to do to actually bring them up?
Speaker 2:Ooh, we had fun, so we did, I would say a year of just an off-season, but I would say Half of that season. We weren't actually sure where we wanted to go next. I think I was still making a decision whether or not I wanted to jump from bikini and go into wellness, but halfway through that we made the decision yep, let's give it a good crack. And then from there we had to build our calories right up. So I think we were coming from maybe 1500 calories. We built up to what was it? Three, yeah near 3000.
Speaker 2:3000 something and just for a bit of context.
Speaker 1:Your scale weight. It's not a big scale weight. Yeah, what was our highest peak of weight? What?
Speaker 2:was our highest peak of weight. Highest peak of weight 50.
Speaker 1:50 kilos. That was big for me Big.
Speaker 2:Usually I step on stage at 40, 41. And that was previously, you know, being in the bikini division. So then taking a longer off season and then actually building my body up to 50, which I've never been at in my life. It was pretty crazy, but I feel like it was a very good. I feel like it was needed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we needed to spend some time and, like I said, make a decision on what we were going to do category wise, but still have enough time to make a difference. And yeah, we ate more food. Off season improvement season, whatever you want to call it there was a period of time spent with higher food, less output like cardio. Yeah, to really add more muscle mass in the areas we needed to improve before we went into this fat loss kind of phase to peak for competition. So we made sure that we built some material and built some mass, especially on the lower body. For you, before we we dialed down the food, went more into a deficit and started to raise output with the cardio. And even now you've still got a day pretty much near 3,000, about 2,700 calories.
Speaker 1:So you've got a refeed day per week and then the rest are in a low day to drive that fat loss. So we've been sitting in a pretty good spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, pretty good spot Like I'm not crazy hungry. I still don't feel like I'm starving, which is very weird, yeah very weird because I think, touching back on like the genetics um thing it's I feel like for when we were still doing bikini, we really had to diet down and you know it's, we were playing against my genetics almost to not have our legs too big and we really pushed to fit into a category, whereas now I feel like I'm more suited into wellness. So I think that's why it feels smoother as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's important, and athletes may bounce between different divisions fitness, physique, wellness, bikini but you may find one where you just are meant to be and right now we can kind of see you flourishing into that division. I would say a lot more, especially with the feedback we're getting, which is great. Training split difference, would you say. There is a difference. I'll start by this and saying the principles. The principle is we've got a certain look that we've got to achieve for both, okay. However, how we get those kind of two different looks, there may be different approaches, yeah. So training splits difference? Talk to me, what's happening?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I just want to mention as well this is, um, this is in relation to myself, so, depending on the person, um, you know, there are bikini competitors out there as well that do train their quads. Um, I was someone that just couldn't, otherwise they would grow too big and grow too much as well. So, um, in terms of, like, my training difference, going like from bikini into wellness, um, when we were training for bikini, um, we were only hitting, I would say, glutes and hamstrings, like never, ever, ever, once, not even one exercise with the quads, um, and then obviously, like shoulders and back. That's kind of where the focus was. Now it's, um, we're doing quads, glutes and hamstrings, but mainly a lot of quad. So before, when I was doing bikini, I maybe doing hitting six different glute exercises for a workout, whereas now it's, I maybe have one or two exercises for my glutes and then the rest will be spread out into like quads and a little bit of hamstring as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you hit a great point. Which is everyone's different and that's the way we approach our comp prep, whether it's with ourself or with clients is that we see what's needed. Do you need more volume on a certain body part to be more competitive and to suit that kind of look, or do you need less? We're in the game of sculpting a physique, not a blanket approach, and sometimes I feel, uh, competitors may get caught up just in a typical bodybuilding kind of style. I mean, while we've been a bikini competitor, have we ever done any? Why do I say we? I've never been a bikini competitor, not a lot of bikini competitors, but have you ever done any direct, supine, flat bench press work?
Speaker 2:No, no, right no.
Speaker 1:And it's just the way we do things. Everyone's a bit different, but the way I approach it is okay. What do we need to bring up? Do we need to bring up the chest, or do we need to put certain volume onto other body parts once again to fit more that criterion? Look, it's mainly about sculpting a physique, a different kind of game that's played. So, yeah, training splits. You've got more frequency on the quads now. Definitely for you. I've noticed the more frequency we've done. As long as we can recover as well. Uh, simply just meaning the more times in a week we can hit the quads and recover, the better. You've responded yeah, would you? Would you agree?
Speaker 2:a hundred percent. Yeah, so we've been prioritizing that.
Speaker 1:we got the refeed day to help and we've been careful with the volume we've been doing and then, if needed, we'll do a deload, only if needed. I think we've only had one throughout this whole prep a couple weeks ago for a week where we backed off the volume intensity so you could recover. But essentially you've been able to do so much volume but you've been responding.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we can see you responding well, whereas if we couldn't see the response happening like your muscles weren't growing or you know you were regressing too much with your strength, we might have overshot that volume to where you're recovering. So definitely like your training splits, super important for whatever look, but make sure guys, especially as listeners or viewers is that it's got to be suited to you. Comparing to others can be hard because you'll see what others are doing and maybe wonder why you're not doing that exercise or focusing on that kind of method. But you need to really take a look at yourself and just ask the questions what do you need to improve for that certain look? Where do you need to pay attention to? And maybe, where do you need to decrease the mass on the body or not pay as much attention to to get more of a balanced physique for either bikini and wellness, you know. So it's a game of sculpting physiques, posing. Now, what's your biggest difference, would you say, from doing bikini to now, wellness, posing?
Speaker 2:yeah. So for me, um, doing bikini, um, even though we weren't training quads, um at with my posing, I still had to make tweaks to hide my legs a lot more. So with bikini posing, it was just very much felt like for me how to hide as much as I could and how to make myself appear as tiny as possible. And how to make myself appear as tiny as possible Versus wellness is completely different. It's more so really pushing to make myself appear bigger, because I'm not a very tall person.
Speaker 2:What am I? I'm like four foot seven, so even learn, relearning the walk, Um. So bikini is very, you know, little steps graceful versus wellness. I have to take, um a lot bigger steps. Um, because I am, you know, a smaller person.
Speaker 2:Um, with bikini I would say I knew the posing quite well. It was, I didn't have to do any posing lessons or anything, um. But then obviously then switching up and going into a different category, I thought, oh yeah, maybe I'll just need a lesson or two here just to um see what wellness posing is like. And boy, I was wrong. It was. It's it's so different to just what I was used to. I ended up needing like a lot more lessons and going to all the seminars that I could and the group classes that I could to really nail the posing for wellness. I would say maybe the biggest difference would probably be my front and back shot. I think if you've seen online, obviously in wellness we don't put our hands up in that back shot. And then also my front is very different. I'm pretty much front on versus in bikini. I would always try to be a little bit more to the side in that front shot just to again hide and make myself appear a lot smaller yeah, it's a total contrast.
Speaker 1:We were so focused with the posing before, which is an extremely important detail because you could have once again overpowering body parts compared to others, but with your posing you can actually hide it or showcase it more. But in this case we've gone from bikini trying to hide the mass in our quad to get more balance, to now trying to get the pose where the mass is showing the most in the quad.
Speaker 1:It's such a contrast. It's funny to see, but it works right. So we got to respect posing, because that will also, up on stage, allow you to get, allow you to either achieve a better look to get judged on or also allow you to not get better judged, better score points, due to your lack of skill with posing and also the position that you put your foot in your hips, in your waist, in shoulders, everything. So posing is a crucial part as well for both divisions, but there's definitely a big difference, contrasting difference, sometimes between both as well. Yeah, backstage pump up. This will be our first backstage. There's the vibes are high music's, high pump up, rice cakes crumbling everywhere. There's a lot going on now with the backstage pump up. I'm looking forward to this one because we can go ham, we can go oh my goodness, squats, we can do everything, but, uh, what are your thoughts with the backstage pump up?
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to this one, because we can go ham, we can go squats, we can do everything. But what are your thoughts with the backstage pump up?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm so excited. I feel like I've been waiting for this day forever, just because, I mean, since our very first comp. I remember I think that's when we were kind of trialing things Wellness wasn't even a thing. When I did my first comp, we were doing bikini and sports model and we were just seeing where I fit in the most, um, and I remember, um, when we would go out for sports model, that's when you would try to pump me up more. Um, so we did, yeah, mainly pumping up like the shoulders and stuff. But then when it came to bikini, it was like, was like okay, nope, like let's just calm it down. Um, don't pump up too much. Um. And then since that very first show, we've pretty much just been doing bikini all the way through until now.
Speaker 2:Um, and it's the same thing. We'll get backstage and, um, if you know, when, when you do pump up, you're doing something anywhere between like 15 to 20 reps, like whether it's lateral raises or or squats, or kickbacks, stuff like that, and I just remember we'd be backstage and I would get maybe like five reps in of doing like lateral raises and Mick would be like all right, hang on, that's, that's enough. Let's just you know we don't need more, let's just we'll just sit here and wait, and I'd always be around the other competitors and I'd see them pumping up and you know, it's almost like I felt like I wasn't getting that full experience.
Speaker 1:So I'm actually really, really looking forward to that yeah, but that's another important aspect, no different than we, we tailor the program to what an individual needs for the look. Pump-up's no different. Sometimes you don't want to pump up as much because you could look out of place on stage for the look. Once again, because you know, depending on the class you're walking out with, you might need even less of a pump-up to get that balance. So you've really got to take it case by case and that's one thing I've learned as a coach over time is, even in peak weeks I don't go crazy with things anymore.
Speaker 1:I try to keep it as predictable as possible, because I do like a saying which is complexity kills execution. And also, too, everyone's different. You know like you may need a little bit more pump up than someone else, but they may need less than you to make sure they're as competitive as possible getting on the stage. No different with, like pump up drinks Some may need more sodium to swell up a bit more, some may need more water, some may need less, some may need more carbohydrates. So you really got to treat it case by case difference, not just with your intro or peak week, but also with your pump up. More attention to detail equals, you know a better physique to present on the day. Yeah, simple as that. But yeah, donna, any final thoughts? I think this has been a great episode, just discussing differences, and also thanks for sharing, like, your journey, because I'm pretty excited to see you up there doing your thing, which we'll get at the ICN event in a couple weeks' time. A few weeks' time, but what are your closing thoughts?
Speaker 2:Closing thoughts, I think I mean I would like to say one piece of advice, and that is, if you are looking to be a seasonal competitor so not just doing one show but then actually taking a season to a season off to improve and then to constantly like come back to compete again and again my biggest piece of advice would be to run with your genetics. I think that's something that I look back now and I think I wish I would have done sooner. I don't regret anything, though, but I would say, because it is a sport that is, you know, your genetics do play a massive, massive part.
Speaker 1:I think, definitely you know, understand your genetics and figure out kind of where your body kind of suits best, and I would say, run for that yeah, play where your strengths are, yeah, and showcase your strengths and sometimes, instead of going not, you know, instead of going against it, essentially um, but like I said, sometimes it takes experience and hindsight to see. But you did very well in sports. You've had top positions. You've done very well in bikini. You've had top positions, and now we're going to make the debut in wellness, and now we'll see if that's the class which we can kind of see your physics really, like I said, responding in the best way that we'd hoped to coming into this one. So I'm excited. So, dana, thanks for sitting down. Excited. So, donna, thanks for sitting down.
Speaker 1:Another episode. Hopefully the listeners and viewers got some insight out of this one, because I think a little bit of lessons that we can share may help someone who wants to compete, or even if you don't want to compete but you want to shape up your body in a certain way, these lessons also apply. We have a lot of clients that don't want to compete but want to look a certain way, and we apply these same lessons, you know. So, guys, thank you for tuning in. If you found this episode valuable, please give us a rating on our podcast, but also, too, if, um, you know you need any help with your own coaching or you want other further resources, we have plenty of free resources user manuals, we have ebooks, everything to do with body composition transformations. You you can go to our website I'll put links in our show notes and also, too, we now have our supplement range which is very exciting coming out so you can join our supplement waiting list.
Speaker 1:It's a performance supplement movement that we're kind of going with our community to help performance recovery, which I'm pretty excited to share, to level up our clients' experience with a health and fitness goal with our community to help performance recovery, which I'm pretty excited to share. Uh, to level up, you know, our clients experience with a health and fitness goal and our community's experience. So I'll put that in the show notes as well for you guys to join if you're interested. But stay tuned for the next one. We'll get into some great topics to help your health and fitness goals and I hope you guys have a great day.