So what’s next for me and Strongwoman?

This time last year the thought of entering a strongwoman competition hadn’t even entered my head. Wind forward 12 months and one of the questions that I’m most frequently asked is ‘so when is your next comp?’

The honest answer is that right now I don’t know exactly.

The first few months of 2016 were completely dominated by training for my first ever strongwoman competition. It took over my life in a way that nothing had since marathon training. If I wasn’t lifting I was recovering from lifting, thinking about lifting, blogging about my training, eating or thinking about eating.

I loved having the focus and discipline to my training but looking back it was also pretty draining both physically and mentally. I don’t think I realised just how anxious I was about the whole thing until it was over and I felt my body and mind completely relax for the first time in months.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved the experience and chose to do another competition shortly afterwards. The preparation for the second competition didn’t tax me in quite the same way but the sense of relief in my body and mind when it was over was again noticeable.

I’ve talked about wanting to get down into the next weight category, and that being my primary aim right now. It makes sense to focus on that rather than preparing for another competition.

I also think that it’s probably not a great thing to be a state of permanent ‘competition prep’. The body and mind need time off, to just enjoy training for fun, not worrying about needing to hit particular weights at each session or whether I’m consuming exactly enough protein to help my muscles recover and grow.

 

I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to get below 75kg, I’ve got 10kg to go now which is still a fair amount. I’ve been vaguely targeting a competition in May next year as my first under 75kg outing and I think that’s probably achievable, but I’ll revisit that idea as the months go by.

Ideally I’d like to do a warm up competition before that. The other day I found out about one in March that has just one category for women with no weight range, which would be ideal. Most of the events would be a relatively comfortable for me so I might sign up for it. But I’m going to give my body and mind another couple of months of ‘competition rest’ before I commit to entering.

There will absolutely be more Strongwoman competitions in the future for me, but for now I’m just enjoying my training and working towards my other, non competition related goals.