Saturday, May 19, 2012

VT5 Announced

by John Barban on May 16, 2012

 

The 5th Venus Index transformation contest is upon us and it’s time to lay out the ground rules.

This time around the categories have changed.

Category # 1 — 12 Week Transformation –

Start Date: May 21st

End Date: Aug 12th

Contest entry submissions will now be through an interactive web form that will be live in your membership cockpit as of May 21st. You can submit your ‘before’ picture and numbers anytime during the first week.

The contest tracking form will provide you with a way to track your measurements and uplooad pictures every week during the contest if you choose. You must at least upload pictuures and stats during the first week and week 12.

The data in the webform is stored in a secure folder and nobody else can see it other than sitte administrators (Brad Howard, myself)

The mandatory poses will be laid out in the web form along with sample poses. You may nottice some previous contest winners featured in teh sample poses.

Prize money is as follows:

1st Place – $500

2nd Place – $350

3rd Place – $250

4th-10th – $200

Category #2 — 20 Week Transformation –

Start Date: May 21st

End Date: Oct 7th

Entry submissions are through the same web form as indicated in the 12 week contest, everyything is the same except for the duration of the contest. “Before” information must bee entered the week of May 21st and final data must be entered by Oct 7th.

 

Prize money is as follows:

1st Place – $500

2nd Place – $350

3rd Place – $250

4th-10th – $200

Contestants intending to do the 20 week transformation may also enter a set of ‘after’ pictures the 12 week point and could potentiall place in both the 12 week and 20 week contest.

Category #3 — Calendar Model –

The ‘calendar model’ category replaces the former ‘open’ contests. The Calendar Model contest starts the same day as the transformation contest and we will be accepting final pictures and stats at both the end date of the 12 week contest and the 20 week contest. Before and after photos are still required however there is no judging on total change.

This category is a non monetary competition and has no placing. It’s for women who are close to VI and want incentive to push a little more. If you are simply intersted in maintaing your condition this is also the category for you. We will select 12 girls over the year to be the models for the first ever Venus Index Pin Up Calendar, and of course an interview. This will be produced in both digital and hard copy form. This is your chance to be a pin up calendar model!

I’ve already had people asking if they can get their birth month on the calendar! I love that kind of thinking! So lets have it, lets see 12 women make this first Venus Index calendar a home run!

One major key to this category is taking pictures that are high enough quality to put on the calendar. You don’t have to book a pro photoshoot, you can definitely take good pictures at home but you should follow many of our previous winners lead on how to take a good pic at home. Of course a professional photoshoot is a no brainer and will display you the best. It’s your choice.

All contestants in both transformation categories can be selected to be on the Calendar as well if their final look qualifies.

—————————————————————-

All categories require a contest essay to be submitted at the end of the competition.

Good luck

JB

{ 0 comments }

Today we have an interview with Kris West who placed 2nd in the Open Level 2 Division in the latest Venus Index Contest.

Check out her pictures:

Would you like to build a body like this?

I bet that you think Kris had to follow a very strict diet and work out every single day for two hours to prepare for a photoshoot like this in just a couple of weeks or months.

Well, if you’d think that, you would be wrong…

The Magic of Maintenance Point - The Minimalist/Maximalist Approach

After placing in one of the previous Venus Index Contests last year, Kris wanted to just maintain her physique. This contest for her was all about finding a way to put the least time and effort into the training and diet to stay looking good. She wanted to spend as little time as possible in the gym to keep her look and ate the maximum amount of calories she could eat without gaining fat.

Do you think this worked?

Well, judge by results not words:

Kris always wanted to look like Rachel McLish, well take a look at how well she stands compared to her role model.

How’s the Maintenance in Reality?

Kris trains during her launch breaks and her workouts are usually about an hour long, because she needs to get back to work. Her fitness is made around her work schedule and kids. Not the other way around as some magazines or “experts” would have you do.

This time Kris didn’t want to have more than 3 workouts a week. And being with Venus Index from the beginning and having lots of experience in fitness, she could play with different programs and “lego block” them into various ways (not something we’d recommend for beginners) and since the Venus Index workouts are designed this way, you can cycle them however you want. She combined the main Venus Index workout with one of the workouts from Adonis Index and cycled them week by week.

Since Kris didn’t do any cardio and wasn’t obsessing over her training she had more time for herself and even if something came up on the day of her workout, she would just go to the gym the next day.

She didn’t strive for some strict workout structure in her weekly schedule and just went whenever she wanted. And as long as you are consistent, you can keep it flexible, the key ISN’T to make your fitness your life, the key is to look good WHILE having a life.

And it’s really not that important when you go to the gym anyway. If you have four workouts a week and you do them four days in a row, that’s fine, but remember that leaving some rest days in between will help you to be stronger in your next workout thus get better results out of it.

For diet, Kris changed her approach a bit. She was always a one meal type of person. This time, she didn’t do any fasts and tried eating more meals a day. Not because she was afraid of Starvation Mode or some other fitness media myth, but rather because she wanted to test out some new things.

She started doing several mini meals during the day to keep more energy and out of cravings. While this may sound as a surprise from a Venus, the truth is that there is a big difference in how you should eat if have 50 pounds to lose vs maintaining visible abs all year round.

We are starting to find more and more evidence that not only does weight loss slow down and gets harder towards the end, but it also seems that once you get really lean (visible abs for women and single digit body fat for man) you need to eat more often and just can’t do 24 hour fasts anymore.

When you get very lean your body has very little fat in its storage and your appetite will be higher as a result and your body may will want to naturally store more fat. So, to stay lean and avoid binging it seems like a good idea to eat more often and not creating large calorie deficits on a daily basis.

Take Home Message from Kris:
  • Keep it simple, the simpler you keep it the less stressful it becomes
  • Have some low calorie options in your house for snacks
  • Start weight loss with counting calories with the goal to eventually learn to just “eye ball” the portions, nobody wants to count calories their whole life
  • Don’t think about your diet, stay busy
  • Don’t eat just because it’s “dinner time”, eat when you are hungry
  • 7-10 o clock is good too, eat when you are hungry
  • Account for water fluctuation in your weight loss
  • Get into the Venus Index contest
  • Don’t limit your food choices, you can have your cookies every day if you are smart about where the rest of your calories come from
  • Good-food-bad-food mindset will have destructive effects on your weight loss and “relationship with food”
  • Get into the Venus Index community and be active, that’s one of the most important things you can do
  • A small protein+carb post workout meal can satisfy you and keep you out of cravings
  • Get creative with the way you eat
  • Google recipes with protein powder
“It’s all about obtaining/keeping “the look” with the least effort and not stressing over the scale numbers.”
- Kris West

Links from Kris’ interview:

Read Kris’ experience with Venus Index in her own words:

After the last Open I pretty much decided I didn’t want to be in a deficit all the time.  With that being said and after listening to the Vince podcast I kind of had an AHA moment.  Physique competitors seemed to be the best at changing their look within the shortest amount of time.  What was their “secret”?  They also always speak of eating “mini meals” throughout the day.  I had tried this concept years ago when first trying to build muscle but could never really conform to the thought of eating every 3-4 hours so never really gave it an honest effort.

Maybe there was something to it…

Click here to read the rest

Listen to the interview here:

{ 0 comments }

After 40 Years of Unsuccessful Dieting There is Still Hope

May 7, 2012

Today we have an interview with Terry Clauss who placed 3rd in the Transformation category in the latest Venus Index Contest. Check out her pictures: There is a good chance that Terry’s story will resemble to yours, because it’s just so common. Issues with weight and eating often times start at an early age, we just don’t [...]

Read the full article →

Creating Your Own Dietary Boundaries

May 1, 2012

A good diet should have strong boundaries, lots of flexibility and as little rules as possible. Most diets have an abundance of rules, little to no flexibility and non-existent boundaries. By nature we know no limits, but without limits we are left to be consumed by our own desires, or I guess more accurately, we [...]

Read the full article →

After Pregnancy, Wins Transformation Contest

April 30, 2012

Today we bring you an interview with Shannon Conners who won the latest Venus Index Transformation Contest. Check out her pictures: A few years back Shannon hated her body and every single picture of herself. Being over 30 and not satisfied with the way she looked and felt about her body, she decided to get back in shape. She started [...]

Read the full article →

Numbers Don’t Lie…Or Do They?

April 26, 2012

When I was a strength and conditioning coach for a girls hockey team one of the girls called me very concerned because her blood work came back saying she had high cholesterol. This didn’t make any sense to me as she was a fit 21 year old athletic girl. Her first questions for me were [...]

Read the full article →

The Cascading Elements of Change – Indirect versus Direct Effects

April 25, 2012

I posted something interesting on my Facebook wall yesterday. It’s something I noticed… and kind of wondered if it would happen if I made a very special change in my life. It goes like this: Sometimes, the best results you get from a change you make are very indirect… almost correlational. For instance, you’d think [...]

Read the full article →

Is your Nutra-Neurosis Ruining Your Relationship with Food?

April 24, 2012

Forget the old adage ‘sex sells’, in this new age of diet and nutrition it is fear that sells. Nutrition and eating right is no longer about making the right choice, it’s about the fear of making the wrong choice. We’ve become stressed and anxious about making food choices. And because we make food choices [...]

Read the full article →

VT4 Contest Winners Announced

April 23, 2012

The forth Venus Index contest is complete and it’s time to announce the winners. This time we have three divisions – the transformation,Open Level 1, and for the first time Open Level 2. Anyone who placed in our previous open contests was eligible for the level 2 contest. As always, you must use the Venus [...]

Read the full article →

DEXA Results Part 2…Season 1 Finale

April 11, 2012

About 5 weeks ago Brad and I did a DEXA scan to see what our body composition was. We reviewed the results on a previous podcast. After that measurement we decided to use the reverse taper diet protocol to accomplish two things: 1. Reduce fat mass 2. Maintain or gain lean body mass I managed [...]

Read the full article →