By Alyssa Flores of Dumbbells N Doughnuts

With all the spooky stories for Halloween being told, we thought it was only fitting to talk about the Spooky stories athletes share about past coaches….

The following stories have been submitted to us and are events that we here at Team Dumbbells N Doughnuts see as red flags:

Spooky Story #1
I had a coach who NEVER asked me for any intake forms… so he never knew how much I was eating, how many steps I was at, how much cardio I was doing, etc prior to giving my plan. We started a prep at 20 weeks out and we started at 1300 calories. I was STARVING. I went back to see how much I was eating prior to starting with him… I was eating 2100calories! For my first check in, I let him know that I was previously eating 2100 calories, and he said that it didn’t matter and that I needed to continue to “trust the process”. I ended up lasting 6 weeks and had dropped 10lbs…. But then ended up having a huge binger with foods I normally don’t eat, gained 15lbs in 2 weeks, and had to pull out from my show. 

Spooky Story #2
I had a friend who suggested this local coach. Turns out he was just a personal trainer at a local gym, not really a prep coach. He said he could help me get to the stage in 12 weeks, so I hired him. At 12 weeks out, he had me doing 2-3 hours of cardio 5-6 days a week. I ended up making it to the stage 12 weeks later, but my body had lost all its muscle from the amount of cardio I was doing. I was the leanest girl there but ended up getting last place in almost everything and my feedback was I needed more muscle mass and shape. Which was sad because I had so much muscle prior to starting this prep. 

Spooky Story #3
My previous coach would NOT allow for meal or food substitutions. I started with this coach because I heard she was great and got great results. I was a little hesitant of doing a prep with a meal plan due to the restrictive nature, but other friends said this coach was great and that meal plans are the way to go if you really want to “be somebody on stage.” So I trusted them and hired this coach. The coach did not ask me what foods I liked/disliked, was allergic to, nor if I had any intolerances. I am really allergic to eggs and some nuts, and the first meal plan had both items listed for me to eat. I reached out to let her know, and she substituted in items I cannot stomach like tuna. When I reached out again, she simply said that I needed to be mentally stronger and eat what she was telling me to eat in order to succeed. I followed this plan with foods I didn’t like for 8 weeks and cried during each meal. I wasn’t able to finish my prep due to old distorted eating habits resurfacing.

Spooky Story #4
I had a coach who would get angry and drop the F-Bomb if you tried to communicate outside of your check in day. If I got sick or had a question about protocol and it wasn’t my check in day, I had to wait up to 6 days before I could ask him about it. It was the most frustrating experience since one time I got food poisoning the morning after a check in day, I tried to ask him how he’d like me to proceed with the day. He answered back that it wasn’t my check in day so he wouldn’t be answering this until it was my check in day. So I proceeded with taking care of me while sick how my last coach taught me. Come the following week’s check in, I let him know about how that day went and what I did to get over the sickness… he basically did a voice memo scolding me for 2 minutes about how I “EFFED UP BIG TIME”... That was my last check in with him.

Spooky Story #5
I had a coach who made my meal plan strictly protein starting 8 weeks out. I was allowed to eat 200g of protein a day with trace amounts of fats and carbs… I ended up getting extremely sick 5 weeks out and had to pull out of my prep. 

Spooky Story #6
My last coach gave me my peak week protocol and it had fats and carb numbers that were LOWER than what I was eating all through prep. When I asked him about it, he said “trust the process.” After 2 days of peak week, I WAS STARVING. I was flatter than I had seen myself before and I couldn’t function. I went from consuming 120c/30f to peak week at 80c/20f. I had a couple friends on the team who were doing the same show as me and we started talking about how we were feeling with peak week… TURNS OUT ALL FOUR OF OUR PEAK WEEKS WERE EXACTLY THE SAME… prior to peak week, one girl was at 50c/10f, another girl was at 100c/25f, and the other girl was at 130c/40f… WHY WERE ALL OF OUR PEAK WEEKS THE SAME?? We started talking even more… turns out all of our workout programs and protocols look the same for every athlete including peak week. The only thing he personally altered were our macros throughout prep.

What do we WANT to see happen in a prep?

We want to see that our athletes feel comfortable with their coach. We want our athlete’s nervous systems to be calm so that way they can work well as a team with open and transparent conversations about what might need to be altered with their plan

DO NOT start a plan until a coach has looked over your starting stats including: Height, Weight, Current Macros, Current Cardio, Current Training Split, How long it’s been since your last cut phase, how long that last cut phase was, medical conditions. ALL of these items will impact your starting macros.

We ask that our clients start typically 3 months prior to prep. This way we can work on increasing calories up and cardio down if needed. We do not want our athletes under 1200 calories or on ridiculously high cardio minutes if we can help it!

We do not want to risk health for prep, if we need to push back our show date, we can! This way we can work on maintaining hormonal health by keeping fats higher than 20% of caloric intake.

We want to try to keep calories higher to ensure muscle retention while prepping!

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