Line Kolbe

I want to share a bit of my plan.

The check points along the way that will make me able to adjust if needed.

My goal weight for the Classic Bodybuilding Competition in October is 68,5 kilos  (150 pounds) and I have about 36 weeks and 9 kilos to go down. The main goal is not weight loss, as you otherwise would expect. The main goal is to keep the muscle mass. That’s the reason I have started to slowly (half the pace than what’s usual) get rid of the fat now. I aim for 1/4 a kilo a week (~½ a pound). This will not only make it possible to eat more all the way to the comp, do less cardio, and therefore lift heavier, keep the mass, have more energy… It will also make it easier to not go up that much after the comp. I want to qualify for the Nordic Championships and I want my weight to be as stabil as it can possibly be. And after I’ve competed in the Nordics I don’t want to add that much afterwards. Then it will be finetuning what I have. I want to remain in Classic Bodybuilding and not grow so big that I have to switch over to “real” bodybuilding.

I’ve made myself a diet that makes me go down that one fourth of a kilo a week (I’ve actually lost weight a bit too fast here in the start of the year so I added cals back in) and I’ve started to do a little bit of cardio and the check points look like this:

Feb the 10th: 77 kg
Mar the 9th: 76 kg
Apr the 6th: 75 kg
May the 4th: 74 kg
Jun the 1st:  73 kg
Jun the 29th: 72 kg
Jul the 27th: 71 kg
Aug the 24th: 70 kg
Sep the 22nd: 69 kg
Competition date  is not sure yet, but the guess is Oct the 6th.

I am so proud that Fairing wants to start a cooperation with me. They want me in Team Fairing!

I’m honored.

Fairing is a Swedish high quality sports nutrition company that makes supplements based on the latest science.

This is what I believe, do and recommend:

I do all I can to be as healthy as I can possibly be. And what’s that?
That’s when you are as strong and fit as you can be and still improving, never get sick, feel good and are happy.

How do I do that?
I exercise (a lot), I make sure I get the rest I need (also a lot), I eat healthy (meaning a lot and what my body needs, both nutrients and vitamins-minerals, in order to make it like I want it. I don’t eat or drink anything that’s bad for me) and what I can’t get from my food I get from supplements.

I take a multivitamin and mineral supplement to be sure I get what I need of that. Even though I eat tons of vegetables most of them have been frosen and I just don’t believe that I get what I need from them. I take extra calcium because I don’t drink milk and the calcium in the other pills is not enough.

I have Udo’s Choice oil on my food to get the perfect amount of omega 3,6 and 9 and give my body the healthy fat it needs.

If I should get the amount of protein my body needs, when I exercise as much as I do and with the goal that is to keep/add muscle mass, it would be expensive and unpleasant. It would simply be too much meat! So I eat protein powder which I have right after my workouts. I also eat fast carbohydrates with the protein to get the depleted muscles filled with energy again as fast as possible. This is good since it raises the insulin which then tells the body to add mass. Right after a tough workout the mass that will be added is muscle mass.  Here I choose a supplement too for the same reason as with the protein powder. I like that I can drink it and don’t have to eat food right after I work out.

Both protein powder and carbohydrate powder is all natural and is actually just food made into powder to make it easier to “eat”.
It’s possible to get these powders all clean from any artificial stuff.

When I do cardio I have BCAA + glutamin in the water I drink so I won’t burn any of my muscle mass. BCAA (branched chained amino acids) and glutamin is also protein. These amino acids actually raises the insulin, like fast carbs do, and that’s great when you don’t want to burn your muscles. I also have BCAA + glutamin in the preworkout shake I have about half an hour before my workouts.

I use a preworkout supplement to make me focused, energized and get a good pump in my workouts. This is because of my goal to keep/add my muscle mass. What it does is that it forces the blood into the muscles and with that nutrients. So the result is that the muscles have more nutrients at their disposal when I break them down, and therefore it’s easier for them to build themselfs up again.

… since I started this blog and a new year is about to start.

A lot has happened in this year! and I’m sure a lot of exciting things will happen next year.

I am a person who loves setting goals and reaching them. I look at the new years resolutions as goals. I wont make any promises to myself that I wont be able to keep. I’m not afriad of calling them resolutions, since they are, for me, goals
My new year resolutions:
I will compete in Classic Bodybuilding in the Swedish Championships October.
I will do everything I can to win and qualify for and compete in the Nordic Championships.
I will keep on educating me and will study and attend education throughout the year.
I will make a living out of my coaching and my coffee.

If you want to reach some goals in the year to come, make SMART goals which means these things:

Specific – exactly what is it you want to be, do or have?
Measurable – know when you get there, when is the goal reached?
Atractive – it has to be something you really want, so is it?
Realistic – is it something that is actually achievable?
Time specific – when do you want to reach the goal?

Write out the goals and make a plan to reach them. E.g. if you want to weigh a specific weight at a specific date, you can split up the goal into smaller goals and keep track on yourself.

You have to plan, do, check and adjust.

When you have your goal you make a plan to reach it.
Then you do what you planned.
Then you  check if you’re on track and progress as you want to.
Then you adjust the plan if needed, and then you repeat..

I promise you: If you make SMART goals, and plan, do, check and adjust along the way, you WILL get your goals!

The mental aspect in everyting.

I work with people (in a gym and private, I have weigh loss courses and I’m a coach, a PT and have classes..) And I’ve seen it again and again, and experienced it myself:

What you believe and expect, is true and what you get.

We all live in a predictable world and we can all make our own future. We do have to believe that we are capable, and we also have do what it takes to get there, but it is possible.
We can either choose to be a victim and let outside things we can’t control get in our way and choose to think that we aren’t in control.
Or we can choose to be a victor and react on the outside things in a way that make them work for us.
And then sometimes we acheive greater things than we could imagine. Just by doing what we know is right and staying the course.

Btw Pauline Nordin just posted this on fb “every obstacle is just a way to grow taller mentally, physically and spiritually and then climb it. When you look back standing at the top and you see you went where you thought you would never go you feel enlightened.”

We are only in control of two things in our life:
Our Actions and our Attitude.
We choose what we do and we choose how we react on the things that happen.

So believe, expect, take action, focus on the progress and the good stuff and you will get your goal.
Don’t believe, don’t expect, take some action just to try, focus on what’s bad and doesn’t work. Guess what – you won’t make it!

The year is about to end and…

~The way you end this year – is the way you start next year~

I’ve set some pretty big goals for next year and I’ve already started to go after them. Why wait to start untill January when you can start now?

I want to win the Classic Bodybuilding class at the Swedish Championships.

I want to qualify for and compete in the Nordic Championships.

When I look at these pics og myself from mylast competition, Olso Grand Prix, I get so motivated…

…but I know exactly what I need to improve.

I need a wider and thicker back and shoulders. More V-taper. So I’ve really worked on that the last many months, and will continue to have that as my main focus.

The plan of attack weight wise looks like this:

January I want to be just under 78 kg and then I want to go  down one kilo per month, so when we get to October I’ll be just under 69 kg which is my goal weight for the competition.

Start pictures. My biggest this building phase and the turning point as I will start to get the fat off of me now.

This is how I look now:

I’ve decided to start to lose the fat. I’m tired of it and I want to do it super slowly, so when I start now I can do it so slowly that I don’t need to worry about muscle loss and I’ll be shredded when we get to October…

I’ve also joined a challenge which starts today and runs untill the 14th of January, where the ones who’ve joined it support each other and write journals and update with pictures and all that kind of stuff. So this…

Today…

…is my turning point, going from gaining to slowly cutting. I’m excited. I’ve gained so much strength the last half a year and I see that I’ve added muscle mass so I will keep that added mass, finetune what I have, maybe even gain a bit the places I feel always can get a bit bigger (lats and shoulders), and start to scrape the layers of fat off of me so the muscles starts to be visuable again. I can’t wait to see them again.  I miss them!

As one of my mentors, Thomas Tidlund, says a lot these days:

“How you end this year is how you start next year”

True in all aspects. I want to hit my comp weight of just under 69 kg (68,5 would be perfect) for the comp in Oct and I start now, and end this year the way I’ll start next year.

Here’s something that’s been going around on facebook I found very fitting and motivating:

Mandy Blank is a great inspiration!

Another thing than just the fact that I now no longer strive to gain, but to slowly cut, is that I will no longer, not ever again, go through a phase to build this fast and therefor gain so much fat.

I’ve had this plan for a long time, that when I have the mass I need in Classic Bodybuilding, which is now!! I don’t need and don’t want to go through such a big gaining phase ever again. I can remove the fat that’s come along with the muscles and I can keep it away. Sure I’ll gain a bit of fat after the comps, but not in any means so much that I’ve gained now when I’ve been building as much as possible. Then the scenario is all different. Now I won’t fight to gain as much as possibly after the comps, now I’ll finetune what I have. Huge difference.

And I don’t say that I regret this half of year gaining. I don’t. This is how I’ve done it to get where I want to be so I can start my new life now.

This weekend is exciting in many other ways as well…

It’s the weekend for the Fitness Festival and Lucia Pokalen in Gothenburg. It’s the largest fitness expo and the biggest beginner competition in Sweden. I did this comp last year and this year 3 of my great friend are competing. Luca, Maria and Björn. All from

TEAM SWEDGYM    :)

Björn competes in Classic Bodybuilding, Saturday. Maria and Luca in Bodybuilding, Sunday. I’m so excited for them!

I’ll go there today, Saturday, to see Björn compete and to see the expo, and tomorrow very early I’ll go there to help Maria with her make up and to see the start of it. Then I have to leave. That’s a sad thing I decided to do. You just can’t be more than one place at a time and sometimes two things you want to do is exectly the same day…

Sunday there’s a big event and education I feel I need to be on. There are many great teachers from our own coffee company there but the most exciting thing is that one of the best personal development educators and speakers from the USA comes all the way to Sweden to educate us. I can’t wait. Donna Johnson is by for the person who has motivated me the most. She teaches to love and care for other people, to believe in them when they might not believe in them selfs, to believe that you yourself is capable of doing anything you set you set your mind up for… And she’s so humble and down to earth even though she a multi millionare. And she got to be where she is today just by helping others succeed.

I love that!

This blog post is about my friend Berit, who I think we all can learn a lot from.

She has a passion and a love for everything that you can do in and outside a gym that has to do with being active and improving your strength and fitness. But she hasn’t had that all of her life. She was fat and got the idea to join a gym. Energym, a gym I started working in and therefore got to now her. This gym and it’s owners, especially Kathrin, helped her not only get started but also helped her realize that if you want something you can do it.  ”if you want it, you can do it” became her mantra. Everytime she’d doubt herselft she’d say that to herself.

Here she is in the start of her journey to be healthy and has just finnished a run:

She started to lose weight and got stronger.

Now some year later she’s unstopable lifting weights, taking spinning classes, zumba classes, strength classes, pilates, running… and what I find so extremely great about her is that does not do it because she has to, because someone tells her to do it, or because she doesn’t think she has reached her goals, because she has (like competing in Fitness Five, and she’s also made new goals). She does it because she loves it. She thinks it’s fun.

This we can learn from. Don’t do it because you have to. Do it because you enjoy it, and if you don’t, and can’t learn to enjoy it, do something else!

Berit still has Kathrin as her coach http://kostkoncept.dk/index.html

And this is how she looks now:

Thought I’d update a bit about my bodybuilding life

I’m having some time off from my heavy lifting at the moment. I still do my classes in the gym and work out with my PT klient, Thomas, but other than that I rest and I have been resting for almost a week now. I hope it’s enough with one week off. I hope to start up again soon. Berit, my friend from Denmark many of you might remember (she competed in FitnessFive and I wrote a lot about her) comes to visit me next week. I so much want to work out with her and give my 100% and not just 80% and be carefull. I really enjoy working out with her. She loves working out. Lifting weights, spinning classes, zumba classes, everything in a gym is her biggest passion. And it really makes me so happy to share it with her. You can’t be in a bad mood when she’s around

But I have some trouple with my wrists and my lower back. It aches and it won’t go away. My muscles have come up so much in strenth the last months and my joints can’t keep up the pace. So… I rest. And I don’t like it. I want to work out.

I’ve put on a lot of weight the last months too. I weigh over 80 kg now. It goes up and down a bit, but about 81-82 depending on how many carbs I eat, and therefor how much water I hold on to.

I just compared my pics I took a couple of weeks ago with the pics from last time I weighed this much (start of august 2010 right before we, Helle and I, started to diet me down for my first bodybuilding competition). I’m not as fat as I was then. I have bigger quads, calves and pecs. I hope I’ve gained size on my lats, posterior delts and lower traps, but I can’t see that because of the fat. I can see that I still need to work on my upper back in general.

I’ve gained this exceptionally good skill of being able to see through and past the fat, especially when I work out. I don’t see the “fat” me – I see the me in the making. I see the goal. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel down once in a while. I do miss my visuable muscles and the cuts. But then I remind myself that this is a necessary phase if I want to add the size I want to add. And I do. So I’ll keep on keeping on..

When I feel my joints are with me again I’ll be unstoppable in the gym. I can’t wait.

I have half a year to keep on building and then half a year to cut down. Swedish Championships…