Strong_Curves_Final_Sample.pdf
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Pobierz
BRET CONTRERAS
&
KELLIE DAVIS
STRONG
CURVES
A WOMAN’S
GUIDE TO
BUILDING
A BETTER
BUTT AND
BODY
VICTORY BELT PUBLISHING INC.
Las Vegas
Table of content
Foreword by Cassandra Forsythe
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Female Anatomy
Chapter 3: The Important Muscles No One Talks About
Chapter 4: Building Booty-ful Muscle
Chapter 5: Nourishing Those Strong Curves
Chapter 6: Where’d You Get Those Moves?
Chapter 7: Ladies, Meet Your Strong Curves Programs
Chapter 8: Become the Ultimate Workout Tracker
Chapter 9: The Strong Curves Warm-Up
Chapter 10: Strong Curves Twelve-Week Booty-ful
Beginnings Program for Beginners
Chapter 11: Strong Curves Twelve-Week Gluteal
Goddess Program for Advanced Lifters
Chapter 12: Twelve-Week Best Butt
Bodyweight Program (At-Home)
Chapter 13: Twelve-Week Gorgeous Glutes
Program (lower body only)
Chapter 14: Living the
Strong Curves
Life
GLOSSARY
Strong Curves Exercise Index
144
159
164
172
125
105
85
4
6
10
15
18
30
39
52
60
72
79
Preface
Genetically speaking, I was spoiled growing up. I had the skinny kid gene. I ran around in my youth from
sun up to sun down, scraping my knobby knees on the pines I scaled in my Colorado backyard. I would
break from a day spent running around the Rockies to feast on giant servings of fruit and cookies, and
then it was back out for more exploration.
This was pretty much how I lived for the first twenty
five years of my life—carefree, bonethin, and com
pletely unaware of my fitness or nutritional needs. Sure,
I was athletically gifted and spent most of my time mov
ing rather than sitting. I played sports up until my fresh
man year of college, and started going to the gym at age
fourteen. However, after I graduated with my bachelor’s
degree and settled into a desk job, my lifestyle started
to catch up with me. I could no longer rely on genetics
to help me beat out the effects of my poor diet. When I
gave birth to my daughter, I lost the weight quickly—
but not for the right reasons. The stress of being a new
parent and starting a new career left little time for me to
eat or take care of myself. I didn’t spend many sessions
in the gym after she was born, and I rarely ate, uninten
tionally starving myself thin.
When my daughter was two, I found out I was preg
nant with my son. By this time, I started to pack on a
little weight but was in complete denial of this whole
process. I still squeezed myself into size five jeans and
covered up the fat that spilled out over the top of them.
A little more than three months into my pregnancy, I
started showing pretty well. There was no guessing
whether or not I was expecting. I steadily gained excess
weight over the months and did little to control it. I ate
my lunch as soon as I arrived to work and went out for
another lunch in the afternoon.
Along with uncontrolled hunger and extra pounds
came a bulk of pregnancy complications. I found my
self in and out of the hospital more times than I care to
remember, and I ended up on bed rest by month seven.
I still haven’t exactly figured out what bed rest entails
when you have a career and a busy toddler running
around the house, but it was supposed to mean I sat
6
PREFACE
on my butt all day and did nothing. I tried my best but
wasn’t very successful with it. My body could no lon
ger carry my pregnancy, and I gave birth to my son on
Christmas Eve, four weeks before my due date.
At this time, I thought little of my lifestyle having
anything to do with pregnancy complications. I blamed
nature as I sat with my son in the neonatal intensive
care unit. My body just wasn’t designed to carry a preg
nancy to term, or so I thought. Looking back now, I
know in my gut that this could have all been prevented
had I taken care of my body, giving it proper nutrition
and exercising regularly. I brought my son home five
days after he was born, and along with my new baby
came an extra fifty pounds of weight.
I was overweight for the first time in my life. I had
always
been the skinny type; the kind most people
wrinkle their nose at because it was hard for me to gain
weight. I’m certain if my body fat had been measured at
the time, I would have fallen in the obese category with
a pathetic muscletofat ratio.
I learned to accept the extra weight rather than do
anything about it. This was mostly driven by selfcon
sciousness and embarrassment. After I gave my body
enough time to heal, I stepped into the gym on a few
occasions only to leave disappointed.
I stood in the mirrors by the dumbbell rack feeling
hopeless. I couldn’t run due to weakened pelvic floor
muscles and poor endurance, and I couldn’t lift weights
because I had no strength. At that time, I was com
pletely and utterly in the worst shape of my life. I had
become the very definition of “out of shape.” But to
me, it was the curse of being a mom. I believed what I
had been told—that babies steal your beauty and ruin
your body.
The Breaking Point
Over the next two years, I slowly lost the weight I
gained with my pregnancy, but like my first pregnancy,
it was mostly due to stress. I wasn’t eating a nutritious
diet, and exercise didn’t extend beyond evening walks
or play time with my kids. I looked great in clothes,
but without them was a different story. A major turning
point was when I decided to strip down to my bikini
and take progress photos—or photos I thought would
show progress.
I burst into tears when I uploaded the pictures onto
my computer and saw my true physique for the first
time rather than what I thought I looked like. I was
completely disillusioned because I only focused on
the scale numbers. I hadn’t seen my body for what it
was. The skin on my belly sagged, and my thighs were
chubby and shapeless. My glutes were completely flat
and nonexistent other than the fat that hung from the
bottom and sides of my hips.
My outlook completely changed from that moment.
The fitness magazines I devoutly read every month
were filled with models who were also moms. Those
women proved it was possible to have children and be
in great shape. So I stopped hanging my hat on excus
es and signed up for classes at my gym. I devoted two
nights a week to aerobic classes and one night to yoga. I
went without fail to every single class. At first, I hid in
the back, barely able to make it through twenty minutes
of the aerobic weighttraining course. I sat out during
lunges because I couldn’t do a stationary lunge with my
own body weight. After two months, my strength in
creased, and I moved to the front of the room near the
instructor.
Nearly four months into my new, fitter lifestyle, I
stepped foot into the weight room for the first time in
six years. I remember when I could finally see a little
bump of biceps pop up—a total confidence booster. I
made it a point to hold things close to my chest so that
my arms flexed in front of others. Pathetic, I know. But
I was feeling really good by that point, and I kept striv
ing to reach new goals by learning everything I could
from fitness magazines and websites.
but I felt that innate competitive drive creeping back
into my life. I decided I needed to take my physique to
the next level, so I committed to a local figure competi
tion. I felt utterly lost a mere three weeks into my train
ing. I joined online forums filled with fitnessminded
women—some were competitors themselves—and
made great connections.
But the information still baffled me. Frustrated and
confused, I hired a coach to get me on stage. By the time
I hit my quarter turns in front of the judges, I weighed
less than I had in high school. I felt completely drained
and overtrained from the methods my coach asked me
to use. The women in my circle all joked about how this
feeling was normal, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t
healthy.
I was hooked on competing but not on my coaching.
By then, I felt confident enough to get to the stage on
my own, and I did so the next time around. Physically,
I felt less drained and I was more intact emotionally. I
only gained back two pounds, though, because I still
held onto the overtraining and undereating mentality
my former coach engrained in my brain.
Finding The Glute Guy
One of my most reliable sources of fitness informa
tion at the time was TNation, a site that regularly pub
lished Bret’s work. After reading one of his articles, I
scrolled down to his byline and realized that he lived
in the Phoenix valley as well. I immediately contacted
him with my story. He agreed to work with me to get
me back on stage. He felt that while I had a great phy
sique, I needed to take a couple of years to build muscle
for the figure stage.
I was a little heartbroken, but I trusted his instincts.
Within three weeks of starting his program, my phy
sique completely changed. I was leaner, tighter, and
carried more muscle than I ever thought possible. Pre
viously, I believed my genetic limitations were set to
“skinny” and I couldn’t carry enough muscle to make it
as an elite competitor on stage. However, his programs
proved me dead wrong. I made more progress in the
first six weeks of working with him than I had in the
previous year on my own.
Bret put together a compilation of my progress and
sent it over after four months of working with him. I
was astounded by the changes; I couldn’t believe I was
looking at photos of my body. I went from a slender,
average physique to a powerhouse stacked with muscle
STRONG CURVES
7
Raising the Bar Higher
After achieving results I never thought possible, I be
came addicted to the gym—but in a good way. I was in
better shape than I had been in before having children,
from head to toe. But the most rewarding part of the
entire program was my strength gains. I was perform
ing lifts at levels I thought only possible for competi
tive powerlifters, and I consistently beat my own per
sonal records every month. My husband, Josh, was so
impressed with my results that he also hired Bret and
worked with him for nearly a year.
Bret has served as a coach, mentor, educator, and
friend for the past four years, and I attribute a large part
of my success to his commitment. He saw within me
the ability to reach elite athletic levels, and he wanted
me to learn and grow inside the fitness industry. Since
training with Bret, I’ve stood on the stage in three fig
ure competitions, placing overall in one and fourth in
another. In the gym, I’ve fullsquatted nearly one and a
half times my own body weight, deadlifted close to two
and a half times my own weight, hip thrusted more than
two and a half times my body weight, and rival most
men at my facility when it comes to pullups.
Setting the Bar Higher
The funny part about all of this is that when I start
ed my journey five years ago, these feats never even
came to mind. We all reach that breaking point when
we’re tired of feeling hopeless. We either succumb to
that hopelessness and give up on ourselves, or we take
action. I imagine right now that you are standing some
where between where I started and where I am now. If
you had gone down the other path and given up hope,
you wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands. You
want to take action and are seeking guidance toward
reaching your personal health and fitness goals.
When I stepped foot in the gym in the worst shape of
my life, I had one goal in mind: to look better. It was an
aimless goal, and I lacked commitment. I had no clue
where it would lead me, and had I not defined my goal
even more, I likely would have given up on myself. But
the more results I saw, the more pinpointed my goals
became.
I want you to go into this program with the same in
tentions. Start with a general goal, but as you progress,
make it more concrete. Make it your own. We all want
to get in shape, lose weight, gain confidence, grow
stronger, and look good in a bikini. But those goals
aren’t very personal. Make this program personal. Get
selfish with your goals, and do whatever it takes to
achieve them. Most importantly, never look back once
your momentum picks up and you’re headed down that
road toward a better you.
The other day, I was helping a friend with a project
that forced me to pull out my before and after pictures.
I found a photo taken on the day I brought home my son
from the hospital. I hardly recognized myself, not just
physically, but mentally as well. I couldn’t imagine ever
getting to that place to begin with, and I never want to
go back there. It had nothing to do with my physique
8
PREFACE
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