Routine difficulty: you need a hard body and a hard routine to win a fitness competition - For the Competitor

Muscle & Fitness/Hers, April-May, 2002 by Steve Stiefel

Impressing the judges in the routine rounds is one of the best ways to elevate your placing at a fitness competition. To do this, you not only need to master basic moves and be able to transition smoothly from one to the next but you should also include enough challenging strength, balance and flexibility maneuvers that you grab the attention of the judges and the audience. "I'm very concerned with including a high level of difficulty in my routine," says IFBB fitness pro Beth Horn. She emphasizes that there are several keys to choosing which moves to include, and how to perform them.

"Sometimes competitors make the mistake of thinking that fitness is like gymnastics, but they're different sports," Beth explains. "A lot of gymnastics moves are very hard, but the ideal is to make them look easy." In gymnastics, each move has an assigned value, while in fitness each move is open to the judges' interpretation. In fact, competitors who often include many difficult tricks in their routines are not rewarded simply because they perform those moves so well that they look easy. "In fitness, you want to make your difficult moves look difficult," notes Beth. "You can hold positions longer to put more emphasis on them Go into movements more slowly. A lot of competitors have really difficult routines, but they run through it so fast that you miss it."

Beth stresses that selling a move is different from struggling with it. "You don't want to include a maneuver until you know you can successfully complete it in competition You must have good execution. When it looks sloppy, it really takes away from the routine. You have to be good enough at a difficult trick that adding it will enhance your routine instead of take away from it."

When you are looking for difficult moves to add to your routine, the challenge is finding one that's harder for other people than it is for you, Beth says. To add a complicated move to your routine, Beth suggests choosing a half-dozen or so tricks to experiment with. "After a few weeks, evaluate which ones are starting to come to you. At this point, you can eliminate those that aren't as easy as the others." This way you won't waste your practice time working on moves you aren't going to be able to use in your routine.

"After you've settled on two or three tricks you might add to your routine, you can really start to focus on them. I use the 5-3-1 technique for learning a new move. I used this for my stalter presses, which is a straddle, then press to handstand without allowing your feet to touch the ground. On Monday, I'll do one or two sets of five reps of these; Wednesday, I'll do one or two sets of three reps; and on Friday, I'll do only two sets of one rep."

Beth says this strategy conditions your body to the move because you perform it frequently "It helps your body develop strength by performing multiple reps on Monday. Fridays allow you to really focus on perfecting form since you do only one rep. It also allows you to recover and to train the rest of your body the way you need to. I think fitness competitors often overtrain certain moves because they're so difficult, and that can have a negative impact on the way they look and their ability to recover."

Another favorite technique Beth uses to enhance difficulty is to combine challenging movements -- a criterion judges should look at more closely in evaluating routines. "In my routines, I include two or three combinations that have three or four tricks each. It's much harder to do the subsequent tricks because you're a little fatigued. You must train to have the endurance you need for your transitions as well as for the moves themselves."

As the sport of fitness continues to evolve, Beth believes judges will come to appreciate the difficulty in the best routines, which will then be rewarded with high placings.

the STALTER press

The stalter press is one of the most impressive moves in fitness, and very few competitors use it. Here Beth Horn breaks down the move, which she includes in her routine.

* Place your hands between your legs and press up so that only your hands are touching the floor (photo 1). This start position is a mandatory strength and balance move for fitness competitors.

* Holding your balance, rock forward so that your shoulders move forward (photo 2).

* At the same time, begin to raise your hips using the strength of your abs and upper back (photo 3). Round your back to really use these muscles. Keep your legs straight and toes pointed at all times.

* As your hips rise, push your shoulders back so they're directly over your hands (photo 4) At the same time, sweep your legs together so that they meet at the top.

* At this point, you're in a handstand (photo 5). Hold that solidly for 2-5 seconds to impress the judges.

Now, lower back down to the straddle position. This is much easier for most people than the press to handstand.

* With straight legs, begin to straddle.

* As your hips begin to lower, counterbalance by allowing your shoulders to come forward a couple of inches.