The Muscle Couple had a truly amazing weekend at Shape Up America @The Grove in Los Angeles.

Mike Torchia and friends put together a truly inspiring and memorable event.  The turnout was excellent as were the multiple vendors and sponsors.  It was a great thrill to see Elaine La Lane (wife of Jack) speak to the crowd and talk about the influence Jack played on the health and fitness culture of the last fifty years.  She is 86 years old and didn’t sound a day older than 40.  Just an incredibly inspiring woman and literally a living, breathing national treasure.

We’re honored to have been asked to become regular contributors and VIP guests of Future West Coast Events for Shape Up America.  Being a part of an organization giving so much back to the community is something we are genuinely excited to be involved with.  More on future Shape Up Events soon.

Daddy is so proud of Mommy for finishing 5th out of 18 very conditioned competitors in the Miss Fitness Hollywood Contest.

It’s hard to express in words how much it means to me (after all Anh has endured the last 3 years) with job changes, major out of state moves, the birth of our two beautiful daughters, the ups and downs of parenting and the roller coaster of marriage.  There are few women like her and I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to call her my wife.  <Daddy was chasing the Muscle B’s around pretty much the entire time so there wasn’t a lot of time to snap pictures.  Thankfully our good friend and fellow NPC Competitor Erik Mara shot a bunch of incredible photos with his Canon High Res camera many of which are appearing in this blog>

To be very honest (and definitely I’m biased), Anh could have won the contest.  She was first on two judges score sheets.  She definitely didn’t do herself any favors in her answer to the loaded question related to Michelle Obama but her body when compared to the 4 girls who finished above her was equal if not superior in many criteria. (When you see the photos, I think it will be clear to see).

This takes nothing away from the beautiful, sexy and fit women who finished above her.  They were all incredibly conditioned and worthy of their selections- no doubt. In fact, I would argue Anh placed where she did not because the condition of her physique but more so on the quality of her presentation.  The other girls who finished in front of her were more polished in their stage presence and clearly more experienced in how to impress and score points with the judges.

TMC believes the real take away points from this event were:

• Anh even at 37 years old with two children under the age of 4, can compete with anyone regardless of age or condition.
• Anh has a new and burning desire to improve her conditioning every time she competes.(She caught the contest bug)
• Jay believes he figured out a solid pre-contest strategy which will allow for peak conditioning at “showtime” for either of us going forward.

We are both now training for a Photo shoot with Natalie Minh the week of the Olympia here in Vegas.  Anh is also contemplating entering the Flex Magazine Bikini Model Search that same weekend.  We both are rock solid committed to competing in Muscle Mania Model America in Vegas in November.

Saturday night and Sunday we took a break from our diets after being so dialed in for the last month.  This morning we got right back on top of the proverbial horse and kicked it back into overdrive to prepare for our shoot with Natalie.

Our HIT Training is going to become much more intense as we both have areas we’re going to address and hope to improve.  (2 Days On(Body Part Split of Chest-Delts-Triceps-Abs and Back-Biceps-Hamstrings/Quads-Abs) 2 Days Off.  First 2 Days will be focused HIT and 2nd 2 Days will be Stopwatch training.(Higher Reps)

Here are some of the best pictures  from our trip to LA  For long time readers of this site, you should be able to see the improvement in Anh’s conditioning right away.

Enjoy:

MIHWCS