Jenni's finale

Steve and Jenni

With 20 years of training and competing under her belt, Jenni Douglas has decided that this will be her swansong year (yeah right!). To make it a memorable final year on stage, she's got some big goals in mind. Firstly to compete and win the NABBA Masters Physique class in Wellington and then step up to the Open class at the Nationals with the aim of taking that too.

click left pic to see Jenni's hardcore training vid

Jenni with Lisa

With such big ambitions, she's called in the services of Stephen Shilelds, the Slow Protocol maestro to help her pack on some size - which from what I saw at her training session, she's achieved.

For those who know the Slow Protocol method, you'll know that its hard work but Jenni just revels in it. Jenni is pushing and pulling some big weights and to do it so slowly is quite a feat, and hard to believe that this is a 58 year old lady doing so! Just watching her train was tiring.

In the 6 months that Jenni has had Steve take the reigns of her training, she's packed on 5kg of muscle - not bad for a lady close to 60 (I mean that in the nicest possible way Jenni!).

And with 12 weeks to the Wellington comp, Steve hopes to pack on a couple more kgs while Jenni drops bodyfat. Will be interesting to see how she copes with the energy zapping workouts while dieting. But I'm sure with her stubborn desire to win, she'll use every ounce of energy to do what she has to do to achieve her goal.

So onto their strenous training session which included some very unique exercises. First, it was straight into 8 slow reps of 100kg deadlift! woh Jenni is a Wonder Woman to be able to go straight into that. Then another 3 sets of 'only' 80kg for 12 reps, which each set finishing off with 20sec hold of barbell at top of movement. Ouch!

Slow 100kg deadlifts		left: Powerpulls above: Great guns!
Then it was onto 2 sets of heavy Powerpulls which works the core, back and legs. Belive me you only need 2 sets to feel the full effects of this - and most exercises if done slowly. Next up the standing cable bicep curl. In this exercise you can really see Jenni's full muscle thickness and structure. She's really built up her lats, biceps and delts from we last saw her at the Nationals 07.
	above: Hyperextension row left: undergrip chins right: barbell shrugs
Undergrip chin ups was next but she couldn't quite manage 2 sets of this as Jenni's forearms were still burning and fatigued from the bicep curls. Then onto a very unique exercise, the hyperextension row. As Steve is trying to encourage more muscle growth on her erector spinae, this exercise works the lower back and rhomboids. Because Jenni's pretty much locked into position, there isn't much room to cheat so all the focus is on the muscles she's supposed to be working. Check out the video to see how this exercise is done.

Heavy Barbell shrugs follows and we mean heavy - 140kg heavy! but Jenni only managed a couple of reps to really fry her traps.

Finally some killer abs on the hyperextension. By now Jenni is fatigued and her back is tired but Steve still forces her to belt out half reps until she can't do anymore.

It sure was a high intensity workout, actually they tell me most of their workouts are this intensity. You have to be a dedicated athlete to go through this gruelling regime each time and Jenni definitely is that! and we look forward to seeing the results of her hard work in a few months. Good luck Jenni!

You can watch the 5min training video here

Jenni's finale

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