Freak Fitness

When I first met my wife, Christina Mehling, two of the many things that I was attracted to were her ability to focus and the level of determination with which she pursued her goals.

This was demonstrated when she chose to pursue a CBBF National fitness title and IFBB professional status. She took break dancing, hip-hop, and adult gymnastics classes to learn routine skills. She learned Olympic lifting to become more powerful for her routine. She changed her work shifts to best fit around her weight training, cardio sessions, and skills training. She studied top IFBB pro physiques and routines to analyze what she needed to develop the best package possible. Nothing was left to chance.

Her complete dedication and execution paid off because at only her second time at Nationals, she achieved her goal, and, at the 2005 CBBF Fitness/Figure Nationals, Christina won the Overall Fitness title and her IFBB professional status

Christina then set her sights on her next goal—a Ms. Olympia qualification. Due to time constraints with our online coaching business growth and chronic injury from the routine skills training, Christina decided to switch to figure. Christina proceeded to compete in eleven IFBB pro shows over a period of six years. She placed well in many shows, her best being a top-five placing but no Olympia qualification.

Like many new Canadian IFBB pros during that time, Christina carried a lot more muscle than many of the current top IFBB pro figure competitors. On her journey to becoming National champion, Christina did lots of squats, deadlifts, presses, and Olympic lifts to add more mass to her build. Being an athlete first, Christina loved the challenge of lifting heavy. Now that she was a pro, I wanted Christina to take a different approach, but she wasn’t ready to give up lifting hard and heavy. It was this style of training that helped her win her an IFBB pro card, so how could I argue with that, right?

Being her husband, I knew I had to tread lightly when suggesting a change in the training style that she had enjoyed so much success with. Fortunately, in the fall of 2011, Christina started up her new competition spray tanning company, Liquid Sun Rayz of Canada. In true Christina fashion, she set out to aggressively grow her new company nationwide. This forced her to take some time off from competing, but it gave me the opportunity to change things up.

Now that Christina needed to spend time on developing her new business, she needed her workouts to be more time-efficient. I took Christina in a different direction, and instead of focusing on lifting slow and heavy, I had her now focus on lighter weights, faster rep speeds, and using supersets and giant sets to increase work volume. I also changed her cardio sessions from classic “road work” (i.e., running) to modified bouts of high-intensity work. Christina was now able to develop a new streamlined look while still training at the high level of intensity she enjoyed so much.

This training style allowed Christina to spend less time in the gym and despite still pursuing big business goals, she decided that she now had the time to make a return to the IFBB pro stage while growing her spray tanning business.

During her short 10-week contest preparation phase leading up to her first show back, the 2014 IFBB Mozolani Pro Classic, Christina’s gym sessions were brutally intense, many times leaving her completely spent. In fact, Christina rarely had to go to the gym more than twice a day to see continued progress.

Ultimately, Christina’s return to competition was another success as she placed ninth at her first IFBB pro show in nearly three years, and rocked the stage at Toronto Pro SuperShow at the end of May. As I’ve shown, Christina achieves her goals and an Olympia qualification is still on her list of goals, so watch out, Olympia stage—Christina is back!

To read more from Darren Mehling, click here!