A few months ago I was desperately searching for a more high end, more aesthetic alternative for IFBB competitions when I stumbled across this federation called The WBFF. The bio on their website promised that they are the most professionally organized show, hosted in only the greatest locations and that they have an unparalleled high level of competition. “The best of the best compete with the WBFF” it said. “Yeah right” I thought, until I Googled which guys are in the WBFF. Sergi Constance, Jaco de Bruyn, AJ Ellison, Roger Snipes, Tom Coleman…. this caught my attention, these are the absolute top level guys in this industry. Then I read that except for Las Vegas their largest competition happened to be in the 02 Arsenal arena in London at Saturday 14 November 2015. Now they had more then my attention, they had me. I wanted to do this. I consulted with team Wheysted and they loved the idea of going there to promote our brand and see what I could do. We subscribed for the competition and booked the plane tickets. This was the start of my prep and the countdown began.
As the weeks past I went trough a lot of high’s and low’s. A big + was that I was Still relatively lean of my photo-shoot in July so I didn’t need to lose a whole lot of weight, but I was struggling due to this becoming by far the most busy period in my life. Business wise things went so well fast that I had to divide my attention a lot more then I first had for seen between my competition prep and my career. This translated to really short nights of sleep which in combination with my heavy diet and training left me tired all day. To make matters worse my old knee injury acted up badly about 6 weeks out of contest which meant I had to skip training legs for the remainder of my prep.
The closer the competition came, the better things went though. And so it was, that the day before competition friday 13 November I felt great and ready to rock the stage! This day was the start of the event. First everybody had to fill in some forms, collect his or her number and get the tanning done. At 19.00 we had a meeting and conference with all the Athlete’s and everyone who made the event possible. This all happened in the 5 star Marriot hotel India quay at the impressive banking district of London Canary Wharf. I booked the same hotel for the weekend so I had the home advantage. This all really added to the overall feeling of quality and exclusivity, everything was perfectly organized and high end.
During the meeting it became instantly clear that this was not going to be a walk in the park. There were a record breaking 300 Athletes across only 8 categories, 32 of them were in my class “muscle model” ! While the founder of the Wbff Paul Dillet was explaining how everything was going to happen the next day I was looking around at the other contestants and I was getting excited. Everyone looked awesome.
Then he said “the best of the best compete at the WBFF”, he repeated this about 10 times during his talk. We will see about that tomorrow I thought.
The next day I woke up relaxed, took my time, ate some Rice cakes and hit the gym in the hotel to pump up and practice my last bit of posing. I felt confident, I looked full, hard and dry, exactly as I hoped for. At 15.00 I had to be present at the contest location: The 02 in London. When we arrived we were immediately taken on stage to do a General repetition and the last few things were explained. After that… the long wait started… As I was waiting (and eating of course) I immediately came in touch with a bunch of people. I have never been to a competition were everyone was so friendly and helpful. Everybody shared his food, tips and tricks. I was stunned by the overall level of my competitors, the level was higher then I ever saw. What amazed me the most was how some of the world famous professional Athlete’s like AJ Ellison, Tom Coleman, James Alexander, Don Akim and Dragos Sykos were also competing and coaching others and were so friendly and relaxed.
Then at about 21:00 it was stage time, I pumped up, wait for them to call my name and went on stage with a big smile. It was all over in a blurr, I got second call out and after that it was just waiting again…I had mixed feeling, I thought it went OK but my shape peaked to early. I looked better at the beginning of the day then at competition time in the evening! Probably cause I carb loaded a bit to much this time around.
About 2 hours later we were asked to go on stage again for the results. Only the top 5 was announced AND….I wasn’t in there.. to bad. It would be stupid to say I wasn’t a bit disappointed, but the truth was that I could have done some things better and everyone looked so good that it was just a matter of taste and I didn’t feel bad losing against real pro’s. I accepted it, congratulated the winners and said bye to the great friends I made this day.
Then I put my smile back on, it was time to eat some hamburgers and fries.
“The best of the best really compete with the Wbff”
