Figure Champion Nicole Wilkins Answers YOUR Questions


The two-time Figure International Champion, Nicole Wilkins updates us with what she’s been up to lately. She definitely has a whirlwind travel schedule as being the champ. Nicole has been kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer questions from fans across the globe that she receives via her facebook fan page.  Check it out!

Hey! I’m in the middle of another busy travel month. After a relatively slow April things are picking up again. Earlier this month, I ventured down to Florida for a photo shoot for our new Met-Rx calendar. Last Saturday, I flew into Pittsburgh for Jim Manion’s Pittsburgh Pro to work the Met-Rx booth and see a lot of people in the industry I haven’t seen in a while. I’m glad I’m getting most of my travel out of the way in May, because I’ll be starting my prep again pretty soon as we are about 18 weeks out from the Tournament of Champions and 19 weeks from the Olympia. It’s going to be here before we all know it!

Last week I released my DVD!!! I am sooo excited that after almost a year putting this together it is finally complete!! It is only available on my website right now at www.nicolewilkins.com. The DVD goes in detail about everything I did gearing up for the 2010 IFBB Figure Olympia so if you’re interested, please check it out and let me know what you think. You can see the trailer here:

Here is another round of questions for all you Hardbody readers that I received through facebook or by email. Let me know if one of these was yours!

1. What do you do in your free time when you’re not training or getting ready for a competition?
When I am not training myself, I personal train clients one-on-one (Mon-Thurs) as well as online all throughout the week. In between clients, I am writing out programs, responding to emails, doing interviews, appearances, modeling, traveling for Met-Rx, competing, hosting and promoting seminars (July 2nd) as well as my show (NPC Nicole Wilkins and Natural Michigan Bodybuilding Championships in July), cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping etc. You know… the usual 🙂 I love to be busy and am definitely a type A personality. I am traveling almost every weekend until the end of July, however in April I was home a majority of the time so I had a great time catching up with old friends and going on movie dates.

2. How many minutes of cardio do you do and how often in your off-season?
In the off-season I do anywhere from 30 min to an hour and a half 6 days a week depending on how I feel. I love doing cardio. It is MY time to focus on ME. It is very therapeutic.

3. What are your thoughts on sugar free gum and sweetners like Splenda when getting ready for a show?
I am a gum addict! Gum does have a ton of artificial sweeteners and if taken in overabundance, can cause painful stomach cramps as well as water retention. Splenda I only use on occasion- I have switched over to Stevia. I love liquid cinnamon Stevia. Typically, I cut gum and all sweetners out about 2 weeks from a show.

4. I recently competed and gained a lot of weight the week after the contest, and now I feel horrible. How do you avoid post contest rebounds?
A rebound occurs after a contest or diet when a person has a huge amount of calories for multiple days in a row – especially if they are foods your body is not used to having (i.e. cookies, candy, chips, pizza etc). Think about it – you haven’t had anything processed for weeks on end. When you eat foods like this all of a sudden your body is in total shock, yet you don’t just have one meal, you have days of these meals. You are going to get bloated, swollen, lethargic and put back on a lot of the weight you worked so hard to drop.

I did this early in my competitive career too, but after a while I realized it just wasn’t smart, and it definitely wasn’t fun. I recommend having a cheat meal or two after the show, then getting right back on a clean-eating plan. That’s what I do, I just increase portion sizes a little bit at times. Healthy foods make you feel great, give you tons of energy, so you’ll feel a lot better and have a lot more energy for your workouts.

5. I recently read a Facebook post from another pro figure where she said that treadmills weren’t good for sprinting. I live in Pennsylvania, so I can’t always get outside for my cardio work, especially during the winter. I notice you do sprints on a treadmill and was wondering what are your thoughts on this?
Being that I live in Michigan – somewhere where the weather is cold and snowy for over half the year as well – I do all of my running indoors on the treadmill, including sprints, when I’m prepping for shows like the Figure International. I can’t get outside during those months, and it wouldn’t be smart for me to go run on icy roads and risk injury. It’s been well documented that high intensity interval training is better for burning fat than slow and steady cardio, so if someone is faced with the option of doing HIIT cardio on a treadmill or not at all, I recommend doing it on a treadmill.

During the summer I do most of my sprint and cardio workouts outside, but I will still use the treadmill on occasion when I’m pressed for time. Sometimes I have up to 8 clients a day. Between that, training clients online and whatever else I may have to do, there are days when I don’t have time to drive to a track or go somewhere I can do my HIIT work outside – I may have to fit in my training between 2 and 3 before training clients from 4 to 9, then do my cardio after that and still get home, eat and get to bed at a reasonable hour. Maybe if someone doesn’t work a full time job they can do that, but there are a lot of women like me who don’t have that luxury. I can only imagine how hard that would be for someone who has two kids at home!

So basically no, I don’t agree with that statement. It depends on the individual and what works best for their body, their schedule and their lifestyle. There are way too many variables involved to definitively say that.

I hope this helped some of you who asked or had the same questions. If you have any more, check out my site at www.nicolewilkins.com and contact me there or through Facebook at www.facebook.com/nicolewilkins01. See you next time!






Disclaimer: Reader discretion advised, please consult your physician before beginning any exercise or diet program.