By Erik Hopkins, Staff Reporter.
From working forty hours a week in the summer to bikinis and body building starting back up in January, Delta student and Bay City native Lauren Sebald, 22, has become the ultimate juggle master. When the snow falls, Lauren starts her traveling, spray tans, and continues spending six days a week in the gym. For Lauren Sebald, bodybuilding has become a new way of life.
“It started after I woke up in the ER,” Sebald says, explaining how her new favorite hobby began. “I was drinking in a beer tent and it mixed with the medicine I was taking for my anxiety, and the last thing I remember was waking up in the emergency room. It was definitely a wakeup call, to say the least.”
After that terrifying night, Lauren decided that she wanted to make some major positive changes towards dealing with her anxiety. Within a few days, she started on her new venture to body building in January of 2016 and was on her way to competitions Memorial Day weekend of this year. She competed in three different classes, a few were even qualifying for nationals.
Lauren has the help of two coaches to get her through all the new changes of her routine, Janae Gillard and Austin Johnson. “They have been very supportive throughout everything I do,” Sebald told the Collegiate, “Meal planning, workouts, scheduling – they do it all.”
Meal prep is a necessity in the bodybuilding world, and Sebald is now a pro at it. She prepares her meals a week in advance based on what her coaches inform her are necessary. Chicken, rice, and water appear constantly on her to-eat list, but she doesn’t mind.
To combat, Sebald spends up to six days a week in the gym for at least an hour per session, hitting all her work out routines until she’s hit her goals for the day.
Sebald has been at Delta for almost two and a half years and is studying Exercise Science. After Delta, she plans to look for work in Corporate Wellness. People like Lauren will help keep employees at large corporations like Dow healthy and fit.
Sebald says that the balancing of school, work, and training isn’t as complicated as one would think. “In fact, it actually keeps me more organized than ever. Having everything planned out to a T for you reduces my anxiety and keeps me on track,” says Sebald, who reiterates that her coaches have helped her tremendously throughout the whole process.
Coaches and people involved within the competition are also extremely supportive of her schooling, says Sebald. With their scheduling help, it makes things less complicated and keeps her organized.
“At first it’s hard, especially when you can be unsure of yourself at sometimes. But when you’re up on stage, it’s like you don’t even think about it,” says Sebald.
Body building competitions are held all over the state, and some even across the country. Sebald says it’d be a dream to travel to California for future competitions.
Women’s competitions are broken down into three weight classes: lightweight, middleweight, and heavyweight. Competitions entail competitors performing on a stage in front of multiple judges. Prejudging is broken down into four different rounds, Symmetry Round, Compulsory Poses, Comparisons, and Individual Posing Routines. Women do five while men do seven. These rounds are extremely important and can even determine whether or not you’ll move forward.
The evening show follows suit, and is usually the round with a much larger audience. The rounds that were held in the prejudging are the same in the evening round, except the evening show ends with a “pose down.” Competitors will do freestyle poses together onstage. Afterwards comes the final judging, with awards and medals being passed out to the winners.
“Being judged simply off appearance is terrifying. They don’t try to get to know you, they just judge you off how you look right then and there,” says Sebald. But in the end, Sebald says it’s without a doubt worth it. “It’s one of those things I’d tell anyone to do.”
