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Helen Sinclair Costa

Innocent Choga Fitness
Helen Costa Sinclair is a talented body fitness athlete. At the age of 36, she is maturing like wine and winning has become second nature. Helen is roller coasting on firm rails, trouncing rival athletes; winning or placing high in every local or international tournament she participates in.

This year she made a comeback after resting her body in 2016. In 2015, she had won the Sportsperson of the Year; a result of triumphs emanating from bruising encounters at the IBFF Zimbabwe Classics and World Championships in Italy.

The way she applies her mind to her training and diet is remarkable. She understands her strengths and knows her limitations. Competing in the body fitness ranks suits her fine, as she does not have to worry about packing on too much size on her slender, athletic figure and small boned structure as required in the body-building ranks, where bigger boned masculine ladies like Regina Jonga dominate.

In the body fitness division, Helen uses her natural gift of an aesthetic physique to her advantage adding muscle where necessary.
Fitness physique athletes can be compared to stone sculpture artists like Dominic Benhura. The ability to envision what the sculpture should look like, plan and implement ways and means to achieve it is talent.

Apart from genetics, the art of selecting exercises and food to solve a problem is a talent. These challenges are motivating factors and driving forces that draw participants to the discipline.

Helen gives us an insight into how she shaped up for the Arnold’s Classics an international body-building and fitness tournament competition held in South Africa last week.

Helen’s programme began in October last year. It started with the base bulking phase which ended in March and saw her increasing her weight from 65kg to 70kg.

The deliberate weight gain during this phase was a tactic meant to enable her to put some mass on her quadriceps and hamstrings which she felt were not well built for a tournament of such a magnitude.

She compromised on her aesthetics during this period; her focus was on lower body development. The cutting phase started in March and ended two weeks before the tournament .The remaining two weeks were the peaking phase.

From March to May her weight plunged to 58kg which was her contest weight . During the cutting phase her training sessions started at 6 am with 30minutes of cardiovascular work.

Mid morning training sessions comprised of upper or lower body workouts using moderate to heavy weights, maintaining 6-8 sets of 20 high repetition regimes.

The days would end with another cardio workout of 45 minutes on cross trainer or the incline treadmill power walk. She would do 2-leg sessions, 2 shoulder sessions and 1 session for the back, chest and arms per week. An analysis will reveal that the emphasis through frequent work on shoulder and leg training helped accentuate and widen these areas thereby resulting in the waist line looking tiny.

The training remained the same throughout the cutting process, but she stopped working legs 10 days before the tournament, to reduce the inflammation caused by the hard sessions.

During the bulk phase, her diet was calorie dense; consuming around 3 000 calories a day to aid in the development of the targeted areas. During the cutting phase her early morning session was done on an empty stomach.

Breakfast consisted of oats, egg whites, and coffee. Midmorning snack a rice cake. Lunch consisted of chicken, fish and a salad or vegetables. Midday snack was composed of cucumbers in vinegar and dinner was roast or steamed vegetables or salad with fish or chicken.

Before going to bed she would have an egg white omelet with amino ,multivitamins and vitamin C supplements .This diet lasted up to two weeks before the tournament.

An analysis will reveal the aminos provided the building and repairing protein, the multivitamins helped in the maximum assimilation and utilization of food and vitamin C helped ward off sickness.

She says water was an essential part of the hardening process, in the bulk phase she would drink 6 to 7 litres a day to keep the blood flowing throughout the body and reduced it down to 2 litres during the cutting phase and till the day of the show. This also assisted in flushing out of toxins.

The last two weeks being the peak period, she removed all carbohydrates hardening the body to reveal all the musculature and vascular details that had been covered by a film of water.

Helen won in her division at the Arnold’s Classics tournament. The officials of the local fitness association (NFZBBF) said she lost the overall by a whisker due to slight water retention at the final show.

However, Helen conceded defeat and expressed respect for the winner whom she referred to as “a fine athlete in her own right”. Thus ended the challenging, “demanding and taxing 30 weeks of muscular, anatomical, and nutritional science”.

Email:[email protected], Innocent Choga is a six time National Bodybuilding Champion with international experience. He is studying for a science degree in Physical Education and Sport.