Good to GREAT!
Marina Popelka Set Her Own Standards for Greatness... and Reached Them

By Matt Fitzgerald

Who: Marina Popelka
Age: 36
Location: Denver, CO
Occupation: GNC owner
Goals: Lose bodyfat and sculpt muscles; break free from exercise stagnation as well as reawaken her passion for working out

Marina Popelka is a walking example of what it takes to go from good to great. For several years, beginning when she first dedicated herself to a fitness lifestyle at age 28, Marina's diet, exercise habits, and physique were all very good—by most people's standards. Marina had her own standards, however.

"My friends thought I was already in really good shape, but I knew I had a ways to go," she says. Nevertheless, she remained stuck at the "very good" level until she found three secrets to greatness that anyone can use to break free from stagnation: motivation, mentoring, and proven methods. Now, at 36, Marina looks and feels better than ever.

It all started last winter. After eight years of repeating the same workouts, Marina, who owns and operates a GNC franchise in Denver, Colorado, found that not only had her physical progress ceased, but she was also losing her passion for training. "My workouts were getting boring and monotonous," she says. "I was losing focus." Eventually she realized that only a new and exciting challenge would reawaken her passion.

In the past, Marina's husband, Matt, a district manager for 24-Hour Fitness, had frequently encouraged his wife to enter a bodybuilding show. She had always refused, and Matt stopped mentioning it.

It wasn't until she was helping a friend, who was competing in a physique transformation challenge, that Marina decided to take some pictures of herself out of curiosity. Not only did she not like what she saw in her pictures, but because she regularly worked out and ate consciously, she actually had "thought" she looked much better than she really did.

At that moment, she immediately decided it was the "right time" for a new beginning. Marina realized that entering a show was just the kind of challenge she needed to reignite the spark. And she made the decision on her own, without any further encouragement.

A New Beginning

She signed up for the Northern Colorado Bodybuilding, Fitness, and Figure Championships. And it worked. With a big goal in front of her, Marina stopped dreading her workouts and became genuinely excited for each of them. She derived so much motivation from her chosen project that even the strict diet she adopted felt easy. "I know other people who are totally freaked out when they're dieting," she explained when we spoke just two weeks before her first show. "All they think about is the stuff they can't have. I'm not struggling with that. I'm not hungry and I don't feel deprived. I believe it's because I've set a goal, and I like the way I'm looking and feeling."

Marina feels that anyone who's struggling to find motivation to train consistently and eat right can benefit from proper goal setting. "It really doesn't matter what the goal is, as long as it gets you excited," she says.

As fate would have it, Real SOLUTIONS Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adele came to Marina's store to do some promotional work for Lean System 7 shortly after she had signed up for the bodybuilding show. When Marina told him about her upcoming show, Stephen offered to assist her with her preparations if she felt she needed any help. She knew this was an opportunity not to be missed. "Let's make an appointment today, tomorrow, whenever you can do it!" she told him.

Marina's Road Map to Success

Stephen created a complete program for Marina that covered every detail of cardio training, weightlifting, diet, and supplementation. He planned it out in two-week blocks. All Marina had to do was print out the schedules and follow them to the letter. (A FREE copy of this plan is available for download at the end of Marina's story!) "I like having so many days laid out ahead of me and not having to figure it out on my own," Marina says. "If I had to figure it out day by day, it would seem like a lot of work."

Much to her surprise, Marina found herself working out slightly less under Stephen's guidance. "I was probably doing more of everything before, she explains. "I was lifting more, doing a lot more supersetting—I might have been overtraining."

Stephen's program called for just three 60-minute weightlifting sessions and three 20-minute cardio workouts in a typical week. But what it lacked in bulk, it more than made up for in precision.

For example, up to that point, Marina had done little in the way of periodization—arranging different types of training into a logical sequence so that each phase builds on the gains made in the previous phase, so progress is steady. On Stephen's program that changed. "Starting off I was doing mostly compound exercises like squats," she said in describing the weightlifting component. "Midway through I started to emphasize more concentrated exercises. And now everything is isolated and single-sided."

Marina feels that people would be less likely to quit their exercise programs if they stopped training harder and started training smarter, as Stephen taught her to do. "I show up at the gym and see people on cardio machines working as hard as they possibly can," she says. "I do my weight workout and when I leave, they're still there on the same machine, looking the same as they did months ago! There are a lot of people who are just killing themselves in the gym, and they're not looking any better. They just don't know!"

The changes in Marina's dietary and supplementation patterns were subtle yet significant. Stephen taught her the importance of carefully timing her nutrition and supplementation throughout the day, steered her to the highest quality supplements, and encouraged her to take in more water and antioxidants. He also helped her break the unfortunate habit of snacking on two to three energy bars (i.e., vitamin-enriched candy bars) a day. "I didn't realize how much extra stuff bars have," Marina says. "Stephen told me not to eat any bars whatsoever."

Overall, however, Marina found herself eating more, not less, under her mentor's plan. "I probably wasn't eating enough before," Marina reflects. "I was eating most of the right things, but I wasn't getting quite enough calories in."

Hunger is never an issue for Marina on Stephen's plan because it allows her to eat as many green vegetables as she wants whenever the planned meals and snacks don't fill her up. She was allowed one cheat meal a week initially, but that was eliminated as the show drew near.

From Good to GREAT (and Beyond)

By working out less and eating more, but doing both with much greater focus and precision, Marina saw great results. Her bodyfat dropped from 21.7% to 9%, and her bodyweight dipped from 120 lbs to 108 lbs. Her physique has transformed even more than these numbers indicate. "If I see someone I haven't seen even in just a few weeks," Marina reports, "they say, 'Wow, you look really healthy! You're glowing!'" In addition to looking better, she also feels better. Her strength, endurance, and daily energy have all increased.

"I've never been in better shape," Marina says. "It's nice to be able to say that at age 36. Not many people can!"

As a testament to her transformation, Marina also won both the lightweight and novice divisions in her first ever bodybuilding show and was only one point from taking the overall title!!

Asked to name the most important lesson she learned from working with Stephen Adele and would like to pass along to others, Marina says, "The best advice I can give people is to seek professional help. Talk to a personal trainer. Too many people think they can figure it out on their own, and actually they can't. Stop listening to people in the gym and marketing hype and stop reading too many articles giving contradictory advice. Find someone who knows what they're talking about to give you a plan and just stick with it."

Fortunately, in her position as the proprietor of a sports supplements store, Marina has daily opportunities to help others benefit from what she has learned. "I love my work there," she says. "I feel very fortunate that this opportunity came about. It's very helpful for our customers to hear firsthand what products I have tried, how I eat, and how I go about my exercise regimen. We have several customers who are transforming their bodies too."

The novelist Toni Morrison has written, "The purpose of freedom is to free others." Likewise, the ultimate purpose of achieving optimum fitness is to help others do the same. Stephen Adele helped Marina Popelka go from good to great, and now she is inspiring and teaching her customers to make the leap. How about you?

Marina's Real Nutritional SOLUTION (i.e., Daily Diet)

You don't have to spend hours at the gym or starve yourself to achieve your best body. As Marina Popelka learned in working with Stephen Adele, going from good (or even not so good) to great is easy when you take a balanced approach to exercise, diet, and supplementation. Here's a typical day for Marina:

6:00 a.m.: 2 Lean System 7's, 2 glasses of water, coffee

6:30 a.m.: 20 minutes of high-intensity cardio (on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays)

7:30 a.m.: Breakfast—8 egg whites, 1/2 cup of oatmeal, 1/2 cup of soy milk, 1 glass of water, multivitamin and mineral , antioxidants, essential fatty acids, and calcium

10:00 a.m.: Designer Protein shake or Myoplex shake

11:30 a.m.: 2 Lean System 7's and water

12:00 p.m.: Lunch—grilled chicken breast with fresh vegetables and water

3:00 p.m.: Designer Protein shake with flax oil or a Myoplex shake with flax oil

5:30 p.m.: 60 minutes of weightlifting (on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—*see full program below)

7:00 p.m.: Dinner—broiled salmon with spinach and water

9:00 p.m.: 2 scoops of Designer Protein with Meta-CEL and glutamine

*Marina does a two-day weight-training program split, alternating between workouts for legs, back, and biceps and workouts for chest, shoulders, and triceps.

If you'd like to follow the same nutrition and exercise program Marina did, please click here for your free eight-week Success Plan and then download either the PDF or Excel version.

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