Local woman competes in international bodybuilding competition | News
DANVILLE — Having spent most of her life exploring different activities all surrounding fitness, a Danville woman set her sights on an international bodybuilding competition last October and placed third in her category earlier this month.
Tori Posatko, 34, worked with Coach Casey Samsel, from Bloomsburg to prepare for an interantional bodybuilding competition on June 1.
Posatko ran cross country and track at Lake Lehman High School and King’s College and kept running into adulthood. She said she would go to the gym here and there and got into Beach Body home workouts for awhile.
“I wanted to take it a little further and landed in cross fit and trail running. I got into races that were pretty extreme,” Posatko said. “I never really found my niche, but I wanted to do something that was cool so I found bodybuilding.”
Posatko started training for her first bodybuilding competition in October after thinking about doing so for a few years.
Posatko joined forced with the Fit Femme Project and worked with a lifestyle coach and learned what it meant to achieve food freedom and conquer physique goals. She took on contest preparation with Samsel after six months of metabolism boosting, body recomposition and creating good habits.
Samsel, born and raised in Bloomsburg and currently residing in Nashville, is an International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Bikini Pro with 38 shows total, a 4th place Bikini Olympia victory, a 3rd place Arnold Sports Fest Bikini International win and 9 years of coaching bikini athletes.
According to Posatko, she basically had to learn how to eat again after years of avoiding food.
“My relationship with food has changed drastically. I used to intermittent fast and I would try to eat as little as possible, but still try to function,” Posatko said. “What happened was, by me intermittent fasting but still trying to do these CrossFit workouts and running however many miles, my body began to store fat and started to change and my legs felt trash all the time. I was sore all the time. I just didn’t feel good.”
Her coach had Posatko eating more than she was used to, but she was told her body would adapt.
“I used to be able to go all day without eating and be fine, but once I became adjusted to eating on time and building, if I went a couple of hours wihtout eating, I was not ok,” Posatko said. “I felt weak and needed to eat immediately. My metabolism was changing.”
Posatko said she started seeing changes in her body right away and watched her waist shrink even though she was eating more than ever before, sometimes evening struggling to consume all of the food she needed.
“The scale maybe changed two or three pounds give or take, but I noticed my waist was smaller, my glutes were fuller, my muscles were fuller and I wasn’t retaining it in my midsection any more,” Posatko said. “It was distributing where I wanted it to. It’s called body recomposition.”
Not only did Posatko’s diet change during this first “build” phase of her prep, but her workouts changed drastically too as she started lifting weights regularly at Planet Fitness.
“Before this, I was doing hard core workouts where I was not satisfied until I was drenched in sweat and my heart rate shot up and I was huffing and puffing,” Posatko said. “When my coach gave me the workouts to do, I was very surprised. They were much less intense. I barely broke a sweat some days.”
After learning to eat five to six meals a day, Posatko went into a cut phase where the timing of her food was essential as her energy levels dropped.
“I noticed I wasn’t able to lift as much because my energy was going down and that’s completely normal and part of it,” she said. “They do consider it an extreme sport, and at times it was extreme. The hardest part was my energy.”
Posatko said there were times when she questioned whether or not she was cut out for bodybuilding, but she muscled through.
In order to be consistent with the macronutrients set by her coach, Posatko measured her food to the gram which sometimes led to her taking a food scale to restaurants or bringing along her already prepped meals.
“You have to be a little bit selfish at times, and people will tease you, but you kind of have to roll with it,” Posatko said. “Yes, I would take my food scale to a restaurant. It’s hard, but you do what you have to do. You don’t want to miss time with your friends and family.
Leading up to the show, Posatko was running a tight schedule as she had to check off 55 minutes of cardio, which she said was usually a fast walk, one hour of lifting weights, ten minutes of posing practice, tracking food, drinking enough water, walking two dogs all alongside her full-time job at Geisinger.
When the June 1 competition rolled around, it was Posatko’s ‘peak week’ and her coach had reversed dieted her, she said.
“My coach reverse dieted me a bit which means you deplete, deplete, deplete and then she kind of filled me back up. She filled my muscles more with extra carbs,” Posatko said.
Posatko went into an international show without realizing that was what she had signed up for. The competition welcome both amateurs and professionals so Posatko said she had a chance to see women who had competed before.
At 5:30am the day of the show, Posatko said she was shocked to see Samsel had scheduled her to eat two orders of McDonald’s pancakes with one packet of syrup and no butter.
“I was so surprised,” she said. “I thought maybe I’d have to starve up until showtime.”
The unexpected meal lineup continue throughout show day and as Posatko sat in a chair getting her hair and makeup done, she ate chicken, peanut butter and a banana to get in the exact macronutrients she needed.
Posatko said she was trusting the process.
“There is a science and my coach is very knowledgeable,” she said.
Surrounded by other like-minded women, Posatko said she spent most of her time with the other novices.
“You can tell who is a professional because if you get the ‘deer in the headlights’ look, you’re definitely an amateur,” she said.
Posatko competed in three categories, two of which were based on height, but the one that meant most to her was the true novice category where she competed against 12 other first-timers.
Posatko said she placed third in the category and was both surprised and excited.
Following the day of the show, Posatko had a night out in Miami where she could eat and drink anything and everything she wanted.
“My first meal was intense. We went out for pizza and wine and I had a milkshake. Then I went back to my hotel and started binging on whatever was there. It was so good,” Posatko said. “My gut took it like a champ. I kind of expected to get sick, but I didn’t.”
After two days of enjoying herself and eating whatever she wanted, Posatko said her gears started grinding and she was already thinking ‘what’s next?’
“I talked to my coach and had a lot of questions like ‘is it going to be as hard to continue into the prep mode,’ because this is not sustainable. Being this lean is not sustainable for life. It’s hard,” she said. “Or is it going to be harder to gain weight back and then lose it again.”
After a conversation with Samsel, Posatko decided she would head right into prep-mode for her next competition which is in just a few weeks.
“We decided it would be better to go right into my next show and after that, then we can go into the build phase all over again,” Posatko said. “I’m going to go up in my macros, a bit more play based on how I’m looking. Right now, I’m at a comfortable state. I’m not in a full on depletion. It’s manageable.”
Sam said she looks forward to seeing what the future holds for Posatko.
“Tori is a seriously driven individual. She was extremely coachable and we had a deep trust built through communication and desire to move forward and crush it. She is an inspiration and many Team Casey girls look up to her,” Samsel said. “I am honored to be able to support Tori through this journey and I cannot wait to see what this realm of her life brings her next!”
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