The Power of Accountability: A Body Builder’s Secret Weapon with Corina Betournay

“Great bodybuilders have all the knowledge to prep themselves. But accountability and sense of community— a lot of people need that to feel like everything’s coming together.”  —Corina Betournay

Accountability is the missing link between wanting to accomplish your goals and actually working toward them. But it does stop at merely adhering to your training and diet plans consistently. It is a binding agreement to yourself to display a higher level of commitment irrespective of whether someone is watching or not. 

This week, Sherrie interviews Corina Betournay. Despite being a rookie in the field, Corina demonstrates an extreme commitment to honing her skills. Her passion for fitness led her to push her boundaries and partake in competitive bodybuilding. Regrettably, the onset of the pandemic coincided with the start of her new endeavor. However, Corina seized the first opportunity post the health crisis to emerge stronger and showcase her athletic prowess.

Listen in as Corina shares her journey, how she practices accountability in her routines, and how she was able to refine her skills in a short period of time. Sherrie and Corina also discuss how Physique and Figure bodybuilding differs, Corina’s secret to overcoming the craving struggles, the power of having a good coach, and the importance of having a community to support you along your journey. 

Connect with Sherrie: 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sherrie.massiakapach 

Instagram: https://instagram.com/mindbodysoul_hypnothetapist 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherrie-kapach-b5bb26243 

Email: skapach40@gmail.com 

Episode Highlights:

01:16 Walking the Body Builder’s Path

05:43 Physique vs Figure

10:05 Overcoming the Craving Challenge

14:17 Get A Good Coach

17:28 The Power of Accountability 

Transcript

Sherrie Kapach: Welcome to Beyond The Prep. I'm your host, Sherrie Kapach. I'd like to welcome today, Corina Betournay, who is a competitor today. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule and joining me. We're gonna start, how did you get into bodybuilding?

Corina Betournay: Mainly, it was just by seeing friends and local athletes, and Prince George where I'm from. I've always been into fitness, always been into lifting and just being inspired by some of our local athletes. Active Body Nutrition is there, so Cara Roberts owns that. And she was competitive for a long, long time. Well, yeah, she was the main one that I look up to. But this is only my second show. So it's been a while since I've competed. Through COVID, I just took a little bit of a backseat. I wasn't sure if I was going to get back to it. But now life allows, so I'm going to be competing as much as possible through my 30's.

Sherrie Kapach: Wonderful. So how's it been going this go round?

Corina Betournay: Good, really good. Actually decided to put myself first. I just have a lot of friends that have been in it for a long time, they're very experienced, and I just do a lot of research all the time. I'm not about bodybuilding. So just educating myself as much as possible. I think one of the biggest helps for me was actually Scott Stevenson speaking on the air and bodybuilding coach. And reading that, that really did help me kind of just set a plan for myself. Just figure things out from that.

Sherrie Kapach: Wonderful. So this is your, you said your second.

Corina Betournay: My second show. I continued in 2017.

Sherrie Kapach: So what now that you wish you would have known when you first started?

Corina Betournay: A number of things. I had a coach. For my first show, I had a coach. So I just got a call, did anything she told me. Nothing is really wrong, per se. But looking back, there's definitely a handful of things that I did differently through my prep. And it's been much more comfortable that way. Mainly being Pete geek, and I didn't do any water cutting for this show. That was torturous doing water. I know a lot of athletes do it. Just the last prep was a little harder. There were a number of things like that. This time, I did repeats almost every weekend, and it's what gave me the energy to get through things. I was able to test drones of what I would look like, like loaded cargo. So that helps me be a loner. Kind of figure out, how do I react? Timeframe after you carb load, that helped me a lot to kind of prepare.

Sherrie Kapach: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. That's really interesting. That's awesome.. Because like you say, you can test your body. It does take time to learn how your body's going to adjust, what it's going to react to and what it's not with you having that control.

Corina Betournay: Yeah.

Sherrie Kapach: Wonderfull. And what category are you in?

Corina Betournay: Originally, I was just going to compete in the category that I'm most interested in, but then my friends encouraged me to do figure. That's what I did for my first show. Then I decided, okay, sure. I'll just figure, and I'll physique. And then (inaudible) sent out an email, it was Monday, so just a week before the show. She requested all the physique women if they were interested to do body work, just to help enrich the show. They didn't have anybody sign up for it. And I was like, I took a couple hours to wrap my head around. I'm not really sure. I kind of know the poses and stuff, but that's really awesome. And then I was like, I'm there. Let's do it. So now, I'm doing it too.

Sherrie Kapach: Good for you. That's interesting.

Corina Betournay: I'm pretty excited for this even more.

Sherrie Kapach: For sure. So you have a different pose in figure bodybuilding? What's the different styles? Is bodybuilding kind of similar?

Corina Betournay: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like men's bodybuilding, women's bodybuilding goals poses are all very much. And the main difference between physique and bodybuilding is close fist. Along with physique, you can get a little bit more personalized with how you do your posing. So that's the main reason physique has always interested me the most is because you show yourself off. In my opinion, you get to show yourself off a lot better. You get the back double bicep versus a physique, figure are just a quarter.

Sherrie Kapach: Doing a lot more posing.

Corina Betournay: You have to prepare for it. So that's kind of exciting for me too.

Sherrie Kapach: And you pick your own music?

Corina Betournay: Yeah. So having a physique routine done, prepared three months ago, I have it. In my bodybuilding routine, I just did it on Tuesday. My last day in the gym, I was like, okay, we're gonna cover up this together. Pick a song that I had. It was on my list of, maybe I'll use those one day. Pick the song and just swung it together in like 15 minutes.

Sherrie Kapach: Yeah, totally out of your original plan.

Corina Betournay: Yeah. Going into prep, I was like, this is gonna be great. But then as it progressed, people are like, not just you figure and do bodybuilding. Okay, well, it's gonna be a full day for me.

Sherrie Kapach: Like you say, your year.

Corina Betournay: And it's just really fun for me. I do always have the goal in mind that, of course, one day, I'd love to get a pro card. But I know that it's a lot of competition that you're up against. So I'm hoping to compete every two years until I'm 40. So 10 years, and have nice long off seasons. Just see where it takes me.

Sherrie Kapach: Enjoy the journey. It's a lot of work, so enjoy it.

Corina Betournay: As soon as I get backstage, I am just all smiles. I get very mad. I have to kind of stop myself from wanting to talk to all the girls. So try to respect, but you can tell which girls are those girls. But my first show, I was just like bubbling over the top. Even though I felt horrible, I was just bubbling over the top. I was so excited. Just made it through events. It's all worth it.

Sherrie Kapach: Would you step on that stage?

Corina Betournay: I was nervous. I know, I'll be nervous on stage, but I'm hoping with three categories that I'll get--

Sherrie Kapach: And then you're much more relaxed.

Corina Betournay: That's what I'm thinking.

Sherrie Kapach: Nice. So peak week spin.

Corina Betournay: I was pretty dead at the beginning of the week. And then I did my carb load Thursday night. And just when we arrived here, I had everything planned out sturdy. It's tough to get all the food. And to be honest, you're like shrunken for small meals for so long. But I got it all, and my goal was to aim for like 200 to 250 carbs, and I nailed it. To be able to just eat a meal, it's like it looks large. I didn't do any dirty refeeds, it's all clean. But being able to just eat a massive amount of whatever it is, but yeah.

Sherrie Kapach: Is there anything that you struggle with? Any cravings that you have?

Corina Betournay: I'm kind of robotic in the sense of, when I'm in prep, I'm very good at shutting off those senses because I'm just so focused on the task. It's not even really a question of, I don't get stressed or worried that I'm gonna go off diet or anything like that. But of course, like the last four weeks, I was finding myself really thinking about food and you start preparing. I can't wait to eat well. And my partner is a fabulous cook. He's hands down, blows your mind. Cook's most amazing stuff. And he actually was dieting with me through my prep. But he did all of his cheat meals and stuff. So when I did my refeeds, even though we broke doing essentially a refeed, he would make something really crazy awesome for himself, and then I'd be having my rice and shrimp. My refeed is just rice or oats. It was just like, oh, this smells, that's the main thing. And actually, honestly, the strangest thing for myself during prep is the smells of things are so intense. Because your body thinks that it means more.

Sherrie Kapach: I'm like, come on.

Corina Betournay: It can be tough, though, for sure. It can be tough. There was only this time I did experience not sticking to my original plans. My one refeed that I did, I made a mistake. I made a mistake. It was just a series of little things. This set me off. I went and talked to a friend of bodybuilding and she was just like, she was mentioned past up to me. Mentioned past that it repeats to me. And then later in the day, I went and all of a sudden I was like, I'm not gonna stick to  my original plan of refeeding with my normal rice. I'm just gonna go buy a box of brownies. So it was amazing, of course. And then sent me on like a little bit of a spiral, and it ended up being fine. It didn't go too crazy, but I was upset with myself that I didn't stick to my plan. So it was a learning lesson for myself. I'm now moving past it. I still lost a pound last week, so it didn't hinder me that much, really. But I still was disappointed in myself. For me, you only discipline yourself. Not anybody else. But it was a learning experience.

Sherrie Kapach: Yeah. And you say when you start, that's okay. Yeah. Guilt can just take over, but you need to let it go. Just get back on that wagon, and just continue on. And it'll be okay, of course, because we're only human. But I understand how the mindset works on that, for sure.

Corina Betournay: I mean, realistically, I've been eating 35 calories a day for the last three, four weeks, roughly. It's like the amount of no amount of cardio and training you're doing. You're not going to be able to even scratch the surface in one evening on overeating. So it's really water under the bridge. But it was a learning experience. Because when you're in prep, you pride yourself on having that extreme level.

Sherrie Kapach: What would you advise if someone came to you and said, I'm thinking about competing? What's your best advice?

Corina Betournay: I would probably say, educate themselves as much as possible. Do the research. I do have people at the gym, and I have had a few people that can ask me things, and usually it's about posing. They want to learn how to take photos.

Sherrie Kapach: Oh, wow.

Corina Betournay: I'll show them how to spread their (inaudible) things like that. But to be honest, the person that I refer to as anybody is John. He's passed away. It's very unfortunate, but all of his YouTube channels are still there. All the things, all the great information that he provides is still there. He was a very educated man, very experienced. I feel like I'm a little bit dazed or lost, or I just need a reminder. I'll go to his channel and I'll find all my favorite videos of his. He's got videos on literally everything you could ever imagine from training, to your diet, your peak week.

Sherrie Kapach: So it's good information.

Corina Betournay: It is. It is. And he's a very well known person in the industry. But yeah, that's usually what I do because it's easier for me to just be like, hey, do you know this person? Create a YouTube channel instead of me trying to say, okay, yeah.

Sherrie Kapach: Well, what do you hear? So yeah, listen to this guy.

Corina Betournay: Yeah, yeah, it's just gonna be here. In this day and age, all the information is online.

Sherrie Kapach: Unless you know where to look. When I started, I'm out in the country, I had no gym, I had no bodybuilders. I didn't even know anything about it. I didn't even know where to look, and that's what got me on the path of this podcast. I want to give everybody an information and insight of where to go, how to get there, what to look for, and things like that. So that's good information for anyone starting out when they go check out this podcast.

Corina Betournay: I love the idea of having a coach if you can get yourself a good coach. That's really tough too, choosing the right coach, and forming that relationship with that coach where they know you. That for me, it's just my personality. I learned that really fast with my first coach. Not that she did anything wrong, but there was just a little bit of like, I felt like a communication barrier. Just things weren't lining out yet, and that processed all that afterwards. So I'm carrying the crap. I was like, she was a God to me.

Sherrie Kapach: But for someone that you can align with, it's meant for you. And they're meant because they are also not only just your coach, but your support group, your cheerleader, your therapist, your everything. So yeah, to have that communication.

Corina Betournay: Yeah, for sure. I've been very grateful to a special friend of mine. She competed for about a decade. I think she's been doing shows. She's very experienced, and she learned that too. But she had a number of coaches. And she just said, I'm just gonna go to myself, like you, you also learn from having good coaches too. You learn from how they coach. And if it is a good coach, oh, no problem explaining to you what's happening. And then at the end of it, mostly great bodybuilders, they have all the knowledge to prep themselves. But accountability and sense of community, that's the kind of relationship. And a lot of people need to feel like the whole thing is going to get great.

Sherrie Kapach: Yeah. Being accountable to someone, that helps a long way. Well, thank you for joining me. Good luck in your competition. I'm hoping to get down there to see you. And have a great time on stage.

Corina Betournay: Thank you.