This article was written by Richard Winett and is the June 1993 Issue, Volume 3, Number 3
Master Trainer (now online)
Lifetime Bodybuilding and Masters Athletes
Teri Thom: Make Age an Asset
According to Teri Thom, 42, a top Canadian bodybuilder, athletes shouldn't even think about their age. In fact,
Teri said, " you should treat your age as as asset. Afterall, if you're older, you should be wiser." Further, Teri believes
she is still improving. After 11 years of very intensive training, Teri feels she still has not reached her full potential.
And perhaps most interestingly, Teri continues to improve while insisting on the importance of maintaining a
balanced life.
At first glance, Teri presents an interesting paradox because she is both similar to and different from other
top athletes, As is the case for all top athletes, training is an absolute priority in her life, and she has learned as we'll
see later to train very intensely with tremendous concentration. Teri has also learned how to simply deal with and
not get overwhelmed by life's daily hassles. For example, when we talked, Teri was in the midst of preparing for a
major contest. Yet, in the middle of her contest training, she had to take time out to move her place of residence.
Rather than get upset (as I know I would), Teri took the move in stride. She would just take care of it and then
immediately get back to her contest training.
 | A few situations in her life (e.g., two major operations) made her realize life is
short and you must do what you want and love to do. Just arrange your life to get
everything done.
This extreme focus on training and competing is typical for most top athletes.
However, Teri does a lot more than just train and compete. She's a devoted mother
to her 2 sons - Brodie, 14, and Jesse, 21, and has raised them primarily as a single
mother. Teri has also developed a successful career outside the gym. Although she
originally wanted to be a painter, the financial constraints of raising two sons made
continuing her art studies a luxury she couldn't afford. Instead, Teri manages a picture
framing business in an art supply and framing store and has helped to build a large
clientele. Not surprisingly, this is a competitive and demanding business, sometimes
requiring Teri to work 9 hour days, 6 days per week. |
While Teri's life is hectic, she believes that for top athletes, it's better to have a balanced life than one only
centered around the sport, the gym, and training. Indeed, as others have found (see December, 1992), having only a
limited time to train (instead of hanging around the gym all day) allows Teri to approach her training with a great
"sense of urgency".
Teri's training is also quite different from the training programs usually featured in Master Trainer. A good
deal of her training is instinctive, which means her schedule is only partly planned. Teri alters her schedule depending
upon how she fees and how her body is responding. This approach takes a good deal of analysis and integrity since a
temptation would be to "instinctively" make a session easier than planned. Teri, however, seems to move in the
opposite direction.
Because of injuries and prior surgeries. Teri relies more on very high-quality,
high-volume training rather than using very heavy weights. Typically, she trains
4 to 6 days per week, using as many as 20-25 sets per body part for pre-contest
training and 12-15 sets per body part for off-season training. Teri rests on
average only 60 seconds between primary movement (e.g., pressing movements)
sets and 30 seconds between secondary movement (e.g., crossovers) sets. In
addition, for contest training, Teri will often do super sets and giant sets.
Teri trains alone, accompanied by her Walkman. Everything mentally and
physically possible is put into each and every rep. The result of her approach is
a tremendous amount of quality work completed in a short amount of time. For
example, in this style of training, Teri will often do 1 or 2 body parts in 45 to
60 minutes and hit each body part about once every 5 days. Also, Teri feels by
using a very wide assortment of movements (e.g., for chest, Teri often will do
dumbbell bench press, flyes, or pec deck, Smith Machine presses, cable crossovers,
cross-bench pollovers, dip machine, and decline presses!), she is hitting a muscle
in every conceivable way. She believes this has led to better muscle quality and shape. | 
Teri Thom,
a Top Competitorat 42! |
Teri has also used the priority principle in her training to bring up weak points or simply to further bring out a
particular muscle group. For example, to bring up her "thin" legs, at one point Teri worked her legs quite hard every third
day. She also, at times, specializes on hamstrings in a workout separate from quads. In this workout Teri will do several
or more sets of lunges (with a very respectable weight), stiff-leg deadlifts, leg presses, standing leg curls, and lying
leg curls.
In addition to her bodybuilding training, Teri also does 4-5 30 minute aerobic sessions per week. Her favorite
aerobics piece is the stairmaster. She is also experimenting with sprinting to refine her lower-body.
Teri follows year-round the typical low-fat moderate-protein (minimum 4 servings per day), high-complex
carbohydrate diet favored by most bodybuilders. She will often eat five smaller meals per day: however, she does allow
herself one day a week to eat whatever whe wants to eat. Teri has also learned to make her contest dieting more
tolerable by altering higher and lower calorie days.
 Photos by Mike Bailey | Teri has read considerable about and experimented with various supplements. For a
natural athlete, Teri believes supplements are important to help with the rigors of contest
training. She has found a combination of amino acids, L-carnitine and other 'fat burners",
chromium, boron, inosine, vitamins B6 and C, calcium, and a vitamin/mineral are supplements
necessary for her competition training.
How far canTeri go in bodybuilding? Keep in mind, Teri is competing in open competition
against women often half her age. Yet as her succession of titles shows (see table), she firmly
believes she's still improving and hardly slowing down.
As Teri has said, "Age is an asset" and "The key is persisting". It won't be a surprise
when Teri soon reaches her goal-- winning a national championship.
|
E-Mail: image@talentec.com
