OTISFIELD — No sleep till Barcelona. Not that Sarah Shraiberg, an Otisfield horse teacher and up-and-coming bodybuilder, receives plenty of sleep anyway. “My frame wakes me up splendid-duper early,” Shraiberg said. “I’m typically at the gym by 5 or five:30.”
She has two gyms: Mac Fitness in Windham, where she does her morning habitual, and TruStrength in Norway. Shaun Mac, the owner of Mac Fitness, tweaks all of her exercises, nutrition, and meals. After Mac Fitness, she comes domestic to her horse farm, Avalon Meadows in Otisfield. She then heads to TruStrength to paintings on posing and aerobics. After that, she returns domestic, eats, sleeps, and repeats. The determination has paid off. In May, Shraiberg competed at the International Federation of Bodybuilding & Fitness Physique America’s Mr. & Ms. Maine Championship and Northeast Open in Biddeford. She changed into selected to move on to the Arnold Classic, an international competition in Barcelona, Spain. She ships out to the opposition on Wednesday.
It is a massive deal. “I imagine myself on this level with the quality judges inside the international, judges who have judged Arnold Schwarzenegger and all the huge names,” Shraiberg stated. “They’re all going to be staring at me.” Shraiberg has taken the fast track to the worldwide opposition. She started out competing approximately 18 months ago, and seeing that then has participated in seven competitions. One day, a friend approached Shraiberg and asked her if she’d ever considered competing in a parent competition. Shraiberg said she has usually been muscular and was honestly bullied for it. But not one to be discouraged, she did some Google research and noticed images from international parent competitions.
“The idea in my mind becomes, ‘That appears frightening,’” she said. “I at once said, ‘I need to do this.’” So she did. “At the time, turned 42, and at 42, I shouldn’t care what all of us think about how I appear,” she said. “I shouldn’t care. I should be satisfied with myself, I decided, rather than demanding and complaining about elements of my body I didn’t like.” So she started teaching. She got a nutrition coach, started to “prep” her body, and discovered the way to pose. Added to the changes in her body, she said, her self-assurance and mindset began to shift. She started to be OK with the way she looked.
Shraiberg stated she desired to be the center of interest by no means, so she placed herself in a scenario wherein she had to be. “You need them to have a look at you and spot every detail approximately you,” Shraiberg said. “This is big. This is not only breaking down all of these intellectual and emotional limitations. This is obliterating them.” Shraiberg said some of those limitations had been put in the area by way of society. “I didn’t like that I had muscle tissue. I didn’t sense female,” she stated. “Now our age is saying muscles are feminine. The complete concept of girls and how their appearance has changed lately. Before, thin and lean turned into the feminine. Now, we may be muscular and in shape and strong, and that’s OK.”
