Chestermerian, Sabrina Van Der Voet has always been passionate about health and fitness, but this year she took it one step further and competed in her first fitness competition.
On May 22, Van Der Voet competed in the Natural Physique Athletics Association (NPAA), Novice Fitness Model where she placed first, and Novice Bikini Model where she placed third.
The following day, Van Der Voet placed second in the Women’s Open Bikini Model and first in Women’s Open Fitness Model where she won her professional NPAA elite pro card that qualified her to compete in professional competition in November.
“I’ve been into health and fitness since I was little. I was always playing sports, dancing, gymnastics, soccer, and curling. I started working out at home and just loved it, I was doing polities and cardio, I did bodyweight exercises for years,” Van Der Voet said.
In 2019, Van Der Voet decided she wanted to build muscle while losing the weight she had gained from medication, and she found a personal coach who put health first.
“I wasn’t looking like myself, I didn’t feel like myself, I wanted to get my Physique back, I was looking for someone who could train me to the weight that I had put on off in a healthy manner, and to help with workouts,” Van Der Voet said.
After building muscle, Van Der Voet felt ready to compete in a fitness competition, which was something she had always wanted to do, but never felt ready for.
“Winning the pro card has been a dream of mine for forever,” she said.
To prepare for the fitness competition, Van Der Voet started doing 10 minutes of cardio a day, and increased up to 13 minutes of cardio five days a week, while doing over one hour of weight training six days a week.
“I did a building phase, I was eating 2,700 calories at the start, we built for five weeks and then it was a 14-week cut. From there I slowly lost the weight, I was ready about three weeks early then we maintained my weight and kept pushing until the show day,” Van Der Voet said.
At the beginning of training, Van Der Voet had doubts if she would be able to complete the training process and compete after she became sick from changing medication.
“I had insulin resistance when I started my prep, I had doubts that I would make it because it made me very nauseous. When I went to the initial dose, I felt amazing and could train again, but for the first couple of weeks, I was afraid because I was getting sick,” Van Der Voet said.
Although Van Der Voet faced challenges at the beginning of training, she enjoyed the entire process.
“I absolutely loved it, and I’ve heard every time you compete, your prep is going to be different, because when you’re training for a show, the workouts are more intense and longer,” Van Der Voet said.
“My coach was amazing and listened to my hunger queues and increased my calories when I needed it, I was improving my health throughout prep,” she said.
Due to COVID-19, the fitness competition was all online.
Competitors were required to complete their personal routines in their living rooms.
After the judges saw all of the competitor’s individual routines, competitors had to do quarter turns to ensure the judges could see every angle of their body until they did a full circle.
Van Der Voet is now slowly adding more calories back into her diet and tapering down the workouts with five days of training and three days of cardio for 10 minutes.
The last three weeks before the competition, Van Der Voet cut out all processed foods and artificial sweeteners and ate whole foods only.
Now every three to five days, she’s introducing foods that she enjoys back into her diet.
“Health and fitness are my biggest passions, for me it was fun. My workouts are my me time,” Van Der Voet said.
Throughout the process of training and competing, Van Der Voet received an overwhelming amount of support.
“I had people reach out to me, and the amount of support was just overwhelming. I had people saying that I inspired them to lose the weight they wanted to lose,” Van Der Voet said.
Adding, “The NPAA has such a great group of people, all the competitors were so supportive of each other, cheering each other on, it’s a great community.
Doing it in a healthy manner, having people being so supportive, and meeting an amazing community of people with the same passion, was amazing.”
