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NMI bodybuilders cutting down for Pacific Games
CNMI bodybuilders Donivan Mendiola and Aaron Tomokane have been cutting down as they prepare to compete in the XV Pacific Games in Papua New Guinea.
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- Aaron Tomokane, left, and Donivan Mendiola strike poses in the inaugural Marianas Muscle Bodybuilding Competition in this file photo taken last March. They will be representing the CNMI in the XV Pacific Games in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea in the bodybuilding event on Monday, July 13. (Jon Perez)
Mendiola and Tomokane have been training for six days a week for more than two months now, under the guidance of Latte Built Fitness and Nutrition coach and trainer Derek Cutting.
Cutting said that he’s been monitoring both Mendiola and Tomokane’s extremely strict diet.
“They’ve been doing high volume drop sets and more on maximum time under tension. They are also in the cutting stage to get their body fat percentage to a lower level,” said Cutting in an interview during a fundraising event by the Commonwealth Bodybuilding Federation for the two-member CNMI bodybuilding team.
Mendiola and Tomokane have competed in the 2014 Mariana Islands Bodybuilding Dee Clayton Classic and in this year’s inaugural Marianas Muscle Bodybuilding Competition.
Tomokane won the overall title in the Dee Clayton Classic and also finished eighth out of 13 participants in the 2014 Michelob Bodybuilding & Body Fitness Championship and International Invitational in Guam.
Both Mendiola and Tomokane has a good chance of earning a podium finish with bodybuilding being an event that judges an individual based on the symmetry of his body and not a sport of measurement or strength.
The Pacific Games has not yet released the weight classes that they are going to offer in the competition, set on July 13, Monday.
“We don’t know yet the weight classes. But our goal is get them the biggest and heaviest in their weight class,” added Cutting.
Bodybuilding is one of the 28 sports offered in this year’s edition of the Pacific Games, hosted for the third time by Papua New Guinea. The Games opened last Saturday, July 4 and ends on July 18.
The CNMI is competing in seven other sports namely, athletics, beach volleyball, golf, sailing, swimming, triathlon, and va’a (outrigger canoe).
In the 14th Pacific Games in Noumea, New Caledonia in 2014, the host won four of the 11 gold medals at stake in bodybuilding while Tahiti collected the most number with seven—two gold, one silver, and four bronze.
The bodybuilding team is expected to leave tomorrow along with CBF president John Davis. The four-member CNMI golf squad is also set to leave on the same day.
The bulk of CNMI’s 32-member delegation composed of 25 athletes and seven officials, are already in Papua New Guinea led by Chef de Mission and Northern Marianas Sports Association president Michael A. White.
American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Guam, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Norfolk Island, Samoa, Palau, the Solomon Islands, Tahiti, Tonga, Tuvalu, Tokelau, and Wallis and Futuna are the other competing countries aside from the CNMI and host Papua New Guinea.
This will also be the first time that the Pacific Games Council decided to allow Australia and New Zealand to join on a trial basis in only four sports: rugby sevens, sailing, taekwondo, and weightlifting.
