I tried low carb combined with powerlifting and that didn’t work at all. More of an experiment in my early days lifting, and w/o carbs I just didn’t have the juice to handle heavy triples and such.
But I could see circumstances when you aren’t competing, want to lean out, and go on a short round of keto while maintaining your protein intake to stave off muscle loss (1.2g/lb for example). But given how important carbs are for muscle synthesis, and for performance, I’d just opt for a below maintenance level caloric intake + lots of protein + reasonable carbs for performance. In this case, fat becomes the major calorie load you have to monitor.
Were they actually on keto or were they just not eating a lot of carbs? There is a difference. I’m on a moderate carb diet myself. But most bodybuilders from the 70’s aren’t shit compared to the top ones nowadays.
I’m pushing my opinion because I think yours is wrong. Some things you don’t need to try to know they are no good.
I have an idea. Everyone who thinks that keto is good for powerlifting: post your PR meet total and bodyweight. And specify whether it’s raw, raw with wraps, single ply, etc.
Arnold and others on record stating they were full keto for extended periods.
What’s noteworthy here is that many of those guys busted ass in the gym with weight for volume.
Comparing bodybuilders of the 70’s to today’s carb pounding water bloated monsters needs to take into account the use of insulin. These guys have methodically built their diets to accommodate their drug stack. Speaking of performance though, which group trained harder despite having less access to drugs?
I’ve been full keto for well over two years and base training on GVT with chin ups/dips with full range of motion so I know it isn’t as detrimental as some guys make out. By comparison I’ve gone for stretches with VLC and felt like absolute dog shit.
I’m not implying that keto is superior for performance, but I do think the notion that many people can’t perform well once fat adapted is overblown. If a high carb diet works for you then great. Everyone needs to do what works for them.
Keto is ideal for elite performance. They are testing the diet on astronauts and it is very popular at DevGru.
I want to understand why it inhibit performance. it seems like a lot of opinion based on empirical evidence. not very scientific.
on keto, your muscles have plenty of glycogen.
I would suggest reading Keto Clarity by Jimmy Moore and The Complete Guide to Fasting by Dr. Fung.
one can be several days fasted and still perform with strength. endurance is where it gets tricky, but even the world record holder of THE WESTERN STATES 100mi race did so on KETO.
That’s a good question. It’s been said that most people don’t use more than 40g carbs during even the most ball busting workout and the liver is always producing glycogen via gluconeogenesis.
I think we’re missing something, as I mentioned in my above post many of the 70’s guys busted ass on keto. It would be naive to think they were absolute retards who were doing something so radical that would inhibit their results.
I’m not taking a shot at anyone here, but it seems that any time I hear someone say keto is crap the person has never been fat adapted, which can take months of doing things properly.
That actually doesn’t sound all that unreasonable since long distance endurance running will mostly rely on fat oxidation for energy and you won’t have to worry about your blood sugar levels dropping.
Which is why everyone fasted before IPF worlds last week, right?
I have so many questions really. Let’s start with how someone is a WORLD Record holder of just the Western States?? World or Western states?? same same
Arnold described his diet during a (relatively) recent video and it consisted pretty much of steak, eggs with a super low quantity of vegetables. Vince Gironda advocated the same thing… Larry Scott was the same, as were others.
Do you think they all said they ate this way to keep carbohydrates a secret from the public?
Well I am glad my post could get such a good debate and information up here. I have been doing keto to cut fat. So far I’ve lost about 4-5%. I did see my lifts drop a bit but I also experimented with some carbs this week. Did a somewhat ckd approach and all of a sudden I could lift my regular weights. I wouldn’t have tried it without this discussion so thanks to everyone.
Good thing is, I cut a ton of fat and didn’t lose strength in the long run. Bad thing is, I didn’t get stronger. But that wasn’t my goal right now. Im going to stick with keto more out of curiosity to see what happens over time, but will probably do ckd for a while since I seems to have better results with it so far.
If you are trying to cut a significant amount of weight (more than just a couple pounds) you are likely to have a drop in strength, your lifts staying the same is pretty much the best case scenario.
This makes me wonder, did those guys all stay on a low carb diet for the rest of their bodybuilding careers? And just to get technical, according to the T-Nation article I linked earlier your body will not stay in ketosis if you exceed approximately .8g protein per pound of bodyweight so you can’t call that keto. I’m pretty sure they weren’t on a low protein diet as well.
And what about all the other bodybuilders since then, are there any notable ones who regularly use keto? I wouldn’t be surprised if there is the odd person (bodybuilder, athlete, whatever) who is able to perform at a high level on keto or low carb, but that would be the exception rather than the rule.
CKD is basically standard keto 6 days a week and one day of lots of carbs(there’s more specifics to us but that’s basically the idea) you then deplete the glycogen and return to keto after a couple days and hard workouts. So far my lifts returned to normal, ill see how I progress and if they increase. So CKD can almost be considered a type of carb cycling I guess. It’s been 5 days since the carb up day and my workouts still feel stronger than the week before and I recover faster. Im also back in ketosis (about 1.5 mmol/L in my blood)
Oh yeah we’d have to assume the majority of people would have been switching things up from time to time. I want to be clear that my personal take is not that keto is superior for performance, I think that once truly fat adapted there is little difference. Keto is inherently catabolic up until adaption due to elevated cortisol which eventually subsides if everything is done a certain way. Curiously, it’s been found that fat adapted people have significantly higher blood levels of luecine (despite having lowered dietary protein intake) so there are mechanisms at play which nobody fully understands.
Vince Gironda trained with volume and achieved the best condition of his life eating just 3 eggs and 3/4 pound beef twice a day with the rest of calories coming from butter. He said that after several months of this cutting diet that he actually started growing. This was after decades of experimenting with competitive bodybuilders and advocating protein up to 300g per day.
Again, I don’t want to come across like I think it’s the best way for everyone to achieve their goals, because I don’t. I do find it interesting though, I’m never overly hungry and my bloodwork has never looked better… for the majority of people in the real world who try keto it’s going to be a muscle losing endevour because few are going to stick with it long enough to adapt.
In hindsight Amit has a good point… as much as we love Arnold he is probably one of the biggest fucking liars in history. You’d have to be in order to become a political figure
There’s a video on youtube called ‘Cyclical Ketogenic Diet 101’ which you might find interesting… the guy isn’t a powerlifter or bodybuilder but he makes some interesting observations and references Dan Duchaine which is pretty cool. There’s a PDF of Duchaines book “Bodyopus” online if you have a look also
If it were me, I’d experiment with a meal of steak and eggs in butter if you wanted to stay on the diet and get a boost in strength… I’ve noticed significant strength increases when eating that way. I don’t know if it’s the mct in butter or something else entirely. Duchaine speculated that some of the fats in beef appeared to have drug like properties, which I thought was interesting
Leucine has to come from somewhere, either food or your own body via catabolism. If it’s from food and you aren’t consuming much protein then perhaps amino acid usage and muscle protein synthesis is lower?
