[quote]retailboy wrote:
JJ Barrett wrote:
Here is what I did in terms of dieting and training:
As long as the diet goes, the key was to eat a variety of food to first prevent allergies, second to make sure that all vitamins, minerals were assimilate and finally that my amino pool were full in order to maximize amino acids assimilation.
So for every meal I tried to incorporate as much variety of fruits, vegetables and grains (not so much at the end, except on the carb up day) that I could. Same thing for meat; every meal was different in terms of food consumption. Essential fatty acids such as coco and fish oils were mixed throughout the day.
At the beginning of the pre-comp preparation I had to be at 10% body fat on the 4 skin folds Durnin scale (with the umbilicus). 6 days per week were devoted to only Weight Training; no cardio.
From there phase 1 started.
Phase 1 of training was a big accumulation phase agonist/antagonist type with superset and dropset on each exercise. The result was high level of lactate and noradrenalin production witch led to a decrease in body fat percentage and metabolism acceleration. No gain in muscle mass was in theory possible.
In terms of meal planning, I add one to now be at 7 per day. Another snack was added before bed to prepare my body in adding another complete meal. Carbs consumption were reduced a tinny bit. After the first week, carb intake were back up as my body fat percentage dropped down; that way I could leave more place to cut back on carbs later on. Better start from a high carb intake than a low when cutting down.
From week to week body fat percentage was diminishing as well as the carb intake, but not to low as I was burning fat without cutting a huge amount of carbs.
Phase 2 was an intensification phase. The goal was to keep the metabolism going high and to take advantage of the super compensation left by the other training program. In other words, there was the chance (my last) to gain a bit of muscles. On the last week of that phase, I started carb depletion and a carb up day.
Phase 3 was a lactate training phase. Burning as much fat that I could was the goal. Once again, I used carb cycling (5 days depletion, before starting the 2 days before competition carb up). The last workout was a depletion circuit training workout to be sure that every traces of glycogen were out. From there glycogen storage super compensation was possible and at the most optimal. In terms of protein intake, 25% of each normal portion was still in at each meal, to preserve nitrogen balance that will give the hard look.
Day time was pumping up, carbing up (from slower digestive carbs to faster ones) and posing.
Here you have it! I have been training seriously for the past 6 years now.
Barrett,
I’ve been around competing let’s just say a while haha and have been around a lot of people that have been competing up to the national level. I used to do the 3 day depletion but I (and so many others) have found it causes water gain and flatness, even after the carb up, compared to depleting for one day and carbing up one day. This is because it causes you to enter ketosis WILL RAISE cortisol which make you hold more water.
I prefer and many others not to deplete at all, just follow a contest diet (ie 250lbs 4%BF no less than 200g carbs) then 24 before show after depleting workout, Carb up 100g drink of glucose polymer solution, after the first hour I would eat 50g carbs every 1 1/2 hour up to 600g in the the first 24 hours…
There’s a lot more to it but just wanted to throw you some stuff to think about, this method (yes there’s a lot more to it - but less complicated than depleting and loading) works for me and many many others.
Good Luck!
RB [/quote]
Thanks RB; I will keep that in mind!