Patience or Stalling

Training Bodybuilding
21

[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
I would keep your basic numbers, but throw in a high day, where you force down about 250-300g of carbs (you can lower protein on this day). I know, I know, people have fought me on this for fear of putting on fat, but you NEED that high day for the lower days to have the desired effect on your body (it’s the whole “we can’t have good without bad argument” -lol)

S[/quote]
Stu does it matter when I have the high day? This sounds odd, but I know you know what you’re talking about so I will give it a try! Should I do like a “refeed day” with a glycogen draiining workout and stuch?

Thanks a lot for the response!

22

Do your ‘high’ day (or refeed, depending on the rest of the diet structure), on the day of your most strenuous workout (ie. legs), or when you train your weakest bodypart (ie. I do it on chest day). Doing it on a day when you’re consciously depleting your stored glycogen would be wasteful, as you want the anabolic kick in the ass once a week.

S

23

[quote]Hazzyhazz24 wrote:

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]earthquake wrote:
So those are the two times you keep them in up until the big day? I always thought people had to go to completely zero to deplete fully, but didn’t understand how they’d look full on stage and not flat.

Thanks Stu[/quote]

They ALL carb load before the contest. Manipulation of body water is the other issue. No bodybuilder wants to look flat on stage even though sometimes they miss the mark because playing around with body water is tricky. I look flat after about 3 days of low carb.

I have also found it takes about 2 full days for me to fill back out completely and my weight can fluctuate around 5-8lbs from that alone…meaning I could weigh a certain weight on Tuesday night looking flat but if I hit the carbs hard after that, but Thursday night I could be 8lbs heavier or more and more filled out. [/quote]

Prof X, do you think carb cycling is an optimal approach to putting on size? I have been eating my way up the scale and weights and if I could still move the scale and weights up with less fat gain then why not? or do you believe a former skinny newb can benefit from the extra weight gain via getting stronger, leverage, homeostasis, etc.

So far my approach has been pretty simply. Get 6 to 7 big meals a day and lose the carbs before bed, no supps or anything fancy just whey protein if in need of meal replacement. an amen to the carb thing i lose about 4 pounds between 5PM and 8AM. After eating carbs and drinking water all day I weigh in at 5PM at around 179-181 and wake up at 174-177. [/quote]

I am going to “carb cycle” from here on out to gain…but I wouldn’t recommend that to someone unless they had a solid base of mass already to work with.

I am not trying to get as “fat” as I was before again and that is the only reason.

That doesn’t erase the fact that I think JUST working on size for a few years at first set me up to make far greater gains than I would have seen otherwise.

Someone in your position needs to eat without making this that complicated.

Scale back if you gain too much, but you won’t be gaining a shit load of muscle mass if your body doesn’t feel you are eating enough to support that type of gain.

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Increase cardio, I’m a proponent of trying to keep cals as high as I can without having to drop them so if that means more cardio for me then I do more cardio. I’ll do it 6-7 days a week if I have to.

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I think your progress is going pretty well, your diet is pretty strict and I wouldn’t really call that a carb cycle diet at this point… its fairly low carb all the time haha.

The high day is a good idea, I’d either put it on your leg+arm day or the back day. Lower the fat to just trace amounts found in your protein and have complex carbs in each meal(except maybe the last). Your body will soak it up like a sponge and help fuel training, the lower carb days will be your fat burning days.

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Good to see you up and running again DLB

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Thanks for the advice everyone I will be implementing them asap.

Bonez: Thanks, its been an aweful year for me (my wrecked physique shows that well enough) but things are finally starting to turn around.