Pre-Contest Diet/Training help

Hi T-people…

Just had a few simple questions (hehehe). I’m about four weeks away from my first competition, and I would be interested to hear from anyone out there who has/is competed/ing…

I’m just curious if I’m on the right track, or whether I need to change anything quickly. Barring the fact that people respond differently to different diets, there MUST be some commonality between the pre-contest diets for NATURAL competitors.

Currently I do some light cardio in the mornings followed by a small serving of oatmeal+protein. For the rest of the day, I’m eating just protein with Flaxseed Oil. Then at around 6 I go for my weight routine which is mostly GVT oriented, followed by 20 min. of light cardio…

I’m only doing the weights 4-5 nights a week and only 3-4 cardio sessions in the morning a week…

But I don’t feel as cut up as I should be (not personal bias here, but reality bias)…are there any tips from others out there??

Like I said above, I realize that everyone responds differently to different things, but there HAS to be some common set of elements which every bodybuilding competitor follows…

thanks in advance,
Wazoo

i will be flamed for this, but go back to heavy lifting. this is akin to a diet i followed exactly for my first show. i lost 72 lbs, was flat, and placed last in each class. i went from doing work sets with 275, maxing 315 to benching 225 for barely 5. add some bcaa’s in your diet asap, with each meal and during your workout. load up on glutamine after (15 grams) try an interval style cardio for 20 minutes and use the bcaa’s immediately upon finishing the morning cardio. pose, pose, pose. 15 minutes, maybe 3 times per day. cardio no ore than 5x per week, three of those hit cardio.

Wazoo, I have worked all kinds of bodybuilders natural and drug induced. I have to say that Paul is giving you good advice. I will explain why. First, I think that your calories are to low to be doing GVT. You are certain to flatten out before you even pull your water out. “That’s a bad thing”. The worm look just doesn’t win shows. I think you should up your calories and increase the cardio slightly, but stay within your current caloric ratio’s. The heavy training isn’t really a bad idea; I have seen it help keep the natural guys full. Whenever you feel that your hitting a plateau, play with your carbs. You can take them gradually up for a day and then back down or down to zero for a day and then back up. When you are ready to play with your water (the week of the show)…let us know.

Thanks for the responses guys. Well I think playing with the carbs was a definite NECESSITY as I’ve forced myself to take this week off the weights/cardio and just eat a bit more. I feel that I was spiralling very fast into an oblivion on the fast fat diet, so I stopped that immidiately and am trying out Poliquin’s meal recommendations put forth in his “Manly Weight Loss” book. I’ll take your guys’s suggestions up starting with this saturday’s workout and go from there. (ie. did I ingest TOO MUCH carbs to even compete? Did I blow it at the precisely WRONG time of contest prep?)
I’m still learning my body (as probably everyone else is), so for now I’m going to avoid the ketogenic diets for a while…

Even if I don’t make the contest this year, I figure it’s given me a REAL good idea of what I need to do for preparation for the next one (this fall??)…

But I haven’t written off June 2nd just yet…:wink:

thanks,
Wazoo

Thanks for the feedback guys. I’ll give the BCAA’s a shot, and carefully try to increase my calories a bit while maintaining the current ratios of macronutrients…

I’ll see how this works, and will probably be asking help on the water extanguination later…hehhe

Wazoo