My event Prep (starting now)

As I am less than 14 weeks out of my competition day and the big changes to my diet and training will be starting soon, I thought that I could share what does involve getting ready for a bodybuilding event, not only for the benefit of those that are planning to enter a competition soon but also for those that want to know the up and downs of someone working towards a goal such as this.

First of all it is important to understand the process of a diet that targets body fat reduction as well the preservation of as much muscle mass as possible.

Its impossible to preserve all your muscle mass when you’re on a calorie and carbs deficit, however, having a good knowledge of how your body responds to this specific diet will help holding as much mass as possible.

The body fat percentage to step on stage has to be on a male competitor anything between 4-8%, being those with the lower BF% the ones that will show better conditioning. The conditioning as well as muscle symmetry and stage presence are essential to succeed in competition. Therefore the diet has to be spot on but not too extreme as you’ll risk losing too much muscle mass and look flat on stage.

The off season in bodybuilding is basically the time when you try to put as much muscle on as possible. This involves very high calorie and carbs diets in order to help your body to cope with the overload training and to feed your body with enough protein that will be used to restore and build new muscle tissue. The downside on a diet like this is that as well as you build new muscle you also get fatter, and the window to drop that fat before your competition is very short.

In my case, and because I tend to have a fast metabolism, this window is roughly 5-6 weeks, but it can go up to 15 weeks for some competitors depending on how high is their body fat, how uncontrolled was their off season and how well their bodies respond to their cutting diets.

Although I am not on full prep diet yet, I am starting to make gradual changes to my diet and training.

Training wise I am starting to add volume sets in between my overload sessions, I am doing about 70% overload and 30% volume atm. As the weeks go by I will start reducing my overload and increasing volume sets. By 6 weeks out I will be mostly doing volume as this will be the time that I will start to work on details such as biceps picks, lower back, core, ect, and I will be pointless to do overload as I want be putting much more mass on due to my low calorie/carbs diet.

Diet wise i am starting with a carbs cycle that consists on a 3 day/ low, 3day/medium and 2 day/high.

On my future posts I will be detailing my workouts and my add some videos.

For now being focused is the key for a successful event prep.

Happy trainings Strong People

Filipe