How to peak for a bodybuilding show

One of the worst things that can happen for a competitive bodybuilder is to show up on their big day on stage and have a look that is worse than it was the week leading up or the day after the show. I have seen it countless times from competitors who coached themselves or hired a coach. It is an absolute nightmare for the athlete, but how and why does this happen? I take pride in my ability to peak athletes perfectly, something that comes from an advanced understanding of the whole picture physiologically. Some of the most common mistakes that I have seen happen tend to occur around excessive manipulations to training, carbohydrate and electrolyte protocols.

Being skinned out lean

Before we get into those topics lets talk about something that HAS to occur to guarantee success when it comes to peaking right. You absolutely must come into peak week already stage lean! When you have excessive body fat for whichever class you are competing in, you hold onto that fat in areas that are incredibly noticeable when you are on stage in next to nothing. No amount of tanner, body oil, last minute cardio or diuretics will hide the body fat that you left on the table. One of the best things you can do when it comes to guaranteeing a stage ready appearance is to make sure your timeline for prep is reasonable and accounts for the amount of body fat you need to lose. This should consider holding weeks if needed and the level of fat the athlete is coming into prep with. I often see competitors start and do 20+ weeks of prep and get to around 3 weeks out but still look like they need about 6-8. Knowing how much you need to lose and giving a proper runway is vital to removing body fat before going into peak week. If you are prepping yourself or going to a coach (especially for a first-time prep) go into it with the intention of cutting until your lean, not cutting until a designated show day.

Cardio/Weight training and cortisol

I’ve seen it time and time again, competitors still doing over an hour and a half of cardio a day plus hours spent weight training on their peak week. But why is this a bad thing if the athlete is just trying to etch in those final details? The hard truth, you are not going to see significant body fat loss or conditioning improvement in your final week. That’s simply not what this week should be for. This week should be to nail the stage look that they are going to replicate on show day. In order to do that, you guessed it, you need to be shredded going into peak week. The only things you are going to effectively do with excess cardio and training is drive up stress levels, fatigue and cortisol, all of which should be decreasing this week. After weeks and weeks of beating your body up, it is going to be incredibly stressed and inflamed. This can easily blur lines of detail in an otherwise sharp physique.

Over doing cardio/training in this week continues to keep cortisol levels unnecessarily high. Elevated cortisol interferes with normal metabolic processes. It causes elevated blood sugar levels by creating glucose from amino acids in the muscle and decreases the utilization of blood glucose. It also causes issues with protein metabolism by decreasing protein synthesis and transport to muscle cells. This creates a catabolic environment that can cause muscle wasting if long term. It does this because you are in a state of stress similar to being in a survival situation. Our bodies respond to this by attempting to utilize and store energy to be optimal for the foreseeable future. Excess cortisol can also create our stress (fight or flight) hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine. This causes multiple other issues (Figure 1) like increased heart rate and blood pressure.

Another important impact high cortisol levels have is on anti-diuretic hormone (ADH discussed below). Cortisol can cause decreased release of ADH resulting in storing of excessive body fluids. This interaction can disturb the water storing capacity of the body and is very hard to predict the impact it will have on one’s physique. If you are increasing ADH by dehydrating yourself, but also decreasing it through elevated cortisol levels, you may not have any idea why your body is looking softer or how to counter it. None of these symptoms are things anyone wants to experience, much less going into their peak week when they should feel calm, rested, recovered and confident about what they are about to do.

The best thing you can do when going into peak week, is begin to systematically decrease cardio day by day and go into a de-load on weight training. This will allow fatigue to reside and typically can see weight drop even further from the decreased inflammation. As an athlete, peak week should be just about your easiest week to date and is used to build confidence, practice posing and envision yourself stepping on stage looking your best.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrate intake is an incredibly important aspect when it comes to looking your best on show day. Because of this, it is often not prescribed correctly to bring the most optimal eye-popping appearance. Let’s examine the physiology of WHY carbohydrates impact your physique either positively or negatively. When carbohydrates are consumed, they are stored as glycogen which is attached to an average of 3g water per molecule. Considering glycogen is stored primarily in the muscle, this helps improve the overall volume in cross sectional area within the muscle (1). If carb intake is too low, it results in a very flat muscular appearance. If it is too high, the athlete may achieve a full look but can also look spilled over and soft. The optimal look is to be skin tight with musculature looking full and three dimensional.

There is however, a lot of individual variability and this can complicate peaking for the perfect look especially if the coach is not methodical about their manipulations. If all goes correctly and the athlete is conditioned prior to peak week, this facilitates a much simpler manipulation of this variable as well. As previously described, training volume and cardio should be systematically decreased to reduce inflammation. There are several different approaches that could take place at the same time when considering carb loading protocols. One of the most ideal for a majority of competitors is the modified loading protocol. This allows for loading of carbohydrates at the same time that stimulus is being reduced and a more optimal glycogen loading state. This loading protocol can be done within three to four days of show day and the coach should be monitoring the look of the athlete during each glycogen meal to observe when they hit the peak look (2). As previously stated, this is optimizing fullness without causing a spillover effect. If they do it correctly this can be achieved within around three days and repeated the rest of the week and on show day.

Water/Electrolytes

A common mistake that is made by many athletes/coaches is drastic water manipulation. A common practice leading up to show day is the use of over the counter and pharmaceutical diuretics. The thought is that implementing this will release the subcutaneous water in between the skin and muscle to give a more defined physique. However, skeletal muscle is made up of around 76% water. With homeostasis being the primary goal, our body tries to maintain balance between extracellular and intracellular water content. Not only will pulling water from subcutaneous layers not last for long periods, it also results in the depletion of water from the muscle tissue. This leads to a more flattened appearance in which the athlete cannot look full. This can often be confused with a lack of carbohydrates, with the primary corrective action being increased carbohydrate consumption. If water levels are corrected this increase in carbohydrates will do little to fill the athlete back up. Additionally, attempting to manipulate and “dry out” water can result in the depletion of sodium and potassium, both vital minerals used for contraction of muscle. Muscle cells are more abundant in potassium while outside the cell contains more sodium. When a contraction is occurring, an action potential must take place to generate an electrical signal. In order to do this the cell intakes large amounts of sodium and after, discharges potassium to return the charge of the cell to normal (Figure 2). This change in minerals is what takes place to start a muscle contraction. If you are using diuretics or manipulating water levels to a large degree, then inevitably, you are changing the body concentration of important minerals needed to contract muscle tissue. Some diuretics can be potassium sparing; however, they still deplete muscular water levels to a point that will create a flat look and will eventually enter the subcutaneous layer anyway.

Figure 2.

Another side effect of water manipulation is the release of ADH. ADH is released from the pituitary gland when it receives signals from the body that water levels are becoming too low and sodium concentration in the bloodstream is becoming too high. The result of this is that the kidneys are signaled to reabsorb more water instead of excreting it. So, while you may not urinate as much when water is depleted, your body is actively working to change the concentration of blood contents. Additionally, ADH has an effect of vasoconstriction because the volume of blood has decreased due to less water. This creates a higher blood pressure and leads to less vascularity on stage. So, if you want your muscles to be as full as possible and to have the vascularity you have had for weeks, removing large amounts of body water directly counters this look. If you are going into your peak week peeled and look stage ready leading up to show day, the less you manipulate, more often not the better you are going to look on stage. There are instances where adjusting water on show day is appropriate and even a time and place for strategic use of diuretics. This has to be addressed as a by need approach, not a template format to use to try to make magic happen when a competitor is not stage lean. Diuretics do not get ride of body fat. If you have excess body fat leading up to show day and use water manipulation techniques, you will often find that you have poor muscle fullness, contractions and still have body fat on stage. The most important thing is that conditioning is appropriate weeks before stage time.

Conclusions/applications

The process of peaking can be very complicated if you are trying to make guess work out of all of these complex variables. The best thing you can do is come ready in peak week and as lean as your individual class(es) require. Beyond this, it is often better to manipulate less compared to more of these variables. All of the hard work you have done has led up to this. Peak week is a time to make small adjustments and lower stress/inflammation. Your body is in a constant fight to maintain homeostasis and will constantly make adjustments to counter the changes that you make.

If you don’t even know where to start on getting skinned out lean or when/how to make micro adjustments to these variables, I offer both contest prep coaching and prep consulting services. Contest prep coaching is best for those who want a hands-off approach for themselves and do not want to worry about all the small details that make the big differences to showing up 100% every time on stage. Consulting is great for those who want to handle their own prep, but need a little help in understanding how to adjust things.

References:

Hansen, B. F., Asp, S., Kiens, B., & Richter, E. A. (1999). Glycogen concentration in human skeletal muscles: effect of prolonged insulin and glucose infusion. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 9(4), 209. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1111/j.1600-0838.1999.tb00235.x

Nygren, A. T., Karlsson, M., Norman, B., & Kaijser, L. (2001). Effect of glycogen loading on skeletal muscle cross-sectional area and T2 relaxation time. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica, 173(4), 385–390. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1046/j.1365-201X.2001.00913.x