Bodybuilding Show Prep: A Deep Dive into Nutritional Strategies and Techniques

welcome back everyone to part two of AJ Sims discussing all sorts of Lifestyle stuff in bodybuilding so today we were

going to kind of dive into more specific like show prep peing stuff right yeah man I think this is

what people have been waiting for they want to get in kind of a deep dive of what goes on in a prep people always

have questions on water and sodium and carbs and how to approach it so I think it's good that we just get some uh great

information out educate people um in a healthy safe manner because it can be done uh to do it right and understand

how the body works from a physiological standpoint now we know Kurt that uh bodybuilding on paper doesn't always

make sense right so there's some crazy uh things that can happen there's different body types metabolisms

responses to certain things uh but at the same time we know that there is a lot of data out there with things that

people are doing so I would love to put that out there with you and again your medical background we can really do a

deep dive and and get into this man yeah and I think um with that too so there's not always data or studies to support

some of this stuff right because abut you're taking athletes not ill people are elderly people and you're adding

also other chemicals to the situation and even if it were one there might be a study on some of these things but

generally you know poly Pharmacy there's not a ton of stuff out there no one studies this stuff so you and I have to

go on a limb sometimes based on experience right we can you can only take the science so far and then you

kind of I tell people that all the time they've never done long-term clinical studies on a bodybuilder that's 250

pounds at 3% body fat they're never going to do it so this is has to be antidote along with knowing uh knowledge

behind um you know the Pharmaceuticals and nutrition and how to dial a body in and how to manage cortisol and fatigue

and uh you know mineral cor corticoids if I'm saying that correctly uh you know all these things in the body that goes

into the final week to produce the best look possible and I want to start it with this and you can agree or disagree

Kur I think you're going to agree the most important thing is get all the body fat off yeah so we we both seen lots of

guys that think they're ready right and they're weeks out still it's for aot especially in the amateur level

it's generally not a water issue it's a body fat issue yeah right guys just don't get you know or girls we we're

specifically talk about men in this case but they a lot of times they just don't get lean enough it's it takes a lot of

suffering and a lot of willpower to get that lean right and what you see on Instagram what people post is generally

that that's like Instagram lean but it's not show lean like when you see post it's a very different thing um you know

you and I st both very lean but like we're still not show all you can't say Shan all the time it's not possible no

not at all I mean I'll touch on that I mean I've always told people and this is kind of a rule that I used to live by

when you think you look good in the mirror typically to be stage ready it has to be almost tenfold yeah really at

the end of the day and and really when you know you're really really in good shape is when you take pictures in

really bad lighting and you still look good yeah because no matter the lighting when the body Fat's gone and the

elasticity of the skin is just tight against the muscle uh you know that everything's there needed and it's just

a matter of manipulating and shifting fluids properly uh from the subq layer and intracellularly and we talked about

that off camera and we'll get into how we do that and kind of the total opposite of what the bodying community

has been told been taught and uh it will definitely be going against the grain so anything you want to lead off with man I

don't know where you want to start if you want to start at the beginning of a prep mid prep or just into the final

week man yeah we can I mean I we could start at the beginning I mean and go just that's I mean pretty

straightforward right I mean to typically star guys you know it's you know at the amateur level you know 20

weeks 26 weeks gives enough time for some mistakes possibly a diet break depending on how severe things go

absolutely assuming that they're in some sort of shape even start a prep meet guys sometimes that are they're just

literally not they need just need to casually train for a while before they're even ready to do this um and

usually you're just getting their diet cleaned up right you're trying to figure out what maintenance is like we both um

you and I both utilize carb cycling so I try to establish some sort of Baseline in there on a medium day right that's

going to be the average training day and then I you know I have you know one or two deficit days and possibly one or two

high days depending on their physique and we kind of just establish what the Baseline I generally start with the

minimum effective dosage of everything cardio training gear food you know that way you have a lot of Runway to

manipulate things I know a lot of guys will start with you know six or seven days of cardio and all this stuff right

out the gate to me that seems a little crazy because you're going to head up PL there's always that wall and where do

you go like I don't know how you what do you do when you start a prep with a guy we prepping yeah it's varied over the

years it can vary client to client I typically do go that route uh but I will also go the route sometimes of going

hard out the gate now when I say that that doesn't mean cardio six times a week that absolutely not what that means

is more nutritional I will attack the deficit a little harder the reason why is because if you know somebody has been

just blasting food for a long period of time they they're not really hungry so they're actually going to appreciate the

deficit right out the gate and they have the energy and The Willpower to actually do that uh but again we don't want to go

hard out the gate in terms of you know adding you know uh fat burners in and then six days a week cardio and a heart

deficit then we have nothing to play with right so I will attack it nutritionally hard right off the bat

with some people and then we go from maybe just going from an activity of a level of say 8 to 10,000 steps maybe up

to 12,000 steps and a couple days of uh you know low intensity steady state or if the athlete is different type of

athlete we will might do a couple days of glycolytic cardio some more hit cardio where I like circuit style cardio

just to keep it interesting battle ropes assault bike this actually saves the legs as well and will help keep fullness

maybe not an Olympia guy because I don't think you're going to see any 270lb guy doing battle ropes probably but I think

do it I think John JW does John J might be the only one but he's he's a very he's a thinking man's bodybuilder so he

actually understands the reason behind that right yeah more of a glycolytic cardio so we can cycle just neat you

know non- exercise activity thermogenesis low intensity steady state and hit cardio you can play around with

that really cool that you touch on it right out the gate you talked about a diet break and this is so vital and

important because we've heard uh you know about refeeds and I talk about super saturation days and cheat meals

people talk about but we know that the data shows that without something longer term typically 48 hours is the minimum

you really don't get a metabolic response in terms of a T4 to T3 and leptin conversion of more fat burning

hormone increase or as you dive deeper my friend you know how important reverse T3 is and we know if someone gets more

into a deficit you know we've talked about this and you actually helped educate me more on reverse T3 and

understanding that the higher it is the more bound up that free T3 is right so we're not getting any type of response

hormonally in a fat burning sense unless we're doing something in a longer period so like you said A Diet break you know

increasing a caloric intake over the period of either 48 hours to maybe even a whole week or sometimes two weeks and

if you're starting someone 20 25 weeks out you have that time frame that's why I always tell guys listen don't try to

start a prep 12 16 weeks out just it's just doesn't make sense you're not taking time to peel back the layers of

the onion for a lack of better terms yeah no I agree I think unless you're very very lean to begin with is it's

makes sense longer and you can do it you know slower I do agree with with some guys though attack while they have

energy be aggressive and then bring the food up at the end I've done that as well just like on average generally

Allstar guys that have never competed like if you have an amateur never competed you want to kind of ease them

into stuff I think with thyroid because we could touch on that really fast um obviously thyroid drugs are used at some

level uh I generally I would use it as a last resort because there are long-term repercussions that can occur um we see

you know guys can mess up their thyroid pretty easily if it's misus I think it can help at the end though when things

start to slow down like we were talking about um when you look at the labs you generally see e some if someone gets

sick or if they've been dieting for too long the the T3 which is really the active thyroid hormone basically starts

to go the other direction because the metabolism will start to slow down and so that really requires that you bring

food up slightly and it's really carbohydrates that your body's going to respond to dietary fat has very little

role with most of these processes that we're talking about outside of steroid hormone formation but if a guy is

enhanced it's really irrelevant at that point now let me ask you Kurt um because you are the medical expert from my

knowledge just understanding what you just said I would correlate that with being in the form of carbohydrates AKA

glucose that would have to do something with igf-1 levels possibly with bringing that up from a physiological standpoint

or is that not correlation together it is so igf tends to resp there's I mean igf can respond

to several things but it is basically like an energy sensor it's a a highly conserved thing that mammals developed

over time basically we would grow muscle or tissue when there was food that was abundant and that's really what it's

going to respond to so the common thing that you see now is that guys are correlating with estrogen solely so the

liver needs estrogen we touched this yesterday to the liver needs estrogen to function correctly estrogen is liver

protective to some degree when estrogen is taken orally it is not it's that's the whole another scenario the natural

endogenous estrogen that is produced or through you know through aromatization from testosterone whether natural or not

is is liver protective as long as it's within a range super physiological levels of estrogen is not protective of

anything um and it's not necessarily conducive to high igf1 it'll raise it in serum but it's generally bound and

there's a lot of research going into this stuff now because those binding proteins there's seven of them in humans

they have a lot of role in cancer too so the way that they get what organs they target but yeah like you said um glucose

amounts glucose is anabolic right it's not so much the the carbohydrates but it's the chemical the hormonal response

from glucose igf th all of these things insulin that basically help drive muscle growth and keep muscle on you as well um

that's why guys will actually skip that and actually just inject things like ink relux

yeah yeah you want it and that's and with leptin too like leptin responds to protein and glucose and fiber it does

not respond to high so again I'm not anti- eating fruit I think fruit is incredibly healthy it's part of a

balanced diet but like one of the things that we might might remove depending on the person at the end is something like

fructose because leptin doesn't respond to it respond to dietary fat it has agree fat is satiating in the fact that

it sits in your stomach but the brain doesn't recognize it in that way not the weon at least

yeah so satiety be better yeah satiety is going to be better with fats obviously satiety will be better with

high fiberous foods and polyenals from the the low sugar berries but I always those are the two things I'm pulling

first I'm not touching complex carbohydrates or even you know simple simple sugars in the form of maybe a

processed food on a refeed day I I need that for fuel and anabolism for the individual especially in a deep deficit

especially when body Fat's low I understand you know from a nutritional standpoint dietary fats are very

important for lipid profile and healthy balance ratio of that proper cognition but at the end of the day we're trying

to get as lean as possible and we're trying to hold on to as much tissue as we can so I will always Veer to a lower

fat higher moderate carb diet moderate protein just enough protein to to hold on to the tissue because we know carbs

are protein sparing in a sense um so that's why you know I've gotten push back from people like man your diets

tend to be on the lower fat side I'm like listen for a in for an athlete that's looking for a aesthetic physique

and we have a goal and we have a tentative date in mind we're going to attack it from the most optimal way now

I understand there's a lot of people that love higher fat diets uh they've had some success with ketogenic diets I

don't see that as much as someone that's dieting on Lower fats higher carbs moderate protein um so man I'm right

there with you I pull fruits and fats first before anything else yep so just so people can understand the physiology

was just what you were saying because people are going to give push back about the fat thing if we're talking about

enhanced athletes the fat need is very low right if you talking about a natural athlete it's still you could still in a

healthy State get by with 20% of your calories but in a dieting for a show is a natural athlete you still got to pull

the fat down hormones will suffer at that point but you have to pull the fat down if you want to get lean so people

understand from a really basic point of view carbohydrates aren't stored in adapost tissue unless you have a

metabolic syndrome diabetes they're not they basic they are stored and we've known this for 120 years they're stored

as glycogen the liver they circulate as blood sugar so when you overeat so you're not really

defying thermodynamics by carb cycling because you're still you're still excess of energy and you're still storing that

excess but it's not getting stored as fat right so you refeed someone with white rice they will excess they will

store the excess glycogen right and the way that excess carbohydrates will be stored as fat is they basically have to

circulate through the whole system basically to the liver twice the liver is still full of glycogen and it cannot

take any it will be converted to triglyceride and then those triglycerides will circulate as a

triglyceride and then get stored as fat that's the storage form that's why we call dietary fat dietary fat is already

enters the lymphatic system in the storage form already so it's ready to go eat peanut butter your body's already

it's your body's ready to store that yeah I mean it's the whole reason why when when people fill out for a show

they typically don't fill out with fats right dietary fats I mean there's I believe a little bit of triglycerides

involved in muscular tissue it's very minute though it's not it's not going to tip the scale in one one form or another

we're always going to shoot for loading glycogen into the cell of the muscle tissue right because that's going to

fill it out and that's going to bring the water where we need to into the intracellular space so I mean dietary

fats and and I'm glad that you differentiated that very important natural athletes will need a little bit

more for sure but those enhanced guys can't the enhanced guys can get away with really digging deep the problem is

and we've talked about this especially on those hard push low carb days I'll even call them death days days sometimes

because it's when you feel like pure death guys don't want to dig hard enough they just don't want to get into that

deficit hard enough and really push through those hard days to get to those higher carb days for that super

compensation effect that can occur and can happen um but that's very important to use those deficit days like we've

talked about me and you off camera to really get to those low body fat levels and so carb cycling calorie cycling at

the end of the day man that's you got to dig on those days for sure I'm a I'm a huge advocate and believer in that so

with the with the super compensation or super saturation day as you call it what it's funny because you see it a lot of

that actually stemm from endurance athletes marathon runners and things like that and you see that they still do

it wrong right they won't de eat first they'll they'll eat normal they'll train for their their race and then the Night

Before the Race they eat a big bowl of pasta and the problem is if you can only store let's say an average person stores

400 grams of glycogen and you don't deplete you don't do that you don't dig into that deficit hard first you're only

going to store 400 grams of glycogen the body's not magically going to create new places to put it so it's not even going

to get used at that point so like what you and I create is we're creating basically a situation where the body

wants to Super compensate because it's nervous that there might not be any more food for a while so it will hold more

right so if you normally hold again I'm talking average person bodybuilders yeah yeah an average person they 400 you get

them really depleted for a while and you you burn up that glycogen they might hold five or 600 grams right which is a

difference a couple pounds on stage in look 100% And that comes down to having an eye for it you're going to have to

have an eye and have experience anecdotally again you understand the science aspect the physiological stuff

nutrition how the Body Works me the mechanisms the mechanics but if you don't have that eye to be able to look

at someone and be like we can push a little bit more we can pull back or we need to hold and this is great for the

listeners because there is no one blanket answer you could write a book uh as a coach and regurgitate what you

think works right so you could go out and say you know add 30 gram of carbs on Wednesday to each meal Thursday add 40

gram of carbs 50 gram of carbs on Friday cut your sodium Friday introduce a thide diuretic add it back in at night you

know once the water like it doesn't work that way and you may get a few people that actually show up decent but the way

that the body responds in this process man it is a you know this because you're in the medical field when you're at such

a uh it's a touch andgo process when you're so Sensi itive to everything and we'll talk about the

potassium shifting and fluid shifting because of that because you're just so lean you can literally see things happen

so fast man it's all coming down to the coach's eye and what they're seeing and then if the athlete doesn't have the

coach what they know internally what to feel for what to look for muscle contraction with it exactly so yeah I

never set up anyone's peak week until we get there and you know I always preface that i' be lying if I told you what it

looks like I don't know what it's going to look like it's different not only between people it's different between

the same person multiple shows right like I've I've had to do totally different things depending on my you

know what's going on in my body there's so many factors metabolism you know if if anyone is curious if you Google human

metabolism and look at a chart of it it is it it's years of studying just alone to figure out what that is no one no one

fully graphs every single step no one memorized that I agree 100% yeah and I tell this people say

what's my peak week look like I said dude I have no idea just be be ready for the ride man be ready for the ride I'm

GNA find out with you man we're going to take it dayto day and we're going to build the process based off how you look

what your body's doing how you're managing cortisol fatigue which is really important and you know this again

from a physiological standpoint from your background man that is the one of the biggest things at the end of the

prep the last week and the last couple days is managing cortisol levels and being able to really drop down for the

the systemic inflammation that you've gone through the process of prepping for the show it is the only way to fully be

able to recover reset and have fresh looking tissue on stage that is doing what it needs to do you're getting out

of the fight ORF flight you're getting into the rest and digest State and your body's able to have proper gut motility

and digestion and utilization of carbohydrates and partitioning so all these things come in together and I

always tell people man sleep sleep sleep sleep it's absolute necessity which is where I start to kind of titrate down

cardio the final week slowly and I allow people to sleep more and when you do that and you kind of understand that

people freak out because they're like dude you know I gotta push man we're almost there I'm like no no the work is

done now now we rest the body and everything starts flowing and you'll see with these um nutritional manipulations

we do because the body Fat's gone cortisol needs to come down the body will start to respond respond so much

better to everything I just it's just phenomenal how it works you know from the Vegas nerve with fight ORF flight

response or getting into rest and digest that the people that overthink and you know you could maybe touch on this but

the people that overthink like the day before the show like they're stressed like there's chronic stressed people

they they look at themselves every 10 minutes I'm flat my veins are going away or you know those people are in a state

of fighter flight and they they're making their veins go away they that and they won't use the bathroom no because

just won't poop because they're in fight ORF flight digestion shut down they start getting bloated and not only that

they'll also and you know I don't know if this is anecdote just from my experience what we talked about off

camera with antidiuretic hormone um AP also the the same thing interchangeable uh they stop peeing as much too um you

know and it starts to now naturally uh a human physiological response in fight ORF flight from my understanding

actually you will urinate more but because typically what people are doing at that point is they're doing some form

of dehydration and they've used some sort of pharmacological diuretic so therefore it doesn't correlate the same

so I know on paper it says that but that's why I say it doesn't always add up on paper yeah with bodybuilders you

don't say you see that yeah and that's and I think you also have some other things going on at the end too that that

make the cortisol worse right so you're typically at least in my experience you're typically pulling injectables

during peak week right to eliminate some inflammation any chance of aromatization uh there is definitely some systemic

inflammation even from things like tremone that you can see you can see there's like a film under your skin

generally right you might leave orals in depending on the person depending on what you're using but it's tremone one

of the main effects is it's blocking it's blocking cortisol's action at the receptor site so when you pull that out

especially because that's St it's out of you in two days you if you're not careful with like you said the sleep and

pulling the cardio and and just relaxing you'll see the stress level build back up you have to be careful certain things

I mean Halo testing will help with that as well but like to a degree it's not as strong as oh no I totally agree with you

so one thing I found anecdotally that works really well is a cortisol inhibitor a moded going into the final

week um is a phenomenal way to really be able to reduce that especially in somebody that's having those issues so

the only problem with the modin is it can cause some gastric distress so people can't have diarrhea as a side

effect so I usually start people on a mod in three to four weeks out small amounts it helps them sleep better and

it reduces cortisol slowly so that when we do pull those compounds we don't have that kind of reaction right so I try to

always backload with certain things to prevent things from happen and that's just years of learning because I've made

that mistake where I've seen that and I didn't understand the pharmacology behind it in the body's response it was

just trial and error and then taking notes and kind of figuring out well maybe this is what the reason is so how

can we correct this how can we how can we troubleshoot this and that is what I think makes a great coach is

we are going to fail with certain clients and Peaks and but we got to learn from them and we got to take notes

and we got to understand what where did we go wrong where did the athlete go wrong because you know sometimes the

athlete doesn't always listen 100% you know they'll they'll add in you know their own thing like I've had people

that you know we go to bed at night the night before the show phenomenal but they were waking up to urinate they were

starving so they just started eating you know snacks you know so we didn't have that we didn't have that over drop that

I thought we were going to have that I correlated it from weeks of T tallying notes and I was like what did you do uh

yeah you know I had a sleeve of rice cakes with almond butter and it just with almond butter I'm like yeah well

dude you just kind of ruined it my man so yeah I I've seen it in men and women that the other one they like to do is

they like to add things to the diet but not tell you just a little bit right it's like a protein bar a little every

day it's a protein bar every day it's an extra 400 calories a day that you're just not accounting for for right or or

those silly Lenny and Larry's cookies like I had I was prepping a woman once half of one a day half one a day she was

100 pounds so it's a big deal like her she just wasn't getting leaner SL man that's a slippery slow for

people she like I thought it was a half a cookie yeah 300 calories so yeah that that that'll destroy you right there man

any anytime someone is like picking or snacking worst thing you can do you think you're not doing much damage but

like you said over time that caloric intake just really increases and it's horrible yeah because ideally you want

what you're really looking for you know for most guys if you're losing a pound a week average right you're you're 3500

calories so it's 500 calories a day you add 300 calories back to that that's an awful lot of cardio you got to make up

for that 300 calories I typically do at least again on average I'll do you know kind of a mix of cardio and deficit

there to make it a little easier on them you do 250 cardio do 250 in the diet you know obviously you might have to pull

down more but that's kind of at least a place that I generally start that way they're not so

shocked absolutely go by their body type Paul and I have talked about this before too you know guys like me me and and and

probably you as well that tend to be leaner naturally you would probably do better perhaps with a more like if you

were competing you'd probably do better with more stimulant than you would with more cardio like there's a point where

cardio is going to waste your muscle off your body but the guy who's naturally heavier probably does better with more

cardio andless abely yeah know I actually just had a coaching call this morning on this app this actual subject

right here so more endomorphic huskier thicker skin hard to lose fat those guys are going to be pounding cardio for the

most part it's just the way that it is I mean you know and then more ectomorphic maybe a little bit of mesomorphic

mixture which is what I am probably what you are fast metabolizer but we can also eat tissue really quick my legs would

always go fast if I did too much sterel um which is why I really learned that you know just getting you know this was

back 16 years ago before steps were popular there was no apple watches to trct you know I I learned that just

going out for a 30 minute walk in the morning just did me a lot a lot better results you know so I wasn't getting a

crazy inflammatory cortisol Spike uh in response with my body my legs got saved and I was still getting fat loss every

single week you know um so I think it's really important to understand what that body type needs like you said so really

really want to hone in on the spe specificity of that body type the metabolism and one thing that I do and

and this could be even a little neurotic but I I really after many many years of making a

lot of mistakes I said listen I'm just going to tell people to pull blood work every three weeks during a prep I I just

think it's so vital man because if we're seeing something happen in the thyroid you know and I always precursors first

tyrosine selenium iodine you know all these things for proper thyroid function before going into a

T3 um or even a T2 which I've seen good success without muscle wasting um T4 sometimes you know I I've learned over

the years you know because we've always been taught as bodybuilders that when you're taking growth hormone you want to

add in T4 for the down regulation of the conversion and my understanding as of late over the last year or two is that

actually is not what you want to do and you're actually hurting your T3 at the end of the day um you know so that's you

don't want to go there I always start with precursors like a selenium iodine getting all your micronutrients then we

divulge into thyroid usage but I always try to go to you know the andronic um uh A2 andronic uh yine Ren

Alpha yoh I like R Alpha yine much better than just your regular yohm Bine it's a lot lot less side effects but

we're really ble to tap into those hard to lose body fat issues areas like the lower back kidney region the lower

abdominal so I I will always start with that with some caffeine and then maybe even a little bit of Bron a you know

which we'll get at Walgreens so we got the ecy stack in um aspirin we know why the mechanism behind doing that but I've

had issues over the years of people doing that every day yeah so I I'm a little timid to do that every day and

I'd rather stick to the ecy stack or utilize you know just an over-the-counter fat burner before we

get into the clenbuterol or the albuterol the problem with clenbuterol that I know is the halflife is so long

that people have a lot of issues with sleeping on it Y and we know that with albuterol the halflife I believe is

around two hours three hours maybe two to four hours and it's in and out of the system it it gives

you what's that with the fedin uh no the alol oh albuterol sorry I thought you said yeah yeah yeah yeah

no I was I was bouncing around man I go maybe I go too fast yeah no no no I'm just making sure he wasn't Clan be all

your saying because that's 306 yeah so Clan obviously is is very potent it works uh I've used it many times I still

use it on many clients this day um dosages will be dependent and and and varied and from my understanding you

know people will say you got to cycle it uh you know the beta 2 receptors get down regulated you bringing keto teeth

and old school train of thought and you're still losing fat and one thing that I say to people is if you don't

feel it that's great because you're not getting the side effects from it but you're still losing body fat you're

still getting the response that you need to lose fat paired with cardio nutrition can I you can correct me if I'm wrong no

I'm just gonna back up for a second and touch on a couple things we talked about just because I feel like people will

post questions below so with dietary fat I'm just gonna go back for a second so really the only two fats that we all

need is basically ala and la which you can technically synthesize EPA and DHA which in fish oil so they're that's why

they're not considered essential that's actually what your body's looking for and the conversion rate is like 3% in

humans especially men I think it's five in women you want to take fish oil like when you're going to bring your fat you

you have to be taking fish oil every day regardless and you want three or four grams of it when you're when especially

when you're dieting you pull the fat down you need that um all the other fatty acids on the human body we

synthesize on our own so like olive oil's Magic Properties aren't in the fat it's in in the the properties from the

olive themselves um it's called OIC acid is the fat that's in Aliva we make OIC acid from

steric acid and look at most Americans they have hundreds of thousands of calories of fat on their butt yes we

don't need yeah that perfect Kur that's a great Point fish oils I never take out I always keep them high and it's always

a high quality highest EPA DHA ratio I like wy's finest fish oil or Nordic Naturals uh it doesn't go rancid and uh

great point so we always keep that in for sure because like you said that's really all you need at the end of the

day yeah thyroid yeah you're correct so T4 the way I would describe T4 T4 is like the idol in your car you don't need

to touch it it's kind of what you're born with it's just showing your basic idle and you don't need to manipulate it

like it's a good marker to see but it's a precursor in inactive right you don't need to supplement and the whole thing

with growth hormone it's you're not you're not doing anything you don't need to be adding T4 you know in to make

growth hormone more effective it's not the gold standard for thyroid production it was something that they was done long

long time ago um clenbuterol versus so some new science of clenbuterol I have a whole video that I did with Dean on

clenbuterol but I I'll touch on it fast so basically cluter rols a fedrin basically is just working through beta 2

which is Bally neat it's basically just making you move more and appetite suppression and that's why those

receptors do down regulate so the keto thing was basically for that beta three receptors which is really what you want

which is what clol hits that's most loss those receptors actually don't downregulate at all yes only obese

people we don't know why if they could figure that out there probably would be no obesity so technically Clen not

there's not a medical recommendation but Clen technically can stay on longer term there's no shutdown of those receptors

that was my it is totally fine should feel it because beta 3 doesn't have a feeling beta 2 has a feeling so when you

first take Clan and you can't sleep that's not beta 3 that's not fat loss that's beta 2 that's your heart things

getting um that was my understanding over the last two years where my thinking thought or my thought pattern

changed with clim butol and actually trying to cycle it or not run long enough and everybody would say well you

know it's CU you don't feel it anymore I'm like listen that is insane you don't feel after a while what does that mean

you need to Psy yeah ex exactly so you're still getting the effective uh wanted outcome which is Fat Loss y

That's the Bron fedrin to me the benefit there is basically appetite suppression 100% you look at like probably 90% of

the fat loss that occurs from a veteran is basically because you're not hungry and I think it's a great technique

versus using something like a glp yes you put someone who really struggles because especially if someone's lost a

ton of weight before prep their appetite's totally disordered yeah it's like they're really going to struggle

with the hunger versus like guys like you and I I can suffer all day I don't really care like I'm I kind of in a

weird way I kind of enjoy it whereas a lot of people really have trouble with appetite aeteran is a great thing to use

for them because it kind of blunts that to some degree yeah and I and I think that too there may be some correlation

with dopamine release and their correlation to food right so they they utilize food for that dopamine release

which is why I like I love tyrosine uh and I like to also attack the col energic system with you know Alpha GPC

and then Ur urine monophosphate so I I like neut Tropics for that reason too but the you pair that with uh ECA just

like you said man it's going to control the appetite which accurancy to satiety signals is the number one thing for

being successful at a diet you have to control it it's just the way that it is you know and if you're hungry sparkling

water coffee you know gum if you even want to go down the route yeah if you want to go down the route of nicotine

obviously that's a really good appetite suppressant as you know as well but it is a Vaso constrictor at the same time

so you can have issues with that but really just man it's phenomenal tool ECA for appetite suppress but clenbuterol

let's just make sure people understand beta3 receptor is not getting downregulated you're getting the fat

loss of and you can mix again not medical advice and I'm not advising it but you can technically use a ferin and

cluter off the same time because they're working they're two different classes of compounds aeteran is more related to

like a methamphetamine cabol is not so that they can technically be paired I'm not

recommending that people do that but they can be used together and they work through to totally different mechanisms

absolutely the Aspirin because you mentioned it before just so people know the aspirin was basically in the ECA

stack the original one because it ended the halflife fat if you need something and then I think guys over time then

started adding ohine in like you said so became the ecy stack I don't personally love yohimbine makes me feel weird makes

my blood pressure do strange things absolutely I think you can definitely use it for the trouble areas like yeah

like I also find a good it's basically blocking the uptake of fat versus burning fat per se what I I almost find

it more useful when someone's like on a high day some the same way that someone might use insulin MH right because if

you really have no fat going in like in a low day when you're in a big deficit you really no fat getting stored maybe a

tiny bit like after each meal but it's almost seems pointless to me if you're using it just to block fat storage in a

deficit yeah and especially if you're having a lot of anxiety from it so they they they note that you know if you

suffer from bipolar disorder or any type of neurological biochemistry that's off do not take your Hine because we do know

that it's basically increasing adrenaline putting you into a fight ORF flight state which is why people just

feel so strange on it or they get nauseated so if you're taking obviously we know that riin or yohimbine on an

empty stomach is I it works best with low glucose levels to do exactly what you just said but you know the payoff

may not be worth it per se um which again is why I'm a big fan of like U Super Shredder from Amino Asylum it's an

albuterol mix with B12 in there aocl choline so it's it's an injectable amino acid that you literally use a little bit

right for cardio and you literally feel it immediately but two hours later it's out of your system and you can sleep at

night so it's a great alternative if clenbuterol is not the route for you because it does disrupt a lot of people

with sleep another um another tip why you mention sleep and chemicals that disrupt sleep so something that Dr Dean

had taught me uh during show prep if you're using Tren which most probably are to some degree if it's disrupting

your sleep you take more magnesium a lot of adding more magnesium glycinate or B glycinate will generally get rid of at

least some of that transomnia or whatever is occurring a lot of times that's basically you know that's that's

what's occurring so it generally fixes that without adding other drugs in there no dude and that's phenomenal it's just

like with echoo adding in Gaba will help with with anxiety if you have issues with that neurologically so dude it's

there's always a cascading effect and I always believe that you can bring in certain minerals and electrolytes and

and and uh precursors to to mitigate it instead of bringing in like a telmisartan or you know faut a lot of

guys like to use faut which is highly highly addictive um you know and of course melatonin I'm not a huge fan of

unless you respond well to it instant release is okay but I'm the one the kind of guy that I feel super groggy in the

morning when I use melatonin so that's why I'm a huge fan of a modin because it really reduces the cortisol level and it

really gets you into a deep rim sleep but magnesium is the number one thing what you just mentioned it is absolutely

phenomenal along with ashwaganda yeah ashwaganda as well I was gonna say that's a good one for cortisol as well

too people that I would say that with magnesium because people can ask about dosing I'm just anticipating the

questions that we're going to get um there is the RDA is a very off it's way too low but there's no known like

there's no easy way to know what like I couldn't just guess what you need to take you generally tie trate up until

you have sof souls and then you basically I had to triple mine I had to triple mine from when your stomach gets

weird that's when it's too much and you basically just pull back a little bit and that's your sweet mine is I don't

remember six or 800 milligrams or something I don't know how many pills it is I was 800 I went to 800 and I was

able to really get the benefits from it absolutely like a gram was a little too much for me but some people gram would

be pushing it but it's kind of just like vitamin D3 K2 I mean you know vitamin D3 is going to be depending on the

individual's blood work I always say so you know I've had to go up to 15,000 IUS and I get a phenomenal response with not

vitamin D3 toxicity and I feel so much better my immune system is running better cognitively I'm better I have

more energy so that's a great thing to touch on Curtis always dose dependent on the individual so and do Labs yeah Labs

absolutely man magnesium another cool marker is Alp which is typically a liverant enzyme marker but if you look

that it also shows magnesium status um the with with vitamin D to magnesium basically if you don't have enough

magnesium which most Americans are deficient in magnesium renders vitamin D useless so you can take all the D in the

world it won't do anything if you're magnesium deficient and when you said iodine before for thyroid that's another

one I think 85% or 86% of Americans are fishing in iodine because no one needs fish so definitely worth you know

definitely worth looking at if your metabolism is a little slow before you jump on things like D3 yeah yeah I like

icelantic kelp iodine it's 41 milligrams you can get on Amazon it's a phenomenal very high quality uh IOD Source you just

have to be a little careful with selenium and iodine because if you go too high you can cause issues with that

so I always start very low so I I would tell even person to pour out the capsule a little bit start super low and then

build from there and see how you tolerate it you know so yeah this is great stuff brother what do you want to

touch on next man what do you think other people we're in we're in the middle of prep right

so so I I mean I could touch on what I would do cyclewise like rough again I'm not giving do I I don't give outside of

really random circumstances I try not to discuss doses just I think it's irresponsible and I think people mimic

it and I also think that you get pushed back one way or another either people believe that they think it's too low or

they think it's too high or they think you're full of [ __ ] um I would typically start if it's a newer person you know

it's generally very mild it's testing an anabolic and then you might switch up to some short Esters maybe an oral or

something before for a more advanced guys to me it's generally you know it's going to be you know a test in Echo

Poise possibly Trend e uh I know guys don't seem to understand that in my experience is what most of the big Pros

are still using in the off season they all don't talk about that anymore they all pretend they're on the trend and

Prim uh test and Primo that seems to be the game everyone's playing yeah uh it to me it's

usually test EQ uh Tren possibly Anadrol I think back in the day it was dball you're gonna get some synergistic effect

between either dball and Anadrol and the Tren balone anadol seems to be slightly it's not safer but a less side effect

prone horal because you're not getting the you know the estrogen activity as a side effect for manol too

exactly oh at a certain period I think in the beginning it makes you hungry and then all of a sudden it kills your

appetite yeah yeah middle of the prep you're getting that appetite suppression typically yeah yeah and then typically

you know at you know eight 10 weeks probably switch it up you know test prop Mass prop Trend acetate you know uh wind

stroll anavar and then I I would typically you and I've talked about this off camera I typically would TI trate

the wind stroll up I might not even use anavar anavar to me is relatively useless if your testosterone's over 500

milligrams anavar seems like a silly thing to add to me it's not really adding much at that point I think it's a

fantastic compound for things like recovery postsurgery like if you're on some sort of ERT plus I think it has a a

function I think you know in your fear if you're using grams of gear I to me it's relatively useless at that point

yeah um I'd save your kidneys and your liver uh and then I would T the wind up I pull the injectables at the end

possibly run you know possibly Halo testin possibly T3 possibly chers if they weren't added earlier depends when

you add those things I think again that's such an individual process yeah I like to keep my guys similar to you I

like to keep my guys leaner all year round I'm not a fan of people getting big and fluffy they don't need to some

guys have to put on the weight yeah you can generally keep them in better shape yeah it makes prep a lot easier yeah

grow you're gonna get more musular if you're lean you're going to grow into the show you have the ability for Less

uh fatigue doing by doing less cardio you can train more you can actually have energy output to pose which a lot of

guys get very lazy in practicing the presentation imposing uh because they're just they're so chronically fatigued

from the fact that they got so heavy in the off season and then they're having to kill themselves so I'm always about

staying leaner you're going to get better insulin sensitivity response you can eat more into the show you're going

to preserve and if not grow and I always see people actually putting on some sort of muscle tissue into the show it's it's

a phenomenal way to actually do it and I think there was something now again he's a hyper responder but you

know Kevin Leone would stop training for six months and he would downsize but he was lean for the most part you know and

he you never got he just looked like a regular athletic middle-aged guy but obviously and then he would turn into Mr

Olympia Super Hyper responder totally get that totally understandable but at the same time you're always going to

have a better response to any androgenic and anabolic in my opinion the leaner you are your body can process it with

less side effects you know when you're starting at a heavier standpoint your lipids are typically already skewed your

liver enzymes can already be elevated to an extent not always but you're going to usually run into more issues and again

like you said Kurt guys do need to grow I get it but if you're at a certain size at a certain level there's no point to

exacerbate at 40 50 60 pounds above stage weight you were just we've all done it it's Point we've all done it and

you're just running your body into the ground your blood pressure is higher you know you're having all these issues with

sleep apnea and recovery and then you're doing hours of cardio and it's just uh it creates a more stressful environment

I believe contest prep is already stressful enough on the body you want to mitigate stress as much as possible so

doing it smart and methodically I call it prep for prep so you're prepping year round for your contest prep you're

setting yourself up to have the best case scenario to win in your contest prep and that is by staying in a leaner

State I 100% agree with you yeah absolutely um yeah and yeah and just the other funny thing you see is on lab work

you know during prep you when you introduce some of these compounds the most people would assume that your blood

work is going to become atrocious right you have orals you have things like tremone which you know contrary to what

again goes on the internet if if used correctly in the right situation at the right dose for the for the person what

they can handle it's not as notoriously horrible for your lab work as people assume it's not causing k failure it's

not doing all these things there are case studies of course with any drug aspirin cause death too um

I think you notice at least I've seen when guys get leaner even when they add the more so-call toxic things their

blood work actually improves because our leaner the body is working better so that's another reason to stay leaner in

the offseason too because why why are you letting your cholesterol and these things triglycerides get way out of

whack your fast to glucose go high these are things that should be always managed if you want to do this if you like we

talk about in our previous video if you just want to be optimal in general when you're done competing you want to stay

healthy as long as possible longevity is key man longevity is key and again you know the younger guys 20s early mid 20s

I understand you're trying to grow especially if you want to go pro you're trying to be a super heavyweight you

know there's a time in a place but the majority of people are not in that scenario so we're talking to kind of the

general pop uh population in terms of how to approach it from a smart methodical as far as ped usage I'm

pretty much right on point um I I like uh propin is phenomenal I've had a lot of success with testosterone acetate

which is very hard for most people to get yeah and and test noer uh for you know especially before training for

performance you know the onset time is so quick 45 minutes to an hour before training you're just like the anavar if

you take it sublingually pre-workout you're going to get an acute strength gain right so keeping someone's

performance up in the gy but at the end of the day we know that the the fast acting tester of testosterone or fast

acting eser of the testosterone really uh at propionates levels I I think that that does a fine job what I see some

guys have an issue with is uh the carrier oils the Benzel benzonate benel alcohol depending on what it comes in

causing too much post injection pain so then you have to figure out if someone's actually allergic to that because there

are a lot of individuals I've come across that are allergic to those faster Esters typically it's not a problem um

and the reason that I agree with you 100% on the anavar being dropped and wind straw being the main DHT d oral

that we're going into the show with is because it absolutely works exactly the way that you want it to every single

time and yes you're going to get some uh cartilage deterioration naturally from it that happens your joints are drying

out I get it it's only two weeks you're not trying to get PRS in the gym we're trying to get the hardest most separated

physique and you're not you're you are not completely destroying Al a your liver's processing it and I would much

much rather do that on a higher dosage than run trend for 20 weeks at a higher dosage I would much rather pull

injectables early and then bump the orals up that's just me and wistol is the look that you're going for that's

what my guys misunderstand this they think Tren is causing that look the look you want is a wistol it's that dry

grainy strided look is is from wistol that's what we want Tren to me is used to hold tissue when you're dieting

you're already lean you don't need to use that much Trend and that's when I made that video with Wesley that people

didn't believe that he pulled the Tren early he was already ripped he didn't need Tren it was doing him no good why

would you just leave it in there to leave it in there I have pulled Tren out for a top Pro that we we won two pro

shows with five weeks out yeah and he just he looked better and I believe it has a correlation with prolac and

progesterone with some guys just can't handle it I'd rather not put somebody on a c goaline or PR just like to stay away

from those if at all those not good drugs yeah exactly so uh because neurologically just there's a

lot of issues that happen and I'm sure you can dive more into issues you know I and also people have to understand that

like some of those things it's it's not the trend was designed to cause those things but some of the the functions of

Trenbolone as a molecule through those mechanisms are why it works so well right so you want because you want it's

trying to purposely throw so prolactin in men is only increased when estrogen is up or T3 is down those are the only

two unless you have an Adema on your pituitary which is requires surgery those are the only two situations so

generally it's one of the other two things Trenbolone drives the T3 down slightly because it's actually trying to

optimize your metabolism in a c in cows they have a fast metabolism they're not going to grow muscle on the same amount

of food right that's nutrient partitioning if for a guy like me that's why I have to eat so much I have a fast

my thyroid runs fast right so if you slow it down a little bit I might be able to apply more if there's animalism

there you know something causing analism I might be able to apply more food to tissue versus just running my thyroid

through the roof um so by playing with those numbers playing with those things you're you're almost out doing what Tren

is supposed to be doing yeah absolutely it's it's almost a brilliant Thing by mistake so I would yeah I'd rather pull

it early than than go issue that's I've seen guys actually look a

lot better off of it you know we we would we would implement it we'd put it in and we'd run it for 3 weeks side

effects are too harsh but the look is just not improving it's not there's there's too much happening within within

their system that I'm like pull it out we're going to replace it with this and then boom within a week dude not only do

they feel much better but they look 10 times better so when you feel and we kind of touched on this yesterday too

when you when you feel better when your system's running optimally you look better like your skin is an organ

everything just shows how you're running inside if you are inflamed in things you're just you know something's wrong

you know this is great stuff man I mean we're yeah we're already an hour in let's touch on one more thing we're

gonna we're gonna do multiple Parts guys we're gonna have to break this up because we should probably do peek week

as a separate When We Touch on we'll do peek we as a separate we can touch on can Doon as a separate video if you want

yeah with the peak week yeah for sure so we can touch on real quick and we can leave you guys with this um you know so

everyone gets into the final week of loading not loading uh when do you load how long does it take for glycogen to

load that's all individualistic I I Peak people different I may do a slow titration starting on Sunday for a

Saturday show where I'm literally reverse dieting the person every day slowly with obviously carbohydrates

being the main source of macronutrient I'll always decrease protein going in carbs are protein sparing plus we also

want to bring in the waste as much as possible so just food volume in general I want to bring down and keep gastric

emptying as fast as possible especially the last day into show day um then there's midweek there's front loow

there's back load there's all sorts of ways which we will get into but I what I would love to leave people with is the

what we were talking about before we got on camera and that's how we shift fluids right from the subcutaneous to the

intracellular where we want the fluid to be in the muscle there's a huge misconception on Mineral and electrolyte

balance and what actually does what it needs to do mechanically right so I made a post about potassium chloride and

potassium as a whole the other week and people were trying to figure out some people understood like you know you do

you know a combination of that with salt you're getting a muscle contraction you're getting a great pump something

you could take back stage right so they almost answered it a little bit so if pottassium is causing this muscular

contraction clearly there's something happening that goes against the grain of what we've all been told for decades

that sodium is is the main driver right into the muscle let's touch on that Kurt you tell me from your

standpoint yeah and I'll back up a second because it where it's relevant in modern bodybuilding and social media so

it's a I think there's a multitude of things that are going on here so people just generally misunderstand the sodium

pottassium pump which again if you have not you know either had your experience or you even gone to school for these

things how would you understand these things it's not taught in regular college classes it's not taught in high

school for sure um I think it goes hand inand with with what the other things that are going on

the running estrogen High the water retention then is subsequently High then they're told that they need to add a ton

of salt to their diet and then their blood pressure goes up right because now they're holding water so what they do

then is because now everyone's terrified of using an AI they immediately self-medicate themselves with a

potassium sparing blood pressure medicine like Tas Arin and so not only they playing cardiologist which they

shouldn't be doing they're actually managing the a problem the wrong way yeah right and this again comes from

people with no medical background that really shouldn't be prescribing these things if you actually have to be on a

beta blocker heart medicine you need to see a cardiologist you should not be managing stuff on your own just because

you self-prescribed steroids doesn't mean you should be taking care of your heart yeah outside you know on your own

in my opinion I think so what what's occurring so I probably because salt was cheap and

it was an easy way and it made your veins come out it somehow caught on in the fitness industry that if you

basically drink salt water you'll somehow transport carbohydrates into your muscles and the problem is it's

lacking the most basic science it's not what's actually pulling it in it might take it too but the pottassium actually

has to swap and Pull It in so and it basically spits the sodium back out and people realize this they're just not

thinking logically when you go to like if you go to a Chinese restaurant and eat something has a ton of salt in it

the next day you woke up and you're bloated right you look like a pig your ankles are swollen that's why you don't

want to necessarily out salt there you need salt to live you need potassium and it's not to say there aren't times

that you and I might add salt to something depending on the look we can touch on that when we do the peeking

thing because generally three four days out you can generally look at someone and get a sense of where the minerals

are by the look yeah right like that's what I do like I can tell usually in photos from on the phone Zoom whatever

tell where they are but so it's actually the opposite so like potassium is actually what's going to pull it inside

the muscle sodium's going to spit it back out yep absolutely and this will get a lot of push back and even even

people the medical field would push back on this but you touched on something that happens in the the ER you know so a

doctor doctors have argued they'll say what about lactate Runners you know someone comes to the ER you know and

there's electrolyte problem you give a lactate rer and it's you got salt well that's to manage blood pressure that's a

whole it's like comparing rat studies to human studies you're you're talking about someone in the ER that you were

worried about coding versus a bodybuilder who you're trying to Peak they're not necessarily the same

situation totally different right you're talking about saving a life versus creating a loss

yeah absolutely and then with if you're on Telma sartan as well then all of a

sudden you have high potassium automatically so careful so it makes our job more difficult too because then

we're not really sure what to do with the minerals if they're on yeah we want to mitigate and manage yeah we don't

want to put someone into a hyperemic state obviously but we do want to make it and preface that potassium is going

to be a main driver into getting fluid intracellularly and then we utilize sodium as the acute vasodilator because

it will give you an acute blood pressure increase that that is what will give you a good contraction backstage or give you

vascularity but that's not going to fill the muscle out per se so that yes exactly so and just like Kurt

said go eat Chinese food that is packed full of sodium and see how you look the next day you will not look better so

there's a lot of things that people try to do the night before the show I've even heard of you know one uh one crew