Ultimate Guide to Bodybuilding Show Prep: Insights from AJ Sims
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Introduction
Bodybuilding show prep can feel overwhelming with all the intricacies involved—from managing water weight to manipulating carbohydrates. In this detailed guide, we dive into insights shared by bodybuilding experts AJ Sims and Kurt, covering essential strategies for successful show prep. This article will navigate through the complexities of getting stage-ready while ensuring safe and effective practices.
Understanding Show Prep
What is Show Prep?
Show prep refers to the period leading up to a bodybuilding competition, characterized by rigorous training and strict dietary regimens aimed at shedding body fat while maintaining muscle mass. It often begins weeks or even months before the competition date.
Importance of Getting Body Fat Off
One crucial point emphasized by AJ and Kurt is that the primary focus of show prep should be to eliminate excess body fat before doing anything else. Many competitors mistake fat loss for water manipulation, leading to a flat or bloated look on stage. To achieve true stage leanness, bodybuilders must accurately gauge their body fat levels, prepare ahead of time, and adhere strictly to their diet plan.
Key Nutrition Strategies in Show Prep
Carb Cycling
- What is Carb Cycling?
Carb cycling involves alternating between high-carb days and low-carb days to optimize fat loss and muscle retention. This method helps create an environment for fat oxidation while still fueling workouts effectively. - Establishing Baselines
It’s essential to understand your baseline maintenance calories. Start by determining the minimum effective dosage of everything (exercise, food intake, etc.) to allow room for adjustments later in the prep.
Managing Water and Sodium Levels
- Water Manipulation Approaches
During the final week of prep, bodybuilders may manipulate water intake dramatically to achieve a dry, vascular appearance on stage. Common strategies include tapering down water intake as the show date approaches to help reduce subcutaneous water retention. - Sodium Management
Sodium intake can also significantly impact water retention. Sodium helps transport water in the body, and careful manipulation can lead to optimal muscle fullness. Potassium, in contrast, is key for intracellular hydration, drawing fluids into muscles. Balancing both is essential for achieving the desired look.
Importance of Macronutrient Ratios
- Balancing Carbohydrates, Protein, and Fats
When prepping, it is crucial to establish an appropriate ratio of macronutrients:- Carbohydrates: These are key for energy and performance. The quantity can fluctuate depending on activity levels.
- Protein: Adequate protein is crucial for muscle retention.
- Fats: While healthy fats are important, they should be carefully managed. AJ and Kurt both emphasize lowering fat intake for a focused approach to getting stage-ready.
Hormonal Considerations
Managing Cortisol Levels
Cortisol—the stress hormone—can hinder fat loss and promote fat retention. Managing cortisol levels through adequate rest, sleep, and relaxation exercises is vital during the course of prep. Cortisol can be influenced by factors like sleep quality and overall stress management, which are often neglected during the intense final weeks leading up to a show.
Incorporating Supplements
Thyroid Function and Metabolism
- Monitoring thyroid levels can play an essential role in maintaining metabolic rate during prep. Introducing supplements like selenium and iodine can support thyroid health alongside a balanced diet.
- Diuretics: Some bodybuilders incorporate light diuretics to help manage water retention, but this practice should be approached with caution and primarily under professional guidance.
Peak Week Strategies
Fluid and Food Manipulation
As competitors approach their show, they may enter a crucial phase known as “peak week.” The strategies used during this period can dramatically affect presentation.
- Glycogen Loading: When metabolizing carbohydrates for energy, glycogen loading can increase muscle fullness. The tapering of physical activity while increasing carbohydrate intake should be carefully timed.
- Electrolyte Balancing:
The balance between sodium and potassium is also crucial during peak week to ensure optimal hydration levels. The use of potassium chloride can help facilitate muscle contractions safely.
- Banana Avoidance: Certain potassium-rich foods such as bananas may be avoided in the days leading up to a competition in order to lessen water retention and bloating.
Adapting to Individual Responses
Each athlete is unique; therefore, it is essential to adapt show prep strategies based on individual responses to diet, supplementation, and physical changes. Keeping logs and observations can help guide decisions.
Conclusion
Bodybuilding show prep requires careful planning and execution of dietary strategies, coupled with an understanding of how the body responds to various inputs. With knowledge gained from experience and the insights of experts like AJ Sims and Kurt, competitors can navigate the complexities of prep safely and effectively. Remember, the primary objective is to achieve a lean physique without compromising health or wellness—get the body fat off, manage your macros smartly, and pay attention to how your body reacts as you approach the finishing line of your transformation journey.
By following these guidelines, you can be well on your way to reaching peak performance for your next competition.
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
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
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
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