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“I screwed up my peak.”
I could
fill a book with the quotes I hear at contests from competitors who
placed from second to last in their class. There are many versions, but
just one quote. I’ll paraphrase: “I screwed up my peak.” That’s it –
end of quote. It’s usually sandwiched in a paragraph including words
like carb loading, sodium manipulation, water depletion, and it always
comes right before the line, “I tried something new this time.” Now,
I’m talking about legitimate peaking screw-ups, of which there are
many. The one thing I want to eliminate from your mind at the beginning
of this article is to blame your body fat percentage on peaking.
Some people start peak week at 14% body fat and think that by doing one
neat, new little trick that they read about, they’ll wake up Saturday
morning looking like Frank Zane. You’ve seen them. The ones at 8% body
fat who say, “Yeah, I was just holding a little water today.” This
article isn’t for them. This is for people who know how to dial in on
contest shape and now want to know exactly what to do in order to wake
up Saturday morning and shout, “Eureka! (or ‘Damn!’ -if you’re on the
East Coast) - I did it!! I finally nailed my peak!!”
First of
all, let’s begin with how you should plan to enter peak week. If you
still have to be concerned with losing “the last couple pounds” in the
week before the show, you won’t be able to peak properly. Peak week
should be thought of as recovering slightly, being fresh, and focusing
just on making sure the muscles are full and hard yet visible because of
proper subcutaneous water elimination. Fat elimination should be over
before this last week.
The next
thing I want to erase from your thought process is the myth that you
have to make extreme changes to manipulate your body into looking good
on contest day. You’ve no doubt experimented with massive sodium
loading and depletion, varying carb loading schemes, and endless water
depletion schedules to try to be your biggest, hardest, and driest all
at one time. You also have probably experienced the shock at looking at
a flat, shriveled up, smooth physique (with it’s mouth gaping open in
terror) in the mirror six hours before prejudging.
DO
NOT PLAN ON DOING ANYTHING DRASTIC DURING PEAK WEEK!!
 Your
body is constantly being monitored by your brain with thousands of
chemoreceptors that are sending feedback on millions of chemical
reactions happening in the body. It’s how your brain manages to balance
the chemical necessities for life. This vast neuro-hormonal-chemical
network is brutally dynamic and always in flux. I’m not smart enough to
predict and override these millions of reactions in my body to create an
unnatural super-compensation effect exactly at prejudging and then
maintain it all day. Neither are you. What we can do is understand the
cycles that our body goes through in directing water into muscles or
outside of the muscle cells, the way our body stores carbohydrates, and
how to gently massage these cycles so that we ride the right wave into
the right day and predictably peak perfectly and naturally instead of
trying to force a freaky, extreme response. That is a gamble you’ll
lose nine times out of ten.
When I peak
a bodybuilder, I control protein, carbs, fat, sodium, water, and
training. We start seven days from the show and I provide a chart that
tells the athlete exactly what to do in what amounts each day for the
entire week. I use these variables to control the normal cycles of
water and glycogen flow in and out of the muscle tissue. We start out
the week in a certain pattern and then each day the variables change in
a subtle way to be able to predict and control peaking. Obviously,
every bodybuilder is different in the amounts of each of the variables.
Some people have unbelievably fast metabolisms and some people are very
carb-sensitive – two extreme differences which dictate different amounts
of each nutrient variable and a slightly different schedule. But, the
actual flow and cycle is still very similar. It is important to know
and understand what to expect on each day so you know how to adjust.
For this reason, even my “long-distance” clients have daily
communication with me during peak week. I want to go through each of
these variables and give you some physiological insight to why peaking
is so elusive.
Carbing-up
is the great myth started and continuing with 250-pound steroid using
bodybuilders who consume huge amounts of food anyway and then take
prescription diuretics to eliminate the steroid bloat. If this
describes you, traditional carb depletion and loading may work. If
you’re body isn’t an eighth grade science experiment out of control,
let’s stick with normal physiology. Even the hardest, leanest bodies
cannot metabolize and shuttle glucose into muscle cells at a maximum
rate without having some extracellular spill-over. Read that sentence
again. You cannot deplete
carbs and then supercompensate and expect all of the glucose and water
to end up in the muscle. You’ll certainly fill out, but you’ll also
smooth out. Some a little, and some a great deal. Yes, a lot of carbs
will go into the muscle, but a little or a lot will end up outside the
muscle cell with a lot of water which makes you smooth. Next time
you’re dieting and you’re fairly lean, log some comments every day in a
journal. “Woke up pretty lean. Very smooth – must have been the sodium
in the chips. Very vascular. Hard as a freak’n rock!!” Just write
down comments on how you look in the morning. I guarantee that you’ll
consistently be your hardest after a couple of low-carb, high-water
intake days. You may not be your biggest because the carbs aren’t as
high, but the lack of extraneous carbs and water under the skin makes
you very tight and you appear much bigger. Who wins the show: the big
soft guy or the bone-dry striated competitor? The way I carb up my
clients catches the wave of glucose and water entering the muscle on the
way up, but not at the expense of smoothing out on the rebound effect of
over-carbing.
My general
carb cycle for peak week is to start at the highest point on the weekend
before. I start at a slightly above “normal” level on Saturday and
Sunday and schedule no training. I want this weekend to be a recovery
time with a refilling of glycogen. As training starts again on Monday,
I slowly drop carbs each day. It’s a subtle drop, not a severe
depletion. The training each day, Monday through Wednesday, with the
slight drop will create a sufficient carb deficit without total
depletion. Depending on the client’s metabolism, I keep the carbs
coming down and keep the water very high all the way through Friday.
For a very high metabolism bodybuilder, I’m not going as low on the
carbs during the week, and I may start re-carbing on Friday. For
carb-sensitive clients it’s very important to wait until Saturday to
reload. By waiting until later in the week to carb up, you eliminate
the chance of glycogen and water spill over. Your body can metabolize
glucose very quickly and you don’t have to start three days ahead of
time especially if you haven’t completely bottomed out with a severe
carb depletion. There are also some issues with the type of carbs you
use to reload. There are some that create more subcutaneous swelling
due to being food allergens. It’s important to know which are the most
common and how they affect you.
Water is
just as misunderstood as carbs. The traditional carb and water theories
have people drop their water sometimes days before the show. Nothing
will flatten and smooth you out faster! You have to maintain a high
water intake because your muscle tissue is around 70% water. No water,
no hardness – just flat, squishy muscle tissue. The reason people
typically start dropping water is because they’ve over-carbed so much
that they’re already spilling glycogen and water under the skin and
think, “Oh, my gosh!! I’ve got to get rid of this water!!” With the
carb reload as I described, you won’t have that problem; you’ll actually
get harder and harder throughout the week.
KEEP
THE WATER INTAKE UP AND LET IT FOLLOW THE CARBS INTO THE MUSCLE!! IF
YOU’RE NOT OVER-CARBED, THE REST OF THE WATER WILL BE ELIMINATED!
 Sodium
also has to be cycled. Start with a moderate amount of sodium, up to
two grams at the beginning of the week and around Thursday start
dropping it slightly but don’t eliminate it completely. If you do,
you’ll force water out of the muscle cell, you’ll look flat and smooth,
and you’ll cramp like there’s no tomorrow. You need approximately four
times more sodium than potassium for your muscles to contract normally.
Again, don’t let the myths from the pharmaceutically dominated side of
our sport lure you into doing things that aren’t physiologically
correct. You don’t have all those drug side-effects to combat in
peaking properly. If you sodium load and/or deplete in a big way you’re
gambling with extreme chemical rebound effects that you can’t possibly
time. If you’re lucky enough to stumble into a good effect, it will be
short lived because you’re on a pendulum swing that your body will
adjust to and you’ll look absolutely lousy in a very short time.
I also use
specific tricks regarding fat intake and schedule very specific contest
day meal strategies for the individual needs and characteristics of my
clients. As I get to know their metabolic rates through the dieting
process, I’m already planning their peak and everyone’s a little
different. These general guidelines, however, I hope will dispel some
common mistakes and put you on a path to learn your body type and peak
perfectly every time!!
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