Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Eric Helms on the Science of Preparing for a Natural Bodybuilding Show

Episode Date: September 30, 2016

In this episode I interview Eric Helms, who’s one of the premier natural bodybuilding coaches in the game. He’s a member of the 3DMJ coaching team and is himself a professional natural bodybuilder and strength athlete, as well as an author and credentialed scientist with several peer-reviewed publications under his belt. I reference his work quite frequently in my writing, actually, so it was a real pleasure to get the chance to interview him. And as you’ve gathered from the title, this interview is on how to prep for a natural bodybuilding show, and Eric covers everything ranging from caloric intake and macro breakdowns to weightlifting and cardio strategies, supplementation, and much more. So if you’re getting ready to prep for a show or are considering doing one, you definitely need to listen to the interview. It can save you from all kinds of trials and tribulations. And even if you’re like me and have no intention of competing but are just working on building your best body ever, you’re going to get a lot of out this interview too, because the principles Eric talks about apply to everyone looking to lose fat and not muscle--not just competitive bodybuilders. So, I hope I’ve sufficiently whetted your appetite. Let’s get to the interview... 5:16 - Eric's background on contest prep and personal experience. 6:52 - What are the biggest contest prep mistakes and myths? 14:51 - Do you need to manipulate water, salt, and potassium? 17:42 - How do you contest prep correctly? 22:18 - What kind of cardio should someone do? 31:28 - Tips on how to recover faster. 35:43 - Tips to maximize your nutrition. 43:09 - What nutrition should someone have on a refeed? 45:33 - How do you determine someone's maintenance? 53:03 - How do you go about reducing calories? 55:48 - Do you increase exercise throughout the prep? 59:09 - Is there any supplementation you recommend? 1:03:08 - What does peak week look like? 1:08:16 - Where can we find more of your stuff? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger If You're a Guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger If You're a Girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

in the gym grinding through workouts that you hate. Now you can find these books everywhere. You can buy them online, you know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audio books like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audio books and you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer, so as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check out my books if you haven't already. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I think you're going to really like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion. As you may know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted who knows how much money over the

years on worthless junk supplements and have always had trouble finding products that I actually liked and felt were worth buying. And that's why I finally decided to just make my own. Now, a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're 100% naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because we explain why we've chosen each ingredient

and we cite all supporting studies on our website, which means you can dive in and go validate everything that we say. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. Our formulations are 100% transparent. So if that sounds interesting to you, then head over to legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And you can learn a bit more about the supplements that I have as well as my mission

for the company, because I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it's long overdue. And ultimately, if you like what you see and you want to buy something, then you can use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your first order. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get Muscle for Life I have a great episode here for you, which is an interview with Eric Helms, who's one of the premier natural bodybuilding coaches in the game. He's a member of the 3DMJ coaching team and is himself a professional natural bodybuilder and strength athlete, which I actually believe, meaning that a lot of people say they're natural and they're either clearly not, or it's very gray, very questionable. In his case,

I fully believe that he is natural, which counts for something. If that were not the case, then I probably wouldn't be doing the interview. And I actually referenced Eric's scientific work quite frequently in my writing. So it was really a pleasure to get a chance to interview him. Now, as you've probably gathered from the title, this interview is on how to prep for a natural bodybuilding show. And Eric really covers everything ranging from caloric intake and macro breakdowns to weightlifting and cardio strategies and supplementation and much more. It's a very, very informative interview. I think you're really going to like it. And especially so if you are getting ready to prep for a show or are considering doing a show, then yeah, you definitely need to

listen to this interview because it can save you from all kinds of trials and tribulations that I have seen firsthand in my work many, many times from people that reach out to me that are suffering through contest prep under the poor guidance of some coach they found on the interwebs. And on the other hand, if you're like me and you have no intention of competing, but you're just working on building your best body ever, then you too are going to get a lot out of this interview because the principles that Eric talks about apply to everyone looking to lose fat and not muscle, not just competitive bodybuilders. So I hope I have sufficiently whetted your appetite and let's get to the interview. Eric, I'm excited to have you on the podcast. I've actually, you're one of

the people that has been asked for the most by listeners and readers and stuff. Wow. Well, that's an honor to hear, and I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Okay, so obviously I already kind of introduced in the beginning of the podcast who you are and why people should listen to you, but can you give a little bit more background specifically in the context of contest prep, which is what we're going to be talking about, and what

are your experiences personally and also as a coach, and just so people can understand where you're coming from in that regard? For sure. So I've been competing in natural bodybuilding myself since 2007. I've done about nine shows. And then since 2009, I've been a professional coach for natural bodybuilding. been a professional coach for natural bodybuilding. So I've coached people in both women and men in multiple divisions, but mostly competitive bodybuilding. And I think I figured it out one time I've worked with something like 300-ish people. Not all of them are contest preppers, but a large proportion would be. And I've also dedicated my academic career to studying this type of thing. So I did my master's specifically looking at protein and macronutrient manipulation in dieting strength athletes. And I wrote a review paper with Peter Fitchin and Alan Aragon on the training side of things, looking at evidence-based best practice for natural bodybuilders.

I've referenced that quite a bit. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. Spreading the good word. Thank you. Thank you very much. And then on the training side of it, uh, Schoenfeld, uh, hopped on there and helped us out there too. So I guess to say I I've, I've coached it, I've experienced it and I've theorized about it. So, um, not to say I'm instant and I've theorized about it. So, um, not to say I'm the end all be all, but, um, this is my specialty. Absolutely. Um, so with that in mind, what would you say, let's just start with, uh, what are the three, four, five kind of biggest prep mistakes that are myths that are kind of out there that you have to consistently disabuse people of and correct? You know, I'd say the most common one is just not dieting long enough. And it's almost cliché to say that now, or at least it feels like it

because I'm preaching it all the time. But it has multiple reasons why. I mean, one is that before I'd even say the early 2000s, the conditioning standard was lower. You know, the rarity of striated glutes was um was well pretty rare you know like you'd see the one the one show or the one guy in the show with the striated glutes and he typically is getting very close to winning and natural bodybuilding where size isn't as much of a dominating factor and then even if you looked

at like the ifbb pro ranks you know if you follow the other side of the sport, it wasn't until probably the 90s where you started to see guys show up with strident glutes regularly. And it was pretty rare before that. So one is the conditioning standards. So what that means is that people were dieting under the constraints of a different system before. So they didn't need to get quite as lean. And the leaner you get, the harder it gets. So it kind of adds a disproportionate amount of time that one should be dieting. Then a natural bodybuilding, holding onto your muscle in

that phase is also the hardest. It extends it further. You've got the tradition going against the grain here of the idea that maybe we should be dieting longer. Then you've also just got the unexperienced eye of a novice competitor. These first-time mistakes, they're based on your experience level. When you've never competed, you don't quite know just how much body fat is really there that has to go. It all has to go. Especially with the lights and how harsh it is and what might look good under the right lighting that you like and then doesn't look so good or doesn't look right under competition. 100%.

Yeah, you spending 10 minutes to set up an Instagram photo in half-nety lighting is not the same as being on stage for 20 minutes. Exactly. That natural lighting, the perfect – I think I see a little bit of adbascularity. Right, exactly. So most of the time people need to lose sometimes as much as twice the amount they think they have to lose. I'll tell you a funny story because I'm not immune to this either. In like 2005, I think, I did my first quote-unquote cut, and I was 220 pounds at the time. I'm six foot, so it wasn't that huge or anything.

And I thought if I dieted down to 200 pounds, I'd be pretty close to stage ready. So fast forward about twice as long later than I thought it would take. I'm 198, and I'm probably 14% body fat. So I just didn't realize how fat I was to get there. So I basically dieted to the point where I'd want to start a prep. And so, yeah. Yeah, prep. And, um, so yeah, yeah, exactly. And then I was right. I ended up competing at about 178, 2007. So there you go. Cool. So that's the, so that's, uh, is that kind of like all one, you'd say that's one kind of big

mistake is not dieting enough. That's a big one. There are others. Uh, probably some of the most common ones are that the rules for, for,, that you have to do things to burn extra calories or get cut up. You want to train higher rep on a lighter load. And the reality is that the same principles that guide training apply at all times. You probably can build a little bit of muscle in the beginning of prep, even though you're starting to diet, unless you're doing something crazy. And even at the stages in prep where that's not happening and you're probably losing small amounts of muscle, it's not that you're just trying to retain muscle. It's you're trying to create the same stimulus that you would to gain muscle. It's just you don't have the nutritional support necessarily.

So sure, you have to pay attention to recovery, potentially lower volume, do deloads more frequently, maybe use an RPE scale to kind of, you know, auto-regulate all that because you're going to be less consistent in terms of your energy levels. Can you explain real quick what that is? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So basically, auto-regulation is just the idea that you need to systematically go by feel. And it's very important what that word systematically is because auto-regulation isn't just, yeah, man, I'm going to just go by feel today. It really is like… I feel like biceps and chest again for the fourth time this week.

Right. Not auto-regulation, right? Hashtag not auto-reg. So auto-regulation has a systematic format, and that's what I'm doing for my PhD. And probably the main thing I'm studying is what's called an RPE scale, a rating of perceived exertion. And I'm specifically looking at a scale that's based on how many repetitions remain at the end of a set. So if you did eight reps with your 10-rep max, that would be an 8-RPE. You had two repetitions in reserve.

A 9 would be 1. 10 would be 0 max. Couldn't have done more weight and more load. This becomes a very useful tool when your strength is less consistent, like during contest prep. There are other methods there, flexible nonlinear periodization, which just basically says, hey, you've got light, medium, and hard days, and you should rate yourself on a 1 to 10 scale, decide how you feel that day, and then

choose which one you want to do. And we know that it produces at least as good of progress as having a fixed exercise or training day order. In the end, if you get all the volume done within the week and you're getting in quality work when you're doing it, you're probably going to get the same results so that those kind of principles are very useful during contest prep but anyway i think the main the main take-home point is that uh the same principles that guide gaining muscle should be used when you're during contest prep even if you might only be retaining it you just have to be more mindful of your recovery yep makes sense

and anything related to cardio? Sure, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you see that. I'm sure you see that. I mean, I know I get a lot of emails about, my coach wants me to do two hours of cardio a day, seven days a week, and eat 1,000 calories a day. Right, yeah, yeah.

I think it's almost not just cardio. It's more of, I think actually it goes back to the first one. Most of the time when I run into someone who's on a thousand calories and doing two day, two day cardio, it's, it's because they didn't give themselves enough time. You know, there, there may come a time in a diet. In fact, there probably will be where you have to do more cardio than you want, eat less, less calories than you want. And not just from a position of, I like pizza. That's what I want. I mean, when I say want, I mean, you look at it objectively as someone who is a competitive athlete and think, you know,

what's the best for me to, what's the best, you know, calorie intake or the lowest I'd want to go to not lose muscle. And you might go, well, shit, I have to go lower than that. Yeah. I mean, you also reached that point where I haven't competed, but I've dieted down to pretty, pretty lean, like where there's not much left to grab anywhere you know ab veins or whatever for photo shoots you get to that point where it's more it's a visceral type of feeling it's not just a yeah i want pizza it's like my body is starved for energy that's the only thing i can feel yeah yeah yeah so so yeah you you may have to get to a point where you've got to do more cardio than you want lower calories than you want and you do what you have to do because you're a competitive athlete. But yeah, I mean most of the time when you run into people who are doing insane amounts of cardio or inordinately low calories, it's because they didn't set up the diet in the first place.

They either started too heavy or they didn't have enough time to diet related to how heavy they started. Or they dug themselves into a hole very early on. So you can actually take a faster pace early on in a prep because obviously the more body fat you lose, the easier it is to lose it. But it still shouldn't be like Biggest Loser Fast. We're talking like losing 1% of your body weight per week instead of 0.5%. Right. Right. And before last, before we just move on to how to do it right, is there anything relating to, because I mean, I get asked about this a lot. And again, as someone who hasn't competed and I never have really done much in the way of manipulating sodium, potassium or water for photo

shoots, I just more took the approach you're talking about, where I just gave myself enough time to get really lean. And, you know, I figure I see once I've lost enough body fat and I just carve up and do some pushups, all of a sudden I look pretty good. You know what I mean? And so is there, is that more kind of myth that you need to be playing a lot with your water and your, and your salt and your potassium, or is that something that will actually go in the, when you kind of talk about peak week and yeah there's there's bits and pieces that are that might make sense and there's other bits that that are completely myth and even counter counterproductive right and and you're right it i think the biggest myth is just the amount of effect it has um you know peaking is a lot of more in my opinion correcting the flatness that you see while dieting

than it is doing something that will make a big impact. A lot of times people don't understand why when I talk on podcasts about peaking, why I say, well, if you're not shredded, it's not going to do much. Like, well, why not? I mean, I don't get that. The reason why is if you're not shredded, you're not typically depleted. You don't have highly depleted baggageogen stores because you have body fat to pull from still you know right you're not on super low calories probably you're not doing tons of

cardio probably maybe you're playing catch-up but even then you just don't typically have that flatness when you have you know minimal levels of body fat uh that's so glycogen is constantly getting getting pulled from at least that's that's my theory as to why it seems to work better that makes sense so it's more about filling up as opposed to trying to manipulate because really it comes down to it when the people that write me they're trying to manipulate subcutaneous water levels and they think that that's going to make a big difference when you know if you're like you were saying if you're not lean enough it just it doesn't really make you're going to look i don know, 5% better for like a day maybe or something.

At best, yeah. And, yeah, so I mean there are some other things that happen during contest prep is your blood pressure drops a lot lower. This is just true in anyone who's been calorie reduced for a long period and gets the low body fat levels. So it's harder to get a pump um so it might make sense to try to do things to raise your blood pressure which when we talk about the house uh we can get into that but um yeah certainly someone just kept it relatively simple you know carved up and did a pump up they're getting the vast majority of the benefits from a peak week. Cool. So my uninformed, simplistic approach was more informed and better than I thought.

To be honest, if you keep it simple and logical, you're going to be right most of the time. As most things go in life. Okay, so let's now get to how to do it right. So let's start at the top here. So you're going to be starting a prep, and I'm just going to kind of pass the mic to you again. And how does this roll out? Yeah, so ideally what is happening is you're looking at a show. If you're, say, a competitive bodybuilder, so male or female, knowing that you're going to have to get to the lowest levels of body fat that you can, you're probably looking at a minimum of five to seven months out, especially if you're a first time.

Because more time is, if anything, better. Because it gives you more flexibility. You don't have to diet as fast. And what would you say is a good starting point in terms of body fat percentage for guys and girls? Yeah, good question. I would say probably 15% at max for men. And then about 7% or eight percent higher for women

that's basically kind of the rough scaling equivalent just so everyone understands why why those numbers why not is it is it just a factor of time like what you ran into pretty much okay it is just a factor of time um some people will walk around 11 some people will walk around at 17 but it does we're talking man again, but based on their natural settling point. But it is just a factor of time. It takes time to lose that much body fat, and having more time is almost always better. Worst case scenario, you're one of those people who loses fat very easily, and you're ready in four months. Okay, so you've got another two months to diet.

Well, that's eating up into the show. Fantastic. Or you can find an early warm-up show to do. It's fine. There's shows all the time depending on where you live. So yeah, that's step one. And I would say even before that because it's very difficult to accurately gauge those two things, how much time do I need and what level of body fat should I be as a first-timer,

is probably contact someone who is experienced. It doesn't necessarily need to be a coach, but have someone who knows what they're doing get an objective look at you like a year out and go, okay, let's think about what position we want to be once we're at that six-month-ish mark. When we coach people, that's what we like to do is we encourage people to do a Skype consultation with us, which then comes off their price for coaching so it's like we try to make it like as definitely do this as possible because it makes our jobs easier right talk to us like a year out so we can game plan here's where i want you to try to work your calories up to or towards here's the heaviest

i want you to be before contest prep start let's get you on a sensible weight training plan let's get you on an appropriate amount of cardio for the off-season, which might be none, you know, depending on what they're doing, or it might be a little. And then we know that we're in a position to be successful at the start of that prep because a lot of the times we're inheriting very bad situations. You know, someone's six months out, and their calories in the off-season are what we would diet them on.

And, you know, they're probably having, like, these cyclical binges. That's a terrible place to start a contest prep. You know, your willpower is already depleted. Your calories are low. Your total daily energy expenditure is probably about as low as it can be at that body weight. You know, it's not a good place to be. Or we have to sell you on a very different type of training. We have to titrate in. So, you know, to get your emotional buy-in and that's not the best way uh you know to to retain muscle or progress during prep and you know we're giving up a little something there so uh there's a lot of pre-prep work that basically needs to be done so that the the bodybuilder is on the same page and you know in our, sometimes now that we have a reasonable presence within our community, people don't come to us as.

Yeah. Say, hey, I have I have four months left. What do I do? Yeah. So it's becoming at least we're having a dent on the people who apply to us for concepts. I don't know how much we're affecting the entire community. I'd like to think it's a positive effect. Right.

But, yeah, that's step one. Step two is then. All right. So, so you're five to seven months out, you're appropriately lean and you have a sound training plan. We'll talk training first because it's relatively easy. I would say cardio should probably only be about, you know, 20% of, let's just throw some random numbers out there, of the deficit you get. And, you know, I would take a long time before you got past this, but a rough limit would be not doing more cardio

than you're doing in terms of weight training if you were to compare like hours. So if you're doing eight hours of weight training a week, try not to go over eight hours of cardio unless you absolutely have to. And that's kind of almost always the always rule, unless you have to, you know. And do you normally start people with that?

Like, would you start that at a one-to-one ratio no way less than that okay so i say wow that's a lot of that's like no that's like that's like a max like four or five months into the diet you know and just so people understand when you're talking about cardio that are you would you include something like walking like very low intensity or you know what i mean okay yeah i typically i stray on the fringe ends of the cardio spectrum so either we're doing a very small amount of low impact which is important uh high intensity type of interval stuff and that's only maybe once or twice a week yeah and then on the other end of the spectrum it's just what i call calorie burning yeah low intensity steady state not not going on a jog um but actually easier than that. Stuff that might get you

breathing hard a little bit, but you can still talk while you're doing it. And that's just basically because we don't want a cardiovascular adaptation. We're not looking to get you better at endurance. We're looking to lose fat and burn extra calories and combat decreases in meat or your normal calorie burning outside of the gym. There's probably something to be said for recovery too. If you're trying to do too much stuff in the middle, like jogging would be a good example. It's going to cut into your recovery. It's going to make your weight training harder,

and it's just going to make the whole process harder probably. Definitely. Going on a walk, if anything, might help you recover a little bit. But going on a run, probably not. Maybe if you're very well adapted i kind of uh come to the same recommendation it's either do as like me personally when i'm cutting i like to do maybe an hour to an hour and a half of hit on a bicycle uh per week and then actually work hard at it something that is that uh it you could it qualifies as actual as hit like i'm not going to be sitting

there having a conversation while i'm doing it you know what i mean so keep that on the or and then do some walking as well i just don't like being in the middle because i found the exact things you're talking about yep and i like that you pointed out the bicycle cool thing about a bike zero impact yeah you know so you're not going to get your joints beat up uh and if if you can think of what the difference between a concentric and eccentric contraction are um in most activities in life we do concentric and eccentric while you're running the eccentric is when your muscle is lengthening while uh it's producing force right so that is when you're breaking you know if you can think about it and that actually causes more micro tears in the muscle fiber

which is fine under the context of regular training but when you add more uh you know, if you could think about it. And that actually causes more micro tears in the muscle fiber, which is fine out of the context of regular training. But when you add more, you know, especially high speed or high impact, these center contractions on top of your training, that can interfere with, you know, recovery and a bike because you're never actually hitting the ground and you're constantly moving forward. It's a circle. You're basically all concentric. Yeah. So the recovery component is even less. And there's even some data showing that bicycling interferes, quote-unquote, less with weight training. So it's always a good choice. It doesn't burn as many calories, though. I personally am a fan of the elliptical if I'm going to do gym cardio.

When I'm not just going on a walk with my wife or doing, like, very light barbell complexes or kettlebells, that kind of thing. And you like that because elliptical burns you like that because Lipto burns more calories. Lipto burns more calories. You're standing up. It's full body. It's the same principle. You're pretty much always concentric and low impact, which is probably more important. And then, yeah, like the bar cardio and the kettlebell stuff,

I just enjoy it more. So it's more sustainable for me. And I have to diet a while. That's another thing. It's just, you know, make sure you're regardless of everything we said, the cardio needs to be semi-enjoyable because you might end up doing a lot of it yeah so it will go from being semi-enjoyable to i semi-hate this and that's much better than than starting with i semi-hate this because by the end you'll you'll not want to do it that's very true i guess that's also one of the reasons why i've kind of uh just gravitated toward the bike is one there's the research that you're talking about i've read that

research and i've referenced or whatever but then also i kind of just gravitated toward the bike is one, there's the research that you're talking about. I've read that research and I've referenced it, whatever. But then also I kind of just enjoy an upright bike and like, I don't really watch TV. So that's my time where I would take my iPad and watch TV show. So I just, I don't know. That's something I liked. Yeah. Yeah. I was, even though I liked the elliptical, I remember during my last prep, I was doing my first master's where I had a lot of coursework and I was just walking on a treadmill so I could study. Life always interacts with these recommendations, and you find what fits the best bill for you. Anyway, your cardio, you more or less want to titrate in as needed, not jump out the gates. I think when I start someone, they do one, maybe two sessions.

We're talking an hour total of cardio they might start with right um and then like i said i try to keep it less than the amount of weight training they're doing and then as far as weight training it should look pretty damn similar to what you're doing in the off season a few things that i like to do to kind of hit on that principle of allowing for more recovery is I start instituting mandatory deloads. So like every fourth week is a pretty common one I do. And you yeah, sure, all the arguments against mandatory deloads, like what if you're not ready, or you know, the whole reason I'm studying auto regulation, right? Yeah. But you're it's also very difficult to gauge on your own. And during contest prep, if anything, you want to err on the side of being more conservative with that type of thing. So I think it's a good way to kind of self-check

your um your inner masochist or inner like yeah i can't i can't deload during prep i'm gonna lose muscle like actually you the opposite will happen because you're you're gonna sacrifice future training quality it just helps you prevent bigger mistakes basically and. And the downside of doing it is pretty minimal. Yeah, it's a check and balance. That's a good way to think of it. So, yeah, that is very useful. And then, you know, trying to maintain your volume and make steady but very small progression in your weight for, say, the first third of perhaps maybe the first eight weeks, you know, when your body fat isn't too low, probably happen pretty successfully. And then it's not a bad idea once you get kind of like the halfway mark to think about a slight reduction in volume, especially if you're feeling it. You know,

this is the kind of thing that I, as a coach, when I'm working with someone, I control tightly. So I can say, you know, that you don't necessarily need to just drop volume straight away. But when someone is self-coached, that's probably where you want to think about. It's very difficult to make that decision on your own unless you're highly experienced. So it might be better to kind of institute a mandatory 10% reduction in volume at the halfway mark in prep,

another 10% when you're in the final third, just in the form of reducing sets here and there from your harder units, that kind of thing. Or even 10, 20, 25%. So that at the very end of prep you're doing like 60 of what you might normally do i don't think anything and do you do you take mainly from the bigger compounds for that the deadlift squat pressing yeah yeah definitely and typically you know when i'm doing it uh people start complaining about uh their how not not

complaining they start letting me know as their coach when they're feeling, man, those four sets of squats really beat me up. And I go, all right, let's do two. You know, and they're like, what? Oh my God, I can't do that. I'm talking them to it, you know? Yeah. I'm like, you know, and it is very true that the amount of volume it takes to maintain muscle is substantially less than it takes to try to gain gain it um so you know is that true in a deficit we don't have great data on that but um from what i've seen the the benefits are greater than the cost you trying to keep in the same kind of training volume that was at the peak of your off season when you're six percent body fat and doing cardio yeah um is is not going to go well

uh you know so so yeah it's it's a good idea to to think and you know that's actually one upside to that kind of old school approach of let's just lower the weights not the reps you know they're probably maintaining volume but the stress per unit of volume is a lot less the only downside is they're removing one of the core stimuli from from uh you know of weight training which is you know progressive overload yeah they're just kind of going for the pump and repping out the high stuff so and just to that point, so people get, so it's key to keep your heavy lifting in. Yes.

And not, because of course that is like we were talking about in the beginning of the podcast, that's one of the more common things that I also hear just from people asking. It's one of those bits of gym lore that if you want to get really shredded and have striated glutes and have striated anything, you know, you need to do a bunch of high rep stuff and get a huge pump. And yeah, yeah. I mean that, that there are, there's, there is value in training with a variety of rep ranges.

Sure. Bodybuilder should be doing multiple angles and isolation work, but it should all be built on the back of a core basis of compound movements trained in a moderately heavy rep range, at least, of a core basis of compound movements trained in a moderately heavy rep range at least. So that is – and it also encourages progressive overload. There was a period where I saw more impressive physiques, of course, with fat on them at local powerlifting meets than I did at local bodybuilding shows. This was a long time ago. We're talking like 10 years ago. I think it was just because progressive overload was just

something that was not commonly understood you know even if the powerlifters weren't training in the most appropriate way for maximal hypertrophy they were always trying to add weight to the bar and it was something they did obsessively on all movements so you know you saw better better physiques there you know yeah um and uh i saw a lot more kind of physiques missing body parts and, and bodybuilding shows, you know? So, um, so yeah, I think it's very important that bodybuilders understand that that, that principle reigns supreme all the time and you can't always do it when you're, you know, you said try though.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. With also keeping in mind that, you know, playing the recovery cards very important, like the mandatory deloads, reducing volume at a certain point. And is there anything else recovery wise that you know playing the recovery cards very important like the mandatory deloads reducing volume at a certain point and is there anything else recovery wise that you find helps like yeah emphasizing sleep or yeah sleep is so important and um there does become a point where and then not doesn't happen to everybody but it almost seems like kind of like a dieting adaptation where uh sleep is messed up uh this can sometimes be effective on micronutrient intake or macronutrient intake so you can play

with a nonlinear diet or maybe you have refeeds to try to, which we'll talk about more, to maybe at least get a few days of good rest or maybe a multivitamin or switching up your food sources to try to avoid deficiencies. Do you find that even strategies or ways to relax and just kind of lower cortisol levels can help? Because I've worked with people that are beyond, I mean, they're not prepping for shows,

but dieting, wanting to get lean, they're a couple months in, and you add the stress of that on the stress of everyday life, and they don't have anything really worked out in terms of personal routine to like chill out. Yeah. Yeah. Structure is huge for everything. And structure for stress management is huge as well. So I've, I've read, I've made the recommendations to people to start a gratitude journal. I've made the recommendation. Like the five minute journal.

Have you seen that? Yeah. Yeah. Stuff like that. Like where you're, you keep it next to your bed at night. Uh, you open it up and you write three positive things about your life. Not bullshit, things that you actually might think about it if you're kind of a negative person, but that's a good thing for you then especially. And there's actually research on gratitude in general and how that can have a positive effect on your mind state. Other things that I've recommended are, hey, no screen time after like 9 p.m right you know and uh like if like for example your your iphone has like a an auto thing you can put on it if

you're like i have an iphone 6 i don't know when they start coming out where you can it'll like shade shift so it's not i mean as much change yeah the the temperature of the light yeah exactly and uh so because you know we're we're nothing if not animals you know who have just kind of created a technological society and we still body responds to the sun that's arcadian rhythm so if you're it's 11 p.m and all these lights are on that confuses things a little bit not like you can't go to sleep or the sleep quality shit but yeah if you're already having trouble with sleep it's not a bad idea to try to maximize all those possibilities yeah i i have recommended meditation in a few cases um it's not a not a regular thing i do because people often kind of they they they're like woo woo alarm alarm goes

off but for the right person who i think would benefit be benefited from it um finding some quiet time of not thinking is not a bad thing yeah i've had some other more individualized strange recommendations like i don't want you to watch youtube for a week or i don't want you to read any articles for a week kind of overanalyze avoid the news yeah yeah and a lot of some of it's like the overanalyzing like constantly finding like there's got to be i can always do more i can always do more and it's like actually what we need to work on is your mindset of thinking you can always do more because everything's perfect right now. You just need to chill the hell out.

Or, yeah, just staying away from things that are pretty negative like, you know, American media. So, yeah, it just totally depends on the situation and the person. situation and the person but definitely doing things to manage stress levels and make sure that your sleep is is there is very important uh for the people who just cannot sleep the night like they wake up to four hours and they're up uh when they start dieting there's absolutely nothing wrong with naps um you might be thinking well it's not as good as eight hours solid you're right but look you're not going to get eight eight hours solid so find a day find a time in the day where you can schedule a couple half an hour naps and that will actually make a substantial difference. I had this problem during one of my preps and I remember just how terrible I'd feel. And then when I had the half an hour nap, it would

just be like a bolt of energy hit me. Rejuvenation. Yeah. And I don't want to feel like that in the off season. I just feel, oh, that was nice. But it's so much different when you're depleted. See, that's basically the full extent of what I do in terms of other things helping with recovery that are a little more intangible. Cool. Okay, cool. So I kind of like, you know, diverted you there,

but I think it was- A good diversion. Okay, good. So then we can just get back to, you know, so you're in the process now. We've gone over that you're in the process now. Um, we've got, we've gone over that. You're not, it was the last thing was, was training. Um, and so what is, so, so they're kind of rolling along, their cardio is low. They, I mean, at this point, probably they haven't changed

much in the way of training volume yet. And, um, is there anything, uh, on the nutritional side that is worth highlighting? That's the everything. Well, sure. That's why I wanted to get training out of the way first. So let's roll it back to the very start. So we've got an idea of what we're going to do with our cardio and our training throughout prep. You know when you're going to start, how heavy you should be. Another thing that you want to start at least, say, probably a month before your diet starts is actually tracking calories.

month before your diet starts is actually tracking calories because if you're doing contest prep uh you know to make sure you keep losing fat you're going to want to be manipulating your calorie macronutrient intake and it's a lot easier to do that uh and less of a kind of shock to your mental system if you have some time doing that if you go from just eating and not tracking at all uh which there's nothing wrong with in my opinion so long as you're hitting a certain amount of protein, your calories are there, you're getting some fruits and vegetables in, and you're having protein around your workouts, and you're ticking a few boxes and making things as optimal as they can be in the off-season. For example, right now, I ensure I hit a minimum amount of protein. I ensure I have at least four protein dosings a day. I ensure that I'm gaining or losing weight at the rate i want

and i make sure that i get you know my multivitamin my fish oil and you know taking my creatine or whatever and um or whatever yeah definitely just creatine and then uh my creatine whatever you know just the d-ball no but so like i i have i have, right? I have the boxes I tick in the off-season, but it's a lot less. It's the minimal amount I can get away with tracking and still being optimal, which is a different formula than during contest prep where you want to make sure almost all your bases are covered because things matter more. So anyway, if I was to prep, and what I recommend to people

who are in kind of that state in the off-season where they're maybe just tracking protein, is to start tracking all three macronutrients and weighing all their foods, eating out less, and getting very used to keeping either a MyFitnessPal or a Fit Day or MyMacros, whatever, tracking going so that it's not a huge pain in the ass and it's something they've integrated into their life and that is not a stressor when they start prep. And the side effect of this is you end up knowing exactly what your maintenance calories or your gaining calories are yeah so you have a good idea of where to go so if you know you're maintaining roughly 3 000 calories and you know that there's roughly 3 500 calories

in a pound of fat and if you want to create an x amount of deficit you can play with that knowledge so for example i'll use myself i'm a 200 pound male and i want to try an X amount of deficit, you can play with that knowledge. So, for example, I'll use myself. I'm a 200-pound male, and I want to try to lose, oh, let's say 1% of my body weight to start. It's about the fastest you want to go and then slower by 0.5. So you're always going to try to fall between 0.5 to 1% of your body weight loss per week. That's body weight, not body fat. Obviously, you want to see yourself getting – Body fat would be nice.

Right. It would be great. Yeah. And maybe that is happening. It's just you can't – there's no good measure to check that. So you really – am I maintaining performance? Am I looking better? Am I losing at the right weight with my body weight?

Right. So anyway, let's say I want to lose 1% of my body weight per week. That's two pounds. That's roughly a 7,000-calorie deficit over the course of the week. So that means I need to create a 1,000-calorie deficit on a day-to to day basis, mostly from my diet, right? So let's say I'm doing some cardio. So I let's go to 2200 on low days, right? That would be an example of someone with a 3000 calorie, you know? Yeah, that's me. With my lifestyle, I mean, in my BMR and in my metabolism, whatever, I'm about 3000 calories a day. And like you also, I'll eat intuitively, but my metabolism, whatever. I'm about 3,000 calories a day. Like you also,

I'll eat intuitively, but I have my rules. I have getting enough protein. I maybe even eat a bit more fruits and vegetables than I do a bit more than the two to three servings just because I like them and it's healthy and it's a good idea, blah, blah, blah. Same supplements and stuff. That's me. When I start cutting, I usually

will start 200 ish because i'll do a little bit more cardio but yeah so perfect those are those are those are two examples of what i do and what you do that fall within the guidelines what probably makes sense for guys our size and with a similar lifestyle where we're on the computer most of the time for a job right um yeah that's becoming more and more more common so maybe you know so play with the amount of cardio so long as you're not going over that amount you're doing weight training and play with the amount of food and then just double check it you know so you're looking at a seven day average of your weigh-in so i actually do recommend weighing in daily first thing in the morning nude right when you wake up

after you use the toilet before you eat or drink anything so you can get a consistent number and then those numbers on a day-to-day basis matter zero. You just want an average. And then you're just comparing averages. And just so people understand why, it's because your daily numbers can fluctuate based on water and going to the bathroom more, going to the bathroom less, whatever. So you don't freak out over why did I gain one pound?

What did I do wrong? Let me just go binge now yeah exactly uh there's a ton of biological noise you know whether you had a higher sodium day or you had more of your carbs at night uh whether it was a refeed which we'll talk about um which is normal to affect your weigh-ins all those things are going to change how much sleep you got what time you weighed in right on the more time you spend breathing and not drinking water or moisture losses and more time not bringing water in you'll weigh less so if you went to bed and slept in late and weighed in you'd be like oh i had a new lit a new low it's like hey kind of so um so yeah all those things will get mostly

eliminated by a seven day average and i like to go probably two weeks before making changes anyway so if you can get two seven day averages and compare them to go probably two weeks before making changes anyway so if you can get two seven day averages and compare them to your last two seven day averages then you can get a really good idea of whether or not you're actually making progress before you just make arbitrary cuts you know and then we're talking 100-200 calorie changes

most of the time that you would make on a regular basis if you were plateaued just so you don't end up digging yourself into a hole too quickly so that that's that's basically the big picture calorie stuff in terms of refeed which i mentioned i like to have a few days at maintenance calories i would love there to be more research on this but what we have at the moment as we know a fair number of studies show that an intermittent approach to dieting, so some days where you're dieting, some days where you're not, seems to be superior in not all studies, but some

compared to just a straight everyday deficit. And this makes sense for a lot of reasons. I think psychologically it's a big part of it. Having that kind of reward or just having that day off is pretty important. And there's some studies showing mental acceptance, like being on, say, 1,500 calories for six days in a row in obese people, and then one day where you're in maintenance was easier to accept than having all days at even lower calories than 1,500. I think that holds true with most people. When you're training, glycogen gets depleted from training and having low calories. Even when you're higher in bodycogen gets depleted from training and having low-calorie. Even when you're higher in body fat, a lot of the rationale that we would normally talk about is the reason the refeed isn't there.

Replenishing glycogen and having a day off from dieting, I think, can help with training, muscle retention, and sanity. I normally start people with one refeed a week at the beginning. Then once they hit about a third of the diet, then I go to two, and then I might end up going to three, just depending on the individual. How do those refeeds look, Mac, nutritionally? Yeah, they are a little more carb dominant, but for the most part, they are just at your maintenance levels. They pretty much mirror your fat and protein intake from your other days of the

week where you're dieting. And then I bring the carbs up to reach maintenance levels. And that's because carbohydrate will primarily replenish glycogen and also has an impact on some of the hormones associated with, uh, your total daily energy expenditure. So it's kind of tends to be one of your kind of regulators for, uh, for, am I starving or not? If you quote unquote will make so leptin being the main, the one, the main one, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I don't want people to get too caught up on leptin because there's a lot of downstream effects. There's other things that matter. So that's why I was saying some of the hormones I like to talk around it, but yeah, definitely fat and protein don't have the same effect on leptin that carbohydrate does, But total calories do matter as well.

So, yeah. And it's important that you chase a slower rate of weight loss as the diet progresses. As you get leaner, it's harder to liberate more. And your energy expenditure is going to go down anyway. So it probably makes sense to have a lower rate of weight loss. So maybe like 0.7% of your body weight would be targeted after the first third of the diet and then towards the end 0.5%. And this also works nicely with having more refeeds because obviously a day of maintenance is a day you can't accumulate a deficit. But when you

only have to lose half as much at the end of the diet per week as you were at the beginning, then you can spread it out over fewer days, but it's not as large of a deficit. It's kind of about the same. Makes sense. Yeah, it doesn't become problematic if you take that approach. If you strictly adhere to a 1% rate of weight loss the whole time, A, that's a problem in and of itself. And as you take away dieting days, those deficits get larger and larger and that can become problematic. Yeah. So that's the overall structure of how you would have your deficits laid out over the course of say that quote unquote quote-unquote six-monthish period. But I also like to have what's called diet breaks.

So about every four to eight weeks, depending on the individual, I like to take a week at maintenance on all days. And this has been a game changer for our clients at 3DMJ that we've started implementing this in the last couple of years in terms of breaking plateaus, getting leaner, maintaining muscle and maintaining a higher calorie level and does not feeling as crappy by the time it shows up. And question. So when you're determining what is maintenance at that point, are you assuming that it's the maintenance of when they started or are you assuming it's a bit lower because of physiological adaptations and they weigh less and blah, blah, blah? Second. Yeah, exactly. The latter. Because if you were to take them back to when they were 10 pounds heavier and they hadn't been dieting, that would probably be a slight surplus. Right. So yeah, you kind of have to look at what was the most recent amounts of weight loss. Don't look at a plateaued week because that can be

a water weight thing covering it up. But a lot of the times it's just increasing like 300 to 500 calories for where you're at as a safe bet because that's probably the size. Or it might be a slight deficit still, but you're never going to hit exactly. So you'd rather, you just don't want to overshoot it too much. Right. The goal is to eat as much as you can without gaining fat. Right. And even a slight surplus while you're dieting won't do that because you're going to be replenishing glycogen for a while. Your energy expenditure is going to rise. Sure. And it will stop being a surplus shortly.

So, yeah, typically it's an increase of about 300 to 500 calories. 300 if you're a smaller person, 500 if you're a larger person from where you're at. And then, you know, cutting cardio in half. And if you do that for a week, it's going to have more positives than negatives in 9 out of 10 cases. And that 10th case is typically when the person psychologically struggles with it. I mean, if you're talking about dieting for 5 to 7 months, I would think that that would actually be very enjoyable.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I know. Like my cuts, I don't know if I've ever cut for more than 12 weeks just because I, I haven't competed. So I haven't needed to get down to, you know, strike glute status. And I, I tend to stay fairly lean just throughout the year. So when I do cut, we're looking at maybe six weeks to where I need to be for photo shoots. You know what I mean? So I know after 10 to 12 weeks, I'm feeling done with it. Like I, you know, I do feed once a week, but I don't do, I'm just kind of like, I'm just going to blitz this and get it done. But 10 to 12 weeks, so I could only imagine trying to, there's no way I could do that for another three months.

I mean, well, I guess I could, but, you know. Yeah, you could. Probably would feel like I'm going through buds or something like that every day. Yeah, exactly. You can do it, but there's a cost. And that's why you hear those horror stories of what happens after shows. And having refeeds, having diet breaks,

taking a slower approach does seem to reduce the severity of how far that pendulum swings back. And the consequences post-show, people struggling with damn near bulimia in terms of their yo-yo kind of calorie intake and just how much weight they gain in a very quick period after the show. So yeah, refeeds are a critical piece to this kind

of longer term approach to dieting that's required to meet the current conditioning standard in bodybuilding. So yeah, that's more or less kind of like what do we do with calories in terms of the macronutrients themselves, I think anything around or slightly higher than a gram per pound of body weight of protein is pretty reasonable. I normally start right around there at the very start of the diet and then I don't change it just so it stays high and it's satiating at the very least. It may help protect against lean body mass losses as you get deeper into prep and offset some of the basically the catabolic things that happen as you do more cardio and and have less glycogen and less

body fat so the body pulls more from protein stores for energy but yeah i mean even just from the mental side of it that that satiating effect is important and it will support your training and your training is probably the most important anti-catabolic thing you can do. So, yeah, protein at that point or higher. Percentage of fat, I normally between 20% to 30% of calories with a minimum intake of about 0.5 grams per kilogram or 0.25 grams per pound, somewhere in there. It's like the don't go lower than that level unless you have to for a brief period of time.

It's always caveat for for getting on stage and then fill in the rest for carbohydrate and that's kind of the basic setup and that 20 to 30 percent range for fat allows a lot of individual variation if you enjoy more fat do better on a high fat diet aren't affected by lower carbs you know you can take it up to 30 percent and that would uh be totally fine sure. Even higher in some cases, 35%, 40%, if you happen to be one of those people. Do you find that the people you've worked with that higher carb or higher fat tends to be the choice or preference? You know, it's different courses for different courses, man, and people are all a little different. Unfortunately, sometimes people like to eat and enjoy and crave aren't

always what seems to be most effective for them. I've definitely had people who are like, no, I'd rather eat 25 grams of fat. I'm like, I just don't think that's a good idea for six months, maybe for a four-week push phase. They're doing everything they can to preserve their carbohydrate intake. There are people who would do fine with that same setup, but there are others who are negatively affected by it. Their sleep starts getting worse. They're enjoying their meals more, but there are negative effects to it. But on the other side of it, there are people who do better on a low-fat, high-carb diet, and maybe they want to eat more fat.

It's not always that those wires cross. Sometimes they line up or the person doesn't really care but yeah it tends there are not everyone has significant differential effects between carbohydrate and fat and where the deficit comes from personal preference does matter but some people do yeah you know respond differently yeah i've worked with a lot of people not for contest prep but just you know everyday people that they want to get fit and um going from let's say, guys starting in the 20s and wanting to get down to about 10 or whatever. And I would say the preference probably is generally for more carbs just because of how they feel. But fats are not super low. I mean,

if it's around 20%, but that's just in working with people, it seems for a lot of women as well, mainly because I guess they like how they feel in their workouts they like their higher collection levels and higher energy levels but that's also a different animal altogether when you're talking about a guy spending a couple months to go from 20 to maybe 12 or 11 or something like that versus what you're talking about yeah definitely it is um like i i we i, I put out these quote unquote rules and then someone will see a client of ours who we have on like, you know, 10% of their calories from fat. They don't realize that that is a four week period where we're like, look, we have to push and you

do better on higher carbs. So we're going to maintain carbohydrate intake and find a deficit there. And then they go, Oh my God, you know, like, what is that you know you're gonna ruin their endocrine system yeah you're gonna put them on trt uh right but uh so but yeah like a month a month is just like it really like you're not gonna get a fat deficiency in a month you're not gonna have you know so it is one of those calculated decisions especially when i'm sure you're being specific on where they're getting those fats from too like you're gonna make sure they get their omega-3s and right you're ensuring they have a fish oil intake. You're talking to them about their dietary sources. You make an agreement with them.

We've also got an RD on staff, so it's not like we're just pulling stuff out of our butt. It is an extreme sport, even on the natural side of it, and you have to do some things that you didn't wish you had to do. You have to rob Peter to pay Paul in almost every case of doing contest prep. It's never ideal. So it's kind of what's the best worst choice to get the person to shred it. So yeah, that's more or less macronutrient setup and that's more or less the calorie spread over the course of a six-month period. And that's like

95% of it right there. Right. And quick question on, so on reducing calories, how do you like to go about that? So you have, you had mentioned that you, you don't know large reductions, one to 200 calorie reductions, but, um, can you just quickly explain how do you determine, okay, it's time to, to, to reduce calories versus first, just increase exercise, for example. Right. You know, so as a coach, I get a lot of data. I'm looking at pictures or video of the person so I can see the visual changes. I'm looking at multiple seven-day averages going back. Sometimes the seven-day averages don't tell you quite everything.

If someone hits a new low two weeks in a row, but there's more variation in their weigh-ins, maybe you're still progressing and they look better than you. Maybe we just are having more water fluctuation, which can definitely happen if they're getting more stress throughout prep. So there are some of those kind of judgment calls you have to make. But if I was to give advice to someone who's self-coached, I would say give yourself a range of acceptable rate of weight loss, say 0.5% to 1% if you want to be broad with

it. And then look at your seven day average and least weight two weeks. And if it doesn't happen over two weeks, then it might be time to make that 100 to 200 calorie cut. And I would say cut from where you feel you'll get the least stressed. Right. So if it's no, if it's easy for you to cut 15 grams of fat and you wouldn't even notice, you're like, yeah, I just switched to low fat cheese. Boom, do it. You know? know yeah and if you get to a point where you like you feel a 10 gram carb cut or you feel a 10 gram fat cut then go the other way or even go with adding cardio the thing with adding cardio though is this thing a lot of people don't get is if let's say you go to the gym and you burn 300 calories that's not 300 calories of expenditure on top of whatever it is because you

didn't gain extra time. Like if you did an hour of cardio, the day doesn't now last 25 hours. You replaced whatever you would have burned in that hour with that 300. So if you would have burned 100 calories just far and around your room, you actually only burned 200 additional calories. So you kind of have to think about that time being replaced with cardio time. That's a good point. have to think about that calorie that that time being replaced with cardio time it's a good point and you know so cardio is never quite as effective uh as calorie reductions at a certain point

people can also just reduce their expenditure at other times in the day so you'll get more fatigue from doing more cardio you do less expenditure at other times in the day you fidget less you sleep more or you just yeah you don't want to take the stairs anymore up to the office. Right. So I've seen strange things happen where you add a bunch of cardio and nothing happens. And then you take it away and you do a 15 gram chop in fat or something like that, and then they're losing again. Interesting. Because you can't as easily outpace drops in energy than you can energy expenditure. So are you looking to increase exercise more systematically throughout the course of the entire prep as opposed to, because again,

I mean, where my, you have far more experience with all of this than I do, but my experience just working, not with my own body, but working with people, again, it's just a totally different set of circumstances, but it's usually, let's be as aggressive as we can on the outset because we're looking at, let's say we're looking at a two or three month cut, uh, not prepping for a show. It's just to get into a nice body fat range. Let's, uh, get as aggressive as we can be on the exercise, which I'm very much have the same mindset as you, where you don't, I would never recommend somebody who's doing hours of two hours of cardio a day ever, but let's, let's, let's come out the gates or with, um, you know, let's say four or five hours of weightlifting a week and let's do

an hour or two of cardio and, uh, and see where that, okay. Once you're stuck, let's work that cardio or weightlifting up basically to the point where like, okay, we're just not going to be going beyond this for, for, for exercise, or we're going to run into the problems you already talked about. And then let's stop, let's start reducing, you know, caloric intake. So what you're talking about sounds different though, is that because it's a longer process or is it just, you've just found that works better, you know? It's a longer process. And in the end, because I'm dealing with physique athletes and maintaining as much muscle as possible a huge priority um i'm i'm more minimalistic with my cardio uh and uh the weight

training is relatively high volume to start with you know if someone's a bodybuilder they're already a high level intermediate or advanced lifter so they're going to be doing a lot of work to build a high work capacity yeah and throwing an additional weight training is something that doesn't make quite as much sense for them. And throwing in additional cardio can interfere with that. So that's why you would rather reduce caloric intake because it has less of a systemic impact, basically. Right. And it's going to have to happen anyway. True.

You know, like if you were to truly take a bodybuilder and go, all right, you're going to cardio yourself to striatoglutes. Yeah. Oh, my God. They wouldn't look like a bodybuilder at go, all right, you're going to cardio yourself to striatoglutes. Yeah. Oh my God. They'd be, they wouldn't look like a bodybuilder at the end. Let's put it that way. And they'd have a great 5k time and a great marathon. What's that marathoner doing out there? Yeah, exactly.

So I guess also if they even made it, I mean, their knees would give up. In the context of refeeds and diet breaks, like we've talked about that also, I could, that makes sense. Yeah. So it's, it it's it's all about trying to set up and kind of periodize calorie deficits uh primarily through nutrition so i'm i might start them with one to two cardio sessions and over a 24-week prep i might make three adjustments to their cardio you know however i might make nutrition adjustments

two times a month you know uh you know, you know, kind of on average, I guess. Um, and a lot of it is I do come out of the gates relatively aggressive just because they have a higher body fat level. They're mentally ready. They've been chomping at the bit during the off season, they built their calories up nice and high. So, um, you know, what I'll do is like, let's try to get that 1% loss of body weight per week. And then as soon as they start to get beat up by the diet, there's our first diet break. know they're starting to stall they're not feeling too hot their training loads are suffering boom let's take a week off and then we come back to it we target a slower percentage you know so it might be diet break and then come back with two refeeds

and only targeting 0.7 percent of their body weight so as soon as their body starts to push back i don't, you know, push harder. I actually ease off the gas pedal and I found that's a more successful strategy. Yeah, that makes sense. Anything with supplementation? Yeah. The biggest thing during contest prep is, you know, you're obviously all the same rules apply. You'd still want to take like creatine. You'd still want to ensure your protein intake was up there. And if that means getting some powder in, awesome. But because you're eating less total calories and your macronutrients are being reduced, often your micronutrients are negatively affected. So I'm a little more emphasizing

the education around vitamin and mineral supplementation and what micronutrients are typically deficient in people who are bodybuilding so that the client knows that and they can make the decision to take a multivitamin. There's some good ones out there that are targeted. But yeah, so things like essential fatty acids and multivitamin and like vitamin D, those are pretty kind of like staples for someone dieting in my opinion. Yeah. And really probably people in all under know under i mean i think those are smart that's why i take personally amongst a few other things but it's smart regardless of dieting because even if you are again like i feel like i'm a pretty conscientious eater and in getting getting micronutrient rich foods but i figure

it can't hurt to have a good multivitamin to plug any little holes that there might be as much as I try to eat leafy greens and a variety of other vegetables and colorful fruits and blah, blah, blah. Anything on the fat loss side of things, obviously there's caffeine. Caffeine can be useful. Outside of caffeine, not really. I don't think there's any true quote unquote fat burners on the market that are, A, legal, and then, B, the ones that are legal do anything. So caffeine is interesting.

It has two effects, and they kind of go hand-in-hand. One is, and they do go hand-in-hand, it's stimulating the nervous system, right? It's a stimulant. You can take a high enough doses to where that can potentially improve performance. We're talking like four to six milligrams per kg, so that's like for a 200-pound male, stimulant. You can take a high enough dosage to where that can potentially improve performance. We're talking like four to six milligrams per kg. So that's like for a 200 pound male, we're talking 350 to 500 milligrams. It's a pretty hefty dosage, more than is in most pre-workouts to actually improve performance. And then just to suppress tiredness, anything from one to three milligrams per kg. So we're talking like a hundred to a cup of coffee 50 oh yeah a large Starbucks cup of coffee right

right or your standard pre-workout those are all pretty good dosages at suppressing tiredness however the that stimulating effect that the higher dosages of actually improving performance you can get a tolerance to and it stops happening however However, it does continue to suppress tiredness, obviously to a point. If you're getting like five hours of sleep every night, there's a certain point where you can't caffeine yourself out of that. We've all tried. Exactly, right? Yeah.

It works for like a couple of times and then it doesn't work anymore. Exactly. So you have to think what is more valuable to me at the stage of prep. So maybe at the beginning of prep, when you're not feeling too run down, you know, twice a week, you're taking a high caffeine dosage. And I would, you know, not just straight away use four milligrams or five or six milligrams per kg. I would use the lowest effective dosage where you feel pretty damn jacked up. And then if it needs to go higher a little bit, or if you can nudge it up, but you know, you don't want to take too much and definitely not more than six milligrams per kg in a 24-hour period. But once or twice per week on your hardest training days

or heaviest training days to try to get a performance effect, awesome. And then once you start to get really beat down by prep, I would actually go down to a lower steady dose just to make it through the day easier. And that may have some kind of downstream effect on your energy expenditure. So if you're not dragging ass 24 7 just because you're taking yeah you know 100 milligrams per day you're walking faster and then you feel up to the stairs because you're not you're not falling asleep exactly so yeah that that's that's one of those ones where the way you take it might change

based on the energy levels or stage prep off season off-season, in-season, etc. Makes sense. Great. So I think then if you still have time, the last thing would just be laying out peak week. How does that look? Sure. Yeah. So peak week, like you said, a big piece of it is just getting a pump and carving up to assist that pump. And I mentioned how blood pressure drops. Well, you might have heard the recommendation from health organizations to reduce sodium intake, especially if you have a family history of heart health. And while I don't 100% agree with that, and there are maybe some people genetically who that would make sense for, for the vast majority of people, if you have a high-sodium diet,

your blood pressure comes up for a little while, and then it goes back down. And we go, oh, so it's not a chronic effect. Well, we don't want a chronic effect as bodybuilders. It would be great if our blood pressure could come up temporarily, and that actually assists with getting a pump and all that stuff. So I actually do immediately prior to the pump up, I have my athletes take a high sodium quick acting meal or literally just put table salt in water. Yeah, just drink some salt. Yeah. Which is not very tasty, but... Well, you don't need that much because it's, what is it, 2.3 grams of sodium per teaspoon of salt?

Exactly. So, yeah, a lot of the times it's right around there, putting a teaspoon of table salt into a glass of water, slamming it back, and then getting their pump up. And that's after they've been carving up that day. Now, yeah, the peak week process is essentially just reversing flatness and reversing that blood pressure drop. I don't manipulate water I don't manipulate sodium and I don't even change the fat and protein intakes that have typically been in a diet I might up the fat a little bit because I don't want you to deficit yeah but typically it is having carb intake levels that are closer to your refeed days, uh, and either a front or a backload approach. The neither or neither method is better than the other. I might've said a

different answer a year ago or two years ago. Um, but essentially probably the easiest for those listening way to do this is on Friday and maybe even Thursday, Thursday, just take yourself out of a deficit. And then, uh, through a carbohydrate increase Friday, um, potentially go to, um, a slightly higher than, than a maintenance level. And then the day of the show be at maybe 80% between like maybe the average of your low and your high days on diets, trying to like maintain that kind of carved up look. And if you really want to play a conservative and you don't want to spill over, which is relatively rare, just have a refeed the day before the show, you know, and then have the average of your refeed and your low day on the day of the show. That'll prevent you from being flat. In most cases, that won't get you fully,

fully, fully peaked. But if you're riding solo, it's very difficult to self-analyze this. And you don't want to be in a position where you've you've spilled over and you can't pull back i used to recommend front loads to first timers but they're actually kind of complex you know having highs and lows and highs against so i think that's probably the easiest way to go for someone just listening but um but essentially what you're looking to do is just get someone's glycogen levels back up yep and for what it's worth uh just for the listeners, that's what I've experienced myself when I've done it a few times,

having to really lean for photo shoots is I just kept it simple like that. The day before, start eating a bunch of carbs. And the day of the shoot, eating a bunch of carbs. Yep. And getting pumped and I don't know. I thought, I think I looked pretty good at work. Yeah, no, it definitely does.

And keeping it simple is very effective. I like to do multiple shows with people on a season, especially if they have to diet for six months. So typically they'll find their peaks get better as I find out what are the limits of carbs I can push. Sometimes I'll find a limit a little after the limit, and then the next one will come down and peak better. So it's one of those things. Especially to that point where it's personal, this is where, and anyone that has, uh,

kind of, you know, read or, or listened to, uh, people compete have come across that where people say like, it's kind of peak week. You have to kind of learn your body,

which, you know, in other contexts, when people say you have to learn your body, it, it, it can indicate like that they just don't know what they're talking about but in this case there's actually some truth and honestly it's one

of those things where we're not going to have effective research on it i can't think of a way to do that maybe we will one day but so we have to go on what makes sense logically based on scientific principles and then experience so yeah you know like basically it is a conservative carb up, carb up if it's your first time, if you've done it multiple times and you have quote unquote learned your body, then a more aggressive carb up and then throwing back, you know, one to three grams of sodium based on body size immediately prior to doing a pump up and then not doing a whole lot of the things you hear people do, like not doing extreme depletion, the things you hear people do, like not doing extreme depletion, not cutting your water,

not manipulating potassium, not drastically changing all your food sources. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Obviously, when you carb up, you probably want those to be carbs that will actually turn into glycogen. You wouldn't want it to be all vegetables. Yeah, starchy stuff. Yeah, so just don't have a high fiber intake while you're carving up. And then that's pretty much it. Awesome. That's great. That, uh, this is, uh, this is really, really good. I really, I think you've touched on, on, on everything. So that's, that's super helpful. Wonderful. So tell everybody where can they find you and how can they, you know, check out everything else here? Cause you also, you have, um, eBooks, which yeah which i've read which are great oh thank you awesome yeah so yeah if you want to talk about you know your professional side for sure

yeah so i'm i'm one-fifth of the hydra that is um hail hydra that is that is three that is 3d muscle journey yeah um so check out 3dmuscledjourney.com and you can see the content that we have there from all five of us coaches. And then we've got our YouTube channel at slash team 3dmj where we have, since I want to say 2011, a library of informational videos. On Instagram, I'm helms3dmj. And I have as much informational content as you can have on Instagram, but also some fun stuff. Selfies. I'm a pretty silly guy. Cats and stuff like that.

I feel like I'm too boring for social media. That's the problem. My life is too boring. I just do the same thing every day. You just got to embrace it and make fun of it, and then you're good to go. My e-books, as you mentioned, I wrote two two books uh called the muscle and strength pyramids one for strength training and then one for nutrition so that's they are for bodybuilders and powerlifters everything you could possibly need to know about setting up your diet for nutrition and training uh those are at muscle

and strength pyramids.com and we also have some blog articles there, useful resources, email courses you can sign up for, and information about my co-authors, Andrea Valdez and Andy Morgan, who are both awesome in their own right. And I think that is pretty much it as far as finding me. Oh, and if you're a total nerd and you want to see my research, you can go to researchgate.net and search for Eric Collins, and you'll find my profile, and you can read all my PubMedses. Cool. Awesome. Well, yeah, I highly recommend everybody listening to go check out Eric's stuff. Follow him. search for Eric Collins and you'll find my profile and you can read all my pub meds is cool. Awesome. Well, yeah, I highly recommend everybody listening to go check out Eric stuff,

follow him. You're one of the few guys that I've consistently followed for, you know, the last several years. And whenever you talk, I'm, I always listen. So for what that's worth,

uh, for the listeners, I, I, you know, uh, just throw that out there that if you want good information, good science based information.

Also, I mean, obviously evidence-based is kind if you want good information, good science-based information. Also, I mean, obviously, evidence-based is kind of a trend right now. And it's a good trend, I think, on the whole. But, you know, someone like me, I'm not a scientist. I don't pretend to be a scientist. Eric is a scientist. I like to read the stuff of people like Eric and explain it so everyone, you know, so the layman can understand. But so you're one of the guys that I say, hey, here's a source of really good information. Like I'm an interpreter and I have a lot of experience in my own realm. But so I appreciate people like you and the work

you're doing. And I do my part to spread it around. Well, it's an honor to hear that. I'm so glad and I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, awesome. Well, just throwing it out there, if in some time in the future, if you have time, I would love to have you back on to talk about off-season. Yeah, sure, for sure.

Because everything you've discussed here, sure, it's great specifically for contest prep, but this is also, there's a lot of great information here for people that maybe they're not wanting information here for people that, yeah, maybe they're not wanting to prepare for a show, but just for knowing how to get really lean, essentially. Because, you know, again, I get a lot of people reaching out just for photo shoots, for example. You don't have to be necessarily as lean for a photo shoot as you need to be for a bodybuilding

show. But if you want, as a guy, if you want to look good, you want to be somewhere down around 7%, probably if you want to, that's kind of the aesthetic type of look, right? Seven, eight. I think even like a legitimate 10%, you look pretty damn good. I think what is it? It's so hard when you, when you look though, it name any, any, any method of determining body fat percentage.

And there are big error rates, including Dexter.. So, you know, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, exactly. I dissect my clients. So I only get to work on them once. So you're Dr. Frankenstein. Yeah, pretty much. Cool. But, but anyways, that look where, you know, you're starting to see ab vascularity, you have pretty much just skin to pinch. So anybody just even looking to get that lean, yeah, it's not striated glutes, but it's pretty lean yes you know it helps so on the on the on the off-season side of things then that that would be for the average person more the okay so they're done being really lean now they want to focus on gaining some muscle and strength

and getting seeing how you know how far they can push themselves until the next diet phase basically yep that's 100 right yeah i mean honestly honestly, because the diets are so intensive, a lot of winning shows happens in the off season. So you can recover and then set yourself up for next time. Makes sense. Yeah. I'd love to come back. Cool. Awesome. All right. Well, again, thanks a lot for your time. Totally appreciate it. You got it. My pleasure. Absolutely. I know that this is going to be received well, so I appreciate it. Awesome. Can't wait.

Cool. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, uh, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two, um, where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com, where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've

written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.