Contest Prep Pro Tips So You Shine on Stage

Contest prep pro tips can be found on any fitness web site these days.  However, how helpful and real are those tips?  Are they really getting to the meat of what it takes to get super-defined?  Do they tell you to eat clean, plan your meals, exercise regularly, etc.?  If so, you are only being given a portion of the story.  The easy stuff.

The truth is, many people don’t want to know what it REALLY takes to get into contest condition.  The truth is, the more structured and strict you are, the better condition you will be in.  Plain and simple. Below are a few of the REAL contest prep pro tips.  If you follow them, you will be lean, conditioned, and very competitive.

Contest Prep and Traveling

If you love traveling, then do it in the off-season.  Oh, news flash.  Off-season is a real thing, regardless of what all the meme’s read online.  So, can you travel during your 12 weeks of contest prep?  Sure you can.  Can it affect your rate of fat loss and water balance?  Of course it can.  Very few competitors can travel and make competing work.  Very few can contest diet and contest train during travels.  If you can travel and diet and train, then you are the few percent and that’s great.  If you cannot stay focused and on track when traveling, then don’t travel during contest prep.

For most people, when they travel they relax a bit more, they snack or eat out in restaurants or eat fast food.   These are not ideal tactics to indulge in during contest prep.  Any unscheduled food can wreck havoc of a physique that needs to get into the single digits and be be judged on stage.

Flying can cause water retention.  Changes in cabin pressure and sitting for an extended period of time may cause your body to hold on to water.  This is why many professional competitors fly to the venue 2-3 days before their competition, to allow time to remove the water retention caused by flying.

Cheat Meals

Want to be in condition?  You can cheat, but you cannot have any unscheduled cheat meals.  Confused yet?  So here’s the deal, you can take one cheat meal once a week.  This one cheat meal must fall on the same day each week.  If you choose Sunday as your cheat day, you must take your cheat day every Sunday.  You cannot change each week or two from Saturday to Sunday.  Choose one day and stick with it, no matter what.

Does it really matter if the day changes each week?  Yes it does because you want to train your body when to receive quality meals and when to receive a cheat meal.  In order to train you have to get on a plan and follow it, no matter what.  When you start changing your days out for whatever reason, it quickly gets you off track, focus and diet-wise.

Your contest diet should be set on autopilot.  If it’s time to eat a quality meal, you eat a meal, no matter what.  If it’s time to eat a cheat meal, you eat a cheat meal.  Do NOT start your cheat day early and do NOT allow it to bleed into the next day.  That is not how pros prep.

Avoid Exsiccosis

Avoid this condition at all cost during your prep.  What is exsiccosis?  It’s simply dehydration.  Drink your water, and drink at lot.  Many bodybuilders and competitors drink up to a gallon of water a day.  This is to keep the kidneys flushed because eating a lot of protein is hard on the kidneys.  Keep you water intake high, and you’ll be fine.

A hydrated muscle is a strong muscle.  Keep properly hydrated for great lifts in the gym.  In addition, staying well-hydrated also prevents water retention and helps to flush fat and toxins out of the body.  The only time you tinker with dehydration is the day before and the day of your contest.  This is a very short amount of time.  Even so, you still need to be cautious and keep your minerals in check.

Eat Like Clockwork

Eat all meals on time.  This means eat on time, every time it’s time to eat.  No ifs, ands or buts.  I don’t care if the moon is turning green.  If it’s time to eat, you eat.  Skipping meals is unacceptable.  It sounds so minor, but nutrition is the foundation of building a great body.  You are actually better off missing training than to miss a meal.

So, choose your meal times.  Eat within an hour of waking up.  Then, eat a small balanced meal every 3 hours after that until bed time. If you wake up at 6 am, you can eat at 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, 7 pm, and 10 pm.  Five to 7 meals a day is fine.  What’s what works best for your body and schedule.

Supplement Timing

Supplements help fill in the gaps of what your nutrition misses.  In order to work correctly, you need to time your supplements.  Many times, not always, it’s best to take your supplements either in a fasted state or post-training.  It just really depends on the supplement.  Glutamine, for example, is best taken before cardio and/or after weight training.  Creatine is best taken fasted or right after training, with a simple carb.  Something like a natural appetite suppressant is best taken before meals.

Your Contest Prep GPS

Now, these are a few contest prep pro tips you can use to become a lean, mean, competitive machine.  If you want even more information on how to do your best contest prep, check out my FREE Contest Prep Crash Course below…