Protein and BCAAs Could Be The Missing Link Your Muscles Need
Getting ready for your contest can be quite the chore when trying to get your protein and BCAAs in, especially if you are a newbie. Not only do you have to be aware of your caloric intake, you need to know your macronutrient breakdown, as well as receive a good amount of water each day.
What you put into your body every day is crucial in allowing your body to let go of fat to be burned and building lean, strong, and dense muscle tissue. It’s really a dieting balancing act that you need to master if you want to catch the judges’ eye and win that trophy and first place.
Top-placing competitors use their diet to dial-in to get those nice curves and razor sharp cuts that look so cool under those stage lights. With the right contest diet, you can dominate your competition. It’s all in knowing how to implement your macronutrients as well as protein and BCAAs in your diet.
Before You Start – Pre-Starting Point
Before you even attempt to step on stage you need a solid muscle base built. If you can’t grasp this, the buck stops here. Most figure competitors have up to 10 pounds more weight (MUSCLE WEIGHT) than the average woman. Just because the scales reads you weigh more, doesn’t mean you are fat. When you weight train you build muscle. Muscle is a dense and metabolically active tissue. This is a good thing. So don’t get discourage if you happen to gain a few pounds when you start weight training… It’s muscle weight. It’s what the judges want and it’s what you need if you intend on competing and at least placing.
Now, how do you get those sexy muscles? You eat protein and you workout with weights. It’s as simple as that. When you train with weights you tear down your muscles. When you consume protein and BCAAs you feed your muscles, allowing them to rebuild and grow a little each time.
In fact, your actual muscle building process doesn’t even take place in the gym. When you are training you are only tearing down muscle tissue. The muscle building process takes place out side the gym, when you eat protein-rich meals and get good rest.
Eat 5-6 Meals a Day for Protein and BCAAs
The most important part of your prep is your diet. A quality prep diet includes complete proteins, carbs, non-starchy veggies, and essential fats. If you are missing any of these macronutrients, you meal is not balanced. The proper balance of these macronutrients will allow you keep your muscle while you lose body fat.
You can actually take advantage of your body’s natural anabolic response and build lean muscle by eating a small, yet balanced meal every 5-6 hours. Having a protein drink 20-30 minutes after your workout will shuttle nutrients to your hungry muscles. This, in turn, will boost your muscle recovery time. Skipping meals can lead to muscle loss. In fact, it’s better to skip a training session than to skip a meal if your true goal is muscle gain, fat loss, and stage presentation.
Have a Post-Training Meal
Eating a small balanced meal every few hours will certainly turn-up your natural anabolic response, but you can take advantage of another muscle-building area by eating a post-training meal.
You see, after you hit the weights your muscles are extremely depleted of glycogen. What you do in the 20-60 minutes post-training will determine your muscle building rate. You can increase protein synthesis up to a slamming 80% at this time.
If you eat a post-training meal correct in carbs and protein within an hour after your workout, you have just feed one of your anabolic windows and set the muscle building process in motion for that day.
Supplement As Needed
Some muscle building supplements do have their place in a figure competition prep program, such as branched-chain amino acids (BCAA). The amino acids (leucine, isoleucine, valine) are rapidly absorbed by your body to be used in the muscle-building process. Since BCAAs make up 1/3 of your muscles’ protein they are important for muscle maintenance and building.
Your muscle cells use BCAAs as a source of fuel during prolonged activity. Rather than being degraded in the liver when taken, like other amino acids, BCAAs are directly transported to the muscles. Taking BCAAs can prevent muscle wastage during heavy resistance training.
BCAAs are in numerous protein drinks and whey protein drinks are suitable for post-training. To further amplify protein synthesis, take BCAA supplements between meals.
Protein and BCAAs Advanced Information
These are just a few of the figure prep protein tips and secrets most all the top-level gals use to get in outstanding shape. Give them a try. But, if you want the REAL DEAL, and I mean the REAL figure competition secrets I use on my clients and used by the IFBB Figure Pros, you really should check out Figure Competition Secrets. It’s the best contest prep info online.
