Forgive me for my ignorance, but several of you with contest experience have discussed final week preparation techniques (what works, what does not), and I'm not sure I understand the vernacular.

What does it mean to "come in flat" or to "spill over"? Any explanation of these conditions would be greatly appreciated.

Tom

Tom,

Hows it going?

"coming in flat" means that you cant get a pump in the muscles despite whatever you do. Its a combination of being too carb depleted and too dehydrated. Thats why prep is so hard. You have to put back enough carbs to fill out, but not too much or you "spill over." Spilling over will occur if you add too many carbs and also add back a little water with too much carbs. If the carbs were more than you needed to refill glycogen levels they could lead to water storage. "spilling over" is where you will immediately feel your abs and intercostals not a sharp and crisp. It affects the rest of the body too, but for me its more visible in these areas first.

Thats why prep is so tough. You will eventually spill over from adding the carbs and water back in, but you have to time it right so it happens way later than prejudging and preferentially later than the night show, especially if a national qualifier where you are supposed to hold condition all day.

Hope that helps!

Jason Theobald

www.geocities.com/chezburger10/JASONTHEOBALDBIO.html

Jason,

Great article in the last NNNL!

Tom,

Jason is 100% correct, and the only thing I can add is its all trial and error, and learning what your body wants to do. This year I compeated in my 60th contest and I am still learning. When I have questions I come right here and get several opinions and design a plan based on those reccomendations. That helped me alot this year, and if not for the advices here I wonld have never won my last show. Thanks all! So Tom, read widley and openly. No one has all the answers, but everyone has a piece of the puzzle.

Sully

Sully,

Thanks for the kind words. I still have so much more to accomplish with only 3 shows under my belt. 60 is an achievement in and of itself, thats persistent dedication.

Jason Theobald

www.geocities.com/chezburger10/JASONTHEOBALDBIO.html

Hey guys,

Thanks for the helpful feedback. It's funny way to look at it, but it's like our bodies are these little chemistry sets.

Sully, with all your contests, it must be interesting to note how your body has reacted to the nuances in your differing nutrition regimens. For what it's worth, it sounds like you got it figured out for your body! Congrats on all your achievements.

Jason, I finally got the NNN in the mail. Nice article... an inspiration for us guys languishing in the land of >10% BF.

Tom

PS when you're over 10%, "spilling over" has a more literal connotation!

In addition to the water and carbs during the final week sodium has a lot to do with your condition. What some people think is spilling over from carbs is often too much sodium drawing water back to interstitial (under the skin) locations as opposed to drawing the carbs(glycogen) and water into the muscles by limiting your sodium the last two days. Sodium and water under the skin = smooth which can be confused with spilling over from too many carbs. I think that it is actually difficult to spill over from taking in too many carbs if you are diligent about your sodium manipulation, although I suppose that if you started to carb load too early that could happen, or perhaps if you did not carb deplete properly.

VA MadDog

VA, I understand about what your saying completely, what I still don't quite understand is what some have said to do is try sodium loading the day of the show , before prejudging, can anyone touch on that , I know I have heard a few of you talking about it but not sure if I understand it? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks...

Bob - Sodium loading just before pre-judging would be the exact opposite of what you want to do. You may have seen some discussions regarding keeping water in on show day, but with regard to sodium I think that there is agreement that it should be controlled.

I'll try to explain the sodium/water manipulation theory as I understand it. As you know sodium in your system will bind with water so where one is, the other will follow. We are naturally in a state of balance under normal conditions. However this can be manipulated in the short term. For example. Eat a lot of salty foods and you will be thirsty. Quench that thirst and you will find that your body will retain some of that extra water binding it with the extra sodium that you consumed. After 24-36 hours or so your body will return to normal but until then you will appear smoother and will be holding extra water due to the extra sodium intake. The body tends to deposit/store this extra sodium subqutaneously (under the skin) thus the extra water also becomes stored under the skin. The affect is to hide or smooth over muscular definition - the "I'm holding water" effect.

So what you want to do for a contest is the opposite affect, what people refer to as being "dry". The theory is that you should consume a normal or even an extra (say 2x) amount of sodium from about 7 days out from your contest until the Thursday before a Saturday show. At the same time you want to also consume extra water, again lets say 2x normal. The trick is to know when to stop or limit both sodium and water. Just as the extra sodium in the first example led to a temporary physiological change (retaining water), the temporary halt to sodium consumption will also have an affect. It gets a bit more complicated, but it is easy to follow. Carb consumption also comes into play. Thus the carb depletion/carb loading you hear about.

Lets see if I can lay it all out in a way that makes sense. Your muscles are mostly water, thus not enough water in the muscles and you appear "flat", if you have enough or ideally as much as possible in the muscle (but not under the skin) you appear "full". So to get the muscles to fill up with carbs (glycogen actually) you first set the stage for carb/glycogen uptake by carb depleting. Carb depleting simply means that you eat very few carbs for several days and exercise/train in such a way that the glycogen stored in your muscles is used up. So your muscles are now ready to "suck up" carbs/glycogen. Every gram of glycogen will combine with about 3 grams of water when it is absorbed into the muscles. So as you carb up the water in your system will be drawn into your muscles. If you stop/greatly reduce your sodium intake at about the same time you will be helping the water in your system to go where you want it to go - which is with the carbs/glycogen into the muscles and not under the skin. If you do this correctly you will have a 24-48 hour window where your muscles are full from the supercompensation of the carb/glycogn intake and you will be "dry" and "thin skinned" because with the low/no sodium your body will not hold water under the skin.

Lets talk about water intake for another minute. The traditional theory is to increase water intake as described above and then to also limit water beginning on Friday evening. Increasing water is a good thing whether you drop it on Friday or go back to a normal/reduced intake level. By increasing water intake your body will again adapt. It does so by increasing elimination of extra water. This increased elimination does not stop immediately when water consumption is reduced thus after you go back to a normal intake or switch to a reduced water intake your body keeps eliminating the extra water that is in your system (but outside of your muscles) for a while. Just what you want to happen. But don't stop/reduce water intake too soon, or you will miss this benefit. The benefit comes from the sudden change in intake, not from a slow reduction. Thus water tapering (say 2 gals on Mon-Wed, then 1 gal on TH and 1/2 gal on Friday would not be the thing to do.) Water manipulation can and does work as desired, but it is hard to manage. Get it or sodium/carb manipulation wrong and you will say that "your timing was off" or that you "missed your peak".

Of course all bets are off and not much of this applies unless your body fat levels are very low where they should be for a contest. With too high of a bf level the above manipulation of water/carbs/sodium will still happen but you won't see it clearly as your muscles are still being hidden by a layer of body fat.

Back to the water. A more recent theory with water is to "keep it in", which means don't drop it on Friday night, or at least don't drop it completely. Many board members here have used this method successfully in the past few months. The advantage to keeping water in is that the timing of when to drop it and how much to add back in on Saturday morning (remember you need some water to make the muscles appear full) is no longer an issue. What people are finding is that if they control sodium, take in enough carbs and have very low body fat levels that they can keep water in and still look full/hard/dry as desired. By keeping water in you also diminish problems with cramping and other electrolyte imbalances.

There are a few BBers who don't manipulate anything. They just get very lean and do not try to change water/sodium or carb intake patterns. Knowing if you can be succesful under this approach requires you to try it. It may or may not work well for you.

I hope that helps. I left out a few details but these are the basics of the theory behind carb/water/sodium manipulation the final week.

There are plenty of other folks who contribute to this board who can add to this and give you their perspective. In some ways the whole thing is a controlled experiment, thus someone like Sully who has done this dozens of times will still see slightly different results due to a host of variables. However, your results should not be very different, any differences in conditioning should be small. The impact of this manipulation does differ somewhat from person to person as we are each a "unique" physiological unit - thus the benefits gained from prior experience come into play for seasoned competitors.

Sorry if that was to long. Hard to explain in two paragraphs.

VA MadDog

One more thing. What you may have seen us discuss was the pre-judging drink that is consumed just prior (15-20 minutes) before going out on stage. This drink is a combination of fast acting carbs, glutamine and some sodium. The glutamine is added to help with carb uptake/absorbtion, the sodium is added to help enhance vascularity as the sodium will at first enter your system through the blood stream and when combining with water as it does it will add a little volume to your blood vessels. It also has an affect on speeding up your metabolism and with the fast acting carb intake will tend to "heat you up" which also results in increased vascularity as your natural body cooling mechanism kicks in. (This, by the way is also why you want to stay warm up until prejudging, if you are cold you will have less vascularity)

I think that this theory has more impact for someone who has reduced water intake on Friday night and Saturday morning compared to someone who has kept a fair amount of water intake in the Friday/Sat plan.

Sully can comment on this because he tried both recently. Sully - Did you see a diference with this drink between the two contests. i.e. the one where you limited water and the one where you kept water in?

There is some concern that this sodium intake could cause some subqutaneous water retention later in the day - like for the evening show, so if you would be sensitive to that you would probably not want to add in the sodium to this drink.

VA MadDog

VA MadDog,

Thanks for the extremely helpful info. you've provided above! I appreciate the detail you've provided. It's helping me put everything together (and doesn't assume I know this already).

Concerning the sodium maninpulation above, I recall Fitdoc stating that he artificially increased his sodium at about 6 weeks out, and then did something similar to what you discussed (but kept water in) during the last week. Would artificially high sodium intake during final weeks cause the sodium manipulation to have greater effectiveness the final week?

Lastly, I recall someone discussing sodium/potassium ratios during final week. what does the potassium supplementation do during the last several days when you're reducing sodium?

Thanks in advance for any inputs you can provide.

Tom

Tom - You ask a couple of interesting questions. I'll try to use laymans terms rather than medical terms as it is easier for most to understand that way. Fitdoc and others can add better detail if they care to.

Generally, unless you are dealing with other health issues such as hypertension, having a moderate or even a little higher than moderate amount of sodium in your diet should not be a concern. One key is to keep water intake fairly high all year long, which helps flush everything through the body along with other benefits, and the best part is it's free if you get it from the tap!

I have not seen anyone other than fitdoc talk about increasing sodium intake that far out. Most folks will do so a week or so before they drop sodium. Hopefully fitdoc will chime in with his rationale for increasing sodium at six weeks out. Remember that we are looking to create a physiological environment that will manipulate things the way we want them to go.

With sodium, just like with water manipulation, going from a high intake to a much lower intake abruptly causes a different reaction than slowly tapering your intake would. Thus when your body senses that you suddenly have much less sodium intake than what it was used to, it will move/distribute what sodium it has to it's primary purpose - which in this case is to facilitate the flow of nutients into and out of your cells. The affect is to draw the extra sodium in your system away from other areas and use it within the cells. As previously discussed, the extra sodium that it "finds" for this purpose, once you stop sodium intake, is the sodium that has been stored interstitially (under the skin), so when you drop sodium it pulls both sodium and water from under the skin for internal use. Going from a higher sodium intake to a very low/no sodium intake makes this change more dramatic and thus better triggers the response that you want. I was under the impression that a week or so of extra intake for either water or sodium is enough to let your body re-balance itself to these higher levels, then when you make the change, the bodies reaction is more dramatic which in this case is what we want. With extra water intake after a couple of days of higher intake the body will actually release a hormone that helps to flush/discharge the extra water helping this whole manipulation process along. Once you go to a reduced or normal water intake the whole thing reverses and for awhile the body will want to retain water until everything is in balance again. The body always wants to be in balance, but most of it's reactions to being out of balance will continue for 24-48 hours after the change. This time lag is what we try to take advantage of.

The potassium and other minerals that you need are to help keep everything intercellularly (is that a word - lol) more or less in balance. The primary purpose of increasing your potassium intake and adding in other mineral supplements is to help prevent cramping which can occur if your electrolytes get way out of balance or if you are too dehydrated. In the extream it can be life threatening.

Your body does need sodium for many purposes. One of them is to help the nutrients, waste products and water move in and out of your cells. If your electrolyte levels get all messed up this movement is impeeded which then means that cell action (read muscle contraction) does not work as it should leading to cramping and other problems.

Now those much smarter than I can correct and clarify this where I have mis-spoken. I enjoy trying to understand the science behind all of this. It makes the whole sport of BBing much more interesting to me.

VA MadDog

Tom,

VA covered everything alread. In response to his direct question, the best approach for me was 1 tsp sodium in my pre-pump carb drink then cut it. Then just enough water to get through to the night show. AT the night show same pre pum mix (the Maddog cocktail as I call it, 1 tsp salt 1/2 carb force and 1 scoop Glutamine select) This worked like a charm for my 3rd show and I was ON!! for the overall. Thanks again VA.

Sully

Hi Sean.. I meant to ask you.. for the 3rd and final show (ANBC) did you dump the protein bar (Detour) and just stick safe with your yam? Also, did you feel the sodium in the MadDog ######## make you feel the BLOAT for the night show? I only did this at the a.m. prejudge at OCB.. but by night - I looked smooth and felt bloated? I just wondered if you switched things up w/protein bar for Nationals or felt salt caused bloat? Thanks Sean..

who makes carbo force??

Jason Theobald

www.geocities.com/chezburger10/JASONTHEOBALDBIO.html

ABB

Val,

kept the carb drink, dropped the bar and went with the yam and chicken. I also kept the water low that day, 8oz or so with lunch and another 8-10 oz 1-2 more times until the finals. I was dry and much harder then the week before and even tighter at the night show.

Jason,

American nutrition, its one of there carb drinks. I may be off on the name as I really don't do any carb drinks, I would rather eat my carbs then drink them, but they are always in the gym cooler.

Sully

Gotcha, I have seen that at the drink machine in the cooler. Just wondering as i want to try it for next time i compete whenever that will be.

Jason Theobald

www.geocities.com/chezburger10/JASONTHEOBALDBIO.html

VA, Man VA , I really appreciate the response, it really did touch on alot that I was unaware of. Allthough I have been competing for almost nine years I still sometimes think I learn a little more every time I compete. I came along way from my first show in oct. of 94 , because then I didn't do anything with carbs, water, sodium, or potassium, no clue! I pretty much at this point keep my water the way Beverly recommends with fri. at 1 gal. stopping at about Mid. or so with just sips to prejudging. I am allways super ripped but do feel kind of dehydrated and flat. What I was refering to in my last post is what Sulcop was talking about (sorry I didn't make that clear) I think I might try that in april for my next show. Now to get this right it's 1 tsp. of salt in a 1\2 carbo force drink ? How soon prior to prejudging? I used to do a snickers 1/2 hour prior. But if I could come in tighter from the salt , and fuller from the fluid, that would be the stuff! Guys let me know if that looks right. Once again thanks.