hi i am 3 weeks out from the tri state show and am still not coming how i would like im having troube ith my midsection i coulp prolly stand to lose 8 more pound in that amount of time any suggestions

Hi Tommybuff05. Congrats on giving a contest a try. As to your question and concerns, frankly if you need to lose anouther 8 lbs in a three week period of time you are probably behind where you should be at this point of the game and it will be difficult to do.

Do you have a link to any current pics that you can post? Getting lean for a contest is just not something that can be rushed. In general a weight drop of 1-2 lbs per week is about the best you can expect without seriously compromising other aspects of your prep.

Have you been on a BI diet plan? Do you have a BI staff advisor helping you? Where do you get the 8 lb goal from?

My self and others here on the board would be happy to help you if we can but we would need a little more information to do so.

the eight lb goal was basically a guesstimate i have my top four abs in fairly well and i figure 'll lose that much in water the weeks out anyway i really appreciate you replying to my post i'll tell you i wieght 256 my fresman year in high school and dieted it all off them fell in love with body building i hated teh whole obesity thing but i think that has a lot to do with my stretched out skin just let me know what info you need and i'll be happy to get bak with you
tommy

Are you competing in the tri-state championships in Erie, PA? If so, i'll be there competing as a middlewt.

In any event, if you think you're 8 pounds over your stage weight, then you have time to lose a few pounds before the final week where you'll likely lose > or =5 lbs of water. I compete at 176.25 and i'm currently around 183.

To better assist you, will you post your nutrition, supplementation, training and cardio regimen?

Also, if you're working with a beverly advisor, stick with his/her program 100%. I would encourage you to talk with him/her before implementing any recommendation(s) you see here.

Tommy - Fitdoc is very correct in that a competitor could lose 8 lbs in three weeks if you are including your water weight loss in the final days, but I was not sure that your goal was to hit a particular weight (for example to fit into a weight class) but it sounded more like you were just guessing that an 8 lb loss of body fat would make your abs come in better.

If you are lean in other areas and it is just your lower abs that are smooth yet you may in fact see an improvement in that area when you restrict your water the final night. That gets me back to can we see some pics of you today at 3 weeks out? That would help in an assessment.

I am assuming that you are now weighing way less than 256 so no matter what happens in this contest you get a huge congratulations for accomplishing that weight loss. I'm sure that you feel a lot better physically and that your self-confidence has shot up as you have embraced a healthier diet and training program. Great job!

i really really appreciate your responses once again to further help you i am eating 6 meals a day 160 grams of protein and 50 carbs tuna eggs whites and beverly shakes for protein and oatmeal for carbs i am not shooting for a specific weight just guessing and i might need some help with what do do that final week
i'll post a pic as soon as i can i am taking the 3 week ons tonight and should be on tomorrow and certain pose youd like to see, va maddog good call on the self confidence thing i am feeling great and thank you very much on the congrats i am weighting 171 now

fitdoc best of luck in the middleweight i'll be a teen my name is tommy hope to see you there. good luck

Tommy - As Fitdoc suggested if you are working with a BI staff person as a coach stick with them and talk to them often about your questions and concerns. They are all very good people who can hep you out a lot.

Take some time to search this site on the topics that you are interested in now. (You can search under things like "tanning", "Final week", "water") I know that you will find many threads related to the final few weeks of contest prep. Specifically look through the posts and threads in the Contest Prep section. You may find many of your answers there. If not, ask the questions and we will try to help. I wish that you had jumped on the board a few weeks sooner, but we will do what we can to point you in the right direction.

Are you practicing your posing? If this is your first show it is especially important to get some help with that from someone who knows how to pose correctly. Two things will have the most impact right now, level of conditioning (and it sounds like you are working hard at that) and presentation during judging - especially your ability to hit the mandatory poses well. Awsome job on dropping over 80 lbs and getting in good enough condition to consider entering a show! Great dedication for a teen, or for anyone for that matter.

BTW - If you go to the main BI web site look up Dwayne Fishels article. He also was successful in losing a whole bunch of weight and getting himself into great contest condition. I think that you will appreciate his success story.

va maddog i really appreciate your replies once again. as far as posing i am getting help from a few guys at my gym on a secondplace finisher in the maser national bantam weiht. the oter has never done a national show but i look upto him very much. both of them have used beverly advisors and are getting me to on emy final week. what do most people do for water loss. and i have been tanning 3 times a week and 2 coats of airbrush tans te week before thank you very much

Tommy - You don't have to be a national level competitor to know how to pose, although I'm sure that if you happen to be one you surely do know how to pose well. I'm sure that your gym mates will be able to help you in that area.

As far as water manipulation goes use the search tool and and see what questions you have after you read through some of those prior threads. As a starter you should be drinking at least a 1/2 liter of water per waking hour now and more would be even better. For the last 10 days leading up to the contest you need to be drinking at least 1 liter of water per waking hour. This will set the stage for any last day water manipulation strategy to work well. You do not have to worry about drinking too much water. The way our bodies work the more water you drink the more water your body will release. Drinking too little water is far worse for a BBer than drinking a lot.

thanks again for the response here are the pics you wanted they are from saturday 3 weeks out looking at the 8 lbs might have been far fetched but let me know what you htink thanks

Tommy - How did you get the pics to post here? I have not figured out how to do that yet.

Again I offer my congrats on a great job of dropping more than 80 lbs in the past two years. You look good and when compared to your former larger self I'm sure that it is fair to say that you look fantastic!

Now as far as the next three weeks go - I'm going to be straightforward with you. Your size and proportions look good but your level of conditioning (leanness/definition) is probably not were you would normally want to be at three weeks out. So you have a couple of choices - keep going as you are, focused on your show in three weeks and just go as far as you can in getting leaner in that time or possibly consider a different show that might be say 6-8 weeks out from now which would give you more time to lean out more slowly which is the ideal approach if time allows.

I suspect that your guesstimate of having to drop another 8 lbs or so of bf is not real far off, plus you would end up dropping some water weight also as you manipulate carbs and water so your contest weight will probably end up around 10 lbs less than you are now if you were to get down to the 5%bf or below range. That bf range would make you very lean and would allow your hard work in the gym to show as your muscle definition and separation would start to be more prominently displayed. It is a situation where as you drop bf/drop weight and technically get smaller, you end up looking much bigger.

What ever you decide best of luck and I hope that you enjoy the experience and learn from it. I learn something new everytime. There are other members here who have competed more than 50 times and are still learning new methods of peaking for a contest. It is a very interesting sport in that regard.

Tommy,You have come a long way and look good.If I were you I would do the Tri-States on Sept.11,and use that show as a warmup show and tightener,then 3 weeks later on Oct.2 in cleveland do the Natural Northern,they have a teen and junior division and you should look great by then.

hey 3 replies that time alright i will probably do my show in 3 weeks it is my first one and i need to do one to get ready for next yeatr reguardless i appreciate the positive support from all of you as for john spartan i would never be pissed i am new in the sport and i am open to any suggestions as far as the natural northern my school is starting in a few weeks which makes dieting tough that why i picked the show i did because i could diet all summer. i want to do 3 shows next year. including nationals. just out of curiosity what have the teen competitors came in like in the past i have seen a few but i am always camparing and contrasting with kraig and brett feldmann well any help onb how i might beable to drop the 10 lbs in the next 3 weeks let me know
oh and maddog my genious girlfriend put the pics in i'll ask her to post it on here cuz i am not as smart as her

Tommy - Doing a show to get some experience under your belt is a good idea. As long as you recognize that you will be able to get into decent, but probably not great condition in the time you have left and take that in stride it can be a good learning experience for you. Learing how to pose correctly and just seeing how a show is run from the competitors perspective will make you better preparred next year.

I think that you will find that the best teen competitors, as in any category, are the people who come to the show with the best conditioning. Of course other things also have an impact such as presentation, symetry and proportion, but in most cases the competitors who are in the best shape/condition will prevail, not always, but in most cases. Conditioning just can't be rushed - it is a slow process and one that takes a lot of planning. So with that as a backdrop, I'd suggest that you get as lean as you can following a solid fat loss strategy but not get hung up on a certain amount of weight loss. For example don't be trying to drop 6 or 8 or 10 lbs, but rather just diet down the right way and go as far as you can in the three weeks remaining. Drastic measures to drop a lot of weight quickily could negativley impact you in many ways, so I would recommend against that approach. Realistically you should be able to lose another 4-6 lbs in the three weeks and do it safely and in a way that will try to preserve most of the LBM (muscle) that you have worked so hard to add to your frame.

There are a lot of good pre-contest diets posted on the main BI web site. Take a look at some of them and compare them to where you are at now. If you don't have a BI advisor call their 800 number and ask for their help. They will assign someone to work with you and will give you a diet to follow for your last three weeks, plus other helpful tips for getting ready for the contest. Good luck and I hope that it will be a positive experience for you.

maddog i called the 800 number and the said by the time they got with me and went through all the motions it would be too late in time for this show but wnat to get me ready for next year i doropped a few more unexpected lbs and am not as discouraged as i was i have been reading the threads you told me and there are so many idea for the final week what would you recommend i am think a sodium load and a lot of water you kno 1 litre per waking hour and then cut the water and sodium the a day out i am goin to lay off the training a week out and tighten up with 1 to 2 hours of posing a day. after this show i am only looking forward i want to weigh in at 180 next year for teen national s beverly said they can do that too me i cant wait any good ideas for posing and final week anyone let me know

Tommy - I'll try to give you a few of the basics for the final 3 weeks, but understand that some of these things will not have their best impact unless you are very lean so you may end up thinking that "x" or "y" did not seem to work real well for me but it won't hurt and will be good experience for you to think them through and understand the concepts.

There is a lot said about water intake and manipulation. From my perspective I would advocate that you simply drink a lot of water every day (1 & 1/2 to 2 gals a day is not too much). It is especially important to be drinking a higher volume of water starting about 10 days out from your contest date. By doing so your body will compensate for the extra water intake by discharging extra water. I won't go into all of the science behind it in this thread but essentially your bodys says - oh I have enough water I can expell all of the extra and so rather than holding extra water it becomes more efficient at getting rid of water. Now here is the important piece for contest day. You DO NOT want to taper your water intake down as the contest approaches, for example you do not want to go to 1 gal/day on Thursday and 1/2 gal on Friday. Instead what you want to do is to keep water intake high up until Friday evening after your dinner meal, then cut back abruptly but not completely. So you would keep drinking water up through Friday evening at a pace of 2+ gals/ day then cut back in the evening to perhaps 4-8 oz an hour. Regular or spring water is fine, you do not need to drink distilled water. You need to keep some water in to ensure that your muscles have water available to combine with the carbs (glycogen) to draw into themselves thus contributing to the hard and full muscle look that you want to display on Saturday. Along with the water intake piece, start taking a few natural diuretics that week prior to the contest. Taraxatone works well as does extra Vit C. If you plan to use the lean beef/grapefruit strategy on Thursday and Friday the grapefruit also serves as a mild diuretic. All of these things together should help you minimize subqutaneous water (water under the skin that can make you look smoother) and instead draw the water in your system into your muscles where you want it to be. (Again this effect is really only noticable when you are very lean) It is ok to add a little sodium to meals before Friday of the last week but there is no need to overdo that. What works well for many is a moderate increase in sodium intake for several days prior to Friday and then a significant drop in sodium intake (to perhaps 1/2 or 1/4 of normal intake) but it is ok and desirable to leave some sodium in your diet plan even on Friday and Saturday morning. The key is the significant drop from a slightly higher level as explained above. Taking some extra Potassium is also fine, perhaps 300-400mg a day(spread out with meals) starting on Friday and continueing through Sat, but there is no need in my opinion to take more supplemental potassium than that. You also want to be taking a zinc and magnesium supplement (ZMA probably fills that bill) in order to help keep all of your electrolytes in balance that final week. Ok - so nothing drastic here, but a controlled environment for sodium, water and other minerals.

If you are doing cardio now try to stick with HIIT cardio. There are many threads here that explain it well (do a search). One or two 20 minute HIIT cardio sessions a day should be the max or you will tip farthur into catabolism (where your body uses stored protein for energy, i.e. burns muscle). Another thing to do when you are calorie restricted as you are now is to supplement with a lot of BCAA's, again to help avoid going into catabolism. BI products like glutamine select, Muscularity, Muscle Mass and GH are all potential sources. If your budget allows I'd recommend Glutamine select during training and muscularity with each meal. The extra BCAA's will help you hold on to muscle mass in the final weeks and also set up an environment where your body is more willing to use stored fat as energy - which of course is what you want it to do. Lean out and Energy Reserve also help create a fat burning environment. The main BI web site has a ton of info on each of those products and how to best use them.

Another search for "carb loading and/or carb depletion" should show you threads that talk about the best ways to train the final week and how to manipulate your carb intake.

These are some of the final three week basics. It by no means is a comprehensive list, but it hits the essentials. I hope that you can use them to your advantage. BTW your goal to enter the teen nationals next year is an awsome goal, and there is more than one member here who has successfuly completed in National level contests both NPC and others (Mark R., Rainer, DCandy, Aram, Sulcop and several of the ladies - please don't feel slighted if I did not list your name...) It may be wise, however, to have some intermediate goals first such as winning your class in a local and/or regional contest first. The experience you get from those efforts will help set the stage for success at higher levels just like your experience in this show will help you learn more about the sport and about yourself. This is not a sport where success comes easily or quickily but with determination, good planning and a lot of effort you can attain your goals and when you do, it can be very satisfying and a great feeling of accomplishment. Remember - you are really always going to be competing against yourself. If you can say yes to these questions: Have I done my best? Did I improve over my prior attempt? Am I making progress towards my goals? Then you are a winner and you have done well. Good luck.

hey yall i did the contest i got third out of three it ws heck of a tough class but by far the best experice of my life. not only did i meet dave hawk but i competed against his son i cam in at 166 and looked harder tha n i thought i could i'll post more pics of the cntest i want mass now i am getting hooked up with an advisor as we speak

That's great Tommy. Congratulations on your first contest!

It sounds like you had a good experience and that you can be proud of your accomplishment.

One suggestion for your off season is that you consider trying to stay within 20 lbs of your contest weight. It will be much easier next time around if you only have to drop 15 or 20 lbs to get into contest condition. It is not necessary to gain 30 or 40 lbs of body weight in order to add muscle during the off season. Choose your coach carefully. All good BBers do not make good coaches. Find someone who will explain the theories to you and not just say "do as I say". If they don't know the why behind the how - they might just not know very much at all. Best of luck in attaining your new goals.

hello i am in the process of getting a beverly advisor and i am going to compete this spring the man i talked from beverly said in the next 4 months they could put at least 5 maybe 15 lbs on for contes i am stayin below 200 for the time being and am eating perfectly clean right now 1 offseason sheat a week i love it i am staying full and lean
i got the privelage of competing against dave hawks son and meeting dave hawk at my show it was a great experience thanks