Be Prepared for your Competition by Kris Gethin

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You picked up your first holy grail – your premier bodybuilding publication (maybe even this one) and that is all it took to entice you to train, toil and deprive yourself to one day stand on the bodybuilding stage like the Professional Bodybuilders. Feeling the absolute confidence of having your hand held aloft as the other holds the first place trophy, awarded for being the most muscular, symmetrical and ripped person for your deprivation is something that drives you to repeat this process time after time, but wait, there is something wrong with this story – You have failed to get diced to the level of conditioning to reveal your slices of shredded separation and thus, victory is still out of your grasp.

There are literally millions of bodybuilders out there that have great potential to do great things upon the bodybuilding stage but few are aware of the secrets of the Pro’s to ever realize their lifelong dream. Well, I am here to unlock the vault and show you the pages of the holy grail of contest preparation secrets of the Pro’s.

First off, what makes me an expert to reveal these so called “secrets”? To make it simple, I happen to be a Pro myself within a natural federation called FAME. Second, and just as importantly I have had the unique opportunity to spend time and question almost every IFBB Pro as they prepare for competition domination.

I have been a journalist for many bodybuilding publications over the years, on occasion I held two Weider contracts – one as a writer, the other as a photographer. Throughout many of those years I have become close friends with an array of the Pro bodybuilders and have trained with champions such as Yates, Coleman, Gunter, Branch Warren and Robby Robinson to name just a few. Through 1000’s of conversations with these unique individuals I have gained jewels of information that allowed me to gain my own professional crown. Now I pass it onto you.

It would be a crime if I were to keep Pandora’s Box closed from the you, the reader, so when Physique Magazine asked if I would like to contribute to its fans, I thought this would be the perfect subject to kick things off and help you win your first Bodybuilding show with the Top 5 Secrets of the Pro’s.

# Stick with your contest plan

Countless of times bodybuilders will go through self doubt and question their appearance, and in turn make drastic changes which lead to a less than victorious appearance on show day. Most professionals have gone through these stages and have learnt that the only person that really knows their body most is themselves. I have even heard some say that they don’t take everything their nutritionist advises literally because they know exactly what works for themselves due to their own trial and error. As you restrict yourself of dietary fat the brain function slowly diminishes and can be easily swayed. Champion bodybuilders expect this and don’t take the risk of changing their strategy in the hope of making themselves look 5% better when the side effect of that change could easily make them look 10% worse. A prime example of this is when a bodybuilder decides to change to their food in the dying days or hours leading into a show when it has become accustomed to digesting a particular food for an excess of 12 weeks. The immediate effect of this is normally water retention. Whenever the body goes into shock, the body automatically holds water to involuntarily protect its vital organs, a side effect that can prove fatal for someone wanting to display hardness and separation in a sport of illusion. Everyone has an opinion on what you look like and what you should do, and a lot of pros acknowledge this but very few of these champions will follow through knowing all too well of past experience blunders.

# Diet Slowly

How many times have you heard of someone starting their contest diet with at least an hour per day of cardio and/or drastically dropping their calories from the Monday of their competition plan? Most Pro’s will begin with only 10-15 minutes cardio twice per day as they know whatever they do at this point will result in fat loss and the longer cardio sessions will prove helpful in the later stages of their preparation. If you haven’t been doing any cardio in the off-season then begin with 10-15 minutes twice per day then of course you will be burning more calories than your body is accustomed to so why launch into your sessions for prolonged periods. The pro’s will normally use the scales at this time to gauge how much to increase their cardio. If their weight hasn’t dropped over a week, then it is increased by a total of 10 or so minutes, but if the weight is still coming down then it can remain the same. If you were to begin with 1 hour of cardio twice per day and your weight hasn’t dropped over a week the last thing you will want to do is increase this time even further which can be extremely inconvenient to your time schedule but also monotony and enjoyment of your journey.

Also, bodybuilding is all about making little changes and having enough energy to continue to build, or at the very least maintain muscle.

# Vitargo S2 by GenR8

I can reveal that a lot of the champion pros will take the Vitargo product prior and post workout (some even during) on the off-season and during competition plan. I cannot name any of these athletes because their own supplement sponsors do not have the rights to include this ingredient in their line of products. The only company that has these rights is a company called GenR8. This product comes in a powder form and has a unique molecular structure that is completely sugar free and made from Barley Starch although many will wrongly claim as waxy maize being the real Vitargo product – WRONG! VitargoS2 explodes around the body upon consuming requiring hardly any transport time to the muscle glycogen stores unlike sugars or Maltodextrine. Because this product doesn’t require hardly any blood in the stomach to digest this fast acting ingredient, I have witnessed many Pro’s mixing it at an extremely thick consistency and spoon feeding it to themselves backstage before competition. This seems to make total sense because when they start pumping up, as much blood as possible is required in the muscles, not in the stomach trying to digest enormous amount of carb loading calories.

# Lower sweetener use

Something that is quite common amongst the general public and bodybuilders (especially here in the US) is the use of sweeteners in an attempt to satisfy cravings without satisfying fat stores with excess sugar calories. What most people don’t know, but what I have witnessed many Pro Bodybuilders take close to heart is the toxic waste in the general sachets of sweetness and sweeten laden drink such as diet sodas, and what effects they have in a successful competition plan. Because a sweetener has no calorific value, the body cannot burn it off, so it gets placed within the body as a toxin. This toxic layer makes it harder for fat stores to be readily available for energy during times of cardiovascular exercises and thus make it harder for the bodybuilder to get shredded on contest day. Dorian Yates told me that he used to allow himself (at maximum) one sweetener per day and we all know that he knew a thing about getting extremely grainy and fat free.

# Eat right for your Blood Type

Something that I have found quite intriguing and yet to become common knowledge within amateur bodybuilding is the increasing amount of Professional Bodybuilders eating specifically for their blood type. Jay Cutler is one champion who (as of late) has become reliant of this practice and claims that his muscles absorb all the vital nutrients without any bloat of fluid retention. We all have a different DNA profiles and some people will experience allergic reactions to certain types of foods, but what we don’t know is that some of these allergic reactions are blatantly obvious whilst other side effects are not so. The champions such as Cutler believe that one of the side effects of not eating right for your type is that the body is unable to assimilate certain foods and will disregard as toxic waste, and secondly the body will hold fluid under the skin – not a good scenario for a person trying to obtain contest condition. Try looking up your blood type and find some literature that will help you attain foods that will benefit your preparation plans.

By polishing up your contest plan with these secrets of the pro’s, you too will be gleaming with envy when you’re proudly displaying your trophy cabinet in years to come. Have the extra edge over the competition by applying these 5 secret strategic keys of competition preparation. Good Luck!

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Kris Gethin is the Editor in Chief of Bodybuilding.com. He has been a contributing writer and a photographer for many famous publications.