QUESTION: “Tom, on your www.burnthefat.com website, you wrote: ‘Who better
to model than bodybuilders and fitness competitors? No athletes in the world
get as lean as quickly as bodybuilders and fitness competitors. The transformations
they undergo in 12 weeks prior to competition would boggle your mind!
Only ultra-endurance athletes come close in terms of low body fat levels, but
endurance athletes like triathaletes and marathoners often get lean at the
expense of chewing up much of their lean muscle.”
“There seems to be a contradiction unless I’m missing something. Why do
bodybuilders and fitness competitors have to go through a 12 week ‘transformation’
prior to every event instead of staying ‘lean and mean’ all the time? If they practice
the secrets exposed in your book, shouldn’t be staying in great shape all the time
instead of having to work at losing fat prior to every competitive event?”
ANSWER: Thanks for your question. There’s a logical explanation for why
bodybuilders and other physique athletes (fitness and figure competitors),
don’t remain completely ripped all year round, and it’s the very reason they
are able to get so ripped on the day of a contest…
You can’t hold a peak forever or it’s not a “peak”, right? What is the definition
of a peak? It’s a high point surrounded by two lower points isn’t it?
Therefore, any shape you can stay in all year round is NOT your “peak” condition.
The intelligent approach to nutrition and training (which almost all bodybuilders
and fitness/figure competitors use), is to train and diet in a seasonal or cyclical
fashion and build up to a peak, then ease off to a maintenance or growth phase.
I am NOT talking about bulking up and getting fat and out of shape every year,
then dieting it all off every year. What I’m talking about is going from good
shape to great shape, then easing back off to good shape…. but never getting
“out of shape.”
Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
Here’s an example: I have no intentions whatsoever of walking around 365 days
a year at 4% body fat like I appear in the photo on my website. Truth be told,
that is day of contest condition.
Off-season (when I’m not competing), my body fat is usually between 8 – 10%.
Mind you, that’s very lean and still single digit body fat.
I don’t stray too far from competition shape, but I don’t maintain contest shape
all the time. It takes me about 10-12 weeks or so to gradually drop from 9% to
3.5%-4.0% body fat to “peak” for competition with NO loss of lean body mass,
using the same techniques I reveal in my e-book.
It would be almost impossible to maintain 4% body fat, and even if I could, why
would I want to? For the few weeks prior to competition I’m so depleted, ripped,
and even “drawn” in the face, that complete strangers walk up and offer to feed me.
Okay, so I’m just kidding about that, but let’s just say being “being ripped to
shreds” isn’t a desirable condition to maintain because it takes such a
monumental effort to stay there.
It’s probably not even healthy to try forcing yourself to hold extreme low body
fat. Unless you’re a natural “ectomorph” (skinny, fast metabolism body type),
your body will fight you and you’ll always be hungry.
Not only that, anabolic hormones may drop and sometimes your immune system
is affected as well (and I hate to say this, but sometimes – for some people – even
the, uh… “reproductive functions”… decline a bit when you’re that lean).
Hey, I’m just being honest. It’s just not “normal” to walk around all the time
with literally NO subcutaneous body fat.
Instead of attempting to hold the peak, I cycle back into a less demanding
off-season program and avoid creeping beyond 9.9% body fat. Some years I’ve
stayed leaner – like 6-7%, (which takes effort), especially when I knew I would
be photographed, but I don’t let my body fat go over 10%. Thats “the line” I
draw – it’s like a personal “rule” for me.
This practice isn’t just restricted to bodybuilders. Athletes in all sports use
periodization to build themselves up to their best shape for competition.
Is a pro football player in the same condition in March-April as he is in
August-September? Probably not. Many show up fat and out of shape (relatively
speaking) for training camp, others just need fine tuning, but none are in
peak form… that’s why they have training camp!!!
There’s another reason you wouldn’t want to maintain a “ripped to shreds”
physique all year round – you’d have to be dieting (calorie restricted) all the time.
And this is one of the reasons that 95% of people can’t lose weight and keep it off
–they are CHRONIC dieters… always on some type of diet. Know anyone like that?
You can’t stay on restricted low calories indefinitely. Sooner or later your
metabolism slows down and you plateau as your body adapts to the chronically
lowered food intake and reduced body weight.
But if you diet for fat loss and push incredibly hard for 3 months, then ease
off for a while and eat a little more (healthy food, not “pigging out”), your
metabolic rate is re-stimulated.
In a few weeks or months, you can return to another fat loss phase and reach
an even lower body fat level, until you finally reach the point that’s your happy
maintenance level for life – a level that is healthy and realistic – as well as
visually appealing.
That’s how we physique athletes do it…
Bodybuilders have discovered a methodology for losing fat that’s so effective,
it puts them in complete control of their body composition. They’ve mastered
this area of their lives and will never have to worry about it again.
If they ever “slip” and fall off the wagon like all humans do at times … no problem!
They know how to get back into shape fast.
Bodybuilders have the tools and knowledge to hold a low body fat all year round
(such as 9% for men, or about 15% for women), and then at a whim, to reach a
temporary “peak” of extremely low body fat for the purpose of competition.
Maybe most important of all, they have the power and control to slowly ease
back from peak shape into maintenance, and not balloon up and yo-yo like
most conventional dieters.
What if you had the power to stay lean all year round, and then get super lean
when summer rolled around, or when you took your vacation to the Caribbean,
or when your wedding date was coming up?
Wouldn’t you like to be in control of your body like that? Isn’t that the same
thing that bodybuilders and fitness/figure competitors do, only on a more
practical, real-world level?
So even if you have no intention of ever being a bodybuilder, don’t you agree that
there’s something of value everyone could learn from physique athletes?
Don’t model yourself after the huge crowd of “losers” who gobble diet pills, buy
exercise gimmicks and suffer through starvation diets like automatons, only to
gain back everything they lost! Instead, learn from the leanest athletes on Earth -
natural bodybuilders and fitness competitors…
These physique athletes get as ripped as they want to be, exactly when they
want to, simply by manipulating their diets in a cyclical fashion between
pre-contest “cutting” programs and off season “maintenance” or “muscle growth”
programs.
Even if you have no desire to ever compete, try this seasonal “peaking” approach
yourself and you’ll see that it can work as well for you as it does for elite bodybuilders.
