the one thing that i have not been able to dial in is how i should go about carb depletion and my sodium intake while dieting down for a show.. i hear high and low days but??? if someone could provide a link or an explanation for say 12 weeks prior to a contest diet wise it would help greatly...
triattack7,
Carb depleting/loading, sodium loading/depleting, water loading/depleting, none of these will help you at all if you do not get your diet right the 3 to 6 months before the show. if you do not look great the week before the show, these tricks will not help and will most likely make you look worse.
For your first show, I recommend you concentrate on your diet during the whole process. Don't cheat, don't skip workouts, don't take shortcuts. Aim for looking your very best the week before the show. Then, don't do anything different. Just keep doing whatever you've been doing that got you to where you are. Changing things at this point will only screw things up.
For your second show, I recommend you read Championship Bodybuilding by Chris Aceto. Try his carb depleting/loading approach about 8 weeks out and see how it works. Then try it again 1 week out. These things are tricky and it's hard to get it right the first time. Everybody is different.
For your next shows from here on, try adding a new approach to carb depleting/loading, such as sodium loading/depleting or water loading/depleting. Don't try more than one at the same time. I recommend you go to
www.ast-ss.com and read about Skip Lacour and Jeff Willet pre-contest approach. Skip has great information on sodium and water manipulation.
I am assuming that you are natural. If you are on any atletic performance drugs, that's a whole different game. Good luck to you!
