Twenty Weeks to Muscletown
Part 2 of I Did a Bodybuilding Competition, Ask Me Anything
On November 23, 2019, I competed as a bodybuilder in a regional competition. It was the culmination of a life-long dream. I come from an academic and creative background, and many friends and former colleagues are unfamiliar with just what a bodybuilding competition entails. I asked them for questions they'd like me to answer, and I got so many great ones that I'm going to need a few stories to get through them. In Part One, I explained things that happen on the day itself. This is Part Two, and it's about the weeks and months leading up to the show.
What kind of support did you need to focus on preparing? What was the time investment, and how did the people around you support you?
Honestly, most of the support is emotional and psychological, although of course some is practical.
If you’re preparing for a competition, you likely have a very regimented lifestyle. If you don’t, you’ll develop one quickly out of necessity. It’s basically a part-time job. It comes very high on your list of priorities, and you sacrifice certain things — social life, for example. It can be very isolating. That’s why emotional and psychological support is so important.
One of my best friends has done four bodybuilding shows. I’ve been by his side for all of them. I remember sleeping on his couch the night before his first ever show. I'd applied his tan myself earlier that day (we didn't yet realize doing the tan yourself is rarely worth it, even though it saves money). Some time in the middle of the night, he trudged out of his bedroom, fished an ice cube out of his freezer, put it in his mouth, and went back to bed — that's the only thing he was allowed to do to alleviate his thirst (why? read on). His physical and mental resources were being put to the test and I made sure I was there to give him whatever support I could.
And he absolutely returned the favour when my time came. He stayed over at my house, and he was up at 4:30 am on the big day to accompany me through the whole process. Just having someone there adds so much to your sense of security and ability to remain calm. Knowing you have a friend who’ll do that is a wonderful feeling.
My husband was just getting over a nasty bout of shingles, so he wasn't able to help with housework and domestic affairs as I hoped he would, but he came to the show and supported me on the day itself even though I told him I'd understand if he didn't feel up to it. He's the one who took the video of my routine, and for that alone I'm very grateful.
Other friends came to the evening portion of the show to support me, or joined me for a little party afterwards. And the outpouring of support on social media was amazing. Again, you’re in a delicate state, physically and mentally, so the support is very deeply felt. Most of my friends aren't familiar with bodybuilding, and I don’t think they understand why I’m doing this, or even really what it entails, other than the fact it’s difficult and time-consuming. But they knew this was something very important to me.
What was the cost in terms of time? I’m lucky to live about five minutes from my gym, which is open 24 hours. Towards the end of the process I was spending an hour lifting in the morning, a half hour doing cardio at night, and another 15–20 minutes practicing posing, doing some ab work, etc. At that point it was 16+ hours a week in the gym. Other things, like preparing meals and so on, I wouldn’t really count, because that’s part of my ordinary life anyway. Time spent searching for misplaced items because my brain stopped working in the last two weeks — that’s difficult to calculate, but a couple of hours at least.
How did you stay motivated and what helped you succeed in the grind? What was the closest you came to losing your discipline and what made you stay strong? (Even looking at my treadmill here at home makes me feel sad and guilty!)
Getting ready for a bodybuilding show is very different from exercising for general health. It requires an extreme and unbending degree of commitment, but it is temporary — you only need to exist in that mode for a couple of months.
My contest was November 23. I bought way too much Halloween candy, and all November I was tempted by this giant bowl of fun-size chocolate bars. I’d think, “It’s just a fun-size bar, I can have one, it won’t hurt.” But then I’d think, “Don’t even go there! Don't open that door!” When the contest was over, I wanted to be able to say I did everything I could. I didn't want to think back to some time when my commitment wavered and feel: if only…
The contest was far too important to me to even consider cutting corners. This was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, so I was going to put everything I had into doing the very best I could. Anything less was literally unthinkable — it wasn’t even a question. So motivation was never a problem.
That's how I feel. I know that isn’t helpful to people who don’t feel that way, but I don’t really know how to help. If you aren’t extremely passionate about bodybuilding, committing to a show might not be a smart choice for you, because it does take extreme focus to pull it off, and if you don’t have the passion to drive you it will be difficult to stay the course.
I have to comment on feeling guilty and sad about not exercising, even though I know you mean it playfully. Sad is one thing. If exercising makes you happy and you don’t have the time to do it, or you have some injuries or illnesses that make it difficult, I understand feeling sad. But guilty! No, don’t feel guilty. There’s nothing morally good about exercising. You’re not a bad person if you don’t exercise. If you want to make room for it in your life, you’ve got all my support and I will be a cheerleader for anyone who makes that effort. But it’s not an imperative! It’s not mandatory! If it’s lower down on your list of priorities, you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. I’d love for us to stop using the language of morality to describe diet and exercise.
What was your most hated part of your workout regimen, and why was it Leg Day?
I get the joke, but I truly love working out. The gym is the best part of my day. I enjoy pushing my body, and the endorphin rush after is transcendental. I do think you need to be a bit of a masochist, because if you’re doing it right it will hurt. But it’s a very satisfying and enjoyable kind of pain. I guess if you don’t have that masochistic streak, the idea of satisfying and enjoyable pain might seem alien (see my essay Pagan Poetry and Bodybuilding). But for me, I never hate working out, and Leg Day is the best day. I’m nervous in the minutes before. I’m in agony when it’s happening. I’m floating when it’s over.
What and how much do you eat for preparation, and is it healthy in the long run? How did you cope with hunger? Did you ever get tired of eating?
There’s nothing unhealthy about the way I ate for my contest prep — it was almost all lean protein, starches like rice and potatoes, vegetables, and fruit.
Contest prep means reducing your bodyfat. It means eating less than what your body needs, so eating doesn't become a chore. Some of the meals in the final days of the process were tedious, though, because they had no salt and were cooked with no oil or fat. Eating those was more about exerting my will than it was about satisfying my hunger.
However, I only had to live with feeling hungry a few times during the cut. You don’t want to cut weight too severely, your body will cannibalize muscle tissue if it thinks it’s starving. So I had strategic “refeed” days when I hit certain weight loss milestones — days where I ate what I wanted and plenty of it. French toast! Huge plate of pierogi! Chocolate cake! These weren’t just sanity breaks. Refeeds refuel your muscle tissue and keep your metabolism humming along.
I started the cut at 225 lbs and eating 3600 calories a day. That’s a lot of food for most people, but for me it was low enough for the weight to fly off. I eased my intake down as the weeks went by. It’s like taking a plane in for a landing — you can’t descend too fast but you also can’t keep at a cruising altitude. I ended the cut weighing 175 lbs and eating 2500 calories daily. Throughout, my carbohydrate / protein / fat split was about 40% / 30% / 30%.
People have told me “I admire what you’ve done so much! I could never give up bread / pasta!” People are so afraid of carbs. The truth is, I ate pasta (85 grams dry weight, to be precise) with about half of my meals, and I had 4 slices of bread on a typical day. I restricted my sugar intake quite severely, but carbohydrates more generally are very important. You need them to train.
Why do you eat all the carbs on show day? Does it have something to do with water retention making muscles more defined or something?
So let’s talk about “peak week” — the week leading up to the contest (most contests are on a weekend).
The way a bodybuilder eats during “peak week” is very specialized. You're tricking your body to achieve a temporary look. In involves carb depleting and water loading for three or four days, then cutting water dramatically while carb loading for the final day or two. It’s not sustainable long term, but neither is the look it’s creating. Everyone involved understands this.
So, as I said, you are tricking your body. You drink lots of water (for me: 6 litres a day) until the last day or two, then you cut your water intake dramatically (I had 150 ml with each meal, none between meals). Your body can’t change gears that quickly so you’re still peeing out lots of water despite no longer taking lots in. Often, people also take diuretics in the twelve hours before the show (full disclosure: I did). You are deliberately dehydrating yourself. Yes, if taken too far this can be dangerous. You have to be honest with yourself, you are playing with fire just a bit, so you have to be careful and reasonable. This is where having an experienced and trusted third party watching you closely and telling you what to do comes very much in handy.
At the same time, for the majority of peak week, you cut your carbohydrate intake dramatically. Your last couple of workouts are “depletion workouts,” where you do full-body high-volume high-intensity work. This is to deplete your body’s glycogen. Glycogen is how your body stores carbohydrates for use. Glycogen is stored in muscle tissue and also your liver. If you’re doing things correctly during peak week, you’ll be zombie-level fatigued by the day before your show.
Then, the day before the show, you start carb-loading, and you continue up until you step on stage. The more muscle you have, the more carbs you need to eat. I ate about 450 grams. A really huge bodybuilder might eat more than 1000 grams of carbs in that timeframe. Think of muscle tissue as a fuel tank for glycogen; the more muscle you have, the more carbohydrates it takes to fill them up. As you get close to stage time, simple carbs that are quickly processed and easy to digest are best, so bodybuilders will eat rice cakes, pixie sticks, honey… I used up some of that extra Halloween candy I had lying around.
Your depleted muscles are starved for glycogen, so they soak up those carbs like a dry sponge soaking up water. For every gram of glycogen your muscles take in, 3–4 grams of water are carried with it. Your muscles are, largely, water balloons.
I will remind you this happens when you're dehydrated.
The muscles swell up as they draw what little water is left into them from underneath the skin. This combination of engorged muscles and dehydrated skin causes the shrink-wrapped bulging muscles that you see on stage. This is the “peak” of “peak week.”
It’s temporary. It involves precise timing and on-the-fly judgements. If you under-carb you’ll look flat; if you over-carb you’ll “spill over” and look soft and bloated. If you don’t get “dry” enough, you’ll look undefined. Push the dehydration too far and you put your health in danger. Backstage, in the hour before stage time, people are fretting about whether they need another rice cake or another mini Mars bar, giving longing looks to the water they’ll chug the minute they’re finished on stage. It takes a trained eye and a steady hand to really dial it in exactly.
Naturally (if you’ll pardon the expression), you’ll want to address the various issues surrounding use of gear. How common / accepted / encouraged is steroid use in this crowd?
This question deserves a fuller answer, and I'll eventually produce an essay of its own addressing it, where I can present more robust arguments, links to studies, etc. Stay tuned.
Briefly: shows are either tested or not tested. In untested shows, you can assume 90–100% of the people on the stage are using steroids. However, you can assume a smaller but still substantial percentage of people in the tested shows have benefited from their use, too. It’s not difficult to circumvent tests, and at a low-ranking amateur level it’s not like athletes are given surprise tests year-round. Also, someone who has done a few steroid cycles in the past then stopped for good will still have a permanently increased natural “limit” for their muscular development versus if they had never used steroids in the first place. That advantage will never go away, but such an athlete who has been steroid-free for years could easily pass a drug test. They are preparing for and competing naturally, but past use has permanently augmented them. So you see, these are not simple or distinct categories. But, in brief, yes, steroid use is very common, and understood as not a big deal within the community — just another tool, especially at untested shows, where they aren't considered an unfair advantage at all.
The world of female beauty pageants is stereotypically catty and mean. What were the stereotypes of competition you had going in and how was the actual experience different?
I spent years dealing with gym anxiety. I let my idea of what the big meatheads were like keep me out of the gym. Years later, I feel very comfortable and happy in gyms, even unfamiliar ones, and I guess I am now one of those meatheads I was so scared of when I was younger. So are many of my friends. I think the stereotypes we’re fed about how people’s bodies reflect their personalities don’t do anyone any favours — skinny people are neurotic and awkward, fat people are lazy and stupid, and muscular people are brutish and cruel. None of these are true, but they infect our thinking.
I liken my first experience backstage to that same evolution of comfort in the gym, but in rapid fast-forward. I went back there assuming I’d just keep my head down, mind my own business, stake out my little bit of floor to store my things. I expected… I don’t know. Guys trying to come across mean, to psych out the competition, whatever. Instead, we immediately formed an ad hoc mutual support community. Everyone was so friendly. Resources like food and exercise bands and dumbbells (used for pumping up) were shared. Anxiety freakouts were nipped in the bud. Reassurances were frequent and forthcoming. Compliments flowed freely. It was delightful. I felt supported and protected, not at all how I expected to feel. It was a wonderful surprise.
Will you compete again? What will you do differently next time?
Definitely! I’m planning on doing a competition in spring 2021 for two reasons. One, I want to add at least 15 lbs of muscle and that takes time. Two, it turns out stripping away your body fat and body hair in November in Canada is MISERABLE. It’s so cold! I’m cold all the time! Doing this in the spring will be so much better.
Shows are split into two parts, morning and evening, as I explained in Part One. This time I didn’t pose well in the morning, when it counts, because I lost my focus. Next time, I will walk on the stage in the morning with my mind sharp and clear, intending to nail every one of my poses — because, as my evening routine showed, I pose very well for a beginner, and hopefully I’ll pose better still by the time 2021 rolls around.
What advice would you give someone who thinks they want to do this? What would it have helped to know?
So, a bodybuilding competition is a very extreme thing. It’s not a way to celebrate having lost 20 lbs, or noticing your bicep vein for the first time. The first prerequisite is something that takes years and will require you to go far beyond where most average people care to go.
In short, you need to build a base. You need to grow a lot of muscle. How much depends on the class you intend to compete in (see Part One for an explanation of bodybuilding classes). I was on the smaller side for Classic, but before I began my prep I was often the largest and most muscular man in any given room.
Even a relatively modest base like my own takes years of serious effort to build. During those years, you’ll become very familiar with gym culture — building muscle is hard, sustained work, and you can't half-ass it. You might make some friends who compete, and you can watch them go through the process. You’ll gain a better sense of when you’re ready yourself, and what it entails, just through osmosis.
When strangers and gym acquaintances ask you, out of the blue, if you’ve ever competed, or ever thought about it, that’s a decent indication that you might want to start considering it.
Once you’re at the stage where “maybe I should do a show” is a realistic question to ask yourself, I say: DO IT! It’s a scary challenge, but it transforms your body in a way that’s really unbelievable. If you want to look like a bodybuilder, and you’ve had some success building muscle, but you’ve never really felt like a proper bodybuilder… doing a show will change that. Most people have never been truly lean like that. You’ll be seeing that hard-earned muscle for the first time as you strip fat away.
The mental changes are amazing, too. You really take on the mantle of “bodybuilder.” Because that’s what you are! Successfully preparing for a show and stepping on stage is irrefutable proof. That video of your posing routine, those stage photos — that’s not a wannabe, that’s not a maybe, that’s not a sorta, that’s a bodybuilder. And it’s you!
Fucking magical!
If you’ve got a good muscular base built and you’re considering pulling the trigger, here are some things to think about.
You need to find a show. (Near you? Are you willing to travel? That makes it much more expensive.)
You need to figure out how long your prep should be. This requires an honest assessment of your body fat level. If you’re just eyeballing it, be aware: almost everyone guesses low. I thought I’d be on stage around 192 lbs. I was 180 lbs — I had 12 lbs more fat on me than I thought I did. The more fat you have to lose, the longer your preparation period. I took 20 weeks, which is a long time (10–16 weeks is more typical), but it’s what I needed. You can’t cut too quickly without losing the muscle you want to show off.
You need to track every single thing you eat. You need a food scale. You need to be the no-fun person who brings chicken and rice in tupperware to the party.
You need to join whatever federation is hosting the show (NPC is the common one in the US; in Canada we have the CPA).
You need to learn how to pose — hire someone or, if you can’t afford it, study video tutorials online.
I can't overstate how much help a prep coach provides, and how you should get one if you can afford them. Otherwise, you need to read as many articles as you can about the prep process, in particular peak week, and you need to be extremely organized, objective, and careful heading into it.
Does that sound like a lot? That’s because it is, and this list isn’t exhaustive. But that’s what makes pulling it off so thrilling — you did something very difficult, with dozens of moving parts, that took months of sustained planning and effort. Congratulations!
