How Do Bodybuilders And Fitness
Models Get So Lean?
By Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
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 all their muscle. Some of them are nothing
but skin and bone.’"
"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, they should be staying in shape all the time
instead of having to work at losing fat prior to every competitive
event, correct?"
ANSWER: 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
(peak) 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. 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 12-14
weeks or so to gradually drop from 9.5% 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 ripped to
shreds” is not 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. Not only that, anabolic hormones may drop and
sometimes your immune system is affected as well. 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%.
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? Not a chance. 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.
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.
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 competitive aspirations
whatsoever, 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.
If you’re interested in learning even
more secrets of bodybuilders and fitness models, visit the Burn The Fat
website at: www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an
NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT) and a certified strength
& conditioning specialist (CSCS). Tom is the author of the #1
best-selling e-book, "Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches
you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using the secrets of
the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid
of stubborn body fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com.
To learn more about Tom's Fat Loss Support Community, visit: www.burnthefatinnercircle.com
Want to know more about fitness nutrition? Click here
for an in-depth article on performance nutrition.
While I do not normally recommend diets themselves, healthy eating is
important to any health, fitness, or weight loss program. Click Here
to learn more about Diet To Go
meals.
P. S. If you want to learn more about why Diets Don't Work,
please click here.
If you want to learn how to burn fat, a great book to read is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom
Venuto
