Yeah, I tried that my first show, and in hindight (and as I learned much more), there were some seriously incorrect suggestions in there. Cutting water (as in stopping, completely) is one of the worst things you can do, because your body will backlash and you’ll end up holding water. As you can imagine that can ruin your conditioning. Everyone throws out the hormone Aldosterone, but few realize how quickly the body mobilizes and doesn’t give two craps about your bodybuilding contest, just that it seems that you’re trying to cause it harm by witholding water. I had Brad limit his intake because we didn’t want any stomach distention, but he was drinking liquids with every carb feeding, and we were counting on the water, sodium and carbs to all go into his muscles and make his skin stretch even more as he pumped up. (Arash pulled me aside to ask just “what the hell I was feeding Brasd backstage” -lol)
Cutting sodium? Another bad idea. Just try getting a good pump, or even carbing up backstage for a contest without sodium in your plan. When you look flat and can’t understand what happened, it won’t be because you didn’t eat enough carbs, it’s usually because you didn’t ingest enough sodium and water.
Training legs or even doing high intensity cardio the week of a contest? Again, bad idea because of the possibility of extended inflammation which can last for a week or more in some individuals. I know that my quads were smooth as a baby’s bottom after any bout of inervals or heavy leg training, eventually I realized that I needed a good week and a half to two weeks out from a show to do nothing for my quads if I truly wanted those deep cuts onstage.
S