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Coaching Physique Athletes: What to Expect Introduction and Welcome Think back to the last contest prep you or a client did. If you've never done a prep for yourself or a client, then think about the last time a friend, colleague, or even someone you follow on Instagram or YouTube did. Do you remember how well it went? Remember how straightforward the diet was? Sleep, stress, recovery training, everything went according to plan? Remember how the fat just melted off leading up to peak week and how during peak week energy levels skyrocketed. All of the lines came in and all the muscle bellies filled out. Think back to how supportive friends, family, and workmates were. After all, everyone knows that when an athlete's prepping for stage, you let them focus 100% on that one single goal. Do you remember how contest prep was the best time of the athlete's life? No, you don't. You know why? Cause that shit doesn't happen. I've been involved in the prep of over a thousand clients in my years of playing this game, and in that time, only one person had a "set and forget" prep, meaning everything went to plan and we didn't really have to make many modifications whatsoever. The other 999 times something went wrong, something popped up. It just happens. "What went wrong?" you might be thinking. Well, I'm glad you asked. First, everyone underestimates how long a comp prep should be. The conventional thinking is that prep is 12 weeks. 10 kilos to lose? Great, 12 weeks. How about you? 20 kilos? Okay. 12 weeks. And you, sir, how much do you need to lose before you get on stage? 30 kilos? No problem. That'll be 12 weeks. Thankfully, our understanding of what it takes to get stage ready has come a long way and comp prep coaches who are worth anything now know that every prep is an individual journey and each one will take a different amount of time, but it's not the coaches you need to worry about. It's the clients. Most clients don't realize how long a prep will take. Almost always something invariably goes wrong. There's always some variable you didn't consider.
Unsurprisingly, these issues that come up during a contest prep, never make it take less time. It always seems to take more. However long you think it's going to be, probably add 25% to that. The next mistake everyone makes is everyone thinks contest prep is linear. It ain't. Weight, appearance, mood, really everything is going to bounce around. You may lose a pound of fat one week, then not lose anything the week after and then maybe even gain a little bit the week after that. You may go from feeling 100% dialed in with your diet to feeling like inhaling every sugary carb you can find. You may feel strong and even hit some PB's in the gym one week, then the next not have the energy to even get into the gym. Contest prep is very hard on the body and the psyche, and as a result, you should expect the process to ebb and flow. There will be good days and bad days, and the leaner you get, the more bad days, you'll likely have. Hunger is a particularly tough one to manage. Getting staged lean is tantamount to controlled starvation. Guess what evolution has programmed your body to avoid? You got it. Starvation. Evolution did not take your desire to get on stage into account when it developed the myriad of adaptations in human metabolism. All of those adaptations are designed to do one thing, keep you alive. When it comes to reducing energy expenditure and reducing the rate of fat loss or dying, the body's going to pick reducing the rate of fat loss every time to prevent you from starving yourself. Many underestimate just how powerful this evolutionary adaptation is. Get lean enough and you'll start to have thoughts you never imagined. Cravings will become extremely powerful. You'll be tempted to cheat your food log. You may even implement protocols like extreme fasting just so you can give yourself permission to binge eat. This doesn't happen to everyone, but it happens often enough that you should plan for these thoughts to enter your head. Something else that really messes with people's heads when it comes to contest prep is the inevitable loss of lean body mass. Unless you're on drugs, you will likely lose lean body mass when you start to get very lean. This has both psychological and physiological implications. From a psychological point of view, you'll need to mentally prepare for the loss of your hard earned lean tissue. When you're getting ready for stage, it's often normal and I would say actually expected to lose some lean body mass. It's very rare that people get stage lean and retain all their lean body mass while being drug free. But it's not the end of the world. From a physical point of view, a loss lean mass may have an impact on strength, performance, and
metabolism. You just need to take these into account as much as anything doing your prep. Now, if you've taken my Science of Nutrition course available online here with Clean Health Fitness Institute, you know all about the metabolic adaptations to fat loss. If you haven't, then first consider taking that course and second, realize that human metabolism is incredibly adaptable. If you're not paying attention, what was once an aggressive caloric deficit can become your new caloric baseline. Most coaches and physique athletes don't understand the extent to which these metabolic adaptations can happen. As a result they easily misjudged calories resulting in delayed results during their prep. Remember how I mentioned prep is going to take at least 25% longer than you think? Do you also remember that I said contest prep results aren't linear? Metabolic adaptation is a big part of that. Your hormones are likely going to go on a roller coaster. Testosterone drops, which impacts your ability to preserve muscle tissue and tanks your sex drive (Hulmi et al., 2016)(Pardue et al., 2017)(Mäestu et al., 2010). Thyroid hormone levels drop, which drags down your metabolic rate (Hulmi et al., 2016)(Pardue et al., 2017). Cortisol increases, which can prevent you from recovering from your training sessions as well. Leptin, the satiety hormone goes down while ghrelin the hunger hormone goes up (Mäestu et al., 2008)(Rossow et al., 2013). Some women may even begin to suffer irregular periods or lose their period altogether(Halliday et al., 2016)(Hulmi et al., 2016)(Alwan et al., 2019). If these hormonal perturbations have one thing in common, it's that you don't want any of them to happen to a chronic extent. Unfortunately, when you get very lean, that's exactly what happens. All of these are evolutionary adaptations to starvation. If there's no food, the body's not going to be interested in maintaining optimal, metabolically expensive muscle tissue. Likewise, procreation is off the table. Why make a baby when there's nothing to feed it? The body has evolved to make you hungry when you're starving to motivate you to find something to eat. In the meantime, the body is highly motivated to reduce your caloric demand by reducing your rate of metabolism. By the time a natural athlete is stage ready, most of them are hypogonadal (Pardue et al., 2017)(Hulmi et al., 2016). All of these changes happening in the body are enough to drive even the most stoic athlete insane. And actually that tends to be what happens. Some of the mood disturbances that many athletes experience can border on psychopathy. This is especially true when you're already very lean, but continuing to push past this to
the point of shredded territory. Emotions can be on a hair trigger. Self-control reduces substantially. Your closest friends and family may begin to wonder if you've become a different person. You may start to question why you thought it was a good idea to be on stage in the first place. Bottom line is that contest prep is one of the hardest things you or your clients will ever do. On top of completely jacking up everything your body is evolved to expect as normal contest prep puts incredible demands on your time. Contest prep isn't something you do in your spare time. On average, you need to expect to devote around four hours a day between training, meal prep, tracking, et cetera. Nearly every competitor eventually reaches a point in their prep where they are getting ready for stage and it just completely takes over everything in their life. Those that don't reach that point either usually don't get lean enough or they don't ever get to stage in the first place. These are the realities of contest prep. That means you should expect these things to happen when you choose this lifestyle. It may sound like I'm trying to talk you or your clients out of getting on stage, but that's not it at all. There's a lot of strength to be found in knowing what to expect, because not only are these things inevitable, they're normal. This is where 90% of coaching the physique athlete occurs. As a physique athlete coach, it's your job to help the athlete understand that what they're going through is normal. They aren't the first. They're not alone. They're not weird or crazy. Well, I mean they're a little bit crazy while they're dieting. But a successful physique athlete coach knows how to step in and navigate their athlete through the rough seas of contest prep. Not everyone who wants to get on stage should get on stage. Understanding this is part of your job as a physique athlete coach as well. Most people can do one or two things at the same time really well. Think about family and work. If your prospective physique client is unwilling to put in their fair share because they have too much going on right now, then maybe now isn't the right time to do a contest. As a successful coach it's your job to recognize when a client is in over their head and navigate them to safety. The passage will always be there. The stage will always be there. They can come back when their ship is more seaworthy. Likewise, not every reason for getting onstage is a good one. If someone comes to you wanting to "get in shape", then getting on stage probably isn't the best thing for them. Why do they want to get in shape? Is it because they want to get healthy and feel good? Well guess what? Most people on that stage aren't healthy and they feel