Archive for October 2012

Part 3.
The final week.

Depletion started 7 days from the show. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all under 75gr of starchy carbs and plenty of green vegetables.
When I take my carbs down so low, I will compensate by bringing protein and fats up a bit. The idea behind the very low carb is to tighten up that extra 10%, to deplete the muscles, and to increase insulin sensitivity in preparation for the upcoming carb load week. Without optimal insulin sensitivity while carb loading, you can eat as much as you want and youll never carb up maximally.

Depletion workouts consisted of training each body part at least twice in a 3 day period. Workouts are long, 1.5-2hrs, but the amount of actual work done to each muscle group is minimal. The goal being to deplete glycogen, not build muscle at this point. I try to train each muscle from as many different angles as possible to ensure that I am depleting as many muscles as possible.

My lady, Amanda, son Benjamin and best friend Bob Weatherill and I all packed up and headed to Vegas on Tuesday. I wanted to get into town early so I could get settled before everyone started showing up.
We arrived at 4pm Tuesday and were greeted by the film crew from “Generation Iron”. We were scheduled to shoot on Wednesday(intentionally on my end, I didn’t want to be bothered until I was settled), so much for that!

The next few days ended up being extremely busy and it seemed everyone wanted my time and attention. Normally before a show, you will find me in my room for 3 days posing, eating and sleeping. Not much else. My focus is on one thing- the contest. When im not meditating and visualizing my goal, im posing or eating.

This week however, turned out to be quite the opposite. I really didn’t have time to pose, and definitely didn’t have time to nap.
Interviews, filming, meetings, meet and greet, the expo and the arrival of friends and family from all over the world occupied my days.

On the whole, my body felt great. I knew it was going take a perfect week for me to break into the top 6(which was my goal), and things really did seem to go as planned. The only thing I can think of that would have made me better, was the rest and posing. But I truly cant complain about the entire process.
My support team(Amanda and Bob) were incredible and I couldn’t have done it without them.

My carb load started at 200g of carbs Monday and Tuesday. 500 Wednesday, 1000 Thursday and 600 Friday(the show was Friday night). Very similar to the load that I followed for the Arnold Classic earlier this year.
Carbs of choice are usually very similar to what I eat while preparing for the contest. Primarily white rice and sweet potatoes.
I’ll divide the total daily amount over 6-8meals. Meal one of the day, and meal 5 are still no carb(like I always advocate while dieting). This just allows my body to maintain insulin sensitivity, and therefore actually use the carbs im putting in.

Some of the supplements I use during the last week:
Fenugreek
Cinnamon
R-ALA(allmax)
Fish Oil
Magnesium
Tyrosine
Taurine
Zinc
Glycocarn

I try to not eat anything for 3hours before going on stage. The idea is to keep the stomach empty and blood in the muscles. My last meal before the show began was
Steak and sweet potato with some “nutzo butter” (look it up….Delicious).

This brings us to the actualy MR OLYMPIA Contest.
It was incredible and overwhelming to say the least. An incredible honour to set foot on that stage. Childhood dreams fulfilled. To hear that olympia music playing brought tears to my eyes. I know that my son was sitting in the audience brought passion to my heart and took all my fear and anxiety away.
My dad, who took me to my first olympia in 1998(i was 17- and 180lbs.) was sitting 2nd row.
My best friends in the world, my family, my incredible lady all looked on and I felt every one of them cheering for me.
Outcome aside, the Mr Olympia 2012 was every bit as incredible as I could ever have imagined it to be, and much much more.
I hope you all get to live YOUR dream.

PLease take a minute to share the blog. Comment below if you enjoyed it or learned something. Your comments keep me motivated to blog more often.

Best,
BPak

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Wassup muscle nerds!

In an attempt to avoid the boring complacency of a typical blog, I try to add a little value into each of my blogs by giving you something you can USE.
This week, my favorite HIIT cardio regiment.( well, second to Wingates, but they weren’t an option in Venice).

First things first.

I was sitting around 293 when I got to Venice at 5 weeks out. My mood was perfect, energy was great, and I was pumped to work with the man again, Charles Glass. I arrived to Venice on a Sunday and got right to work first thing Monday morning.
I woke up to a view of the pacific ocean and Venice Beach, a bodybuilders dream.
I decided to make Monday leg day because I had missed legs on Saturday due to a guest posing. 8am comes and im sitting in my favorite chair… the leg extension! Venice has a great cybex eagle piece that faces the door that usually serves as a warm up for my leg sessions. I wasted no time and got straight to work. 8am can be a social hour in Venice Golds if you let it. Its quite busy and everyone wants to chat about the previous night, especially on Mondays. So, on go the headphones and to work I go.
The reason im telling this story is because what happened next set the stage for an awesome workout. Charles walks up and says “lets go!” I hadn’t planned to meet Charles that day, but when he saw me stroll in, he told his next client that he had double booked by accident and headed straight over to start the workout with me.

As if that didn’t get me a whole lot more motivated for legs, the man whose name is synonymous with greatness was then also standing right behind me as well….Arnold! One word…..BOOM! Needless to say, legs were crushed and I couldn’t see nor stand when I left the gym that morning.

The next few weeks went smoothly. Every workout with Charles was building on the last. I was getting better and better each day. Confidence was growing and Charles, who is a very quiet man most of the time, was getting excited.

At this point I was doing HIIT Cardio in the evening, 20-30 mins, and 40-50mins of cardio in the morning (either after meal one, or after weight training depending on the bodypart).

My HIIT regiment of choice was:

Stepmill-
Level 5- 5 mins(warm up)
Level 6- 3 mins
Level 7- 2 mins
Level 8- -2mins
Level 9- 1 min
Level 10- 1 mins
Level 11- 1min

Then drop back to level 6 and repeat 2-3times. The 2nd and 3rd times through I would usually start at a higher level(level 7) and go one level higher on the top end as well(12).

This was one of the simple techniques I used that seemed to work well because of the massive accumulation of lactic acid in the last few minutes. It sucks!
I used this method every other time I did HIIT. The other HIIT days were the typical 1min high, 2-3mins low and repeat.

By 3 weeks out I was right on target and just needed to tighten up a few more lbs.
Things were looking better than ever.

For anyone that has ever competed at a very high level at anything, you know that as the event approaches your mind is in constant pursuit of a way to be “just a little better”, work just a little more, eat just a little less, be just a little more perfect.
I think I got caught up in this mental struggle and wanted to be just a little extra shredded for the Olympia. Instead of just working a little harder like I normally would. I decided I would drop the carbs a bit. Well, being a large guy to begin with, my body needs calories to train. The issue I have is that im very stubborn. I can run on literal fumes for weeks and still have all the energy I need for amazing workouts. Especially when im training with the legend, Charles Glass.

Sounds like a good thing, but sometimes has become my downfall. I drop the carbs/cals a little too low and flatten right out. It can sometimes take days to recover from over depleting. Since taking time off is not an option, and neither is really high calorie days when youre approaching two weeks from the Olympia, you suck it up and hope your body holds on and doesn’t get too tired/depleted.

Well, im not 100% sure, but this may have been the exact case. I just wasn’t able to load as well once the final week came around. My body didn’t fill out the way it typically did.

As far as training goes for the last 5 weeks, I did 2x/day weight sessions about 4 times a week, and double cardio the other days. Since my condo was about 5 blocks from the gym, getting in there 3 times a day was just a matter of a little stroll down the road.

For those of you wondering how heavy I train going into the last few weeks before a contest, the answer is as heavy as I can handle while using only “safe” exercises.
No heavy squats or deads. Although, I did do both, just lighter toward the end of the workout and less often. The main consideration to keep in mind at that point is that you simply don’t have the calories to build muscle. The goal is to stimulate, volumize, squeeze in some extra hardness and detail, while burning calories and stimulating protein synthesis. Save the hard, muscle building stuff for the offseason.

Ive been getting numerous emails a day asking me to blog more often, give you guys more valuable information you can actually use. Well, im happy to do so, just make sure you take the time to comment below so I know what you think, what you want to see, and that youre actually reading them.

Also, take a minute to use those MEDIA SHARE buttons. The more people we get following the blog, the more likely I am to do them all the time. Supply and demand peeps

Love and focus,
BP

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Part 1 of 3.

My Prep.

My preparation for the 2012 Mr Olympia really began about 24 weeks prior to the contest. I started training my back 4 times a week(two days-twice a day each time), started ensuring I was getting at least 6 good meals a day(and a few not so good ones). The goal was to make sure I was consuming enough high quality protein to grow. I can hear many of you right now…”how much protein?” well, truthfully that changes according to how often and how hard im training. I will usually increase my protein intake on days when I train twice, and for 24 hrs after those days. Off days, my calories drop down a bit.

This prep was very unique for me. It was the first with my amazing incredible wonderful handsome son(he was born 6 weeks before the Arnold classic this year, but this is my first full prep). It was also my first prep without the man who had become my biggest role model, educator, mentor, and best friend who tragically passed away 12 weeks from the contest(RIP Peter). The man changed the way I look at the sport of bodybuilding, training, and life itself.  Many of the methodology, and training techniques I use in the gym were either taught to me by him, or at least explained to me in such a way that made it much more clear as to why certain things were meant to be done one way, versus what most people out there are doing.

At 12 weeks out, cardio started. Usually only about 30mins, 4 times a week. One of the simplest ideas I have ever employed is to allow my body to change as much as possible by making as little change as possible.

In an ideal world, a pro bodybuilder(or any one aspiring for a very lean physique) would be able to eat whatever they want and stay very lean. Then, by making some slight dietary changes be able to drop bodyfat and get contest ready (your body would look best being as close as possible to its natural homeostasis- aka wherever you are in the “offseason”). Unfortunately for most of us, myself included, this is not the case.  Although there are many times when I try to convince myself I CAN eat whatever I want and stay shredded, it just doesn’t happen for me.

I try to do as little cardio as possible offseason, so eating clean most of the time is the only way I can maintain a somewhat lean appearance and continue to consume enough high quality calories to grow. Trust me, if I could eat burgers and pizza like most pros, stay under 8% and diet for 6 weeks, life would be a whole lot easier. (Although Ive never been one to take the easy road! )  That being said, most of them might not be able to add as much mass as I can….we always want what we don’t have.  The idea behind getting your body to change without making drastic changes is something that stems from years of observing competitive bodybuilders do what I call “backing themselves into a corner”.  This can most often be observed with amateur and female physique athletes whereby they start their diet 16 weeks out, doing 2hrs of cardio and zero carbs. My question has always been, “what the heck do you do from there?” Once your body stops responding to the stimulus you subject it to, and it ALWAYS will, where do you go from there?  So starting with 20mins of cardio 4 times a week, then 30, then 40, just made the most sense to me. It is constantly offering a new stimulus, and your body is basically forced to adapt-provided your diet is consistent.  This approach is also one of the reasons that most of my drastic changes occur in the last 4 weeks before a contest.  I really haven’t done anything drastic, or varied from my offseason all that much by this point.  Other than eliminating cheat meals and adding in a small amount of cardio, I am trying to stay as close to my homeostasis as possible.

THE TRICK then, is attempting to shift my “homeostasis” each year so that im slightly closer to contest shape. Just a little leaner, and little bigger each year. Train your body to improve the efficiency with which it uses nutrients little by little each year.

Its no secret that I have never used carbohydrates as well as most top IFBB pros. Poor dietary habits as a child and as a young bodybuilder(on top of poor genetics) have led me to have very poor insulin sensitivity.  However, learning the intricacies of proper nutrition and supplementation have allowed me to make incremental changes each year, and improve my body composition one year at a time.

Enough of my tangent.

At 5 weeks out, many of you know by now, I made my way to train in Golds Gym Venice California from my normal stomping grounds of Tampa FL.

Here is my exact diet at 5 weeks from the Mr Olympia:

530am
12oz lean beef

6oz broccoli
2tablespoons coconut oil

830am
12oz tilapia
6oz broccoli
2cups fennel/kale/spinach salad.

 930am PreWorkout
2 scoops Allmax Muscleprime
2scoops Aminocore

10am TRAIN w Charles Glass.

1130am Post workout
3scoops Aminocore
5g creatine
10g EAA
2g Vitamin C
2g CLA
50g carbs from Allmax Krush or Dextrose powder

12pm 1scoop ISOFLEX Choc Peanut Butter.

1230pm
12oz tilapia
75g carbs from quinoa flakes or rice

3pm
12oz chicken
75g carbs from quinoa flakes or rice(opposite of last meal)

530pm
12oz beef
6oz broccoli
4oz avocado

**Many days I train Twice. In which case it would fall here with cardio after training.

8pm
10oz tilapia
75g of carbs from sweet potato

***9pm Cardio 40mins(if I don’t train in the evening)

1030pm
6oz beef
16 egg whites
1bag spinach
2oz macadamia nuts.

Make sure to comment below and let me know what you want to hear about from my prep.

In part 2 of the blog I share my favorite HIIT cardio program and in part 3 my exact carb load protocol for the OLYMPIA!  Don’t miss it, THIS WEEK!

 Lots more to come in Part 2

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