How to Take Care of Your Body After the Stage
Honestly, it all starts w
ith your improvement season or (off season) followed by a healthy prep. Taking care of your body after the stage is actually just as important as taking care of your body during your prep. This is one thing many people don’t realize. There are many factors that come into play to avoid things like a horrible rebound, damage to your body, or metabolic problems.
Starting with a good improvement season or off season has a lot of factors to consider... for instance, eating enough healthy fats and carbs, getting lots of rest, and staying well hydrated. It starts with eating enough calories.
It would also be a good idea to not do hours of cardio for any reason. Make sure your body is getting the amount of calories it requires so you don’t do things like binge eat or get to a point of starvation where you then become miserable. Generally speaking lots of people like to remove most all their fats and carbs from their diet in hopes to cut but what they don’t realize is healthy fats and carbs are our main source of energy to help us train like athletes.
Removing all the essential macros from our diet, under-eating and overdoing cardio lead to metabolic problems. Be sure that as you head into your prep that things stay healthy as well. You should enjoy competing and feel good!
A good and healthy prep is where most of the damage can be avoided after your competition. When you step off stage and it’s back to your normal life you want to make sure you rest and give your body time to regulate. Absolutely eat but, take it easy. Have a good meal but then go back to what you have been doing as far as eating and slowly add foods back in and raise your caloric intake.
This is where a lot of people have a bad rebound because they eat everything in sight! The reason they do that is because it is possible that their calories have been way too low for way too long!
If you binge eat after your competition, your body has no choice but to naturally try to overcompensate for lost calories and store body fat and store it quickly! This is called a rebound. You should never be on a meal that is below 1000-1200 calories period. I’ll explain this some in the next paragraph.
Eating extremely low calories or below your BMR (amount of calories your body needs to function) for a long period of time or even a brief time in extreme cases can cause things like dark spots in your vision, slurred speech, hair loss (more than normal), foggy thinking, slurred speech, memory loss, painful joints, irritability, mood swings, hormonal imbalances (especially for women), lowered heart rate and body temperature.
So make sure you and your coach or whoever you are working
with know what your body requires to begin with. Another good thing to consider is taking your time with prepping and not trying to cram it into a time frame that your body isn’t really able to deal with properly. Like maybe doing a 12-16 week diet instead of 8-10 weeks.
The longer you give your body and the slower you drop your body fat for a competition the better off you will be and feel. Take my advice on that one because I speak from experience. Be gentle with your metabolism and – trust me – it will thank you.
Now I would like to touch on the cardio subject for a minute. If for some reason you were doing two or more hours of cardio during your prep my advice would be to stop! Cut back to a couple days of HITT cardio or interval training. Do about 25-30 minutes each session. HITT has been proven to do way more good and in a shorter amount of time versus hours of steady state cardio.
Now on the other hand if you were doing high intensity HITT cardio or interval training during your prep then maybe continue it after your competition, but cut back the amount of days that you do it. So, if you were doing HITT 5-6 days a week maybe cut that down to three days or so.
Doing tons and hours of steady-state cardio has no additional impact on fat utilization and it can do more harm than good to your body. After a certain amount of time it just becomes extra stress on your body and pretty much pointless in my experience.
To avoid such a bad rebound after your competition, one of the things you can do is don’t take water pills during your depletion. You should be able to deplete naturally. And your body will regulate naturally so don’t take water pills post show either in my opinion. Trying it both ways, I have had better results with having less of rebound if I avoided diuretics. Afterwards, take it easy on food extremely high in sodium and keep your eating clean.
It is just as much work to take care of your body post show as it is during our prep. It is just hard for us competitors to grasp all the little details that go into this sport that can actually help us so much. A lot of competitors have the mentality that when the show is over it’s time to pig out and binge. And that’s fine, but not if you want to look your best and have longevity in the sport.
The show is over, so now what? I would recommend getting right back in the gym after competing. Yes, rest but still work out! Maybe not with the same intensity or duration, but definitely get back in the gym. Your body is being fed now so it’s prime time to train like a beast and gain some muscle and the work continues right there. The cycle repeats and goes right into your improvement season. It’s a year-round thing!
Once you step off that stage, remember just how hard the work was to get there and treat your body the same way in terms of still eating clean and working out. Of course not at the same intensity or drastic measures you took during your prep but in a good healthy manner. Find that balance… physically and mentally.
As competito
rs, we tend to just beat our bodies up and focus on what will get us there (to the stage)… doing whatever it takes even if it’s not the healthiest things to do. We don’t think after the show matters. Well, it does. More than we realize! If we want to be the best we can be then we have to really take care of our health and bodies.
On the other side of taking care of your body physically is making sure we are taking care of ourselves mentally and emotionally. Many of us beat ourselves up when the tan fades and our bodies aren’t as ripped before. We have to realize that to look that way all time isn’t realistic. We also need to realize that it is much healthier to eat a little more and have a little higher body fat percentage. Once you truly grasp that you will become more comfortable in your own skin and competing will become much more fun for you.
What makes us unique as athletes is the ability to bring our bodies to stage at such a level of conditioning that the average person cannot obtain. This sport – as with any other sport – comes with stress on your psyche and stress on your body.
We have to mentally prepare ourselves for the changes our bodies will make after stepping off stage. Yes, the tan will fade, you will hold a little water, gain a few pounds… but there are plus sides as well! You will be able to lift heavier again, have greater mental clarity, and you can always get another tan.
Most importantly you will have the energy to improve yourself! Is competing worth all of this? In my opinion, YES! It all comes down to balance and truly loving our bodies. If we are healthy and balanced on the inside, we will shine on the outside!
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