Dropping water

[Menna]

I am having 1 gallon Today (wed) 40 ounces on Thurs and then 20 ounces on Friday and no water the day of the contest on Sat...

I also dropped my sodium today (wed)

My question is should I take potassium to help prevent cramping and help regulate the water and keep what water is left in my muscles so they are full on stage or should I not take the Potassium?

(Carb up starts Thursday night at 8pm can?t wait!!!)

[Menna]

And the show is the INBF Hercules anyone else who is doing it GOOD LUCK!!!

[tipsta]

I am having 1 gallon Today (wed) 40 ounces on Thurs and then 20 ounces on Friday and no water the day of the contest on Sat...

I also dropped my sodium today (wed)

My question is should I take potassium to help prevent cramping and help regulate the water and keep what water is left in my muscles so they are full on stage or should I not take the Potassium?

(Carb up starts Thursday night at 8pm can?t wait!!!)

Read my thread in this section under diuretics on page 2

Why are you limiting water if you are not carbing up till thurs which is TOO LATE! You only restrict water when carbs are introduced.

[Lando33]

And the show is the INBF Hercules anyone else who is doing it GOOD LUCK!!!

I'll see you there!

[Menna]

Na it wont be too late I am starting around 8pm thursday with a medium yam I am carb sensitive so its a good time to start for me. Then carb load all day Fri and sat morng have a steak and 3 pancakes and then 1 rice cake with natty salt free PB every half hour

[Cytrainer913]

Carbs work way too fats to be carbing up all day on Friday, I just think that combined with low water levels, are both a recipe for failure as a natural athlete.

You are doing which part of the show? BB/Figure/Female BB

unless you are some ecto freak, keep the carbs out until late late fri night into sat morning and DO NOT CUT WATER!

I will be there sat all day helping out

[Menna]

Novice bodybuilding...

I did it this for the May 5th INBF show and I was fine...

Thurs 40 ounces

Friday 20 ounces

Nothing Sat

I have been on no carbs sence monday

Thurs night 8 pm Medium Yam and chicken then 11pm 3 rice cakes natty PB and chicken then bed...

When I mean carbing up on friday I have 7 meals

Meal 1 - medium Yam and chicken

Meal 2 - 3 rice cakes with Natty PB and chicken

Meal 3 - medium Yam and chicken

Meal 4 - 3 Rice cakes with Natty PB and chicken

Doin it this way till meal 7

Then Sat moring 7am steak and 3 pancakes then untill the show 1 rice cake with Natty PB every half hour till stage time...

I did it befor and I didnt spill over...

If you think there is a better way let me know

[Cytrainer913]

All of their articles can be searched and looked up on here and you will see for the natural athlete many of the ways you are talking about are just old school ways maybe still used by the untested side of the sport and are usually very dangerous for the body to be put through these methods of cutting water for the simple reason of the % of muscle that is water, pretty high near 65-75% water, so cutting water can pull more water out of your muscles thus appearing flatter because water could leave the muscle and from under the skin. In addition the body knows when this will happen as well, and other hormones willl be released to hol onto last bits of water as well, known as ADH.

for the last week, especially someone of your height and weight, should be drinking near 2.5 -3 gallon per day and maybe cut it back to 2 gallons by fri.

sodium should stay up there as well where it does not need to be cut either, only small drops at best, maybe starting in the neighborhood of 3000 mgs and maybe dropping to 2500 mg's by fri.

Carbs can be very different for each person, but you can go low, maybe near the 100 g's mark on sat/sun, and then hit your highest point on Mon, and slowly taper them down as the week progresses, but not down too low and then depedning on the way you handle carbs, maybe fri afternoon the earliest to start bringing them back. Carbs do not need that much time to be pounded back in by wed or thurs, thats usually way too early.

[Cytrainer913]

Be Dry on Contest Day
by Dr. Joe Klemczewski

Posted on 6/19/2003 2:26:22 PM
Take the guess work out of being dry and full on contest day!
Drifting in and out of sleep for most of the night, your routine ran through your mind at times, your pulse raced, you wondered if ?it would work.? You were awake long before the alarm sounded but you were afraid to look. Maybe just a little more sleep. Finally, you amble to the hotel bathroom, turn on the light, and slowly lift your shirt to reveal your abs. Would your skin be dry? Would deep crevices and vascularity be visible like so many days in the last two weeks? Or...would you look soft?like last time.
There are countless locker room experts to guide you through the last week of your contest preparation. They competed a decade ago in the County Novice Mr. Nobody, have their PhD from Flex Magazine, and their advice is free. You listened. If my psychic powers are tuned correctly and Jupiter is in the right position, I bet I can get close to your formula. Carb deplete Sunday through Tuesday, drink tons of water, maybe sodium load a little, carb load starting Wednesday, start cutting water Thursday (Friday virtually none,) eliminate sodium for two or three days prior to Saturday, start taking 99 mg of potassium every 2 hours, and use a magic cocktail of glycerol, creatine, sugar, toss in a little wine if your from the British team, and finish it all up with an over-the-counter dandelion root-based diuretic to supercharge your vascularity. By the way, if you ever get tired of bodybuilding, pharmaceutical companies pay volunteers to test new therapies far less complicated ? you may want to apply.
I know; I?m being cruel. How can I joke about this when you?re standing in front of the mirror shocked at how you could follow the ?protocol? so perfectly and be flatter and softer than you were last Saturday. I hate to tell you, it will get worse. After the disappointment of not being able to recover your form all day, you?ll wake up tomorrow full, hard, and vascular. Sunday, that is?just like last year. Why is it so hard to time a peak? Turn off the T.V., you?re going to want to concentrate on this article.
Water balance in your body is incredibly complex. The end goal of a bodybuilder on contest day is to look ?hard.? Body fat must be gone, that?s a given, but even with the leanest physique you can present, the shredded/dry look comes from having a minimal amount of water under your skin. Really, what this means is interstitial plasma, which can be thought of as any fluid outside the cells in your body. There are several processes that affect cellular fluid dynamics. We have to start with the big picture first.
Water makes up 50-60% of your body and up to 75% of your muscle tissue. If you?re 2% dehydrated it will negatively affect your muscle tissue and athletic ability. If you?re 5% dehydrated you?ll cramp and if you?re 7-10% dehydrated you?ll hallucinate and risk death. Think back to when you were drinking a gallon and a half of water a day. You were full, hard, and vascular. Why? You had enough water in your body. The morning of the show you were flat as a pancake, soft as a marshmallow, and every muscle on your body shook and cramped on stage. Why? You were dehydrated. When you see pictures of top WNBF pros that are clients of mine, be assured they didn?t cut water one bit.
Why weren?t they waterlogged and soft? The water was in their muscle tissue making them full and hard, while interstitial water was at a minimum. Keeping water intake normal gives you the opportunity to be full, but being hard depends on what we do to channel it into the muscle. This is where the sodium/potassium comes in. Sodium is the major extracellular fluid cation and potassium is the major intracellular fluid cation. ?Aha!!!!! Professor Novice Mr. Nobody was right in having me cut sodium and increase potassium!? Nope, misapplied science. Normal physiology maintains 55-65% of our fluid intracellularly anyway. If we are in a normal condition, we have more fluid inside than outside our cells. It?s when we screw something up that this percentage heads the other direction and fluid is diverted outside the cell. Fluid dynamics is controlled with incredible precision via our kidneys. Though you hear the phrase ?you have to trick your body? every time you get a locker room lesson on peaking, trust me, there is no tricking your body. It?s much faster than you and much more sophisticated than you could hope to account for. Every time you do something extreme trying to cause an extreme reaction, you?ll get one. Two problems are that first, it may not be the one you wanted, and second, if it is, it will be very short-lived because the extreme reaction will be quickly countered in the other direction just as severely until the ?pendulum? that you violently swung slows back down. Take a serious look at what happened to your body during the fictitious example I gave. You went from hard and full, to harder, then a little smaller, then huge, then huge and soft, then soft and flat on the morning of the show, then huge and vascular on Sunday, and finally as soft and squishy as can be for a couple days after that. That?s the kind of instability you get when you start trying to ?trick? your body.
Yes, sodium and potassium are key ions that regulate cellular fluid dynamics, but you can?t create extreme environments and expect to time them for a show. You can subtly influence them, but keep in mind this phrase: water follows solutes. Water is attracted to and will follow the ions as they travel across the cell membranes. We want plasma to be attracted to the inside of the cell but it won?t happen by just increasing potassium, it will be because we have the right balance of sodium and potassium. The goal should be to simply maintain the ?normal,? stable environment that would have 55-65% of the fluid there anyway. Just as big a factor, however, is sodium?s role in blood volume. Deficiencies in sodium will lead to a drop in blood pressure which means plasma (water) has been pushed out of the vascular system. If it?s not in your blood vessels, it?s around them interstitially which means subcutaneously. That, of course, means SMOOTH!!! This will then start a chain reaction that will take days to remedy. When sodium is dropped from the diet, your kidneys will be influenced immediately by the hormone Aldosterone to conserve sodium from being excreted and remember; water follows solutes. If sodium is being resorbed, then water will be as well. You retain water and with the lower blood pressure, it?s all under your skin instead of in your vascular system.
Within one day of dropping dietary sodium, excreted sodium is cut in half and continues to decline as more Aldosterone is produced. BUT, look at blood levels of sodium: they?re conserved perfectly!! YOU CAN?T TRICK YOUR BODY!! All you did by cutting sodium was screwed up the osmolarity of the cell membranes and you won?t know where the water is going to go. If you keep your water intake and sodium intake normal, your cellular fluid dynamics will stay normal. You?ll continue to flush excess water and sodium out of your body. So, you ask, ?What?s normal?? The RDA for sodium is a range of .5-2.4 grams per day but other sources recommend up to 3.3 grams per day. The RDA for potassium is 1.6-2.0 grams per day. One quick side note on potassium: excessive potassium will also stimulate Aldosterone. Don?t add potassium in amounts that place it higher than sodium intake. Everyone, of course is a little different, and this is precisely why I don?t just ?peak? clients. I have to have more than a week of working with them so I can make and observe changes in their body before I detail out a perfect plan for them as individuals. If you?re going it alone, you also need some self-practice to see what?s right for your body.
I know you may be disappointed to hear all this talk about ?normal,? so I want to give you a chance to manipulate a variable that WILL make a huge difference. Since I won?t let you whack your sodium/potassium around, what other nutrient could possibly affect water balance in a very, very positive way??
Carbs. You already know that every gram of glycogen (stored glucose/carbohydrate) attracts water to it ? 2.7 grams of water to be exact. Remember the ?water follows solutes? thing? Glycogen is a solute too. This is why you get so full and feel so huge when your carbs are high. Your water content is high also. We already established that when your water is low, you?ll experience the opposite: flat, soft muscles. The real trick is to have enough carbs in your body to attract water in your muscle tissue to be full and hard, but you may have also heard the phrase ?spilling over? in relation to carbs. This is a legitimate concern. The average adult can only store 375-475 grams of carbs in the body, about 325 of which would be in the muscle (90-110 grams in the liver and 15-20 as blood glucose.) When you consume too many carbohydrates, which is likely with a traditional carb-up, the excessive glycogen ends up in the interstitial fluids, the water follows, and now there?s another reason for the water under your skin. How you carb up, how much you carb up, and the foods you use are all factors in making sure the glucose is in the muscle not outside. Combine this with water intake, sodium/potassium intake, and even your training and you have the full picture of how you will look on Saturday morning.

[Cytrainer913]

I know this is an incredibly complex subject, but if you read it, make notes, sort it out, you?ll see that peaking can be consistent and predictable, not a gamble. I?ll let you go back through the article to isolate the details but I hope I have impressed upon you that dropping water, eliminating sodium, increasing potassium, and carbing up hard are not only physiologically contrary to your goals, but has been the sabotaging of your contest day! Try doing things in concert with your body instead of trying to trick it and practice them several times before contest day!

[Cytrainer913]

PEAK WEEK ? IT HAS TO BE PERFECT!!
by Dr. Joe Klemczewski


I could fill a book with the quotes I hear at contests from competitors who placed from second to last in their class. There are many versions, but just one quote. I?ll paraphrase: ?I screwed up my peak.? That?s it ? end of quote. It?s usually sandwiched in a paragraph including words like carb loading, sodium manipulation, water depletion, and it always comes right before the line, ?I tried something new this time.? Now, I?m talking about legitimate peaking screw-ups, of which there are many. The one thing I want to eliminate from your mind at the beginning of this article is to blame your body fat percentage on peaking. Some people start peak week at 14% body fat and think that by doing one neat, new little trick that they read about, they?ll wake up Saturday morning looking like Frank Zane. You?ve seen them. The ones at 8% body fat who say, ?Yeah, I was just holding a little water today.? This article isn?t for them. This is for people who know how to dial in on contest shape and now want to know exactly what to do in order to wake up Saturday morning and shout, ?Eureka! (or ?Damn!? -if you?re on the East Coast) - I did it!! I finally nailed my peak!!?
First of all, let?s begin with how you should plan to enter peak week. If you still have to be concerned with losing ?the last couple pounds? in the week before the show, you won?t be able to peak properly. Peak week should be thought of as recovering slightly, being fresh, and focusing just on making sure the muscles are full and hard yet visible because of proper subcutaneous water elimination. Fat elimination should be over before this last week.
The next thing I want to erase from your thought process is the myth that you have to make extreme changes to manipulate your body into looking good on contest day. You?ve no doubt experimented with massive sodium loading and depletion, varying carb loading schemes, and endless water depletion schedules to try to be your biggest, hardest, and driest all at one time. You also have probably experienced the shock at looking at a flat, shriveled up, smooth physique (with it?s mouth gaping open in terror) in the mirror six hours before prejudging. DO NOT PLAN ON DOING ANYTHING DRASTIC DURING PEAK WEEK!!
Your body is constantly being monitored by your brain with thousands of chemoreceptors that are sending feedback on millions of chemical reactions happening in the body. It?s how your brain manages to balance the chemical necessities for life. This vast neuro-hormonal-chemical network is brutally dynamic and always in flux. I?m not smart enough to predict and override these millions of reactions in my body to create an unnatural super-compensation effect exactly at prejudging and then maintain it all day. Neither are you. What we can do is understand the cycles that our body goes through in directing water into muscles or outside of the muscle cells, the way our body stores carbohydrates, and how to gently massage these cycles so that we ride the right wave into the right day and predictably peak perfectly and naturally instead of trying to force a freaky, extreme response. That is a gamble you?ll lose nine times out of ten.
When I peak a bodybuilder, I control protein, carbs, fat, sodium, water, and training. We start seven days from the show and I provide a chart that tells the athlete exactly what to do in what amounts each day for the entire week. I use these variables to control the normal cycles of water and glycogen flow in and out of the muscle tissue. We start out the week in a certain pattern and then each day the variables change in a subtle way to be able to predict and control peaking. Obviously, every bodybuilder is different in the amounts of each of the variables. Some people have unbelievably fast metabolisms and some people are very carb-sensitive ? two extreme differences which dictate different amounts of each nutrient variable and a slightly different schedule. But, the actual flow and cycle is still very similar. It is important to know and understand what to expect on each day so you know how to adjust. For this reason, even my ?long-distance? clients have daily communication with me during peak week. I want to go through each of these variables and give you some physiological insight to why peaking is so elusive.
Carbing-up is the great myth started and continuing with 250-pound steroid using bodybuilders who consume huge amounts of food anyway and then take prescription diuretics to eliminate the steroid bloat. If this describes you, traditional carb depletion and loading may work. If you?re body isn?t an eighth grade science experiment out of control, let?s stick with normal physiology. Even the hardest, leanest bodies cannot metabolize and shuttle glucose into muscle cells at a maximum rate without having some extracellular spill-over. Read that sentence again. You cannot deplete carbs and then supercompensate and expect all of the glucose and water to end up in the muscle. You?ll certainly fill out, but you?ll also smooth out. Some a little, and some a great deal. Yes, a lot of carbs will go into the muscle, but a little or a lot will end up outside the muscle cell with a lot of water which makes you smooth. Next time you?re dieting and you?re fairly lean, log some comments every day in a journal. ?Woke up pretty lean. Very smooth ? must have been the sodium in the chips. Very vascular. Hard as a freak?n rock!!? Just write down comments on how you look in the morning. I guarantee that you?ll consistently be your hardest after a couple of low-carb, high-water intake days. You may not be your biggest because the carbs aren?t as high, but the lack of extraneous carbs and water under the skin makes you very tight and you appear much bigger. Who wins the show: the big soft guy or the bone-dry striated competitor? The way I carb up my clients catches the wave of glucose and water entering the muscle on the way up, but not at the expense of smoothing out on the rebound effect of over-carbing.
My general carb cycle for peak week is to start at the highest point on the weekend before. I start at a slightly above ?normal? level on Saturday and Sunday and schedule no training. I want this weekend to be a recovery time with a refilling of glycogen. As training starts again on Monday, I slowly drop carbs each day. It?s a subtle drop, not a severe depletion. The training each day, Monday through Wednesday, with the slight drop will create a sufficient carb deficit without total depletion. Depending on the client?s metabolism, I keep the carbs coming down and keep the water very high all the way through Friday. For a very high metabolism bodybuilder, I?m not going as low on the carbs during the week, and I may start re-carbing on Friday. For carb-sensitive clients it?s very important to wait until Saturday to reload. By waiting until later in the week to carb up, you eliminate the chance of glycogen and water spill over. Your body can metabolize glucose very quickly and you don?t have to start three days ahead of time especially if you haven?t completely bottomed out with a severe carb depletion. There are also some issues with the type of carbs you use to reload. There are some that create more subcutaneous swelling due to being food allergens. It?s important to know which are the most common and how they affect you.
Water is just as misunderstood as carbs. The traditional carb and water theories have people drop their water sometimes days before the show. Nothing will flatten and smooth you out faster! You have to maintain a high water intake because your muscle tissue is around 70% water. No water, no hardness ? just flat, squishy muscle tissue. The reason people typically start dropping water is because they?ve over-carbed so much that they?re already spilling glycogen and water under the skin and think, ?Oh, my gosh!! I?ve got to get rid of this water!!? With the carb reload as I described, you won?t have that problem; you?ll actually get harder and harder throughout the week. KEEP THE WATER INTAKE UP AND LET IT FOLLOW THE CARBS INTO THE MUSCLE!! IF YOU?RE NOT OVER-CARBED, THE REST OF THE WATER WILL BE ELIMINATED!
Sodium also has to be cycled. Start with a moderate amount of sodium, up to two grams at the beginning of the week and around Thursday start dropping it slightly but don?t eliminate it completely. If you do, you?ll force water out of the muscle cell, you?ll look flat and smooth, and you?ll cramp like there?s no tomorrow. You need approximately four times more sodium than potassium for your muscles to contract normally. Again, don?t let the myths from the pharmaceutically dominated side of our sport lure you into doing things that aren?t physiologically correct. You don?t have all those drug side-effects to combat in peaking properly. If you sodium load and/or deplete in a big way you?re gambling with extreme chemical rebound effects that you can?t possibly time. If you?re lucky enough to stumble into a good effect, it will be short lived because you?re on a pendulum swing that your body will adjust to and you?ll look absolutely lousy in a very short time.
I also use specific tricks regarding fat intake and schedule very specific contest day meal strategies for the individual needs and characteristics of my clients. As I get to know their metabolic rates through the dieting process, I?m already planning their peak and everyone?s a little different. These general guidelines, however, I hope will dispel some common mistakes and put you on a path to learn your body type and peak perfectly every time!!

[Cytrainer913]

Using Water to be ?Dry? on Contest Day
by Dr. Joe Klemczewski

Drifting in and out of sleep for most of the night, your routine ran through your mind at times, your pulse raced, you wondered if ?it would work.? You were awake long before the alarm sounded but you were afraid to look. Maybe just a little more sleep. Finally, you amble to the hotel bathroom, turn on the light, and slowly lift your shirt to reveal your abs. Would your skin be dry? Would deep crevices and vascularity be visible like so many days in the last two weeks? Or...would you look soft?like last time.
There are countless locker room experts to guide you through the last week of your contest preparation. They competed a decade ago in the County Novice Mr. Nobody, have their PhD from Flex Magazine, and their advice is free. You listened. If my psychic powers are tuned correctly and Jupiter is in the right position, I bet I can get close to your formula. Carb deplete Sunday through Tuesday, drink tons of water, maybe sodium load a little, carb load starting Wednesday, start cutting water Thursday (Friday virtually none,) eliminate sodium for two or three days prior to Saturday, start taking 99 mg of potassium every 2 hours, and use a magic cocktail of glycerol, creatine, sugar, toss in a little wine if your from the British team, and finish it all up with an over-the-counter dandelion root-based diuretic to supercharge your vascularity. By the way, if you ever get tired of bodybuilding, pharmaceutical companies pay volunteers to test new therapies far less complicated ? you may want to apply.
I know; I?m being cruel. How can I joke about this when you?re standing in front of the mirror shocked at how you could follow the ?protocol? so perfectly and be flatter and softer than you were last Saturday. I hate to tell you, it will get worse. After the disappointment of not being able to recover your form all day, you?ll wake up tomorrow full, hard, and vascular. Sunday, that is?just like last year. Why is it so hard to time a peak? Turn off the T.V., you?re going to want to concentrate on this article.
Water balance in your body is incredibly complex. The end goal of a bodybuilder on contest day is to look ?hard.? Body fat must be gone, that?s a given, but even with the leanest physique you can present, the shredded/dry look comes from having a minimal amount of water under your skin. Really, what this means is interstitial plasma, which can be thought of as any fluid outside the cells in your body. There are several processes that affect cellular fluid dynamics. We have to start with the big picture first.
Water makes up 50-60% of your body and up to 75% of your muscle tissue. If you?re 2% dehydrated it will negatively affect your muscle tissue and athletic ability. If you?re 5% dehydrated you?ll cramp and if you?re 7-10% dehydrated you?ll hallucinate and risk death. Think back to when you were drinking a gallon and a half of water a day. You were full, hard, and vascular. Why? You had enough water in your body. The morning of the show you were flat as a pancake, soft as a marshmallow, and every muscle on your body shook and cramped on stage. Why? You were dehydrated. When you see pictures of top WNBF pros that are clients of mine, be assured they didn?t cut water one bit.
Why weren?t they waterlogged and soft? The water was in their muscle tissue making them full and hard, while interstitial water was at a minimum. Keeping water intake normal gives you the opportunity to be full, but being hard depends on what we do to channel it into the muscle. This is where the sodium/potassium comes in. Sodium is the major extracellular fluid cation and potassium is the major intracellular fluid cation. ?Aha!!!!! Professor Novice Mr. Nobody was right in having me cut sodium and increase potassium!? Nope, misapplied science. Normal physiology maintains 55-65% of our fluid intracellularly anyway. If we are in a normal condition, we have more fluid inside than outside our cells. It?s when we screw something up that this percentage heads the other direction and fluid is diverted outside the cell. Fluid dynamics is controlled with incredible precision via our kidneys. Though you hear the phrase ?you have to trick your body? every time you get a locker room lesson on peaking, trust me, there is no tricking your body. It?s much faster than you and much more sophisticated than you could hope to account for. Every time you do something extreme trying to cause an extreme reaction, you?ll get one. Two problems are that first, it may not be the one you wanted, and second, if it is, it will be very short-lived because the extreme reaction will be quickly countered in the other direction just as severely until the ?pendulum? that you violently swung slows back down. Take a serious look at what happened to your body during the fictitious example I gave. You went from hard and full, to harder, then a little smaller, then huge, then huge and soft, then soft and flat on the morning of the show, then huge and vascular on Sunday, and finally as soft and squishy as can be for a couple days after that. That?s the kind of instability you get when you start trying to ?trick? your body.
Yes, sodium and potassium are key ions that regulate cellular fluid dynamics, but you can?t create extreme environments and expect to time them for a show. You can subtly influence them, but keep in mind this phrase: water follows solutes. Water is attracted to and will follow the ions as they travel across the cell membranes. We want plasma to be attracted to the inside of the cell but it won?t happen by just increasing potassium, it will be because we have the right balance of sodium and potassium. The goal should be to simply maintain the ?normal,? stable environment that would have 55-65% of the fluid there anyway. Just as big a factor, however, is sodium?s role in blood volume. Deficiencies in sodium will lead to a drop in blood pressure which means plasma (water) has been pushed out of the vascular system. If it?s not in your blood vessels, it?s around them interstitially which means subcutaneously. That, of course, means SMOOTH!!! This will then start a chain reaction that will take days to remedy. When sodium is dropped from the diet, your kidneys will be influenced immediately by the hormone Aldosterone to conserve sodium from being excreted and remember; water follows solutes. If sodium is being resorbed, then water will be as well. You retain water and with the lower blood pressure, it?s all under your skin instead of in your vascular system.

Take a look at this study:


NB&F EDITOR, PLEASE MAKE A CHART:

NORMAL DIET LOW SODIUM
1 day 2 days 6 days
Urinary Sodium217 (mmol/day)105 59 9.9
Aldosterone10.4 (ng/100 ml) 11.7 22.5 37
Serum Sodium139 (mmol) 139 139 138

Within one day of dropping dietary sodium, excreted sodium is cut in half and continues to decline as more Aldosterone is produced. BUT, look at blood levels of sodium: they?re conserved perfectly!! YOU CAN?T TRICK YOUR BODY!! All you did by cutting sodium was screwed up the osmolarity of the cell membranes and you won?t know where the water is going to go. If you keep your water intake and sodium intake normal, your cellular fluid dynamics will stay normal. You?ll continue to flush excess water and sodium out of your body. So, you ask, ?What?s normal?? The RDA for sodium is a range of .5-2.4 grams per day but other sources recommend up to 3.3 grams per day. The RDA for potassium is 1.6-2.0 grams per day. One quick side note on potassium: excessive potassium will also stimulate Aldosterone. Don?t add potassium in amounts that place it higher than sodium intake. Everyone, of course is a little different, and this is precisely why I don?t just ?peak? clients. I have to have more than a week of working with them so I can make and observe changes in their body before I detail out a perfect plan for them as individuals. If you?re going it alone, you also need some self-practice to see what?s right for your body.
I know you may be disappointed to hear all this talk about ?normal,? so I want to give you a chance to manipulate a variable that WILL make a huge difference. Since I won?t let you whack your sodium/potassium around, what other nutrient could possibly affect water balance in a very, very positive way??

[Cytrainer913]

Carbs. You already know that every gram of glycogen (stored glucose/carbohydrate) attracts water to it ? 2.7 grams of water to be exact. Remember the ?water follows solutes? thing? Glycogen is a solute too. This is why you get so full and feel so huge when your carbs are high. Your water content is high also. We already established that when your water is low, you?ll experience the opposite: flat, soft muscles. The real trick is to have enough carbs in your body to attract water in your muscle tissue to be full and hard, but you may have also heard the phrase ?spilling over? in relation to carbs. This is a legitimate concern. The average adult can only store 375-475 grams of carbs in the body, about 325 of which would be in the muscle (90-110 grams in the liver and 15-20 as blood glucose.) When you consume too many carbohydrates, which is likely with a traditional carb-up, the excessive glycogen ends up in the interstitial fluids, the water follows, and now there?s another reason for the water under your skin. How you carb up, how much you carb up, and the foods you use are all factors in making sure the glucose is in the muscle not outside. Combine this with water intake, sodium/potassium intake, and even your training and you have the full picture of how you will look on Saturday morning.
I know this is an incredibly complex subject, but if you read it, make notes, sort it out, you?ll see that peaking can be consistent and predictable, not a gamble. I?ll let you go back through the article to isolate the details but I hope I have impressed upon you that dropping water, eliminating sodium, increasing potassium, and carbing up hard are not only physiologically contrary to your goals, but has been the sabotaging of your contest day! Try doing things in concert with your body instead of trying to trick it and practice them several times before contest day!

[Cytrainer913]

You Only Get One Peak
by Dr. Joe Klemczewski

Posted on 5/13/2004 11:16:37 AM
You only have one day to nail it - do it right!
Dear Diary, Sunday: Look great; I?m ready this year! Started carb depleting, sodium loading, water loading. Monday: Second day of the same; getting harder. Tuesday: Last day of carb depleting, everything else the same; freaky hard and vascular. Wednesday: Started carb loading, water high, cut sodium; huge and vascular, started getting softer in the evening. Thursday: Second day of carb loading; really watery but huge! Friday: Last day of carb loading, cut water to half a gallon (to shed subcutaneous water I?m holding) and eliminated sodium; starting to get a little flat and still soft, must need more carbs. Saturday: @#%&! Lost size ? much smaller, not as watery, but very soft and flat. Same thing every year!!
Sound familiar? Let me run through the supposed logic behind the steps you may have blindly followed to your contest doom. Super carb compensation started as an experiment for runners where it was discovered that after three days of eliminating all carbohydrates from your diet, your muscular system would compensate by holding up to 50% more when provided enough carbohydrates. You?ve experienced it without having to be in a contest situation. A day after a pizza buffet gorge-fest you?ll have a mind-blowing pump in any body part you work. Huge! That feeling, you interpreted, would be great on stage. It?s what you need to look like, you reason to yourself. But, you may not be as familiar with the fact that when your body has enough glucose to shovel 50% more into your biceps than normal, you?ll also have extra glucose floating around the interstitial spaces of your body outside your muscle cells. Water follows carbs. In the off-season, your spare tire may mar the evidence of this added softeness, but pre-contest, you?ll look and feel like someone injected three gallons of water under your skin. Thus, the two to five pounds of weight gain after a carb binge.
So, you reason that a carb depletion and carb load will leave you huge! Now, how do I make sure I don?t get that spill over? Cut water? Sodium load and then deplete? Let?s play out the rest of the scenario, my little Iron-Einstein. It all sounds logical; too much water under the skin: let?s cut water out. I?ll have all the carbs in my muscle, I?ll pee out all the subcutaneous water, and I?ll end up with Todd Elliot?s mass and Dave Goodin?s skinless hamstrings definition. The problem starts with the fact that your muscle is up to 75% water and it?s the water that makes you full and hard, not the carbs. When you cut the water it starts leaving your body indiscriminately from your muscle and everywhere else. You now start getting flatter and softer. The overage of carbs you have stored are still in and around your muscle so the remaining water leaves a film hiding your striations and your muscles aren?t full enough to push out against their own fascia to create separations. Your striations and separations are gone and you?re muscles are flat and squishy. Sorry for those of you experiencing post traumatic stress syndrome from the flashbacks of so accurately reading your past contest experience to this point, but one more ?corrective? measure: sodium.
Maybe if I sodium load and then deplete, I?ll solve this problem. Maybe that?s what pushed the fluid out of my muscle and left me flat. You need up to four times as much sodium than potassium and when you train as hard as you probably do, you need even more. Also, excessive potassium causes water retention just like excessive sodium does. When you make dramatic cuts in your sodium, you no longer have what you need to pump water into the muscle. You may drop more water from your body, most of it from your muscle tissue again, but the only thing you gain are cramps that almost tear muscle from bone on stage. So why do people continue to follow a recipe for self-destruction that someone came up with decades ago? ?Cause by golly it?s gotta work this time! I read it from the 300 pound Mr. Olympia contender in the 500 page annual issue of Beefy Girls in Lingerie Bodybuilding Mag!?
Here?s what you can do to finally get it right. It boils down to three integral issues. First, in what state does my body look best? Second, how do I get there? And, third, how do I stay there? I?ll explain the first, but how you get there and how you stay there is really dependent on your body type and metabolic rate. That?s why I don?t just write or sell ?programs? to clients; I work with them with massive communication right up to the morning of the show. Recall the diary scenario or even think back to your most recent contest experience. You looked your fullest and hardest BOTH when you were drinking unlimited water and your carbs and calories were in a deficit. Why? Recall that your body is about 65% water and your muscle tissue about 75% water. When you deplete water even slightly, you won?t be up to full capacity in what your muscle can hold. Softer, flatter muscle is the result. As if that isn?t bad enough, softer, flatter muscle means there isn?t as much volume to push out against the fascial constraints of the muscle and you lose muscle separation.
The misunderstanding or misapplication of water dynamics goes hand-in-hand with a total misunderstanding of carbohydrates. Do carbs make you full? Yes and no. It?s the water that makes you full, but it?s the carbs that attract water into the muscle. Too much carbohydrate, however, will mean glucose is floating around the muscle as well as inside, thus the dreaded spillover. Once you spill over, you can do nothing that won?t take days to correct. Once you?re soft from extracellular water and glucose you will not recover in time for the contest. If you?re slightly flat from not having enough carbs in your muscle tissue, you can remedy that with 30 minutes notice. You only store 350-500 grams of glucose in your entire body, period. It doesn?t take three days to carb up. Your body works best absorbing carbs slowly in small increments, though, thus the need for a perfectly timed peak week that leads to a perfect peak on Saturday. For example, after following my very detailed Peak Week spreadsheet I created just for her, one of my recent title winners was just a little flat the night before and the morning of a show. Being as hard as possible, but a little flat is the best way to err. I simply increased carbs slightly to the already higher carbs scheduled for that Saturday morning, left water and activity plans alone, and by the time her feet hit the prejudging stage, muscle fullness was at capacity! She won the whole show. Water stays high, carbs only as high as necessary. What about sodium? Who ever said sodium ever causes water retention in people who are unbelievably active and sweating a lot? Who ever said you need to cut sodium out and add truckloads of potassium? Whoever it was is the Stalin of bodybuilding, slaughtering more competitors? hopes on contest day than you can imagine. Nothing will make you flatter and softer than trying to upset this delicate balance of minerals responsible for water balance in your body. Your body reacts much quicker than you do and will wildly fluctuate to compensate for ill-advised mass-scale upset. And, your muscle NEEDS the sodium to retain water.
If I could write a concise statement describing the physiology of peaking it would be just about the exact opposite of what most people do. Conventional wisdom says drop water, try to super-compensate a carb load, and cut sodium. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. There?s nothing more rewarding than seeing a frustrated bodybuilder full of potential finally get it right. Be one of those bodybuilders!

[Menna]

Yea I got this info about dropping water and salt and carb loading from an old school type of guy thanks for the new info...

ITs too late and I would freak out if I tried to change things...

I did it this way for my last show on May 5th and nothing really bad happened so I am going to stick to it for this show...

I plan on doing another show (OCB Yankee classic) July 28th so I will use this info for that show...


Thanks again...

[Menna]

I already started to drop my water and sodium so im not going to change that but I havent carb loaded yet I am sgoing to start tonight but before I step on stage on sat I wont go above 475 like it says in your post so the carbs dont bring the water out of my muscle and I dont spill over...

But its too late for water and sodium...

Next time ill do it right

[Menna]

Ok so for my next show keep sodium the same keep water at a gallon or more a day low on carbs mon tues wed thurs and then fri night and sat start adding them in as needed...Sounds alot easier then what I am doin

So for this show there is nothing I can do about the sodium or water cause I started dropping it already but from tonight till around 2pm (on stage) sat i wont go over 475 carbs

32g's of carbs from yams (4 OZ= 32 g) and 3 rice cakes with little natty PB thats around 32g of carbs and 50gs of protein from chicken per meal

for 9 meals starting thurs night till sat morning - That leaves me at 288g of carbs sat morning

Then steak and 3 pancakes sat moring 7 am and then 8am 1 rice cake with Natty PB every half hour after the meal till show time that will put me around 450g of carbs at around 2pm on sat

All I can do for this show is keep the carbs under 475...

THanks you for the last min help

[Cytrainer913]

carbs are usually done like this and this will be very different for most of us in terms of amounts and what we can handle in terms of metabolisms:

carbs can be slightly adjusted down for those that need to deplete, and others can stay real low for the whole week due to being big endos, and ectos will be very high and might stay almost the same the whole week.

sat/sun-can be low points my samples but not for all i am an endo/meso and carb sensitive and 145 lbs max for a show
100 g's

water here is about 2 gallons per day and maybe 1.75 gallons on fri

mon-usually highest point 225 g's
tues-200
wed-175
thurs-150
fri-150
sat listed below:

Saturday amall meals have about 6-8 oz of water
1-2 am 1/2 c sweet potato, 6 oz water
drink 32 oz of water upon waking and with 30 minutes of light cardio
5-6 am Meal One: 4 oz steak, 1/2 c sweet potato
After your 5-6 am meal, do a slow 20 minutes of pump-up room-like work (pushups, pullups, etc.) to break a light sweat.
2 hrs later Meal Two: half a protein bar, half a banana
2 hrs later Meal Three: 4 oz steak, 1/2 c sweet potato, 1 tbsp honey in sweet potato
If needed If we need another meal time-wise, we'll talk about it here.
30 min. before 2 rice cakes, 1 tsp PB and Jam on each
prejudging

Make sure you get a decent upper body warm-up in the pump-up room; not too aggressive, but a light sweat and some good sets.
After prejudge Repeat cycle, increase water for first meal to 16 oz. Change to chicken breast, from steak.
Take a couple salt packets with you. If you start to cramp ( you shouldn't, but if you do ) take a pinch under your tongue with al little water.
Take extra food - including a couple of blueberry or banana nut muffins and even a slice or two of pizza - we'll talk before prejudging.
Also, take a packet of NOXplode for prejudging in case I want to use it.

[Menna]

Ill follow that for my next show...

Im gonna follow what I did for my last show for the one this sat...

I have been on 0 carbs sence monday...

Tonight I will slowly put carbs back in my body till sat around 2pm I wont go over 475gs of carbs though...

[teezlr]

WOW! Good read! Thanks!

[Power-Quest]

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/drryan46.htm

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=3842591