It depends mainly on your body composition and the date of the competition. It’s best to have your body fat checked by an experienced practitioner. Water-immersion gets the most accurate results, but still fat-calipers work just fine if done correctly.
On the average bodybuilders begin dieting 8 to 12 weeks out from the competition date while some find 4 to 6 weeks to be sufficient. As long as you monitor your progress daily, specifically in the final weeks, you’ll do fine.
If you are not losing fat at a suitable pace then increase your cardio. According to the Ultimate Competition Guide, do your cardio in the morning on an empty stomach, as this forces your body to burn stored calories. This alone can produce marked results.
Competition diet is one of the most important aspects to preparing for a competition. The idea of the competition diet is to get the cut look. Cardio can help with this. However, since you are on a strict diet, at this time, exercise may work against you. Try to experiment until you know your body well.
The last week of the diet is a game of chance and many competitors test their diet tricks at this stage. The tricks are fat loading, carb loading, sodium loading and depletion. The purpose of these is to increase muscle density and fullness with maximum vascularity. You might have heard this being called “peaking.”
A bodybuilder can only keep the peak condition very short phase of time. For this reason, it is crucial that peak condition be reached during the competition – pre-judging – the morning show is ideal. If the bodybuilder doesn’t calculate his peak time correctly, like the day after or before the show, it is a real tragedy. All that hard work to watch the bodybuilder lose control of his body is tough to experience. The bodybuilder comes in one day ripped and vascular and the next day flat and smooth. It is a good idea to experiment and see what works best for your body.
