What is your diet like in the off-season and what is your off-season training split like?
I have tried it all in the past when it comes to off-season eating. I remember after my first show, I made the rookie mistake of eating all I could get my hands on. I was eating pizza, ice cream, Weight Gainers...this approach only did one thing: gain too much fat. After my second show, I took a different approach. I tried to eat as clean as I could and in doing this, my off-season was more like a contest diet and I did not get the shock value of changing my diet up to a contest diet. Doing this made my contest diet even harder, because I felt like I had been dieting for a long time already. So after my third show I found the right way to do my off-season. The way I do my off-season diet now is a little bit of both worlds. I pretty much eat whatever I want, but in limits. I drink three shakes per day, two shakes being weight-gain shakes and one being just a whey shake with oats. For my other three meals, I eat solid food, but I don’t have anything written down. I just make sure I eat 10-16 ounces of meat or 8-12 whole eggs, and with my first two solid meals, I make sure I get carbs with them. Typical day looks like this:

Meal 1: 10 whole eggs and 1 cup oats

Shawn Ray, Ronnie Coleman and other bodybuilders are known for doing the unthinkable… taking time off after competing. Many bodybuilders find it difficult to take time off, mostly due to psychological reasons of being ‘addicted’ to training. Bodybuilders are not the only ones; many endurance athletes also have a psychological addiction to exercise.
The testosterone-to-cortisol ratio has been suggested as a useful indicator of training stress.1 A delicate balance must occur between anabolic hormones (testosterone, IGF-1) and catabolic hormones such as cortisol in bodybuilders looking to make continuous gains in strength and muscle mass. Changes in the testosterone-to-cortisol ratio (TCR) have been positively related to weight training performance.2 Overtraining is the kiss of death for increasing size and mass. But like a muscular ‘fiddler on the roof,’ a bodybuilder must maintain a delicate balance. Increases in cortisol and decreases in testosterone and insufficient recovery are associated with overtraining.3,4 What researchers are now discovering is that recuperating from overtraining may take longer than previously thought.