Relentless Pursuit: Staying In Shape During Off-Season

Build Muscle Without Gaining Fat

Presented by Allmax Nutrition

I’ve seen your off-season pictures and you stay in good shape. How do you transition from prep to off-season?

This is a great question and one I feel is very important, especially for new competitors. After 12 to 16 weeks of hardcore dieting, your metabolism and insulin sensitivity are primed to build muscle following a competition, but it will also refill and even build new fat cells if you start stuffing your face with crap, especially high saturated fat content crap! The biggest mistake people make is that after months of consistent feedings every three hours or so to get their metabolism and fat burning firing, suddenly their structure goes out the window and they start eating haphazardly with no set meal timing schedule anymore. This will slow down the metabolism and leads to faster fat gain.

There’s nothing wrong with having some food that you have been craving post competition, but remember it’s the building season (not week), so you don’t have to have everything you’ve been craving for the last four months in a few days or even two weeks after the show. What I do is have a cheat meal the night of the show and always a good breakfast the next morning (whatever I want), then I incorporate clean meals back every three hours to keep my metabolism firing and burn off some of the junk I ate after the show. Then every couple of days, when I want to, I’ll have another cheat meal. The biggest trick is making sure you keep eating the clean meals with the dirty meals to keep metabolism firing. Don’t abandon clean eating or have an entire cheat “day.” This will keep fat gain down and help you process the nutrients needed to build muscle after a show and not just get fat like so many competitors do!

In simple terms, for the first couple of weeks after a show I keep my baseline diet about the same as it was about three to four weeks out from the show to accommodate some of the cheat meals without spilling over. Then as I get tired of the cheat meals and feel satisfied, I will slowly increase carbs to stay full and start slowly putting on clean weight. Then once I feel I’ve reached my carb threshold, meaning my muscle glycogen storage tanks are full and I’m no longer gaining weight, that’s when I will add good healthy fats to increase calories like avocado, mixed nuts, or olive oil. The whole thing is you have to do the same thing every day and take notes to be able to track results through scale weight and visually assess yourself as well to see when changes need to be made, one way or another!

Bottom line: Have some discipline post show to make sure you don’t undo all your hard work in a few short weeks and you will greatly benefit the next time you prep for a show! Remember there is no need to put on a bunch of weight that you will have to diet off. As long as you are in a calorie surplus you will build muscle mass. Just because you add a lot more calories doesn’t mean you will build muscle any faster! Implement this as a lifestyle and it will become second nature.

The Right Nutrition to Build Muscle and Improve Recovery

How does your supplementation change from off-season to pre-contest? Do you change products at different times or just amounts used?

I’m a big intra-workout nutrition advocate and I believe there’s tremendous benefit to drinking BCAAs, glutamine, creatine, vasodilators and for me lots of carbs during a workout, as I’ve talked about before. 

I use 2 scoops of Aminocore (16 grams of BCAAs), 10 grams of glutamine, 5 grams of creatine, 1 scoop of Impact Pump, and most of the time for me, 2 scoops of Carbion (100 grams of carbs).

I always use these same dosages, except at times in prep when fat might not be coming off as quickly as I might like. In those instances, I reduce my intra-workout carbs to 50 grams instead of 100 grams, but I always try to keep them up as much as possible to make sure my workouts are productive, energetic and powerful. That way I’m always building muscle during weight training and using cardio and diet for fat loss. Also for recovery year-round, my go-to post workout is 2 scoops Isoflex protein powder— but in the off-season I’ll add another scoop of Carbion (50 grams of carbs) to it for extra glycogen replenishment that I might not do during prep unless I feel I’m getting a little flatter than I should be at that point! As you can see, things need to be adjusted in prep depending on what’s going on and how you are looking.

I use Impact Igniter as my pre-workout year-round, but when body fat levels get low and carbs are reduced from meals it’s that much more important to me to help push me through my workouts. I rely on the pre-workout at those times not only for the stimulants in it but also the cognitive effects from the lion’s mane mushroom and the alpha-GPC. Give it a try and I promise you won’t be disappointed!

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Website: www.teamwadefitness.com

Instagram: @ifbbprojoshwade and @teamallmax

For more information, visit allmaxnutrition.com

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