Peak Week Plans

Peak week is the final week of your preparation before your competition. At this stage your body is almost ready for the stage. You should have reached a low level of body fat and you should be able to see your muscle. The “Peak Week” helps your condition to “Peak” in the final stages of your physical prep. 

Because you are low in body fat and have been eating clean for a long time your body is highly conditioned, therefore very responsive. Any food or liquid that you put into your body on peak week will affect your onstage condition. Therefore we need to choose our food carefully. It should be pure, simple, clean. It needs to feed your muscle and fire your metabolism. It needs to pull water retention out of the skin.

During peak week we need to prepare our body for the stage. Traditionally, bodybuilders dehydrate themselves so that the skin and fat cells have no water retention in them and so the skin sits  tight and firm against the muscle to highlight your shape and your definition. 

The dehydration process needs to be done carefully. It can put the kidneys under excessive stress so we need to prepare your kidneys for this. Also, as you dehydrate the water can leave the muscle bellies therefore your muscle can appear smaller. So a specific order of water loading then dehydration needs to occur so that the muscle can retain water but the skin can be dehydrated. 

Excess water in the body during carb loading will carry the carbs into the cells under the skin and blur the tight, shredded look so the peak week nutrition needs to work in conjunction with the water plan ensuring that the carbohydrate loading at the end of the peak week will load the muscle with carbs but without showing in the skin.

Sodium in the cells under the skin can also blur the tight, shredded look that bodybuilders desire. It is crucial to remove salt from the diet in the peak week however the current condition of the athlete can determine when the salt is best taken out. There are different methods around that determine how and when salt is removed. However the reintroduction of salt on the day of competition can assist in highly conditioned bodybuilders to achieve the vascular (veined), shredded look that makes the physique look “extreme”. Therefore salt can be used to manipulate the desired look for your class on show day. 

Your kidneys do not like to go for more that 48 hours without sodium. After this time they will go into troubleshooting mode and can flush your system with stored sodium. When this occurs we can have the opposite result from the look we want to achieve, and can appear “softer” and less ripped. Therefore decisions about salt on peak week are crucial so that you hit the exact criteria for your class.

Warning! These are not plans for yumminess! These are plans to get your body to do what you want it to look like on stage! In my peak Week Nutrition plans you will see lean meat and fish specified in grams. Specific vegetables are suggested. For best results do not deviate from the plan. Follow it consistently! My plans are gluten free and dairy free and you need to eat each meal every 2.5-3 hours apart. There are some supplement suggestions and guidelines also.