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Contest Training
You need to continue lifting weights to send the signal that
your body must hold onto that muscle you've built. Keep
lifting as you normally do. If you intentionally lift
lighter weights, the muscles may adjust to the decreased
stress put on them and be more likely to lose size,
especially since you’ll be at a calorie deficit. The goal in
contest dieting is to lose fat and retain muscle. Definition
comes from lowering overall body fat so there’s less of it
between the skin and muscle. You don’t really want the
muscle to change when dieting, you want it to be shown more
clearly, and that happens as fat is burned and skin is
closer to the muscle showing more lines (less cushioning
masking lines, cushioning meaning fat). You can add some
cardio to your exercise program to help with the burning of
fat. Cardiovascular exercise burns additional calories, and
continues burning fat long after the cardio session has been
completed. As the weeks go by, you can increase the cardio
session’s length, if needed, to continue losing 1-2 pounds
per week. Fitness and figure competitors (or women
competitors in general) may need to do more cardio than a
male bodybuilder due to slower metabolisms, in part from
female genetics and in part from not carrying as much muscle
mass as a male bodybuilder.
Just beware when dieting that you don’t overdo it. If you do
too much exercise without taking in enough fuel (food) your
body can actually work against you. It can go into
starvation mode and fight to hold onto fat instead of
burning it for energy. You have to keep a slight negative
caloric balance, not an excessive one. Symptoms of over
dieting/exercising are your legs starting to feel heavy when
you walk, energy becoming drastically low for longer than a
few hours (like for days), strength while working out goes
down drastically, and metabolism slowing down (less frequent
bowel movements). If these things happen, you’re not burning
fat as efficiently as you could be, and trying to diet and
train becomes harder!
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