It’s my philosophy that you want to be extremely conditioned for a bodybuilding show weeks before you hit the stage. But with multiple shows per year, this means peaking from show date to show date. It’s hard work, with an easy bar for failure. But having a solid peak week bodybuilding plan and knowing how to lean out efficiently are cornerstones to successful conditioning, contest after contest.
I am currently in the midst of preparing for my second show of the 2024 bodybuilding season, the Vancouver Pro, and I have been stage lean for several weeks now. This body fat level is maintainable short term, but it’s not sustainable. It works for me because I’m careful, meticulous, and always stick to my plan.
What Is Conditioning In Bodybuilding?
In a broad sense, bodybuilding conditioning is the process of leaning out your physique to visually amplify your cut muscularity and vascularity. In essence, it’s about honing a completely shredded look, one that may just win you a competition.
There are some general, widely adopted practices for conditioning your body for show:
- Cutting body fat percentage down to the bare minimum
- Strategically working out at high-intensity
- Performing the right amount and type of cardio
- Dialing in your diet right down the calorie
- Manipulating variables (if that’s your thing)
But bodybuilding conditioning to such an intense degree comes with a fair share of risks. Pushing your body to this extreme alters hormones levels, sleep, mood, libido, and increased focus on food. It doesn’t just pose a risk to your body, but also to the responsibilities in your daily life. The lowered energy makes you less productive at work and more disconnected in relationships. Being this lean is not a conducive spot to grow muscle either.
What Is Peak Week Bodybuilding?
Peak week bodybuilding involves getting your body to its peak physique—and maintaining that appearance—in the final week immediately preceding your show. This is when bodybuilders focus on their training and diet like mad to look as hard as humanly possible on stage. Many people take to manipulating diet and fitness variables during peak week, such as hydration, sodium intake, and workout routines. But know that this is just optional and there’s plenty of success to be had in sticking to a good peak week plan that feels more like an extension of your prep, not a scramble to compensate for losses.
What Body Fat Percentage Is Stage Lean?
Body fat percentages will vary from competitor to competitor, class to class, and by gender. (And, depending on the competitor, maybe by ego.) To keep things scientific, the general body fat percentage throughout most of prep is 9.6% to 16.3% for the guys and 15.3% - 25.2% for the ladies. Closing in on competition however, those numbers drop to 5.8% - 10.7% and 8.1% to 18.3%, respectively.
One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of bodybuilders find themselves five or six weeks out from show with no idea what their target body fat percentage should be. Do not follow in their footsteps. Do your research and incorporate that target percentage into your prep.
How To Lean Out Before Competition
As you prep for a bodybuilding show, you should already be at or near your show physique, which means you’ve already built your muscle mass. There’s no time to get bigger now, but you do have time to maintain leanness.
Think of this existing on a spectrum: the farther from your offseason comfortable body fat set-point you are, the more challenging maintaining can be.
So, after all the heavy dieting, training, and cardio, you should be focused more on maintaining a lean physique as opposed to honing one. This is a good thing. Because once lean, the tortuous digging for final fat loss is over. You can step out of the war trench and breathe some. Some, being the operative word.
Here’s what can be done about the systemic fatigue, training, and diet fatigue that ushers in that world of hurt during your bodybuilding pre contest prep:
Food is Moving Up
This makes you feel drastically more energetic, no more zombie brain and training improves. You may be able to keep increasing food pretty high and stay lean. Hunger is manageable here and food focus is low.
I generally start with a 10% increase in calories, all coming from carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are the main macro we typically reduce when dieting, so increasing this will reverse a lot of the fat loss phase negatives you may be experiencing. If hunger is a struggle or sweet cravings are strong, I like to increase fruits in meals to bring in some nutrient-dense items to my plan. I also like putting a majority around training to support performance and recovery.
Cardio is Moving Down
You have to weigh out if cardio or the diet is killing you harder. Knowing how to stay lean means knowing that if you drop some cardio, you can’t afford to increase food or you’ll lose your image. Vice versa, if you up your cardio appropriately, you might be able to do the same with your food. Do what you need to make the perception of the fat loss phase easier.
Two of my best bodybuilding preparation tips for cardio are:
- If you’re doing direct cardio work, like 30 minutes on the elliptical, you can start with a 10-minute reduction.
- Track your steps. This is a great tool to increase your food intake or lessen your direct cardio work, as steps are a very low burden on fatigue.
Fat loss Supplements are Needs Based
To create the full story of energy balance when leaning out, we essentially are looking at three avenues:
- Calories burned through activity
- Calories consumed through nutrition
- Calories burned through fat loss supplements
Don’t exclude that last one! Fat loss supplements like our Animal Cuts can make a big difference for your calorie burn for the day.
A lot of people neglect the potential of fat loss supplements because they don’t understand how to incorporate it into their bodybuilding conditioning plan. The key is to not manipulate too many variables simultaneously. I don’t like to change too many things all at once, so in the first week of my maintenance plan I continue taking fat burner supplements. It would not be smart to drop out the Animal Cuts and your cardio, while at the same time increase your food intake. That may cause you to gain weight instead of maintain it. So I recommend adjusting cardio and diet only, monitor the response, then decide whether to leave in the fat burners or drop them out of the plan.
Weight Training is Held Steady
Because it doesn’t take much training to maintain muscle, training volume should be kept within your recovery capacity. Volume has already been reduced to uphold training performance through your fat-loss phase. What I like to do is leave training volume low until the point when increasing food and lowering cardio starts to allow training performance to pick back up. Later, we might consider a slight increase in volume, but for now maintaining gym performance is all that is needed.
The Relief of Maintenance
Increasing food can lead to more energy for training and daily life. As a coach, I often see clients continue to get leaner as I increase their food intake because that added energy allows them to burn far more calories for the day, since they have energy. It also improves mood and sleep, both of which lead to a happier and less fatigued state.
Final Thoughts On How To Stay Lean Between Shows
Despite how you feel keeping lean between shows, your ability to continue maintaining a show lean physique will depend on your genetic set point. It can be great to hold that look for multiple shows, photo shoots, or a couple months in the summer, but don’t set back your offseason progress by just trying to stay overly lean for too long.
About The Author
John Jewett is a IFBB pro, a top five Olympia competitor, and five-time powerlifting World Champion. Beyond his bodybuilding accolades, John holds a bachelors in Exercise Science, a Masters in Nutrition. He’s also a Registered Dietitian and self-proclaimed muscle nerd, generously sharing his extensive knowledge of fitness and nutrition with the Animal community.
