PRAETORIAN
New member
(from AE)
I am writing to thank you for your valuable contributions to the contest prep regimen of Kevin - the competitor I trained for the NPC Jr. Nationals competition which was held in St Louis, MO this past weekend.
Here's the scoop:
Kevin is 5'6", 37 y.o., the father of two and comes from a powerlifting background. His father introduced him to the iron over twenty years ago when Kevin was a chubby-faced, bushy-haired teen with an attitude. He has competed 6 times previously and this was his first national-level competition. He qualified for the Jr. Nationals by placing 2nd in the Middleweight class at the Missouri State Open last year.
Kev had managed to put on over 20 pounds (both lean and soft) over the winter. I took charge of his regimen in March when he weighed 202lbs. at about 11%bf. Over the course of his 12 week pre-contest diet we managed to pack on over 7lbs of lean mass while dieting off over 11lbs of fat. I'd imagine this statement evokes some skepticism - allow me to explain:
Kevin had been cycling Ergopharm's Andro Spray on and off for over a year but was otherwise a steroid virgin. Realizing that it would be difficult to get Kevin "national-level" lean (he is an endo-mesomorph with a slight emphasis on the "endo-"), he opted to try Gee-Aych to help reduce abdominal fat and preserve lean mass while dieting (8IU, 3x weekly - we of course would've preferred to do 4IU or more daily but had to go 3x weekly for convenience's sake - Kev didn't want to take drugs and needles home as they would be difficult to hide from his kids so he drove 30 minutes each way to my home 3x/week for menus, bf% analyses, and IM/SQ drug administration). Initially our goal was to get Kevin down to 176.25lbs which would have qualified him for the Middleweight class. For the first 3 weeks we used a moderate isocaloric diet to sort of break Kevin in to the "fun" which was to come. In his fourth week we switched to a lower calorie, higher protein diet and he lost over 5lbs of lean mass during the fourth week. This alarmed us so we decided that a more aggressive anabolic regime would be necessary to preserve his hard-earned lean mass. We began administration of 50mg a-drol/daily and 100mg tren acetate 3x/weekly.
During weeks 5-8, Kevin packed on several pounds of lean and lost equivalent pounds of fat. He never fell below 199lbs and we quickly realized that our goal of 176.25lbs wasn't going to be realized. We switched our focus to the Light-heavyweight class (cut-off of 198.25lbs) and increased his tren dosage to 150mg/3x weekly while adding 900mg daily of Ergopharm's 1-AD. We were finding it impossible to decrease the skinfold measurements on his back and legs and decided Kevin hadn't suffered enough. It was time to resort to more drastic measures. Kev performed 2-1/2 weeks of carb-depletion dieting consisting of 1650kcal daily with only 41g of carbs. He was allowed
controlled refeeds every 5th day and trained according to the following grueling schedule: lower body, upper body, rest, whole body, rest, repeat.
He lost it for a day during week 10 and on a low-carb day went for pizza, hostess, and various other crap. He quit counting his calories that afternoon at 6000kcal. His wife busted him in the kitchen where he had been sneaking Nutter Butters. She picked the dish towel up off the kitchen counter where Kev had hidden a neat little pile of peanut-shaped, carb- and fat-laden sin-sandwiches. For shame, for shame...
On Wednesday of the week of the contest Kevin performed his last workout - upper body, hi reps, slow eccentrics, explosive concentrics. I had the privilege of training him on this day and tried my best to push him to the limit. His last exercise was d-bell lateral raises as part of a tri-set at the end of a 22+ set workout. He squeezed up 20lbs for 12, then 15lbs for 8, then 10lbs for the last 8. Poor guy had to cheat to get up the last 2 reps. Imagine the painful humor of watching a 200lb man whimper while mustering all the momentum and bad form he could to get 10lbs to just above shoulder-parallel. The GIRL next to us curling 25's got a good chuckle out of it.
Immediately following this workout Kevin downed 100g of dextrose dissolved in distilled water with a bit of Kool-Aid drink mix. After 2-1/2 weeks of carb depletion, the grin this evoked would have made one think it was the first sugar he had ever tasted in his life. This he took with an exact dosage of fast-acting ins-lin, then went home for a mixed-carb supper. We continued to carb him up all day Thursday with 4 administrations of ins-lin plus simple carbs. During this big carb-up day Kev slammed down over 2-1/2 gallons of distilled water along with 4 administrations creatine and blew-up like a (non-Firestone) car tire: solid and full, hard and with striae and vascularity like brand new treads. We knew we were on the right track.
He arrived in St Louis on Friday afternoon looking bigger, leaner, and better groomed than he has ever been in his life. At 5:15pm he did a trial weigh-in on the official scale which read 202lbs. With the cut-off for weigh-in scheduled for 7pm, we had 1 hour an 45 minutes to peel off 3.75lbs. 50mg L-six (30mg SQ and 20mg push IV) and 1.5 hours later he weighed in at exactly 198.25lbs. The scale was oscillating right at the 198.25 mark - we had nailed it by the skin of our teeth.
After feeding Kev and putting him to bed, we all grimaced at the thought of a 4:30am wake-up call. He shared a hotel room with his wife, and his friend Bill. They had gotten screwed with a crappy room containing only 2 full-sized beds and no coffee maker. After demanding a coffee maker for the morning, his wife and Bill woke up, deposited the requisite water and pre-measured coffee pouch, pushed the "on" button, and nothing happened. The damn thing didn't work. By 6am a carb-inental breakfast was laid out in the lobby but with one catch - it wasn't complimentary - you had to pay for the friggin muffins and bananas. What's up with that?
Frosted flakes, 2 oz. banana, and sodium-free baby food doped with dextrose were the fare of the early morning. 40mg L-six (20mg SQ and 20mg push IV) had Kev dry but not flattened out by any means. He was full, lean, mean, tan, carbed-up, dried out, feeling good, and ready for the 8am competitors' meeting (which, of course, didn't commence until sometime around 9am).
Fitness was the first category up for pre-judging followed by women's BB, then the new class called "Figure." This category attracted what seemed like hundreds (but was probably more like 40) primped and coiffed,
flat-stomached young ladies, many of whom wobbled and weaved on their brand-new, 6", clear-soled stripper stilettos. I kept thinking to myself, "OK, you're all gorgeous...you'll all be asked for your hand in marriage well before the age of 30...you all deserve magazine contracts...now GET OFF THE FUCKING STAGE before my guy goes flat!" After the Bantamweight, Lightweight, and Middleweight male BB'ers did their thing we all braced ourselves for the moment of truth...and out paraded the same friggin' 40 Figure competitors, this time in their 1-piece swimsuits instead of bikinis.
I can't remember how many little high-glycemic meals we had to shove down Kevin's throat to keep him full. This had him in an almost constant state of hunger all morning as his insulin spiked and receded ump-teen times. Nervousness couldn't fight off the hunger response and seemed to aggravate rather than blunt his appetite. We joined a small group sitting on the steps outside the ballroom with 3 or 4 nervous competitors forcing down small servings of yams, belly-up on the carpet with their feet elevated on their gym bags.
Finally, at around 2pm, it was time for the Light-heavies. This was the largest category comprised of 25 competitors divided into 3 groups of 8 or 9. Only 15 could qualify for finals, so 10 would have to be eliminated
cutting short the big day they had planned for so many days, weeks, and years. Kevin was part of the third and final group. He wore a brand new pair of pro-cut, turquoise-colored trunks ordered from the back of a BB magazine just one week previous. He was sandwiched in between two monsters who overshadowed Kevin by at least 2 or 3 inches of height. I can't see how these guys made 198.25lbs - they must've been masters of diuresis.
Kevin hit his 7 mandatories with style. His face was relaxed and his broad smile reflected his confidence as well as his genuine nice-guy personality. His complexion gleamed with just the right amount of posing oil (not the injectable kind) and his legs, which are his greatest asset, dwarfed those of his fellow competitors. The judges couldn't have missed his definite ham/glute and ham/quad separation. His bi's had good peaks and his tri's were huge, hard horseshoes with more stripes than Tony the Tiger. His midsection looked great as Kev possesses those awesome square abs which line up at perfect right angles to one another. Obliques and serrati were all there. It was apparent to me that his chest wasn't quite as thick or ripped as those of the guys next to him and despite 10lb lateral raises to failure, his delts never got as striated as we had hoped. Regardless, Kevin flew through his mandatories with grace and a bit of flash and we felt entirely confident that he would earn good call-outs.
Some good insights for all!
Peace,
P
I am writing to thank you for your valuable contributions to the contest prep regimen of Kevin - the competitor I trained for the NPC Jr. Nationals competition which was held in St Louis, MO this past weekend.
Here's the scoop:
Kevin is 5'6", 37 y.o., the father of two and comes from a powerlifting background. His father introduced him to the iron over twenty years ago when Kevin was a chubby-faced, bushy-haired teen with an attitude. He has competed 6 times previously and this was his first national-level competition. He qualified for the Jr. Nationals by placing 2nd in the Middleweight class at the Missouri State Open last year.
Kev had managed to put on over 20 pounds (both lean and soft) over the winter. I took charge of his regimen in March when he weighed 202lbs. at about 11%bf. Over the course of his 12 week pre-contest diet we managed to pack on over 7lbs of lean mass while dieting off over 11lbs of fat. I'd imagine this statement evokes some skepticism - allow me to explain:
Kevin had been cycling Ergopharm's Andro Spray on and off for over a year but was otherwise a steroid virgin. Realizing that it would be difficult to get Kevin "national-level" lean (he is an endo-mesomorph with a slight emphasis on the "endo-"), he opted to try Gee-Aych to help reduce abdominal fat and preserve lean mass while dieting (8IU, 3x weekly - we of course would've preferred to do 4IU or more daily but had to go 3x weekly for convenience's sake - Kev didn't want to take drugs and needles home as they would be difficult to hide from his kids so he drove 30 minutes each way to my home 3x/week for menus, bf% analyses, and IM/SQ drug administration). Initially our goal was to get Kevin down to 176.25lbs which would have qualified him for the Middleweight class. For the first 3 weeks we used a moderate isocaloric diet to sort of break Kevin in to the "fun" which was to come. In his fourth week we switched to a lower calorie, higher protein diet and he lost over 5lbs of lean mass during the fourth week. This alarmed us so we decided that a more aggressive anabolic regime would be necessary to preserve his hard-earned lean mass. We began administration of 50mg a-drol/daily and 100mg tren acetate 3x/weekly.
During weeks 5-8, Kevin packed on several pounds of lean and lost equivalent pounds of fat. He never fell below 199lbs and we quickly realized that our goal of 176.25lbs wasn't going to be realized. We switched our focus to the Light-heavyweight class (cut-off of 198.25lbs) and increased his tren dosage to 150mg/3x weekly while adding 900mg daily of Ergopharm's 1-AD. We were finding it impossible to decrease the skinfold measurements on his back and legs and decided Kevin hadn't suffered enough. It was time to resort to more drastic measures. Kev performed 2-1/2 weeks of carb-depletion dieting consisting of 1650kcal daily with only 41g of carbs. He was allowed
controlled refeeds every 5th day and trained according to the following grueling schedule: lower body, upper body, rest, whole body, rest, repeat.
He lost it for a day during week 10 and on a low-carb day went for pizza, hostess, and various other crap. He quit counting his calories that afternoon at 6000kcal. His wife busted him in the kitchen where he had been sneaking Nutter Butters. She picked the dish towel up off the kitchen counter where Kev had hidden a neat little pile of peanut-shaped, carb- and fat-laden sin-sandwiches. For shame, for shame...
On Wednesday of the week of the contest Kevin performed his last workout - upper body, hi reps, slow eccentrics, explosive concentrics. I had the privilege of training him on this day and tried my best to push him to the limit. His last exercise was d-bell lateral raises as part of a tri-set at the end of a 22+ set workout. He squeezed up 20lbs for 12, then 15lbs for 8, then 10lbs for the last 8. Poor guy had to cheat to get up the last 2 reps. Imagine the painful humor of watching a 200lb man whimper while mustering all the momentum and bad form he could to get 10lbs to just above shoulder-parallel. The GIRL next to us curling 25's got a good chuckle out of it.
Immediately following this workout Kevin downed 100g of dextrose dissolved in distilled water with a bit of Kool-Aid drink mix. After 2-1/2 weeks of carb depletion, the grin this evoked would have made one think it was the first sugar he had ever tasted in his life. This he took with an exact dosage of fast-acting ins-lin, then went home for a mixed-carb supper. We continued to carb him up all day Thursday with 4 administrations of ins-lin plus simple carbs. During this big carb-up day Kev slammed down over 2-1/2 gallons of distilled water along with 4 administrations creatine and blew-up like a (non-Firestone) car tire: solid and full, hard and with striae and vascularity like brand new treads. We knew we were on the right track.
He arrived in St Louis on Friday afternoon looking bigger, leaner, and better groomed than he has ever been in his life. At 5:15pm he did a trial weigh-in on the official scale which read 202lbs. With the cut-off for weigh-in scheduled for 7pm, we had 1 hour an 45 minutes to peel off 3.75lbs. 50mg L-six (30mg SQ and 20mg push IV) and 1.5 hours later he weighed in at exactly 198.25lbs. The scale was oscillating right at the 198.25 mark - we had nailed it by the skin of our teeth.
After feeding Kev and putting him to bed, we all grimaced at the thought of a 4:30am wake-up call. He shared a hotel room with his wife, and his friend Bill. They had gotten screwed with a crappy room containing only 2 full-sized beds and no coffee maker. After demanding a coffee maker for the morning, his wife and Bill woke up, deposited the requisite water and pre-measured coffee pouch, pushed the "on" button, and nothing happened. The damn thing didn't work. By 6am a carb-inental breakfast was laid out in the lobby but with one catch - it wasn't complimentary - you had to pay for the friggin muffins and bananas. What's up with that?
Frosted flakes, 2 oz. banana, and sodium-free baby food doped with dextrose were the fare of the early morning. 40mg L-six (20mg SQ and 20mg push IV) had Kev dry but not flattened out by any means. He was full, lean, mean, tan, carbed-up, dried out, feeling good, and ready for the 8am competitors' meeting (which, of course, didn't commence until sometime around 9am).
Fitness was the first category up for pre-judging followed by women's BB, then the new class called "Figure." This category attracted what seemed like hundreds (but was probably more like 40) primped and coiffed,
flat-stomached young ladies, many of whom wobbled and weaved on their brand-new, 6", clear-soled stripper stilettos. I kept thinking to myself, "OK, you're all gorgeous...you'll all be asked for your hand in marriage well before the age of 30...you all deserve magazine contracts...now GET OFF THE FUCKING STAGE before my guy goes flat!" After the Bantamweight, Lightweight, and Middleweight male BB'ers did their thing we all braced ourselves for the moment of truth...and out paraded the same friggin' 40 Figure competitors, this time in their 1-piece swimsuits instead of bikinis.
I can't remember how many little high-glycemic meals we had to shove down Kevin's throat to keep him full. This had him in an almost constant state of hunger all morning as his insulin spiked and receded ump-teen times. Nervousness couldn't fight off the hunger response and seemed to aggravate rather than blunt his appetite. We joined a small group sitting on the steps outside the ballroom with 3 or 4 nervous competitors forcing down small servings of yams, belly-up on the carpet with their feet elevated on their gym bags.
Finally, at around 2pm, it was time for the Light-heavies. This was the largest category comprised of 25 competitors divided into 3 groups of 8 or 9. Only 15 could qualify for finals, so 10 would have to be eliminated
cutting short the big day they had planned for so many days, weeks, and years. Kevin was part of the third and final group. He wore a brand new pair of pro-cut, turquoise-colored trunks ordered from the back of a BB magazine just one week previous. He was sandwiched in between two monsters who overshadowed Kevin by at least 2 or 3 inches of height. I can't see how these guys made 198.25lbs - they must've been masters of diuresis.
Kevin hit his 7 mandatories with style. His face was relaxed and his broad smile reflected his confidence as well as his genuine nice-guy personality. His complexion gleamed with just the right amount of posing oil (not the injectable kind) and his legs, which are his greatest asset, dwarfed those of his fellow competitors. The judges couldn't have missed his definite ham/glute and ham/quad separation. His bi's had good peaks and his tri's were huge, hard horseshoes with more stripes than Tony the Tiger. His midsection looked great as Kev possesses those awesome square abs which line up at perfect right angles to one another. Obliques and serrati were all there. It was apparent to me that his chest wasn't quite as thick or ripped as those of the guys next to him and despite 10lb lateral raises to failure, his delts never got as striated as we had hoped. Regardless, Kevin flew through his mandatories with grace and a bit of flash and we felt entirely confident that he would earn good call-outs.
Some good insights for all!
Peace,
P
