Training against Metabolic Downgrade!
Metabolic Downgrade is a very r
eal problem in our community of competitors. It’s a popular topic of discussion online, especially here on RX Girl, but I’d like to touch on it some more and share my experience as a contest coach fighting against it!
First, for those of you who have not read up on the subject let me briefly give you an overview of the problem so you can understand the solution better, and in case you are experiencing this issue yourself you can recognize it and correct it before it really takes a hold of you. Metabolic downgrade is what happens when athletes diet for too long. Their bodies become used to the clean food, the frequent small feedings and used to a lowered caloric intake, so much so that they become resistant to losing weight and body fat. What program once shocked their metabolism into overdrive and turned them into a fat burning furnace, can actually become nearly ineffective over a long period of time leaving athletes tired and frustrated. This problem is occurring more now than ever because of the frequency at which athletes compete. For instance Bikini competitors will compete 5, 6, 10 times per year whereas bodybuilders tend to only compete 1-3 times per year. Competitors that are on stage this many times in a year are dieting almost year round. They look great all year but the problems generally happen after the diet is over. Their body has become accustomed to eating 6 small meals a day and training hard on a limited caloric intake. After a long season, when it’s time to be “normal”, it can be VERY easy to put on body fat. Gaining weight becomes hard to avoid, and many competitors won’t stress over it because their next contest diet will begin soon and the weight will come right back off! Hopefullly….. When the next diet begins it will be harder than the one previous, partly because rebounds generally cause competitors to exceed previous offseason body weights, and secondly because their metabolisms have been damaged by a long year of contest dieting. After a few seasons and offseasons, it can be very frustrating as your body fights against your efforts to prepare for the stage.
This is a relatively new problem for me, and my experience as a contest coach. When working with a large female client base in the past (pre-bikini division days), this would only occur to figure clients competing on a frequent basis, but not to the degree that my bikini clients now experience this. I believe this is because figure clients are usually training hard and heavy to gain muscle and eating lots of clean calories in the offseason, whereas many bikini competitors reach their desired level of muscularity very quickly and are expected to maintain a lower body weight through the offseason. This higher calorie, hard training offseason usually is enough to repair a metabolism and keep normal training and dieting programs effective. I have been training bikini competitors since the start of the division and in these athletes is where this has become an issue. The frequency of the competitive schedule, the speed at which bikini competitors expect to advance through the ranks, the size of the rebounds after long diets and the lack of necessity to continue to gain muscle is what I have narrowed down to be our main issues. So now let’s talk about how to combat this!
First and foremost maintain a sensible offseason body weight is KEY! When competitors get heavier and heavier in there offseasons it amplifies the problem. Maintaining a sensible offseason weight (for my clients it is 8 pounds of their 1 week out weight) will be the best way to keep your precontest diets from getting to rigorous. And it really only takes ONE good offseason to keep a trend of sensible weight gain every offseason let me explain by providing an example. I had a competitor gain 15 pounds after a long season. This made the following contest prep much harder because there was much more to lose. Because the prep was much harder the next rebound was 20 pounds. Seeing this trend we kept a strict o
ffseason rule of 8 pounds. Because she has only gained 8 pounds her next prep was not nearly as hard as the two previous and she didn’t feel burnt out by the end of it, so now maintaining a healthy weight is much easier.
Training against Metabolic Downgrade
While maintaining a sensible weight is key, I have found that using Metabolic Interval Training a few times during the year is the best way to fight against this issue. MIT is not a popular training style in the competitive niche of fitness, but it is very popular amongst trainers and athletes outside this small circle. I spoke about this on my article about crossfit, for those of you that would like to read that it can be found here (http://www.rxmuscle.com/rx-girl-articles/4819-crossfit-whats-all-this-crossfit-hoopla-anyway.html)
Just to sum up MIT, it’s a series of strength movements, plyometrics and cardio training all performed in a sequence with very little rest. It is meant to burn a ton of calories during the session and create a metabolic afterburn that will keep your burning fat for longer. There are ton’s of great articles out there about MIT and the studies that have been done on it’s success, but for the purpose of this article I will just explain it’s use to a competitor and provide a sample routine.
I use MIT on athletes after they have finished a contest diet. This is often when they want to slow down on their cardio activity, and their metabolisms need some repairing after a prep, or series of preps. I also use some MIT during contest prep, if competitors need a metabolic boost or are having trouble dropping body fat through traditional methods. It can be very effective in both of these scenarios. It is NOT ideal for a competitor that needs to gain a good amount of muscle or fill in weak body parts. Many MIT advocates will disagree with me on that, but I don’t think it’s even close to the best way to add muscle to any competitors’ frame because of the lack of rest and difficulty to use heavy loads during training in this style.
So let’s give you an example of MIT and let you try it out yourself!
You can let MIT fit your current training split, it will just effect the exercises in which you will choose. For this example let’s use leg training, but it can be applied to any body part or group of body parts.
I like to start with 1-3 exercises performed in straight sets based on an athlete’s weak points. So for instance, if you are looking to bring up your glutes and hamstrings I’d recommend starting your workout with
Glute Kickbacks 4 sets of 15 with 90seconds rest in between
Lying Hamstring Curl 4 sets of 12 with 90 seconds rest in between
Stiff leg dead lift 4 sets of 10 with 90 seconds rest in between
Now it’s time to start the MIT.
Circuit 1, perform all 5 exercises with prescribed reps consecutively with NO BREAKS. Repeat three times through, again with no breaks.
-90 second sprint on elliptical
-Smith Machine Squats
x 20
-Leg Press x 20
-Mountain Climbers x 50
-Weighted Walking Lunges 12 steps each leg
Circuit 2, perform all 5 exercises with prescribed reps consecutively with NO BREAKS. Repeat three times through, again with no breaks.
-Jump Rope 90 seconds
-Bulgarian Split Squat x 15 ea. Leg
-Seated Hamstring Curl x 15
-Tire (or box) jumps x 20
-Abductor x 15
Happy Training!
Greg McCoy
MetroflexPlano.com
GregMcCoy.net
Twitter.com/greg_mccoy
Facebook.com/TrainerGregMcCoy
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