Muscle Ventures Podcasts

Nancy and I met April 28, the day before her contest, to videotape the poses that made up her required routine. We made some excellent pictures and short videos. You'll be seeing them over in the video analysis section of our site as we kick that back off in the next few weeks.

After the video session, we talked about her final contest prep for four minutes. You can view the 9 MB Quicktime movie of the conversation by clicking on Nancy's picture.

Nancy was feeling a little uptight about the rate at which her muscular vascularity was returning. The week before, it had been possible to see veins in her shoulders when she worked those muscles. After the carb deplete, that was not coming back fast enough for her comfort with under 24 hours before the show. Carb deplete is supposed to first diminish vascularity before carb load enhances it.

The major part of the conversation, however, was spent discussing her plans to cut water to get her muscle to better show through. I had previously discussed this aspect of her training with her consultant Kevin Kelsey. The idea is to get the skin to adhere to the muscle as much as possible by removing glycogen (carb depletion) and water.

On Tuesday before the show, she cut from her standard gallon of water per day to three-quarters gallon and started taking diuretics. By the time we spoke at 3 PM on Friday, she had quit drinking water at noon and was not planning to drink any serious quantity of water until after her show at approximately 9 PM the next day.

Of course, under this regimen, dehydration is a real danger with serious consequences. So, I asked Nancy how she was going to ensure safety. You can hear her answer by watching the video.

post scriptum: I am posting this after Nancy's competition which occurred yesterday. Nancy won the heavy weight open title, competed in a pose down for the overall open title (did not win), and placed in the master's competition. Afterwards, she drank lots of water, and ate Pizza with ham and bacon, two very fatty meats. She was very happy, and that was good to see after all she had been through. We will likely do a post-mortem podcast. I have posted photos of the after show festivities here.

Additional Links

• Many bodybuilders follow water removal (dehydration) regimens. This one uses Preparation H to remove subcutaneous water.
• The discussion boards at anabolic minds provide a good list of the signs of dehydration through its various stages.
• Exrx summarizes scientific studies on bodybuilders' nutritional practices. Many reported use of diuretics, and all followed a dehydration regimen.
• Tom Venuto follows a rather different water strategy his last three days. While he cuts water severely on the last day, he is much more generous with water before. His goal is to get water out from under the skin and into the muscle. One of his major concerns is that too much water depletion will deflate the muscle which is, after all, 70% water.