Krysten Janzen's top 5 tips for bikini competition peak week, covering water depletion, sodium intake, carb loading, drinking water, exercise and more.
“Today we're gonna talk about something that I know alot of you are very interested in… Peak Week!
I've gotten a lot of questions about this, so here are five tips that are going to help improve your peak week.
Before we get into these five tips let's just quickly address something very important, peak week is not as sexy as everybody makes it out to be. Everybody thinks that peak week is some magical week that is going to help get you shredded.
If you are ‘ready’ before peak week, then yes it is going to do a lot in regards to your fullness and how you're gonna look on stage.
However, I have to tell you, if you still have 5, 10 or even a few pounds to lose by peak week, it's not going to do too much. It will not be a secret magical week that's automatically just gonna get you shredded.
At the end of the day the importance of peak week is honestly going to depend on how ready you are.
Tip 1: we're going to talk about your water intake. I talked about this in a couple of my videos before but for the sake of convenience, we will retouch on it.
You actually don't have to cut water. People cut water as an attempt to get rid of the water that's held outside of the cell.
You have water inside the muscle and outside the muscle. The water that's stored inside the muscle is what makes you look full and it's what makes you appear more shredded.
The water that is outside of the muscle can make you look washed out and that you have “spilled over”. I’m sure you've heard that term before, that you look like you've spilled over.
When people cut water that's what they're trying to do but you actually can't control where the water comes from. It’s going to come from inside and outside of the cell. It's not just going to be outside of the cell when you go to cut water.
So people who do cut water, who are natural athletes typically look really washed out and flat on stage and you will usually hear that they can't get a pump backstage and that they look so much better a few days after their show.
Often they chalk it up to the fact that they've had more carbs, whereas it's actually not from the carbs thats making you look more full. It's actually from the water and sodium consumption post-show, so cutting water is a very old school mentality.
There has been new research to indicate that it is not necessary. So what do you do for water then?
People freak out when it comes to water. Honestly you want to keep it as consistent as possible. For example: I am consuming four litres of water and I have been for the last 12 weeks and I'm going to continue to consume four litres of water all the way up until the end of my peak week.
You want to keep it as consistent as possible which is why tracking your water intake is very important because some people will consume five liters of water and that’s very normal for people who have more active jobs.
I have a very sedentary lifestyle so consuming that much water isn’t necessary for me. Some people who have even more sedentary jobs and are sitting around even more than I am, taking 2 to 3 liters of water is more normal for them.
Make sure that whatever your intake is, throughout your entire prep is consistent all the way up until the end of peak week.
There are some situations where you can manipulate your water just a little bit during peak week, however, this is just going to depend strictly on your physique.
If you find that you're too hard and this is typically the case for a lot of bikini competitors. You're not supposed to be super hard and you're not supposed to be super vascular. So if you find that you are super hard going into a show during peak week then it does make sense to cut your water but not a dramatic amount like everybody does.
I suggest you cut your water Friday night for a full 12 hours, some people even 24 to 30 hours. You just want to do a moderate cut so scale back your water intake and taper it off throughout the week and then the day of your show just sipping on water.
In contrast if you have spilled over, for example: say you've done your prejudging the morning of your show and you notice that you have spilt over and you are going to try to recuperate and recover for the night time show.
When you find this happens it's very difficult to recover from a spillover but a good strategy to allow you to do this is actually to drink more water.
You actually want to dramatically increase your water intake in between the morning and the night time show. You also want to increase your amount of pump ups and even your sodium intake from morning to night as well.
This is obviously going to depend on the person. Everybody is different so it's very difficult for me to give you a correct percentage of how much water you should actually increase but you just really want to pay attention to your body.
People think that cutting water is going to reduce the spillover but it's actually the opposite. You actually want to increase your water intake and really increase your pump up sessions throughout the rest of the day. That's really going to help you as best as you can to recover from a spillover. ...
