This is the third in our on-going Final Countdown Series of articles.

In Part 1 we covered how to get the most out of pre-contest dieting…

In Part 2 talked about couple do’s and don’ts of the ever-so-important pre-contest training…

If you haven’t done so already, now would be a great time to catch up and read these 2 articles—just make sure to come back when you’re done because today we’re covering…

After many weeks and months of training, the big day is finally at hand. Hopefully, you made sure your submission was in by the date marked on the registration material and joined the NPC already (if not, do it now!).

Here’s a list of items to make sure you have before you leave for the competition:

Good luck!

You’ve been training so long and now it’s time to shift gears in the last few weeks before the competition.

At this point, your goal is to walk the line between low intensity workouts and high intensity maximum lifting so you build and maintain muscle without injury. That means staying out of lower repetition ranges and avoiding anything that could lead to injury.

But do not change things up tremendously…

Welcome to the second installment of our Final Countdown series. In our last article we discussed the importance of pre-contest dieting and a couple tips on maximizing its effectiveness. Today we’ll be talking about training,

If you haven’t had a chance to read the first in the series, The Final Countdown to Competition Part 1 – Your Diet, you can check it out by clicking here.

You’ve been training so long and now it’s time to shift gears in the last few weeks before the competition.

At this point, your goal is to walk the line between low intensity workouts and high intensity maximum lifting so you build and maintain muscle without injury. That means staying out of lower repetition ranges and avoiding anything that could lead to injury.

But do not change things up tremendously. In the weeks before competition, you don’t want to be experimenting with your training routine. Instead, make small adjustments such as:

These small changes should give you the extra definition you’ll want to have on stage. Of course, you should be paying special attention to your diet during this time as well!

Finally, training is difficult and a lot of discipline is involved. You must take on a champion’s attitude—that nothing will stop you from your goal. And you must be willing to sacrifice many other activities in order to devote all of the time you need to training and dieting properly.

Don’t sway from this commitment. You’ve been working too hard to stop shy of the top!

How many times have you groaned when you saw a favorite athlete fall apart at the Olympics or other big competition?

It doesn’t matter how well trained you are physically—your mind can throw a wrench in the works in a heartbeat if it’s not equally prepared.

Any athlete who has sustained a long and successful career will tell you mental preparation is critical to performing your best. Yet, for many athletes, it one of the most neglected aspects of their training. Don’t make the same mistake!

Here are three keys to cultivating the mindset of success:

One of the most difficult aspects of bodybuilding is pushing yourself when you don’t want to. The training is endless and the attention to diet is nonstop. Top performers learn to motivate themselves.

Motivation comes from within. Others can inspire you, but the driving force comes from you alone. Without knowing what you want to achieve and why, it will be hard to maintain motivation!

Ways to keep yourself motivated include:

Visualization is picturing the outcome of an event before it takes place, which helps your mind lock onto the goal. Famous golfer Jack Nicholas called this “going to the movies.” He would visualize a putt rolling along the ground and into the cup over and over again. His mind then became conditioned to simply repeating what it had already seen on the course.

Visualization does not mean you will be able to lift a lot more weight than you ever have. But it can be a tiebreaker—the combination of your physical effort and mental imagery will be the one-two punch you need to achieve greater goals.

Find a competitor you admire and want to emulate. Strive to copy the best of their habits, routines, and attitudes. Modeling your efforts on those of a proven champion will speed your development.

This isn’t about stealing their personality and signature routines. Instead, you are applying your own personality and style to the framework of what they do. Eventually, your own framework will evolve as your career grows.

Overall, the more mental training you do to achieve success, the more likely you are to actually achieve that success—and more!

As you get closer to competition day, you should be adjusting your workout sessions and getting even more fanatical about your diet.

Recreational bodybuilders can get away with a less knowledgeable approach, but you need to know your diet inside out so you know exactly what you need to do to perform your best.

The way to be in total command of your diet is to:

You also want to stay anabolic in the final weeks before competition. That means you should eat constantly, with small meals throughout the day. Your body should never feel deprived or starve at any time.

Try to avoid creatine in the weeks leading up to competition. Other than that, consider adding these to the core bodybuilding supplements you’re probably already taking during the weeks leading up to competition:

Finally, the last few days before the competition are obviously NOT the time to try something new with your diet!

Getting stronger in all areas of your body is essential to layering muscle and cross training properly so you meet your bodybuilding goals. After all muscles don’t work in isolation. They support other muscles as well. Therefore if you skip strengthening one group of muscles, you can tank your overall results.

Here are a few things to remember…

While there is room for a variety of routines in your training, it is critical to build up the core routines in a systematic fashion. Squats, leg presses, deadlifts, bench presses, dips, rows and chin-ups are the building blocks of a successful routine for all competitors.

You can add personalized routines on top of these core exercises. But don’t neglect the core or your overall outlook will suffer.

One core area many bodybuilders skip is the legs, preferring to work on the more accessible upper body. But squats and deadlifts are core routines and you need to master them to maximize your performance for several reasons:

First, research shows that exercise in the legs has an overall positive effect on development of the entire body.

Second, it is important to develop the entire body. You don’t want to be out of proportion with a sculpted upper body and the lower body what seems to be a different person.

Third, the squat and deadlifts affect many parts of the body, including the lower back, thighs and glutes. As we said above, ignoring one set of muscles can take a toll on the others.

During the off-season, you should limit cardio workouts to once or twice a week to channel calories to muscle building as much as possible. During the competitive season, increase cardio to 3 to 4 times a week because it is critical to burning enough body fat to get that ripped, muscular profile you want.

Too many bodybuilders and weightlifters use the wrong technique day in and day out. You can’t be yanking the bar into a routine, or heaving, dropping, or allowing any other excessive range of motion. When you’re doing these things, an injury to yourself or others is almost in inevitable.

Proper technique will prevent injuries and ensure safety on the weight room floor. Forget about what your seventh grade football coach told you – no pain, no gain. Pain should be avoided at ALL costs. Focusing on a safe application of proper technique will put you on the way to massive gains.

Some of the most memorable bodybuilders were also great entertainers. Put on a show, ladies and gentlemen! Bodybuilding is entertainment. Think of the great performances that stick out in your mind. Maybe it’s old-school guys like Schwarzenegger and Ed Corny. Or new school folks like Darrem Charles or Tony Catanzaro. Each gets the crowd going in their own unique way.

You need to spend time developing a performance style of your own. You don’t have to be super flashy, but you do need a style or brand that best communicates your appeal. Overall, choosing the right routines, performing them safely, and working on your unique competition style, will put you in top shape for your next competition!

Supplements are an important part of competition preparation.

Problems arise when people begin to believe that claims of supplement manufacturers of building excessive amounts of muscle in an unbelievably short period of time. Don’t fall for it.

It is much more important to maintain diet and training consistency over a long period of time to reach your goals. Supplements themselves will not make up for problems in your diet or inconsistencies in your training regimen. However, some basic supplements can help your performance.

Yes, you could eat whole foods after a routine, but your body will process whey much faster and begin the repair process much quicker. And whey has a very positive protein to calorie ratio compared to whole foods.

Basically, the more creatine in your muscles, the more explosive you can be. Studies show that fast twitch muscle fibers contain the creatine – hence, it’s popularity with football players, track stars and similar athletes.

Your body will break down muscle in order to get the glutamate for immune cells and the digestive cells of the stomach and intestines. Also, your body will break down muscle tissue to produce more glutamine if enough isn’t found. Glutamine supplements help make sure there’s enough glutamine for these internal organs and muscles as well.

Whey is a complete protein that has become one of the staples of the body building world. It contains essential amino acids, is digested by your body rapidly, and is excellent in helping repair muscles after exercise.

A close second to whey in popularity is creatine. This supplement has been around since 1993 and is widely used throughout the sport. When lifting weights, the body uses a form of energy called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate). After ATP is used up, your body turns to glucose and glycogen.

Glutamine is important to your overall health, immunity system and muscle repair. Glutamine is the most productive amino acid in our muscles and makes up 60% of the amino acids in muscles.

Fish oil comes from deep sea and cold water fish. It’s a great source of Omega-3 essential fatty acids which help keep your brain and heart healthy and improves joint flexibility.

When you are training with weights and doing cardio constantly, you run the risk of basic vitamin and mineral deficiency. A basic multi-vitamin will act as insurance to make sure you are covered.

While there are many supplements out there promising the moon, some basic supplements are a smart part of your long-term diet and training plan.

Many bodybuilders hate cardio. To some, it seems like a waste of time to sit on a bike for 45 minutes.

But champions know cardio is important to getting the shredded look you need to succeed on competition day. During the off season, you can limit cardio. But once you are in a training mode, cardio must be part of the plan.

Cardio will not just burn fat, though—it will also pull oxygen into your muscles. To get maximum results, schedule cardio to 3 to 4 times a week. Try increasing cardio by 5 minutes each week until you are up to your desired level.

For some, that will be 2 hours a day (probably 1 hour in the morning and 1 at night) while others will complete 35 minutes and call it a day.

This is a common concern for bodybuilders and the answer is both yes and no.

When you are doing cardio, you start to burn calories in this order:

The challenge for bodybuilders is to stay in the first two categories. Super hard cardio will make your body reach into its muscle cells to keep the energy going. A very general guideline is that this will start to happen after around an hour of moderate to heavy activity.

Admittedly, this is an oversimplification. Carbs, proteins and fat all provide “food energy.” When we workout, we are burning that fuel. Anabolic activity (building up muscle or storing fat) needs an energy surplus. Catabolic activity (breaking down muscle and fat) needs an energy deficit.

So try to stay in the range where your body is burning carbohydrates and fats but not proteins. Runs of 20 to 30 minutes will barely burn any muscle so you should be safe. You can carb-load ahead of time in order to have extra fuel reserves.

Another way to keep your intensity at the right level is to shoot to work at about 65 percent of your maximum heart rate. To find your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220 and multiply it by 0.65. This is your ideal heart rate for burning fat.

Warming up and cooling off properly is a must for every cardio session. Jack LaLanne, the godfather of bodybuilding, was famous for dismissing the value of warming up before working out. He said, “Does a lion warm up when he’s hungry? No! He just goes out there and eats the sucker.”

However, studies show stretching helps speed up your body’s recovery process by reducing the stress on your muscles, connective tissues, heart and joints. It also increases the range of motion for a muscle—helping create space for new muscle fibers to grow.

Trying to stretch completely cold muscles is not advised though. So, for example, if you are going for a run, try walking a bit before stretching to warm and loosen your muscles.

Don’t neglect the cool down period either. Avoid jumping off your stationary bike and hitting a heavy weight session. Let your heart rate come down while stretching again.

Love it or hate it, cardio provides important benefits to both your health and your performance at bodybuilding competitions!

Your workout habits are key to developing a winning physique.

But that doesn’t mean you have to spend all day every day in the gym. We asked top-notch bodybuilders about their habits in the gym and they revealed 8 ways they maximize each training session:

If you are spending more time chatting, flirting or checking the latest scores on your cell phone, your success as a bodybuilder is doomed. Time is so limited these days, especially for bodybuilders who need to complete a wide range of exercises and routines before the day is done.

It is critical to focus when you’re at the gym on what you’re doing at any time. Distractions are time killers and will rapidly eat up the time allocated to your routine.

Your body can take a lot more than you think. Results come from training hard. Not over-training–but most of us can increase our intensity levels without hitting the red line. At all times, you should maintain safe and proper technique. But once that is established, crank up volume.

Most male bodybuilders train with weights that are too heavy. This speaks more to the male ego than anything else because strength is built up slowly.

On the other hand, women generally don’t lift enough weight. Some use the same weight on the bar year in and year out. Weight training is progressive resistance. Make sure your routine involves gradually increasing weight over time.

Have you ever seen someone at the gym swaying or “throwing” a weight? This is an injury waiting to happen. If you are heaving weights all over the place, they are too heavy. Go to a weight level you can control. Do that and you’ll avoid muscle tears, back problems and a host of other injuries caused by these behaviors.

Try not to do 4 or 5 sets per routine. Set a limit of 3 sets and max out those sets. Gauge the weight properly and work out to exhaustion. Concentrate more on intensity of your routines than length of time involved or the volume. By doing excessive routines, you are actually hurting your progress because you are postponing the recovery process.

Study show that many amateurs do not provide their body enough recovery between sets. In fact, there is a whole school of thought that repeating the second and third sets within a few seconds of the first one is beneficial. But your body needs plenty of time to recover. If you don’t give it enough rest, you start to fatigue the muscle.

The key is to wait long enough to provide enough rest but not wait too long or you will lose the pump. There is no set time—you must determine the optimum time for your body. You can only determine what that time is by focusing on your routine and monitoring yourself.

A good trading partner will enable you to work longer and harder. Try to find a partner that has a similar pattern in terms of workout routines and recovery times. You want an upbeat person who will push you and help you maintain your technique. A good partner can really make a difference between a workout flying by or being mere drudgery.

It’s important to stress the muscle when working out. Some potentially great bodybuilders neglect to increase weight gradually over time. It stalls out your development and motivation. Learn to add weight gradually, meaning one pound at a time (not 5 or 10), and record your development. But this should be a temporary solution.

In short, you will get the body of a champion faster if you learn to work hard and smart when you’re at the gym!

When you’re tired and hungry is a bad time to be deciding what to eat.

On the other hand, preparation decreases temptation—that’s why it’s smart to plan out your meals for the week.

Meal planning also makes it easier to shop for groceries and make sure you have everything you need on hand, so you don’t just reach for the take-out menu when you come home at night.

Try to eat 5 to 6 times per day before competition season and then 6 to 7 times a day in the 10 weeks leading up to a competition.

Of course, these are just a few quick examples. The point is your planning doesn’t have to be elaborate—you just have to do it!

You want to eat differently after training than you do at other times. After an intense workout, the blood used for digestion is displaced into your legs and arms.

Since the digestive tract demands a lot of blood to do its job, you want a meal that is easy to digest. Try something easy like a whey protein shake mixed with a banana. This will help fuel the recovery process and is absorbed quickly into your system.

In this sport you have to make sure every nutrient counts and “pulls its own weight” by:

In short, a meal plan will not only keep you from eating the wrong things—it’ll also help you map out your nutrient intake and make sure each meal is getting you closer to your main goals.

Now that you’ve done the hard work, it’s time to make sure it shows well on competition day.

Darker, shiny skin showcases your hard work the best under the bright lights—so here’s how to get it.

Tanning is critical because the darker your skin is, the easier it’ll be for the judges to see the lines of your physique. Remember–the very bright lights on stage are much different than daylight or lighting found in stores, homes and offices and will wash you out unless you are protected by a good tanning product.

Essentially, it would be difficult to be too dark. Therefore, when you think you’ve applied the right amount, apply one more coat.

Here are some of the most popular tanning products:

Probably the most popular tanning product on the market today, this is a liquid tanning agent you apply with a sponge. It will remain very solid even after applying oil and sweating under the hot lights. It does have a funny smell and is kind of messy. But it will give you a great base to work from.

This lotion comes out very evenly and gets very dark with just two to three coats. It washes off a lot easier than Pro Tan though, so it’ more prone to smearing or running.

This is another lotion that applies evenly and quickly. One common use is to apply it in the morning before the pre-judging. Many competitors will go for 2 coats. If you use Dream Tan, forego the use of oil because there is oil in it.

Quality posing oil will enhance and show off your muscles like crazy. The problem is when people use far too much and oil drips off them during competition. Therefore, use a light hand when you apply oil. A thin, even coat will do wonders.

Here are some options:

Finally, competition day is not a good time to try something new. So choose and try out your tanning and posing oil products ahead of time so you can walk onto the stage with confidence on the big day!