How To Stay Lean In The Off-Season
12 minute read
The Off-Season: A Time To Stay Lean and Build Muscle
The off-season. It’s often seen as a chance to eat more food, build muscle, and take a well deserved break after a challenging competition prep. While the off-season can be all of that, you can, and even should, aim to stay lean in the off-season.
In this blog, I’ll share some strategies that have helped me stay lean in the off-season and year-round. These off-season strategies will help you maintain a lean physique while continuing to build muscle and enjoy a more relaxed routine.
The Benefits of Staying Lean In Your Off-Season
First, let’s establish the benefits of staying lean in the off-season.
You’ll like how you look all year round, not just right before your Bikini competition.
You’ll feel better all year round.
You’ll be metabolically healthier keeping body fat at healthy levels.
You’ll be fitter all year round.
You’ll avoid the negative impacts of frequent extreme yo-yo dieting.
You’ll avoid stretching your skin, leading to less loose skin on stage.
You can see the actual changes and progress you’re making building lean muscle because it isn’t covered or exaggerated by a layer of body fat.
Staying lean in the off-season also impacts your NEXT Bikini competition prep immensely. When you stay lean year-round, you’re setting your next prep up to be easier.
You’ll have less body fat to lose meaning…
A less intense contest prep - calories won’t have to get as low for as long
A shorter contest prep - less time spent in a deficit
A more enjoyable contest prep - less ‘grind’ time
As a natural Bikini athlete, there is no ‘extra assistance’ to help maintain muscle in an extended and very aggressive deficit. A shorter and less intense contest prep becomes a huge advantage to retaining all your hard-earned muscle.
When you focus on staying lean in the off-season, there won’t be such a dramatic difference between your off-season and your Bikini prep.
When you start prep, your day-to-day will look pretty much the same as it did in your off-season:
Food choices will be similar
Workouts will be similar
Cardio will be similar
The biggest difference between your off-season and prep will be fewer calories overall.
Defining Off-Season Leanness for Bikini Competitors
Staying lean in the off-season does not mean staying stage lean. Staying stage lean isn’t necessary, and for most Bikini competitors, maintaining that level of leanness isn’t realistic or healthy.
So how lean is off-season lean?
Sitting roughly 10-13% above stage weight in your off-season, if you came in lean enough and not dehydrated, is what I and many top coaches in the industry recommend.
This recommendation does depend on how long of an off-season you are taking. A true off-season is typically 6 months or longer. Under most circumstances, I recommend most athletes’ off-seasons last roughly twelve or more months.
The shorter the off-season, the closer to your ideal stage weight you’ll want to stay.
Let’s look at an example of a Bikini athlete taking a 1-year off-season, who is 5’6” and was 122lbs on stage. This would be a weight gain of 12 to 16lbs. This would put her off-season weight at 134 to 138lbs. By no means unrealistic to maintain year-round.
Alrighty, let’s dive into what you’re really here for - the tips!
Effective Strategies to Stay Lean Year Round
The Importance of Accountability
Keep Your Coach
Nothing helps more than KNOWING you have someone expecting and counting on you to stick to the plan.
Knowing someone else cares just as much if not more than you, about how your post-show goes, it’s easier to stick to the plan. When it feels hard, your coach’s voice will be in your head encouraging you to make a choice that you’ll be proud of.
Not to mention the help they provide in setting post-show goals and strategies to reach those goals.
Another benefit of keeping your coach is when you do ‘screw up’. Having the support post ‘screw up’ is invaluable and can help keep you from spiraling, and instead, a coach can help you learn from it.
Not to mention the help they will provide in setting post-show goals and strategies to reach those goals.
Don’t Skip Check-Ins - No Matter What
Don’t miss your check-ins - even if you think you’ve had a bad week. Check-ins are even more important on the ‘bad’ weeks.
When check-ins are non-negotiables, you are presented with the consequences of your previous weeks’ choices - positive or negative. Check-ins give you time to reflect on your past week and provide you and your coach an opportunity to make a plan for the coming week.
Whether that be doing more of what is working, or looking at what isn’t working and making adjustments.
Another benefit of committing to your check-ins in the off-season is you’ll probably put a bit more thought into your choices before making them. When you pause, even for just a moment, before making a choice, it gives you a chance to think about the choice and then you can purposefully make the decision.
Keeping your coach and doing your check-ins leads to fewer F-It moments and more ‘Ugh, fine I’ll stick to the plan,’ moments.
Weigh Yourself Daily
Stick with your daily weigh-ins.
Weighing yourself daily means excessive weight gain can’t sneak up on you. You can see trends in real time, and make any needed adjustments before you’ve gone too far off base.
Something to remember - when doing daily weigh-ins, don’t let normal weight fluctuations mess with your emotions. Daily jumps and drops in weight are normal, expected, and unavoidable - stay objective.
Keep Tracking Your Food & Maintain Control Over Your Diet
Don’t stop logging your calories and macros – even on the days you may go off (even way off) plan. When you have an unplanned higher intake day, don’t think of the day as a failure, instead, maintaining consistency with tracking is what success becomes.
When you continue tracking your calories post-show, the habit of tracking is maintained and strengthened. When you track your calories post-show, the habit is disassociated with only being something to do when you’re ‘on prep’. Tracking calories and macros becomes something you do as part of your normal routine.
Another benefit to consistent tracking is that it helps keep F-It mode under control. It can feel much harder to go over the top when you see the numbers in your food app reaching 3,000+ calories.
Not tracking is just as much of a habit as tracking. When you skip tracking after a ‘bad’ meal or a ‘bad’ day, it gets easier and easier to let tracking fall by the wayside.
Focus on building the habit you want to strengthen. Focus on the habit that will help you reach your goals.
Diet Strategies to Stay Lean Post-Show
Avoid Reverse Dieting
Return to your estimated maintenance calories ASAP after your Bikini competition. Reverse dieting out of a show prolongs the deficit you’ve been in for weeks, which post-show is not beneficial in any way.
When you return to maintenance calories, it is easier to stick to your plan. It feels easier to stick to the plan because you have more calories to work with, you can incorporate a wider variety of foods, and you’ll be and feel less restricted.
Bumping calories back up to estimated maintenance levels immediately post-show starts the process of regulating hormones, hunger, and cravings.
All of this helps bring your metabolism back up to pre-diet levels quicker.
Consistency in Food Choices
Avoid doing a 180 when it comes to the foods and meals you are choosing to eat. Think about what your favorite food combos were during Bikini prep, and make sure to include them post-show.
Having prep friendly staple meals as part of your off-season diet is a simple way to stay lean all off-season.
Your off-season diet shouldn’t look all that different from your prep diet. With that being said, you do want to include a wider variety of foods and you shouldn’t cut out all your favorite foods that aren’t prep friendly.
Keep Protein High - It’s Essential for Muscle Building
Eating enough protein is one of the biggies when wanting to build muscle and stay lean in the off-season.
More muscle means a slightly higher resting metabolic rate making it easier to stay leaner. A small caveat - the effect isn’t nearly as big as we’d all wish, but more lean mass is still beneficial.
Another perk of a high protein diet - protein takes more energy to digest than other macros, burning more calories throughout the day.
Protein can also help you feel fuller with fewer overall calories, meaning it is easier to stick to a calorie intake that will keep you lean all year.
Fuel Your Workouts Effectively with Carbohydrates
Eat enough carbs!
Carbs are your body’s preferred energy source for fueling your workouts. Having the energy to push hard in your workouts means you get max potential for muscle growth with each lift.
In addition to their workout-fueling benefits, carbs can help keep you feeling more energized throughout the day, and by choosing minimally processed carbs, you’ll also get all the healthy nutrients that come with them.
Carb sources, like fruits, veggies, and whole grains, are packed with micronutrients - vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients - that keep your body running like a well-oiled machine.
Eat Your Fiber to Stay Full and Satisfied
There are many benefits to eating a high-fiber diet - lower risk of disease, better digestion, lower risk of colon cancer, a healthier gut microbiome, and balanced blood sugar and cholesterol levels.
In addition to all the health benefits, fiber fills your stomach and slows digestion, helping you feel fuller for longer.
Notice a trend? Eating foods that help you feel full is a big part of staying lean in the off-season because you’ll be much less likely to overeat.
When focusing on eating the recommended daily intake of fiber, which is 25g daily for women under 50, your food choices will automatically trend toward whole and minimally processed - a sneaky benefit you might have overlooked.
Lean Living Tips
Intense Lifting - Build Lean Mass
Lift heavy. Lift with intensity.
With your next show date undefined and far in the future, it can be easy to lose sight of what the goal of an off-season really is - to grow!
It is easy to fall into the habit of going through the motions in workouts, which isn’t enough to build the muscle needed to sculpt a Bikini physique.
When you step into the gym, take a moment to remind yourself why you’re there. You’re there to train. You’re there to build a better physique. You’re there so next time you step on stage you’re better than last time.
Non-Exercise Activity - Stay Active Between Workouts
Staying active in addition to your formal workouts is a big part of staying lean in the off-season.
Non-exercise activity (NEAT) is an easy way to keep energy output high without doing excessive amounts of purposeful exercise.
NEAT accounts for a large portion of expended energy throughout the day, which is a big factor in weight maintenance.
There are many ways to increase NEAT, and they can range from picking up new active hobbies like hiking or gardening to sneaking in more steps by parking at the end of the lot or taking the stairs instead of the elevator (even if you have to go 8 floors).
Manage Body Fat During Long Off Seasons with Mini Cuts
If you’re taking a long off-season, more than 1 year, you could implement strategic mini-cuts if needed.
Most mini-cuts last 4-6 weeks max. The goal with a mini-cut is to eat in a deficit for a short time to lose a small amount of body fat and then transition to eating at a slight surplus or maintenance calories immediately.
Mini-cuts should be used sparingly and only for longer off-seasons. Any time spent in a mini-cut is time lost toward building muscle.
In my two-and-a-half-year off-season, I did 1 mini-cut lasting 4 weeks and one lasting 6 weeks. My goal was to stay at a comfortable body fat level while having little impact on my hormones and metabolism and losing minimal time toward building muscle.
Allow Time to Build and Recover with Long Off Seasons
A common mistake made by many Bikini competitors is taking incomplete off-seasons. Your body needs time to recover, and ‘off-seasons’ lasting less than 6 months typically won’t help accomplish that goal.
Anything less than 6 months should be considered a maintenance period between competitions, not an off-season. As a natural Bikini competitor, building any appreciable amount of lean mass requires more than 6 months of building.
Generally speaking (there are always exceptions) aiming for roughly 1 or more years is ideal if you need to add size and density. Another benefit of a properly long off-season is that it gives your hormones and metabolism enough time to recover.
Another benefit is a proper off-season gives you time to reset mentally from the stresses of dieting and following a demanding prep routine.
A long enough off-season helps you stay lean in future off-seasons. You’re recovering fully between preps which sets you up for a better next prep, which then sets you up for a better post-show and a better off-season.
This process is more about maintaining longevity in the sport. The long-term benefits outweigh the instant gratification of jumping into a prep too soon.
Keep it Sustainable - Don’t Be Too Strict on the Minor Details
The best off-season is a sustainable off-season. There is no reason to maintain the same level of strictness that prep requires, use your off-season to relax a bit.
This type of balance looks different for each athlete. You need to figure out what balance looks like for you.
Remember though… as a competitor what balance looks like for you will look different than it does for someone only interested in living a bit healthier.
I want to stress – staying focused and on track matters, but perfection isn’t needed.
Focus on Building Fitness, Not Just Muscle
Want to bring a better package to the stage next season? Want to live lean all year? Want to have a smoother next prep?
Focus on more than just building as much muscle as possible. In addition to focusing on building muscle, focus on building fitness, focus on improving health. Think of the habits and actions that go into building fitness and improving health.
Those are the same habits that help you live lean.
Take Note - Muscle Gain Takes Time
Before I let you go, I want you to head into your off-season with realistic expectations. Building a Bikini physique isn’t a fast process, it takes time. As a natural Bikini athlete, building muscle is a process that can’t be rushed.
Maybe you’ve heard other athletes talking about their coaches having them bulk, putting on 20, 30, or 40 pounds, and how it’s the best and only way to build muscle. Maybe you’ve wondered if you’re missing out on potential gains, or if it is possible to make progress without gaining that much weight.
Natural female athletes are not putting on 20-30 pounds of muscle within a year. Most of the weight gained in many of these instances is body fat. An athlete who puts on this much weight has to shed that body fat next time they want to compete.
This means a longer and more intense prep. Not only does a longer more intense prep suck and lead to a less enjoyable prep, it means the likely hood of losing more lean mass is higher.
A brand new female lifter with great genetics and who is doing everything perfectly can MAYBE gain 1lb of muscle per month. A more realistic number is .25-.5 pounds per month.
That is at most 12lbs of muscle in a year and unless this is your first year lifting (which if you are going into an off-season, it isn’t) 2.5-6lbs per year is much more likely.
What I’m getting at is, that there is no advantage to bulking versus keeping it tight in the off-season. Only disadvantages.
The athletes who bulk hard and then diet hard in prep are the same athletes who burn out quickly and begin to resent the entire sport.
Staying lean in the off-season leads to longevity in the sport, a healthier athlete, and a more enjoyable time in the phases of Bikini.
Smart & Sustainable - Staying Lean in the Off-Season
Staying lean in the off-season is much more than just looking good, it’s about taking a smart and sustainable approach to competing in Bikini.
Staying lean and on track in the off-season, means you’re not only putting yourself in a better spot to start your next prep, you’re also taking care of your health and building your fitness year-round.
Are you interested in rocking your next (or first) prep or off-season? Built by Sam is your one-stop shop for Bikini prep, post-show, and off-season coaching.
Built by Sam is based in the heart of the Midwest - Des Moines, Iowa, but you can join the team from anywhere. I offer in-person and online Bikini prep coaching. Ready to take the next step? Book your free Bikini prep consultation call now!