Help! Offseason Fat Gain What to Do?

You sadly have moved to the next notch on your lifting belt.

Tying your shoes you have to take a big breath before reaching down as the belly compression might make you pass out.

Yes, welcome to the large offseason life. The point when you are hoping a fat loss phase is around the corner.

When should we actually implement this phase?

We are competitors, so we must always keep in mind that we have to diet back down for a show at some point.

This ending offseason point should not leave you needing to diet for over 20 weeks to make that happen.

A round number might be we don’t want you 15-20% above your stage weight.

Dieting for longer than 20 weeks is going to be faced with challenges physically and mentally, that we really don’t want to do all in one shot.

Also we do have to consider the health aspect of gaining too much body fat especially compounded with PEDs.

This can very easily set up a recipe for living in a state of poor health, not ideal for muscle growth or fat loss.

When to do this phase?

This is when you reach that cusp of a peak offseason body weight and a body fat level that is beyond that 20 week mark.

You want a fat loss phase to reset the body fat limit and give you some runway to extend the offseason longer or move into a prep.

Now you could gain slower and not do the fat loss phase at all. I have tried this and more often than not gains are left on the table or you don’t progress at all.

Once you reach that peak mass, you want to hold it for a few weeks before doping into a deficit.

We can “cement” or “hold” the gains to not let that new tissue drop too quickly
We also want to pull back on PEDS to give the system a stress break and prepare for the fat loss phase.

We might have labs that need restorative work and we need a low PED amount to do so, which low PEDs might not favor well with a deficit to hold tissue.

This gives you a psychological break for constinet food pushing prior to going into a phase of food restriction.

You might also need time to heal up niggles/injuries to be optimal for a fat loss phase.