Carb loading for bikini girls
CARB LOADING FOR BIKINI GIRLS
It’s no secret the bikini class has evolved over the past ten years - overall muscularity has increased and conditioning has improved significantly. To showcase that muscle on stage ladies must go through a ‘carb up’ process to fill muscle glycogen stores. Therefore, the aim of this article is to discuss different carb loading protocols that bikini girls can run to bring their best look to stage.
THE BIKINI CRITERIA
There will be some of you reading this who don’t really know what the judges are looking for in the bikini class, I will do my best to put it into layman’s terms. Judges will be looking for athletes to display a good amount of muscular development, specifically in the glutes, hamstrings, delts and upper back. The only exception to that would be NPC/IFBB where the upper back would be covered by the hair.
Bikini girls will showcase an hourglass figure in their side shot. They will have well capped delts, particularly the lateral head, a small waist, and round glutes. They will display a good level of conditioning however the judges are NOT looking for six pack abs, visible striations, or separations anywhere. If the athlete has enough muscle mass in their glutes, then a slight glute/ham tie is favourable. In most cases judges are looking for a level of ‘smoothness’ when it comes to conditioning.
Competitors will display a strong level of femininity, have strong stage presence, and pose confidently. If competitors do not pose correctly within the federation’s guidelines, then they will be marked down.
In recent years, federations such as PCA have been rewarding girls that are bringing a harder look. This can’t be achieved by everyone as it is more down to genetics, but it does require a significant amount of conditioning and it’s due to that conditioning that bikini girls must undergo some form of carb load across the week.
WHAT IS A CARB LOAD?
To try and understand this process I use a simple analogy of imagining muscle to be like a ballon. When a ballon has no air in it, it is lifeless and has no shape. The minute you fill it with air it gains shape, size, firmness and looks rounder. A muscle is no different, except rather than fill it with air we fill it with muscle glycogen (carbohydrates) and fluid.
When we diet to extremes, we lose muscle glycogen stores as these are essential our bodies reserve fuel stores. It’s a necessary process that all competitors have to go through to attain the level of condition required to meet their chosen class criteria requirements. That being said, all competitors must go through some form of carb load to fill those muscle glycogen stores and bring some shape back to their physique. There are some heavily muscled bikini girls that don’t necessarily run a carb up because they already look round and hour glassed flat, but those instances are few and far between.
WHEN DO YOU CARB load?
By now, you know bikini girls are jacked and that they need carbs to bring their physique back to life. The biggest questions on your mind will be, when do you do the carb load process? Is it the day or two before the show, is it earlier on in the week? Which one is the best?
The answer is simple, what have you seen during prep? Throughout prep you will have run high days multiple times (to learn more about high days click here). You will have checked in with your coach multiple times across those high days and in the subsequent days that follow. It’s the process of doing that multiple times and continually, methodically analysing someone’s physique in the days that follow that determines when the best time is to carb load.
For some girls, their best look might be immediately after three high days, for another it might be after two high days. Another girl might look her best when she has had two high days followed by a low day (normal prep diet) or three high days followed by two low days. Do you see what I’m getting at? There is no right or wrong way to do this, there is only what’s effective or ineffective. As prep goes on, you’ll learn which method bring your best look. Whatever brings the best look, do exactly that going in to the show!
THE HYPERFOCUS
Bikini girls often hyperfocus on their mid-section and love feeling small. When they are in the process of digging their mid-section can feel super tight and small. They can often see more visible separations in muscle and often being to fall in love with the look. The biggest issue with that is this look isn’t the best look for them to present on stage. Therefore, when more carbs go in, they can feel ‘big, bulky, fat’ although the reality can be quite different. It can make them not want to carb up as they have a skewed perception of what they think looks good.
In that scenario, early on in the prep, I continually remind girls to detach emotion from the flat look. Alongside this I will send multiple different images of the flat vs full look and reinforce how much better the look gets with more food. This often changes girls perception of the carb up process and typically they will be more relaxed going into it.
If I get to peak weak and I still feel a client is hyper focused on their midsection, do you think I’m going to load them close to the show or far from the show? You guessed it, far away, perhaps at the start of the week vs the end of the week. It might require me to alter their baseline diet a touch to hold fullness versus what we were doing in the weeks prior but I’d rather they maintain that fullness and internal feel like their mid-section is super tight than the opposite.
In summary, the bikini class has evolved over the years and girls are significantly more muscular and conditioned than ever before. This means that they all have to go through a carb up process close to the show to bring their physique back to life and fit the criteria. When girls carb up across the week is heavily dependent upon the data collected through running high days in their prep. The process that produces the best look can often vary from one girl to the next. However, some bikini girls can hyper focus on their midsection and may require a different carb up protocol than they had been doing on prep. There is no right or wrong way to carb up, there is only what’s effective or ineffective to bring the best look for that individual.
Vaughan Wilson Bsc Hons