The Long-Term Bikini Timeline (What Most Athletes Don’t Plan For)
This post is part of The Ultimate Bikini Prep Guide – check out the full guide for more!
Ok, we’ve talked about timing and judging requirements in previous posts – if you haven’t seen those, open these up in new tabs and add ‘em to your reading list!
Now let’s start to game out your roadmap a bit. In Bikini Blueprint I have an entire module dedicated to planning your “Physique Roadmap” as I call it, or the long-term strategy.
For Many Athletes, Stage Readiness Is Measured in Years
Yep read that headline again. As we’ll talk about more, just because you compete (get on stage) doesn’t mean your competitive – so this is about presenting a competitive package on stage that’s going to get the judges to take notice and really consider you, even in a stacked lineup.
For every story you hear about someone who wins their first show, goes straight into a national show and earns an IFBB pro card after being on stage twice, there are a thousand stories of people who rush their prep, have a bad experience and never compete again.
The former isn’t realistic. The latter can be avoided. Successful careers in bodybuilding happen in the middle.
The first step is to get a base physique that you can walk around in without massive effort to maintain it.
Developing Your Base Physique
Clearly, some of you reading this may already be here. It’s hard to say exactly WHAT this is, and clearly a ‘base physique’ will look different for everyone.
Very generally, I would say you have enough muscle that people know you work out, unless you’re super covered up. Your lean enough to show abs, even if you have to squint and they’re just “kinda” there. And you’re generally balanced from head to toe.
On the leanness front, in an ideal world you’ll be lean enough that it’s easy to see muscle and not fall into the “I have big legs because that’s where I carry all my body fat” camp.
Now this base physique isn’t where you’ll spend a ton of time, BUT you’ve achieved it. From here you can lean out into prep, or go into a growth phase where you’ll likely soften up a bit, and THAT might be where you spend more time – slightly softer.
For many women (and men!), getting to this “base physique” level is where most of the work happens. If you have significant weight to drop (50+ lbs) to get there, this can take a year or much longer or hard, dedicated, prep-like effort. At which point you should probably give yourself a bit of a break to recharge before jumping into whatever phase is next.
You need to chip away enough so that you can properly evaluate that base layer to see how much growth is needed to be competitive on stage. It can be nearly impossible to make that determination while you’re carrying excess body fat, so we clean that up first – with plans to KEEP it off long-term, then we re-evaluate.
Improvement Seasons Do the Heavy Lifting
Let’s say we reveal that base physique and, as is likely, there’s growth needed from there.
This is where the quality of your training matters the most, but also being precise enough with the diet that you don’t put on weight too quickly. If you’re gaining 0.25% of your body weight in a week, that’s FINE – no need to be more aggressive than that. At 140lbs, this means just about a pound a month, maybe slightly more. THAT is a rate of gain that’s productive and can be pretty clean as well, assuming training intensity is on point.
Building Specific, Division-Relevant Muscle
First we have to understand exactly what the goal is for your category. Start – if needed – by reviewing the differences between the categories in this video
Then you need a proper needs analysis. A coach can do this for you, or you can take a stab at it yourself – analyze each pose and compare against women winning shows at the amateur levels (or the pros, if you can accept the larger gap between them and where you are now). It’s not about “where am I lacking compared to them?” but rather “where am I more/less in/out of balance compared to them?” It’s a trick thing to do yourself.
Then, you need to design your training split and execute it with intention. Bikini Blueprint dives into this in detail, the training side specifically is in Hypertrophy University, which is included in Bikini Blueprint
Accepting Some Body Fat as the Cost of Growth
If you aren’t gaining weight, you likely aren’t growing – but we want that rate of gain to be on the slow side to keep it as lean and clean as we can.
However – remember the objective is GROW, “grow while staying lean” is the secondary objective. We can always strip away more body fat if it’s accumulated, but once you transition to a cut you can’t build more muscle from there. Don’t overshoot and put on so much body fat that you don’t have time to peel it off, but don’t set yourself up for a 16 week prep where you only need to drop 7 pounds also.
Mini-Cuts and Maintenance Aren’t Failures
A mini-cut is when the off-season get a little TOO thick and we need to peel away a layer or two either to restore body comfort, let clothes fit a little better again, or just let hormones recover if you’ve gotten soft enough that the levels start to decline.
Think of body fat like a credit card balance – in prep for a show, we’re paying that balance down to zero. In a mini-cut, we’re just looking to not be maxed out.
Maintenance can be a nice mental break from the mode of constantly feeling like you have to be aggressively pushing all the time.
With my clients, I don’t typically use maintenance breaks as a ‘default’ thing that happens at certain times or between phases, but if it feels like we need a break I always make sure it’s known we can take one. Sometimes pushing food just gets exhausting and it can wear on your body and your digestive system. A maintenance break might mean a drop by 500-1000 calories per day and for a few weeks, that can be a glorious reprieve from the constant eating.
Why Rushed Careers Burn Out
There’s no secret here. The body is an engine, and most engines need breaks and maintenance when they’re being redlined all the time.
The whole ‘no days off’ thing is great for the handful of people who can go hard all the time, BUT also consider how long those people stick around. “No days off” can very quickly turn into “2 years off” because they burned the candle and flamed out. This happens ALL THE TIME. The hardcore part is loud, the quitting part is quiet and doesn’t get the attention. People just disappear, and that’s a silent activity usually.
Physical Burnout
Overtraining can definitely be a thing – but if you moderate your volume and frequency it should be largely avoidable in bodybuilding.
Constant pushing towards progressive overload can introduce more minor injuries, and if you don’t stay on top of body work and self-care, those can become bigger injuries and turn into larger problems over time as well.
Psychological Burnout
Do anything every day with no end and you’ll get sick of it soon enough. When you GO HARD ALL THE TIME, it becomes your identity too easily which creates additional pressure and reduces your flexibility through self-imposed choice.
If something goes wrong – a bad placing at a show, not growing “enough” during an off-season, whatever it is – that “failure” can start to feel huge and create a big ol’ mental scar that will be difficult to heal.
Keep your expectations high but flexible and also accept that sometimes just working super hard A) isn’t enough, or B) might not be the answer.
I work with a lot of SUPER HARDCORE clients who end up doing better by doing less, but doing it all in a more focused way.
Athletes Who Accept the Timeline Tend to Last
Play the long game and you play to win. Playing for short term gratification rarely plays out well over a years long career.
Absolutely critical in bodybuilding is an enjoyment of the process, not just the results. If you suffer through the process for the results, this will be very short term and it’s unlikely you’ll achieve any results worth writing home about (in the competitive world anway).
If you enjoy the process, the results become secondary but also likely more dramatic. It’s a big part of success.
Playing the long game also means bigger differences from one show to the next, with feedback from those shows being more clear and meaningful as well.
It also encourages you to be more accepting and happier with slow and steady progress vs. chasing big swings in body composition rapidly.
The Cost of Pretending the Timeline Is Shorter
There are a few possible costs for a few possible missteps here.
First, if “pretending the timeline is shorter” means you compete too soon and too often, you simply never get the opportunity to really build a physique, grow into it, and refine it over the years. Bodybuilding is a slow burn, long-term ROI sport. If you want to do well, you can’t rush it.
Another possibility in perceiving the timeline to be shorter is in feeling the need to be way too aggressive with everything. This can mean being way too aggressive in the gym (going heavier than you can/should) which opens you up to greater injury risk, or by pushing PED’s too heavily and compromising your health.
A lot of people think their window for opportunity is smaller or shorter than it really is. I hear from people in their 30’s worried that they’ve missed their chance to compete, which is just insane. I just turned 49 and I’m hoping that my shows later this year present my best look yet. I have clients who started competing in their late 50’s or even their 60’s. There isn’t really a “too late” here.
Competing Isn’t the Goal — Competing Well Is
Decide early on – do you want to show up on stage, or do you want to compete?
The path for each of those looks different.
For the former, it’s easy – just cut NOW and put yourself on stage. Don’t be surprised if you aren’t really “competing” however.
It’s funny, so much has been said in our monoculture deriding the idea of a participation trophy – but in terms of bodybuilding so many people seem to be happy with exactly that.
“Hey, I did it and that counts”
It does count, yes – but is just showing up your goal?
Whatever your goal, I think it’s worth believing that you can aim higher than you probably are currently. Give yourself the opportunity to grow and really compete and see what happens.
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