Introduction
In the off-season your focus should be to gain some weight and work on your weak points. Sooner than you think it will once again be time to get lean and mean for your upcoming shows (Guide note: or the beach if you are not into competing).

One of the most common mistakes people make is gaining way too much weight. You don't need to add 40 lbs of fat in order to build muscle! Quite the opposite! The more weight you gain the more weight you'll have to lose when contest preparation begins. You see, when you must drop many pounds of body fat, your body falls into a catabolic state, meaning you don't only lose fat but also muscle tissue. By staying lean in the off-season you have a better chance to preserve your new muscle gains once you start your contest prep.

Of course, it takes a little bit more work to stay in great shape all year around, but you will feel better and look better. Not bad, huh? Keep reading to learn about my secrets to stay lean?

Don't Get Out Of Shape!
When the season is over all you want to do is to eat, eat, and eat. Don't worry, you can do that for a day or two, but after those initial days your body will notice the change in your diet and start to store fat. Do yourself a favor and follow a healthy diet with minimum amounts of fast food.

Keep Doing Cardio!
Many people avoid cardio since it's believed to prevent muscle gains. I disagree! When your heart is well-conditioned you will endure harder and more intense workouts in the gym. You also keep your body fluent at burning fat. To assure your muscles don't shrink, take care of your pre-workout and post-workout supplementation. Just like you down a whey protein shake with some simple sugar, creatine, and glutamine around your weight training workouts, you should use the same principles around your cardio training workouts. This strategy allows your body to keep your blood sugar at a steady state and that helps protects your muscles from shrinking. As long as you keep your cardio short but intense you have no reason to fear muscle loss.

Don't Spread Your Calories Through Out The Day
This is something you must have heard many times. It's being told the best way to lose fat and gain more muscle mass is to have many smaller meals each day with equal amounts of calories in each and one of them. I believe you get a better effect by making sure you decrease your servings of food when you're inactive and make your meals bigger before and after your workouts. When you've finished training, your muscles are starving and there's little risk your body will store extra calories as fat. The take home message is to supply your body with more calories when you need them and fewer calories when you're lying on your couch doing nothing.

Add Quality Calories
To build lean mass you need to take in more calories than your body uses for staying at the same body composition. Are you not gaining any on the scale but you look bigger in the mirror? Well congratulations! You are adding lean mass while melting fat away from your physique!

If you're having a hard time getting into shape you need to pay attention to your diet. Eat clean six days a week and enjoy your favorite junk food one day per week.

How many calories you need to gain muscle depends on many things, but the best way to find out is by keeping a diet journal where you take notes about how many calories you take in along with the ratio of protein, carbs, and fat. If you gain weight and it looks like the weight is muscle and not merely body fat, you know you're on to something good. If you feel puffy you might need to make some adjustments and make a slight decrease in your calories.

Don't Overtrain!
You don't need to be in the gym five or six times a week to grow big. As a matter of fact it can be counterproductive since you never give your body some rest. Maybe you've been training almost every day of the week for a long time and your results have been good. Then you might feel you have no reason to mix up your routine. I suggest you do, take a leap of faith and work out with weights every other day and not more! You will experience a big increase in strength, motivation, and energy. You know what that tends to lead to? Muscle gain!

Good luck,

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Pauline Nordin
IFBB Figure Pro

About The Author
Pauline Nordin is an IFBB Figure Pro, Fitness Model, Actress, Certified Fitness Trainer and writer. Pauline's message is that anyone can achieve their physique goals but there is no quick fix to an athletic physique. In her own words: "There is no excuse for being out of shape if you're healthy, but you must be wanting to make a change more than anything else. Then nothing can stop you."