- Joined
- Aug 29, 2003
- Messages
- 5,165
I have tried quite a few methods of water manipulation and I have to say the best one for me has been a taper method, tapering down gradually from the start of carbing up, after fully carbing up I then dry out, it is hard to do both as when carbing up you need to draw water into the muscles but if you are using diuretics this is flushing water out, so hitting diuretics in the final stage allows you to be full but then pull interstitial water out without dehydrating the muscles, it takes a bit of tweaking to get the timing right but it can work very well.
If i base it on general consensus, i would without a doubt have to heavily favor the taper method. For every 1 person who ran their water high and looked awesome, there was 10 i talked to who tapered. Now WHY does this work? .... OK, lets analyze this and see what conclusion we can draw... everyone and anyone knowledgable feel free to comment or correct me if you disagree.....
my thoughts, could be right or wrong.............
When you load water you are lowering aldesterone levels. This keeps water flying through you and lowers the amount of water your body is used to holding. If you keep your carbs low at this point, it will be FLYING through your body. Now on Thursday you cut the water in half and slightly lower sodium when you start your load heavily. This will still leave SOME sodium and SOME water present to load up carbs. You will start to rebound, but you are not allowing your body enough water/sodium to do ANYTHING except load up the carbs your muscles are starved (which from depletion makes them much easier to load with increased insulin sensativity). The rebound should also help with supercompensation within the muscles of sodium/water. Now on Friday you cut back sodium+water further, since your body will be heavily rebounding, and only allow it JUST enough to fill out the muscles further. At this point you should almost be full and not need so many carbs and the sodium and water is not as necessary since you are almost fully loaded. Due to the rebound, you are holding sodium and water inside the muscles and there is no need to RE-introduce it the day of the show. You should be full, hard, dry, and vascular. If needed, you can use a small amount of diazyde to pull a little water, or the morning of add a tiny bit of sodium to boost blood pressure and pop those veins out.
This seems like a slower process, giving you much more time to make adjustments and hit your peak with more precision.