Josh King PT

Very very proud coach this weekend!

3rd debut classic physique
3rd novice classic physique
For my client

He look so confident and like he belonged on the stage which was amazing to watch a first timer having stage presence!

Posing was on point and vacuum was spot on

Can't wait to do an off season with Jack so dedicated and locked in, bringing up weak points ready for the next show we can only go up from here 🙏🏼

still holding 202lbs keeping full
keeping shape

not going to lie holding this condition is probably the hardest thing ive done since winning at UKBFF its been hold... hold... hold

and tbh im ready to pull the trigger when we are back on stage very very soon 🔥👀

most people jump straight into a deficit without any of the foundations in place and then wonder why the wheels fall off 8 weeks in

heres what id lock in first before i cut a single calorie

1. protein floor locked in. not roughly high, actually measured. minimum 1g per lb of bodyweight, every day, non negotiable before anything else changes. if youre already dieting and protein is inconsistent your body is eating muscle not fat, the scale might be moving but the conditioning wont be there

2. meal timing around training sorted. you are carb restricted and under recovering, bias carbs around your session is the easiest free win you have left. pre and post sorted before i touch anything else

3. fibre and satiety managed. dropping calories on a 16 week prep is brutal if your food choices are making you feel empty by 3pm. id make sure my food volume and fibre was high enough to keep hunger tolerable before i started cutting, because once youre deep in the deficit you cant fix hunger with willpower. id be eating high volume low calorie foods from the start not scrambling to find them at week 10

4. sodium and water consistent. water retention is the thing that makes a physique look flat or full and most competitors are managing it wrong or not at all until peak week. id track my water intake and keep sodium roughly consistent day to day from the start of prep so i have a genuine baseline to manipulate from in the final week.

5. a real starting point, not a guess. the biggest mistake i made was not tracking accurately at maintenance before i started cutting. if you dont know what youre actually eating how do you know what a 300 calorie deficit even is. id spend 2 weeks tracking honestly before i touched a single number, because everything after that is built on that foundation

get these 5 right before you start slashing food and your prep will look completely different by the back end

save this, its the stuff nobody walks you through before your first show

Surround Yourself With People Already Doing It

You are the level of the people you train around.
Want to build an elite physique?

Get around people already living it. You absorb how they eat, how they train, how they handle a stall, the little things nobody posts.
You cut years off the learning curve just by being in the room. Surround yourself with people playing small and youll stay small.

Surround yourself with people operating at the standard you want, and that standard quietly becomes your normal.

Look at who youre around. If nobodys pulling you up, you need new rooms.

Follow if this is the level you want to operate at.

The cuts and details are coming in 🔥

we had a weight stall so a refeed went in to kick start the weight loss again
we are keeping cardio in with normal nutritional days and low days on rest days to keep carbs low when we are resting

still a good few weeks to keep getting tighter and tighter dialling things in for our show

if your physique isnt where you want it, more sets is almost never the answer

you want a physique that looks stage ready without ever stepping on stage, you train 5 days a week, you eat pretty well, and its still not matching the standard you have in your head.

here are the 5 things id actually fix first.

1. ex*****on quality - not technique for the sake of it, im talking about whether you are genuinely creating mechanical tension through the full range of the target muscle on every rep. most people are moving weight from a to b. thats not the same thing. a set of 10 where the muscle is loaded, stretched, under real tension the whole way, is worth 3 sloppy sets where youre just hitting a number. fix your ex*****on and your current volume will feel completely different.

2. proximity to failure - if your last rep feels like rep 6 out of 10 felt, youre not close enough. hypertrophy lives in the last couple reps of a properly hard set. not grinding to absolute failure every time, but close enough that the muscle has a genuine reason to adapt. most people stop 4 or 5 reps short and wonder why nothing is changing. you dont need more sets, you need to actually finish the ones youre already doing.

3. sleep and recovery - you can be doing everything right in the gym and eating perfectly and still stall if youre running on 5 or 6 hours. growth hormone peaks in deep sleep, protein synthesis is elevated overnight.

4. weekly calorie accuracy - not daily, weekly. one or two days of overeating can undo a weeks deficit or erase a surplus you needed for growth. most people track monday to friday and go by feel on the weekend, and then wonder why the scale doesnt move or why they cant push condition forward. the total has to add up over 7 days.

5. exercise selection - are the exercises youre doing actually loading the muscle you want to grow through a range where it gets a proper stretch? shortened partial range movements done heavy feel productive but they are not the same stimulus as a movement with a deep lengthened position under load. if your programme is built around exercises that never properly challenge the muscle at length.

This weeks check in 🙏🏼

New low of 201lbs last show I was 202lbs so we coming down and still more time to get tighter, drier, leaner and more detailed

Lets go 🔥 cant wait to be on that stage again head down and locked in for the next at least 10 weeks

Lean but still flat? Your muscles arent small, theyre empty.

Glycogen is the difference between a muscle that sits round and full and one that looks soft and deflated. Every gram you store pulls water in with it, and thats intramuscular water, the stuff that fills you out, not the subcutaneous water that blurs you.

Run low carb and train hard for months and youre never fully fuelled, so you look flat and you build slower, weaker sessions, less stimulus, less muscle.

Heres the part that matters. Lean and flat looks depleted. Lean and full looks like a physique. That fullness isnt luck, its enough carbs, timed around training and replenished properly. Carbs were never the enemy. Staying empty is.

Being lean gets you halfway. Staying full is what makes it look elite.

Save this for your next diet, and follow if this is the level you want to operate at.

Visiting Cambridge Aesthetics today 🦷

Finally managed to go get my teeth whitened its something ive always been conscious about and as turkey teeth is a few years away yet 😅

But couldn't thank CA enough for bring my teeth back to life and white again 🙏🏼

If i was starting my competing journey from scratch, these are the five things id tell myself before i ever touched a tanning mitt.
1. You wont feel ready.
Nobody does. The athletes next to you are just as deep in their own head. Readiness isnt a feeling you arrive at, its a decision. The prep either did the work or it didnt. Trust what you built.

2. Your worst posing day is peak week.
Everyone hits a day in the final stretch where the body looks flat and wrong. Water shifts, carbs are low, youre exhausted. Thats not your final condition. Ive watched athletes spiral over one bad mirror check in the last 72 hours and it costs them more than any meal could.

3. Condition beats size every time.
Judges dont reward the biggest in the class, they reward the sharpest. Every season i see athletes carry too much in, telling themselves theyre full when theyre just not lean enough. If you think youre ready, you probably need another week.

4. The stage shrinks you.
Lights, distance, the platform. Everything you thought was visible disappears, muscle flattens, separation softens. What looks right in the gym at 80 percent light doesnt read on stage. The best up there trained for that environment specifically.

5. Confidence is built in the off season.
You cant manufacture stage confidence in the last six weeks. The ones who walk out owning it built it in the growth phase, the specialisation blocks that brought up weak points, the back that finally fills the stage. The off season work is what you feel when the music drops.

If im rebuilding from scratch i spend less time worrying about peak week and more time making sure the off season actually does its job.

Save this and come back to it in the final week when your head starts going sideways.