Natural bodybuilding how much protein

Like all bodybuilding competitions, how you prepare depends on the show you enter. For example, the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation WNBF or INBF requires athletes to undergo polygraph testing, urine drug testing , and a contingent follow-up urine drug test immediately after the competition if they win an award. Olympia competition is quite permissive about what the athletes can take in terms of supplements.

In addition, the WNBF requires athletes to be drug-free for 10 years prior to a competition. In other words, former steroid users would need to wait a decade before being eligible to compete in a WNBF competition. We cannot stress this enough: The list of banned substances will vary depending upon the competition you enter.

Therefore, if you adhere to their guidelines, it is highly likely you will be within the limits set forth by other natural bodybuilding competitions. There are roughly substances currently banned from WNBF competitions, including:.

As a competitive natural bodybuilder , your goal is to increase lean muscle size and cut body fat through primarily diet and training. Natural supplements can help as an adjunct to get you in tip-top shape for your bodybuilding shows. In fact, competitive lifters and bodybuilders agree it's nearly impossible to win first place at a natural bodybuilding competition without using supplements.

Whether you're competing for Mr. Natural Olympia or at a regional WNBF contest , you'll be happy to know the following supplements are allowed and effective :. Creatine is a substance found naturally in many cells especially skeletal muscle cells , and it happens to be the top supplement for muscle growth and athletic performance. In everyone there is both constant protein synthesis and breakdown. Resistance training causes both breakdown and synthesis to increase, normally with a favorable balance towards synthesis.

As you progress in your training, the body becomes more efficient at stopping the breakdown of protein resulting from training. Since less protein now needs to be replenished, this increase in nitrogen retention means less protein is subsequently needed for optimal growth.

Secondly, the more advanced you are, the less protein synthesis increases after training. As you become more muscular and you get closer to your genetic limit, less muscle is built after training. This is very intuitive. The slower you can build muscle, the less protein is needed for optimal growth. A final objection that is often heard is that these values may be true during bulking or maintenance periods, but cutting requires more protein to maintain muscle mass.

Walberg et al. A perhaps even more telling study is by Pikosky et al. The researchers took a group of endurance trained subjects and had them consume either 0. They also added a thousand calories worth of training on top of their regular exercise.

So these guys were literally running on a calorie deficit while drastically increasing their training volume. Talk about a catabolic state… Of course the nitrogen balance in the low protein group plummeted. However, the protein intake of 0. Nitrogen balance, whole-body protein turnover and protein synthesis remained unchanged. A further review of the literature on the optimal protein intake in a deficit can be found in this article of the research on protein by Eric Helms.

Enter your email and we'll keep you on top of the latest nutrition research, supplement myths, and more. How much dietary protein does a bodybuilder require? Several organizations, such as the American College of Sports Medicine [1] and the International Society of Sports Nutrition shown in Figure 1 , have recommended that physically active adults consume between 1.

However, these recommendations are based primarily on studies that involve recreationally active or formerly untrained adults with normal amounts of lean body mass. Extending these recommendations to a resistance-trained bodybuilder looking to maximize lean body mass may not be appropriate.

Several studies have attempted to identify the minimal protein requirements of elite bodybuilders [2] , novice bodybuilders [3] , and strength-trained athletes [4]. Using the nitrogen balance method, which attempts to determine protein requirements by measuring nitrogen intake and excretion, these studies suggested that protein requirements upwards of 1. However, the nitrogen balance method has several limitations [5] , such as the way in which the data is analyzed linear fits used for nonlinear data , inaccurate estimations of nitrogen intake and excretion, and the one to two week adaptation period required before protein intake measurements can be taken.

Isotope tracer studies [6] have suggested that there are four stages of protein metabolism: deficiency, accommodation, adaptation, and excess. Nitrogen balance studies may show that people are in nitrogen balance at lower intakes of dietary protein because the body adapts to this lower amount by downregulating physiologically relevant pathways, like muscle protein synthesis and immune function. However, for a bodybuilder interested in maximizing muscle growth, this accommodation is not beneficial.

Rather, the focus should be on conditions when both optimal growth and immune function are present. The Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation IAAO technique is a method for determining protein requirements that overcomes many of the shortcomings of nitrogen balance studies. For instance, only a minimal adaptation period is required before testing of protein requirements. Dietary amino acids must be incorporated into bodily tissues via protein synthesis or oxidized for energy and excreted from the body.

The study under review used the IAAO technique to determine the protein requirements of young male bodybuilders. This is the first study to use the IAAO technique in this population, and will provide important information for helping to establish protein recommendations for bodybuilders while avoiding the shortcomings of nitrogen balance assessments.

Eight healthy young men average age of All the participants had at least three years of resistance training experience and were currently strength training four or more days per week with minimal aerobic exercise less than 20 minutes per week. Additionally, the participants had to be relatively weight stable, with less than four kilograms 10 pounds of weight gain or loss in the past six months, and never having used anabolic steroids.

To ensure that the participants were near their theoretical maximum muscular potential, each had their fat-free mass index FFMI; same as BMI but uses fat-free mass instead of body weight calculated and compared to published values [7] of Mr.

USA winners during the pre-steroid era of USA winners were selected. USA bodybuilders. The participants underwent several three-day test periods separated by at least one week. Each occasion consisted of a two-day adaptation period followed by the IAAO study day. During the adaptation days, the participants were provided with a maintenance diet supplying 1. During the IAAO test day, the participants were randomly assigned to receive a test protein intake ranging from 0. Importantly, testing days occurred on non-training days and at least 48 hours after a training session, since resistance training is known to increase muscle protein synthesis rates [8] for up to two days after training.

Figure 2 summarizes the study findings. Protein oxidation declined with increasing protein intake up to an average intake of 1. This suggests that the average dietary protein requirement for the study sample was 1. Using lean body mass rather than body weight, the average protein requirement and upper end of the confidence interval become 2.

The study under review suggests that the daily protein requirement that would cover the needs of young and experienced bodybuilders is likely to be between 1. From these statistics, the authors then infer that almost all experienced bodybuilders would have their protein requirements satisfied by eating 2. There are many important qualifiers of this study that cannot be overlooked when extending its findings to other populations, including strength-trained athletes.

The participants training for a minimum of four days per week, for about an hour each day, but the specifics of their training routines were not provided.

It is common for bodybuilders to use split routines with a focus on relatively higher repetition zones repetitions per set is recommended [9] to maximize muscle growth. Protein is a complex chemical structure of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen.

From the simple blink of an eye to the flow of blood to muscles under extreme stress, proteins are everywhere. Their function involves more than muscle tissue repair. It includes repair of red blood cells, hair and fingernail growth, regulation of hormone secretion, movement muscle contraction , digestion, maintenance of the body's water balance, protection against disease, transport of nutrients to and from cells, the carrying of oxygen and regulation of blood clotting.

So the role of protein is very important to over-all body function and health. Sadly enough, this role has been improperly depicted in various muscle magazines, on TV fitness shows and in claims by trainers and bodybuilders who think protein is mainly used to repair damaged muscle tissue. This couldn't be further from the truth. As mentioned earlier, the RDA is 0. Food and Nutrition Board, for sedentary adults. For infants and children the RDA is doubled and tripled because of the rapid growth rate they experience.

How did the researchers come up with this RDA and arrive at the figure that has been shunned by the bodybuilding community?

Studies using nitrogen a component of protein have been conducted to see how much protein is used and absorbed before an excess condition results.

Researchers looked at the nitrogen balance and made comparisons to see if a positive or a negative balance had been occurring. They observed the outcome by comparing the amount of nitrogen excreted with the amount ingested, and then they determined whether or not protein was accumulating in the body, remaining at the same level, or decreasing.

The nitrogen balance test uses nitrogen loss in the form of sweat, urine, feces, shedding of skin, and loss of hair on a day-to-day basis. If there is a positive balance in nitrogen levels, it means there has been more nitrogen ingested than excreted, and so, tissue growth can be a direct result. A negative balance shows researchers that more nitrogen is being excreted than taken in, and this means, of course, that more protein is being lost than produced.

Basically, the protein requirement for sedentary adults involves replacing routine losses-the task, so to speak, is to keep the leaky bucket topped up. Well it seems they concluded that 0. With a safety margin in place, it has been bumped up to 0. This is to replace the amount which may be lost during digestion, as well as making up for a lack in quality of protein. The general protein requirement for sedentary adults is just enough that if one follows this guideline they will supply themselves with enough amino acids to replace each day's loss without allowing for exercise and the growth of muscle tissue.