CategoriesNutrition

Why Gym Bros Should Periodize Their Nutrition

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of United Kingdom based strength & nutrition coach, Harry Archer. 

He took my subtle hint from a few weeks ago when I made note of the dearth of nutrition content on my site and how I tend to not touch it with a ten-foot pole. 

Not because I don’t know what gluconeogenesis is1, but because I know my where my expertise isn’t and I respect scope of practice.

Nevertheless, he reached out and offered to provide some nutrition-related content for the site.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Copyright: tverdohlib / 123RF Stock Photo

Why Gym Bros Should Periodize Their Nutrition

Let’s face it –  as a lifter and fellow enthusiast of all things getting Yoked, chances are you wanna be jacked/strong and lean all at the same time.

Admirable goals friend, join the Swole Club.

Unfortunately our physiology doesn’t really like us doing all three at once, so it’ll make excuses and half ass any adaptations and responses to lifting.

IKR, ffs, c’mon physiology.

Fortunately there’s a groovy nutrition concept that allows us to maximize training adaptations over time so we can indeed get massiver, stronger-er and more shredded..

It’s called Periodizing Nutrition, and I’m going to take you through it today.

All aboard the Gainz Train.

What Does Periodizing Nutrition Even Mean?

 “The planned, purposeful, and strategic use of specific nutritional interventions to enhance the adaptations targeted by individual exercise sessions or periodic training plans, or to obtain other effects that will enhance performance longer term” – Juedenkup

In bro-terms it’s organizing what you eat around the type of training you do to get the best results.

You can’t maximize (<– note key term here) both strength and hypertrophy at the same time very well, nor can you do either of these things whilst dieting down to single-digit body fat at the same time.

I know, I’m as gutted as you are.

via GIPHY

This is why training periodization exists – we can logically and systematically create training stimuli to produce different physical adaptations. We can lift heavier loads to create neural/strength stimuli, or we can lift moderate weights a lot of times to create hypertrophic stimuli, and we can do a load of cardio to help lose fat.

(Just kidding on that last one – don’t be THAT person).

The central idea of Nutritional Periodization is to match what you eat/how much you eat/specific macro ratios to the goal of your training block.

  • If you’re getting jacked, we can use calories and macros strategically to maximize gains.
  • If lifting heavy is your thing, I feel you homie, we can use certain nutrition protocols to maximize that.
  • If you’re #teamnogains, then certain dieting nutrition protocols can attenuate losses in fat-free mass as you’re dieting so you can hold onto your gains as you spend time choosing to deliberately catabolize your gains.

Developing Your Very Own Periodized Nutrition Plan

Nutrition Periodisation by @feedthebarbellntr

I mean, just eat right?

Why not just eat “well” or eat “good foods” or have seven protein shakes a day?

Because, whilst that’s lifting nutrition’s most ok-est advice, we’re more interested in our goals than “just eating right.”

What happens if your “just eating right” doesn’t support the hypertrophic goals you have and training in a hard volume block doesn’t result in the desired muscle gain?

What happens if “just eating right” doesn’t support the maintenance of lean muscle tissue during a deficit?

What happens if “just eating right” isn’t a sufficient amount of carbohydrates to offset perceived exertion during exercise leading you to feel like you’re the weakest dude in any gym that ever gymed?

You put a limit on how much progress you’ll make. Let’s not do that…

Training x Nutrition Periodization

If we look at training periodization, we have different training goals for different blocks. Each goal has a different objective, to produce a certain physiological adaptation or response so we normally use three different phases:

  • Increased Load = hypertrophic adaptations
  • Maintenance Load = Context dependent – could be transitions, could be a strength block after hypertrophy training
  • Decreased Load = usually transition between different blocks of training e.g. hypertrophy to strength or strength to deload

So, we can manipulate our nutrition to match the goal of the block right? Like so:

  • Increased Load = ideal for gains, so ideal for a surplus!
  • Maintenance Load = maintain body weight
  • Decreased Load = ideal for a deficit

So how do we plan nutrition around our block of training?

I Wanna Bulk Up

Ok, now we’re talking. So how can we periodize nutrition for them sweet gains?

The goal of hypertrophy blocks is to accumulate maximum recoverable volume (MRV) at a sufficient intensity to elicit muscle hypertrophy.

Basically?

Recover from lifting enough weight, enough times, multiple times a week so you get jacked.

When training load increases, guess what else should increase? If you said “calories, carbs and my biceps” you guessed right! Periods of high volume massing just need higher total calories and higher amounts of carbohydrates.

If we don’t periodize calories and carbohydrates to energy demands of our training, then very bad, super non-awesome stuff happens like overtraining, injuries and worst of all, you can’t fill out your Gymshark stringer Vest.

Topless gym selfies won’t be the same again.

How Fast Should You Gain?

When massing, we want to keep muscle:fat gain ratios favourable right? Keep rates of gain between 0.25-0.5% of your body-weight per week.

How Long Should You Gain?

You could probably make enough gains in 6 weeks, however, longer massing phases would see better results so push it to 12/16 weeks.

Is there a limit?

16 weeks. Outside of this, we run the risks of desensitising ourselves to training,  the ratio of muscle:fat starts tipping in favour of fat, we start running into health issues and ultimately it means longer, and more frequent dieting + maintenance phases as you’ll have accumulated too much fat that you don’t want to keep.

Macros For Gains Phases

Calories = 30-45 kcals/FFM (fat-free mass)

Protein = 1.6-1.8g/kg

Fats = 0.2-0.4 % of total calories

Carbs = whatever’s left (calculate other needs first)

Bit Fluffy From Your Last Perma-Bulk? I Got You

The goal of fat loss blocks shouldn’t really be to lose as much fat as possible. Instead, productive fat loss phases should really centre on maximizing FFM/LBM during the dieting phase, pushing close to MRV and promoting recovery from training load.

There’s mixed opinion on training volume when dieting. General bro rules dictate trying to  keep MRV (max recoverable volume) high to keep lean muscle mass during your dieting phase. There might be drops over time due to recoverability factors but cross that bridge when you get to it.

How Long Should This Phase Be?

Typically between 6-12 weeks, depending on how aggressive you want your deficit to be/how much you can handle. 6 week diets aka “Mini-Cuts” open themselves up to more aggressive losses, although these are typically fluctuations in water/glycogen and salt which aren’t fat.

Still, you can look pretty decent to your gym crush.

Longer dieting phases give us a better chance of retaining FFM due to slower losses, as long as you regulate training load. Otherwise, whilst you’re losing fat, you’re also increasing FFM losses, increasing injury risks and generally having a miserable time of it.

Proposed Rate of Losses?

Losses between 0.5-1% of total bodyweight per week is sufficient. Whilst a more aggressive approach may initially increase those %’s, most of that is water/glycogen and salt fluctuations. Higher rates of loss will come back to kick your ass with stuff like poor muscle retention, being hungry all the time, low sexual desires (what’s the point of looking decent if you can’t get laid?) and generally being a bit of a dick to everyone ‘cos you’re moody.

Is There a Limit?

There’s a concept of “Single Phase Limits” – up to no more than 10% of total body weight loss is recommended for a single dieting phase. The goal isn’t to hit maximum fat loss per phase, the goal is to retain maximum muscle mass and recover from training loads per phase. Always has been, always will be.

More aggressive losses are a wild ride. For most, lower rates of loss will be easier to mentally and physically manage which honestly increases your chances of sustaining your fat loss efforts. I mean, don’t go so slow that you can’t see any results because that’s not fun for anyone but keep it psychologically and physiologically sensible.

Macros For Fat Loss

Calories = 30-45kcals/kg FFM

Protein = 1.6-2.4g/kg

Carbs = whatever is left

Fats = 0.2-0.5% total calories

Ok, You’re Shredded. Now What?

Now your gym crush is following you on Insta, now is the time to avoid rebounding post diet.

Here’s where maintaining gains comes in.

Maintenance blocks are important as you don’t really wanna go straight into a bulk, rebound, and regain all of the layers of fat you’ve just spent months slowly peeling off now do you?

The goal here is to keep lower body weights stable, and to reduce any diet fatigue. It takes a while for your body to recover from dieting, so maintenance blocks should be about as long as the dieting block.

Or at least until you stop fantasizing over food more than your gym crush.

If you want to sequence several fat loss blocks together (Rule of 10%) then diets with maintenance phases are very necessary as each period of dieting becomes a little bit more difficult

Each maintenance phase should progressively get longer than the dieting period as you’ll accumulate diet fatigue across each phase, life sucks when you diet a lot and dieting gets super hard and takes longer as you get leaner.

Bringing It All Together

via GIPHY

Choosing how to sequence your very own periodized nutrition plan is going to depend on where you’re currently at.

If you’re looking to pack on some size, then maybe string a few massing cycles together – with the appropriate maintenance blocks obviously, and see how you grow.

If you’re looking to shift a bit of timber in time for 6 Pack season, then sequencing dieting:maintenance cycles could be a good choice for you right now.

Ultimately you’ve got to decide what you want to achieve and then periodize your nutrition to match the goals of your training blocks.

Now, go get strong, jacked and shredded.

About the Author

Harry Archer is a Strength and Nutrition Coach based in Bedford, UK.

Having worked in the fitness industry for nearly a decade, he’s worked in commercial gyms, private gyms, performance gyms, health clinics and more recently online (thanks COVID), with a variety of clients, ranging from helping the John’s from Project Management get Jacked With Abs, to coaching Strength-Sport performance athletes attempting World Records.

He’s usually happiest when lifting and eating, and when thinking about lifting and eating. Follow him on his Insta HERE.

 

CategoriesUncategorized

2 Big Mistakes

Had my latest article posted up on T-Nation recently:

Chances are if you’re reading T Nation you’re interested in muscle, and you’re interested in packing on as much of it as possible.

Whether it’s to improve performance on the field, look better naked, or to stop the, “Hey, you look like that skinny kid from the movie Road Trip” taunts, it stands to reason that a fair share of the people reading this have gone through a bulking cycle or two.

And failed miserably.

Bulking isn’t easy – it takes a lot of hard work, time, and dedication. But if you’re someone who’s consistently making the same two mistakes below, then it’s time to make some changes.

CONTINUE READING……

Also (See Below for a Stellar Gwyneth Paltrow/Tracy Anderson Burn)

Everyone and their Little League coach is seemingly making the trip to NYC this weekend to support my boys John Romaniello and Adam Bornstein for the book launch of their new book Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha Male.

Unfortunately, while I was invited, I won’t be able to make the trip because I’ll be presenting at the Elite Training Workshop (alongside Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson, and Mike Reinold) at Cressey Performance this weekend.

As I noted earlier in the week, John is offering some pretty sweet additional bonuses for those who purchase the book on the official Engineering the Alpha website HERE.  Offers that end tomorrow (Saturday, April 20th at noon).  These offers ALSO apply to those who buy the Kindle version (so long as they forward their receipts of purchase).

If that’s not incentive enough I have one more ulterior motive to entice you to purchase the book that I want to throw your way.  The current #1 Hardcover Health/Advice book on the New York Times best sellar list is It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great by none other than Gwyneth Paltrow. The same Gwyneth Paltrow who, while being BFFs with “celebrity” trainer Tracy Anderson (of the “no woman should lift a weight heavier than three lbs” and “baby food diet” fame), was also diagnosed with osteopenia (a precursor to osteoporosis) two years ago; in no small part to the extreme diets and food restriction she has long advocated.

What a bunch of BS.

So, if you don’t buy Man 2.o (a book that’s actually written by two well-respected people IN the industry) and help it climb to #1, you’re essentially supporting Paltrow Skeletor and Anderson Mephistopheles.

Okay, that’s a bit harsh, but hopefully you see my point.

Ladies, This Means You, Too.

Understandably, a book not starting with the words 50 Shades of.… and revolves around how to go about increasing T-levels isn’t high on a woman’s “to read” list. To that end, John has placed his best-selling program Final Phase Fat Loss on sale as a “peace offering” for any women out there feeling left out and still interested in getting some top-notch information in their hands.

You have to act quickly, though, because the offer ends tomorrow (Saturday, April 20th).

CategoriesMotivational Nutrition

An Athlete’s Approach to Optimal Eating

I’ve had a great run of weekly guest posts from various people in the fitness world as of late, and I wanted to keep the streak going with another one from Nate Miyaki.

For those unfamiliar, Nate is a regular contributor at T-Nation and generally leans more on the nutrition side of things.  I’ve grown to really respect his body of work and appreciate his simple, minimalist (yet very effective) approach to nutrition. In addition, I KNOW he walks the walk and doesn’t just talk a big game.  My man is shredded!

I hate to say it, but there are A LOT of people out there that seem (maybe prefer?) to make things waaaaaaay more complicated than they have to be, and the topic of what to eat and when ranks right up there.

Is it better to eat low carb or high carb?  Is it okay to eat past 6 PM? Because fruit contains fructose, we should avoid it at all costs, right? Is 1.0 grams of protein per lb of bodyweight best for optimal results or is 1.376 a better number to shoot for?  And since everyone and their Little League coach is doing it, what’s the deal with Intermittent Fasting?  

You would think, based off how some people dissect every nook and cranny of their diet, that they’re  performing rocket science or trying to figure out why it is women are drawn to the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon.

Nonetheless, in today’s post Nate dives into how athlete’s should strive to eat, and offers a sorta pre-game speech to set people straight.  His sentiments mirror much of mine, and I think many of you will appreciate it.

Enjoy! 

From the moment you put on that jersey, grab a bat, strap on the gloves, buckle up the chin strap, climb under the bar, or lace up a pair of sneakers, cleats, or skates; the sands of time start ticking away.

Most athletes only get a relatively short window within which to accomplish something great.  That’s a gift in itself, because the majority of people were just not born with the natural talents or skills to even get a chance.

If you’re one of the lucky few, you need to take advantage of that privilege.  For once its gone, it’s gone forever.   Don’t wake up one morning wishing you had done more when you had the chance.  You have the rest of your life to kick back, follow the crowd, and be mediocre.

But while your opportunity is here, right now in this moment, why not do everything possible to give yourself the best chance of succeeding?  Why not use every weapon at your disposal to maximize your true athletic potential?

Dietary Discipline & Maximizing Your Potential

One of the most important weapons is your diet.  Unfortunately, it is often the most overlooked by performance athletes, because the truth is you can perform decently on a suboptimal diet.  Anecdotally, there is no arguing that given some of the sh*t lists I’ve seen from some of my own athletes.  Do you even know what a caramel dumpling is?

But you certainly are not maximizing your true potential and performing at your genetic peak with this approach.

Our generation has lost something.  We’ve become a bunch of entitled whiners expecting something for nothing, always looking for that quick fix.  We’ve lost that ability to strive, to sacrifice, to set goals, to do everything possible to achieve them, and to never waver in their pursuit.

We’ll take short cuts and cheat the system any chance we can get; yet we shy away from the day-to-day grind that is really necessary to climb to the top.  We’ll take a pill, but won’t change our daily habits.

So before we spend time getting into dietary details, which we will, we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.  If we don’t solve this riddle first, all subsequent nutrition articles will be meaningless.

Athlete or Average?

You have to decide right now whether you consider yourself an athlete or an average dude (or girl).  One gets more leeway, sympathy, and handholding.  The other gets a swift kick in the nuts (or female equivalent, metaphorically speaking) when they show up to a training session with a bagel in hand, sipping on a latte.

Are you preparing to fuel your body for battle, or are you, in stealing a line from the great Dan John, “eating like a child”  that needs a bag of Skittles to much on while sending your BFF texts about the Twilight Saga?

The average dude comes in for a few workouts a week, then goes and hangs out at Applebee’s.  An athlete lives like one 24/7, whether their coach is watching over them or not, whether its “hard” and “inconvenient” or not.

Which are you?  There’s no right or wrong answer.  But as a coach, I need to know.  Because you talk to guys on the field a lot different than the ones sitting in the stands.

It amazes me to see guys and gals train like madmen, then go out and eat pizza and ice cream.  They have the discipline of a warrior within the lines, but a bullsh*t excuse-maker outside of it.

You’re saying you have dreams and want to be the best, but your actions are screaming something very different.

It’s Not Just How You Lift, It’s How You Live

Don’t you need to junk-load to increase calories and support your training?  No.  Never.  Do you want to follow plans based on marketing material or plans based on science, or just pure common sense?

What do you think a dietary induced, chronically inflamed body is doing to your ability to recover from your training sessions, or for your nagging knee and shoulder pain?

That pastry sounds like sh*ts and giggles to the average, but its not if you have elite goals.

Cellular integrity, insulin sensitivity, and optimal nutrient partitioning can all degrade over time with a poor diet.  What do you think that does to your ability to put on functional muscle that makes you faster and more powerful vs. non-functional fat that makes you slower and less explosive?

And sure, you may be able get away with whatever you want nutritionally in your 20’s.  But the small percentage who extend their careers into their latter years are the ones who took care of their bodies and followed an informed path right from the beginning.

You call yourself an athlete, than live like an athlete — on the field, in the gym, and in the kitchen.

Start With the Simple – Optimize Food Choices

I don’t want this article to be just about philosophy, psychology, pontification, and rah-rah ramblings. You need some practicality as well.

So how should an athlete nutritionally support their competition and training demands?  Do it through quality, nutrient dense foods that serve a physiological and metabolic purpose.

So hit those high quality animal proteins for the essential amino acids necessary to build lean muscle mass, and for the essential fatty acids and good fats necessary to support optimum hormone production.

We’re talking grass-fed beef, wild fish, free-range poultry, and eggs — all hormone and anti-biotic free, of course.

Don’t eat fast food, salami slices, or candy bars with protein added to it to justify “getting your protein in”.  The #5 combo will be waiting for you when you’re trying to grow some chins, not be fast and powerful enough to land that knockout punch on your opponent’s chin.

Include some plant foods like vegetables and whole fruits for a variety of micronutrients and phytonutrients, not a bunch of empty calories combined with randomly shot-gunning a bunch of pills to try and make up for the nutrient deficiencies.

Maybe your mama thinks eating a bowl of cornflakes and chewing on a Flintstones vitamin is the Athlete’s Way.  I don’t.

And carbs?  I love Paleo nutrition as a baseline template. It automatically gets rid of many of the problematic compounds in the modern Y2K diet.  That’s why 80% of my dietary recommendations are based off of it.

But as a high performance athlete, you can’t follow it all the way down the rabbit hole and end up in some dietary cult.  You’re not a sedentary, pre-diabetic, insulin resistant office worker.  And you are certainly not a frickin’ caveman.  You’re a modern athlete with modern performance goals.

The game is different.  You need to understand a thing or two about exercise physiology, and integrate some modern, researched, Sports Nutrition principles to properly fuel and recover from your training sessions.

Many athletes get caught up in following the universal, dogmatic proclamations of carbophobic academics whose only sport has ever been jogging (Ron Burgundy pronounces it Yogging).  But high intensity strength and intermittent sprint sports are fueled by anaerobic metabolism, which can only run on glucose/glycogen.

That doesn’t mean loading up on bologne sandwiches and fruit roll ups.  You want starches without the toxic compounds, potential food allergens, or “anti-nutrients” that can wreck the digestive system, impair nutrient absorption, and leave you tired and lethargic.

So cut the sugar, refined flour, and gluten-based starches.  Stick with starchy tubers (yams, sweet potatoes, white potatoes) and white rice to support your training.

Drink some high quality H20 like the Water Boy recommends, not Diet Coke.

Conclusion

I get it.  It’s easy to watch highlights of your favorite athlete, or film on your next opponent, or just flip through the pages of Playboy, crank up some AC/DC, and get amped up like a madman to train.

When the adrenaline subsides, and some semblance of a normal human being returns, however, it is a lot harder to get fired up to eat a grass-fed steak and potato instead of pizza and fries.  But I believe it’s equally important to your long-term athletic success.

For every one genetically gifted or drug enhanced athlete that can get away with a crappy diet, there are ten that can’t.  Everything you put into your body makes a difference.  It’s up to you whether that difference is positive or negative.

Author’s Bio

 

 

Nate Miyaki is a fitness author, athlete, and coach. He is the author of the new book “Intermittent Feast: An Evolutionary & Scientific Approach to Slashing Fat”.  Visit his site at www.NateMiyaki.com.

CategoriesUncategorized

2011 Bits of Awesomeness

2011 is quickly drawing to a close, and I thought I’d take this time to review some of the more popular blog posts from this past year. Collectively all of them made the list either because they were the most viewed, had the most responses/comments, or I just felt they kicked ass and thought you should read them again; or if you’re new to the site, for the first time.

Everyone does a top ten list. Ten is lame, so I thought I’d become a trend setter and go with twelve – albeit in two parts.

It’s interesting, though.  In dissecting the stats, those posts which I felt I put a lot of time and effort into, weren’t necessarily the most popular.  Jerks!

Conversely, some posts, which I literally put together at the last minute, were an instant hit.  I don’t get it.  Nevertheless, it’s readily apparent that there’s a lot of diversity on this site (not to mention I have no idea how to interpret my Google Analytics page), and there’s really no one “category” that reigns over another. It seems, at least transparently, I have a nice mix of geeky content and infotainment that appeals to a wide variety of people.  It works, so why fix what ain’t broken?

With that, I can’t thank all of you enough for the support.  Here are some of 2011’s highlights.

High Heels, Deadlifts, and Attitude (Part I and II)

I had a handful of superb guest bloggers this year:  Kellie Hart Davis, Jason Bonn, Michael Gray, Jonathan Goodman, etc.  But it was this two part post from personal trainer and co- Girls Gone Strong* founder, Molly Galbraith, that stood out.

* For those out in the dark:  look for the Girls Gone Strong page on Facebook.  They do an amazing job at putting out solid content geared towards women.

Perfecting the 1-Legged RDL

My “Exercises You Should Be Doing” series is one of the more popular staples on this site, and this post I did on the 1-legged Romanian Deadlift seemed to resonate with many people.  Maybe it was the killer commercial gym story at the beginning to set the tone, or maybe it was the random picture of Jessica Alba.  Either way, it worked.

My Case Against the Leg Press

Here, I opened a can of worms and left myself open for public scrutiny, but felt I made a solid case as to why I’m not a huge fan of the leg press. For 95% of people, 99% of the time, they’re worthless.  And, what’s more, I somehow managed to include a joke about Tom Selleck’s mustache into the mix.  If that doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what will.

Mistakes Skinny Guys Make: Eating Like an Olsen Twin

One of my goals last year was to start an on-going series that, unlike those shitty Transformers movies, didn’t suck.

This was the inaugural post that marked the beginning of my Mistakes Skinny Guys Make saga. I think the title says it all, but you should read it anyways because there is a lot of useful information in there.

Don’t You Think You Look Tiny: A Psychological Look Into the Female Brain

This was actually a surprisingly popular post, and I was amazed at how many people chimed in with their own personal stories of others – friends, family, colleagues – giving them backhanded compliments about their transformations.

This post only reiterates why I absolutely LOVE reading things on behavioral economics.

Intimidate the Weight

This one was an absolute blast to write, and I get fired up reading it every time. I’m so sick of people going through the motions when they train, and with little to no purpose.  GET ANGRY!!!