NUTRITION AND STRENGTH BUILDING

Muscle does not build itself. Your ability to recover and grow from your workouts is directly related to your nutrition, meaning you must always be conscious of the need to properly fuel your body with the correct food choices.

Of course, the benefits of good daily nutrition go beyond a stronger Squat or bigger biceps:

• Improved recovery between workouts
• Increased energy and stamina
• Increased muscle
• Decreased body fat percentage
• Improved health and injury prevention
• Building positive, healthy nutrition habits for life

Nutrition, however, can be more than preparative or preventative. Nutrition also provides the critical “trigger” for translating weight training into increases in strength, power, speed and agility. Simply put, lifting and conditioning both serve to stimulate the body, but only with proper rest and nutrition do we see the muscular adaptions of speed, strength, and power occur.

PRE-EXERCISE NUTRITION

Why should you eat prior to exercise?

Eating a meal prior to exercise replenishes muscle and liver glycogen stores. This is especially important for morning exercisers. An overnight fast can really deplete your body’s glycogen (carbohydrate) stores. Not having enough carbohydrates to fuel a tough and brutal workout will really hamper your pursuit of strength gains!

A large meal should be eaten 3–4 hours prior to exercise. This allows for maximum digestion, absorption, and metabolism of the nutrients, and ensures that the stomach has emptied prior to exercising. You should look to have a mixture of carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats in your pre-workout meal.

• Carbohydrates are the primary source of energy for anaerobic and prolonged high intensity aerobic activity.
• Protein in a pre-exercise meal will provide a small amount of energy to your muscle cells, decrease the breakdown of muscle protein, increase protein synthesis in muscle after the workout, and delay hunger prior to the exercise.
• Healthy fat is optional, and some people may experience some digestive issues when too much fat is present in their pre-workout meal. Other people may experience greater energy levels for a prolonged period of time. You will need to experiment to find the best fit for you.
• Stay hydrated to prevent dehydration from occurring too soon during exercise. Drink 17–20 fluid ounces 2–3 hours before any strenuous workouts and continue sipping on water throughout the workout.

Your actual needs for these three macronutrients (and fluids) will fluctuate depending on your size, genetics, and the duration and intensity of your activity. For example: the protein, carbohydrate, fat, and fluid requirements for a 165-pound person training 2–3 times per week vs. a 220-pound person recovering from 4– 5 heavy duty training sessions are quite different.

POST-EXERCISE NUTRITION

There are three great reasons to eat after exercise:

1. Refuels for the next bout of exercise
2. Rehydrates the body
3. Repairs muscles

Aim to eat in the first two hours post-exercise. In terms of what to eat, you should look to have a meal that is very similar in style to your pre-workout meal (or a post-workout meal shake). In general, the best pre- and post-training meals will contain some combination of high-qsuality protein, high-quality carbohydrates, healthy fats, and some fruit and vegetables. Make it specific to your body type and exercise level by adjusting the ratio of protein to carbohydrate.

Sometimes, especially after an intense training session, you might not feel hungry. If you don’t feel like eating, you can go with liquid nutrition. This can be as simply as a protein power mixture of whey and casein, prepared with 8–12 ounces of milk in a shaker cup. Want to take things to the next level? I personally recommend the Super Shake by Precision Nutrition. They provide multiple easy-to-make shakes that can fuel you before and after training.

Finally, drink—even if you are not thirsty. For every pound of sweat loss through activity, you should aim to drink 16 ounces of water. Fluids with sodium, potassium, and magnesium content can help to speed up rehydration.

EATING ACCORDING TO YOUR BODY TYPE

There are three general categories of body types: ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph.

Ectomorph

• Runner or endurance athlete build
• Can handle a higher carb diet
• Fast metabolism, or “hard gainer”
• Best diet strategy may be higher carb and lower fat

Mesomorph

• Competitive CrossFit or football running back build
• Can handle a medium carb diet
• Builds muscle easier than most
• Best diet strategy may be a balance of carbs, lean protein, and healthy fat

Endomorph

• Larger build with excess body weight in the belly and hips
• Poor carbohydrate tolerance
• Slower metabolism and difficulty with weight loss
• Best diet strategy may be most carbs from fruits and vegetables, high protein and medium fat

Most peoples’ bodies are often a combination of these characteristics. Please allow your body to be your guide by experimenting with different nutritional approaches until you find what works best. In addition, don’t judge a book by its cover. An ectomorph can easily gain a little belly fat from a sedentary lifestyle and a mesomorph could be a former “fat kid” who has trained hard and been consistent with healthy nutrition for year. Ultimately, honest efforts will yield honest results.

NUTRITION PRINCIPLES, NOT RULES

Over the years, I have counseled my clients, athletes, friends, and family to follow proven principles, not strict rules when it comes to successful nutrition. Strict diet rules tends to lead a person to bouncing around from diet to diet, drastic weight cycling (gaining and losing 10–20 pounds in a matter of weeks), and/or complete discouragement because they failed again. This happens when, after radically reducing calories from what we are currently eating, we create a negative quality of life because we’re saying “no” to social events, or we’re making multiple major changes in a short period of time, compared to a lifestyle that developed over a lifetime.

Some lifelong nutrition principles to follow include:

• Be honest with yourself and stop rationalizing what you know is bad for you. You do have time in the morning for a better breakfast than Pop Tarts.
• Eat veggies, fruits, lean proteins, higher fiber carbs, and heart healthy fats. Every diet book you’ll ever read and any diet you’ll ever follow suggest these same basic tenets—because they work.
• Consistent, healthy eating is only way for sustainable, healthy weight. There is no one food (or macronutrient) that will make or break your diet. Any single food diets or diets that restrict entire food groups are no way to live. Put another way, eating one salad doesn’t get you ripped, just like eating one piece of birthday cake will not make you fat.

DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS

Since dietary supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the safety of these supplements can always be compromised. As a result, third party organizations (Informed Choice, NSF Certified for Sport, the Banned Substance Control Group, and the Resource Exchange Center) test dietary supplements for safety.

However, these third-party organizations are checking primarily to make sure that what is listed on the label is actually in the bottle. For example, Red Bull has been tested as “safe;” that does not mean it is a good/safe choice for you to drink. It just means you are safe to know what is inside the bottle or can.

Working from that criteria, here are the “Big 4” that we recommend for building muscle:

The “Big 4”

1. Protein. Either whey or casein, or a combination of both, to increase your daily protein intake and help muscle recovery.
2. Fish oil. To help heart health and muscles recovery.
3. Creatine. To add a few reps in the weight room and build strength.
4. Beta-Alanine (Carnosine) to help finish those final, brutal reps.

As a bonus, also consider:

Vitamin D3. Great for athletes in the winter months, Vitamin D3 can help fight off cold and flu season, muscle inflammation, stress, and general aches and pains.

Joint care supplement. For the mid- to late-age lifter, these can be an invaluable support to keep you lifting longer.