Previous Chapter ... ... Next Chapter
I am going to briefly address most of these topics because they are very important to training but not the main focus of this book.
Sleep is extremely important for recovery. You may have heard that our muscles grow when we rest. This i true.
Depending on your body this may be anywhere from 6 to 9 hours a night. Most people would do well with about 7.5 to 9 hours. Sleep cycles are typically 1.5 hours in length, so it is best to plan your sleep towards those times if possible. When you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle you are extremely fatigued and cannot think clearly. We have all experienced this. Thus, it is best to try to avoid that.
Now that we have cleared that up here are techniques and tips on various topics that may help improve sleep.
For those that use the computer a lot especially at night F.lux is a great program that can help. It changes the screen to emit more red light after sundown which helps to normalize our circadian rhythms. Ideally, you want to be off of electronic devices at least 1-2 hours before sleep, but if you cannot then Flux will help out.
Here is a list of modifications that you can make to your room to improve sleeping:
Elimination of electronic devices / outlets / plugins near the body.
Pitch black room
Cool, dry room (60-65 or so degrees is good if possible)
Ear plugs and facemask
Sleeping before 10 PM
The best scenario is if you can get to bed early enough that you wake up without an alarm.
There are also some exercises that can be done before sleeping or during the day that can help improve sleeping as well.
Alternatively, supplements can be used to help improve sleep. However, I would only use these as a last resort unless you are already performing much of the above.
I know sleep can be a troublesome issue for people. One last tip I will give you is more of a psychological conditioning tip — only use the bedroom for sleep or sex. It can be difficult to fall asleep if you are in your room a lot and conditioned to watch TV or study.
To put it simply I like the Paleolithic diet.
Despite what you may have heard about the Paleo diet, it is neither low carbohydrate or high carbohydrate. It can be either depending on how many carbohydrates you eat from fruits and vegetables.
The plant to animal ratios of our ancestors and studies on hunter gatherers suggest the percentage of calories obtained from animal products was highly variable. For instance, the Gwi people of southern Africa ate as little as 25% of calories from animal products, and the Alaskan Nunamiut ate as high as 99% of their calories from animal products. Typical averages of animal calories to plant calories ratios are about 64-68% of animal calories and 32-36% of plant calories.
As you will note, this leaves no room for vegetarians.
Typical hunter gatherer carbohydrate sources ranged from about 22-40% of total energy intake. On a 2,000 calorie dict, this is 440 - 800 calorics from carbohydrates which is 110-200g of carbohydrates a day. It is even noted in populations where if they did not have any type of starch sources such as potatoes that even if they had meats they would say they were starving. As you can see, traditionally there is actually no such thing as a low carbohydrate Paleo diet.
Instead, the Paleo diet focuses specifically on inclusion of high quality and nutrient rich foods upon which we evolved: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, meat, birds, fish, cggs. High quality of foods means we will get all of the vitamins and nutrients that we need, but the relatively low nutrient density will help keep us lean
As athletes, we are going to want to aim for 1g/lbs or 2g/kg protein each day for the body, especially if we want to add muscle.
Now, i you have weight gain (for muscle) or weight loss goals including excreise there may need to be some modifications.
The biggest concepts that most trainees need to lear can be summed up in 4 axiomatic statements:
All weight loss, weight gain, increases in muscle mass, losing fat mass, etc. can be summed up by these statements. They also dispel a lot of myths in regards to the topics above. Abs are really made in the kitchen, although exercise can help.
Additionally, I have come up with 3 of my own general rules in regards to Paleo eating
Generally speaking, low carbohydrate and ketogenic diets are useful for correcting metabolic derangement and helping to reverse disease processes that are brought on by the "big four" factors that foster the diseases of civilization: (1) refined carbohydrates, in particular, fructose; (2) grains; (3) trans fats; and (4) omega 3:6 imbalances. Al of these are prevalent in processed foods
Athletes, especially endurance athletes, need higher amounts of carbohydrates to function well at their particular sports or disciplines.
Finally, no thriving population in our history has done well without enough carbohydrates. Carbohydrates from natural sources such as sweet potatoes.
I personally do not eschew rice, potatoes, or some of the other food stuffs that are not technically Paleo. however, they have been used extensively by hunter-gatherer groups for tens of thousands of years. Therefore, I believe they are fine. I also do not eschew dairy either unless you are allergic. Dairy is very useful for muscle gaining.
I know people love their grains but consider this: is there any nutrients or vitamins that are found in grains that are not found in more abundance in fiuits, vegetables, and meats? If actually look at the nutrition data you will se that the answer is a resounding no.
If you want to read more on this topic check out Robb Walf's The Paleo Solution or Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint.
On the Paleo dict, if you are obese you will naturally lose weight. If you are slightly overweight then Paleo will likely help you lose some weight, but may not get you to where you want to be. I would suggest eating until you are satisfied not full. This will ikely get you the results that you want.
Since it is fairly popular, here is the second way you can lose weight: calories in < calories out.
If you are going to use this approach you will need to do two things. First, is chart your food intake for the week (using a food calculator like fitday), and see if you gain or lose any weight. Divide by the number of days to get your approximate calories burned per week
Second, you want to eat in a caloric deficit of approximately 500 +/- 200 calories. If you are already not eating a lot, you do not want to go below about 1500 calories for men and 1300 calories for women because the body will enter starvation mode.
The reasoning for a slower form of weight loss is that changes to the body need to be gradual. If you deprive the body of nutrients, it will shut down thyroid hormone production which regulates metabolic: rate. Therefore, if you starve yourself your body will become more resistant to losing weight than if you just aim for a small caloric deficit,
Gaining weight is simple. Eat. A lot.
For gaining weight in the context of muscle there are two things that need to be present
There are a few myths regarding being overweight/obese and losing fat and gaining muscle. I will dispel these now.
The general rule of thumb is that extra "fat" within the body is an energy source. Therefore, if you a overweight/obese and lifting weights BUT eating in a caloric deficit then your body can call on the fat mass as the extra energy to build muscle. Obviously, as your body composition improves the ability of the body to do this decreases. However, this is one of the extraordinary things that can happen with lifting weights and why it is far superior to cardio or higher repetitions for fat loss. Basically, what I described in the above section on weight loss.
Now, there are two ways to approach gaining weight. One is the "clean" way eating healthy foods and the other is the "dirty" way which can be done by eating anything and everything. These two are referred 1o as clean and dirty bulking respectively.
Obviously, as your guide in this matter I would prefer that you approach it from the clean way which s to eat massive amounts of real foods (whole milk is especially good). However, if you do not care and just want to get bigger fast food is an easy way to provide lots of calories. It is up to you.
If you are not allergic to milk I would suggest adding in whole milk to Paleo (even though milk is not Paleo) to get sufficient calories to encourage muscle gain.
Metabolic flexibility is an interesting concept that has interesting parallels to injuries. Metabolic flexibility is defined as the ability or capacity of our bodies to adapt to different fuel sources given their relative availability.
Type 2 diabetes is a great example. Diabetes lies on a continuum from health fasting glucose to pre- diabetes to full blown diabetes. The only difference is the numbers that you get back from the test that arbitrary classify glucose numbers as normal, pre-diabetic, or diabetic. For example, as is stated on diabetes.org: "Normal fasting blood glucose is below 100 mg/d. A person with pre-diabetes has a fasting blood glucose level between 100 and 125 mg/dl. If the blood glucose level rises to 126 mg/dl or above, a person has diabetes." after a certain point, the body gets to the point where not enough insulin can be secreted to keep up with the glucose levels and therefore insulin injections are needed.
Now, what does this have to do with both nutrition and injuries?
In a diseased state, the body literally becomes intolerant of glucose. It cannot use the glucose because of the lack of insulin. Glucose becomes toxic to the body. It can be deposited into nerve cells where it is converted to sorbitol which impairs sensation. It can cause significant damage to arteries via AGEs — advanced glycation end products — contributing to heart disease. It can contribute to eye conditions such as glaucoma. It can lead to chronic kidney discase and renal failure. There are many other examples.
Glucose, like exercise, without insulin (or recovery factors in the case of exercise) can start to cause the body to dysfunction. Thus, exercise, like glucose, can start to harm the body through overuse injuries.
Now, the interesting concept is the relationship of metabolic lexibility to the recovery process. As you may know, if you eat correctly you can actually improve your blood glucose levels and in some cases actually reverse both pre-diabetes and diabetes. Low carbohydrates and ketogenic diets are effective at
this. I prefer low carbohydrate or ketogenic Paleo if this the case. The same is true in rehabilitation — if you eliminate the offending stimuli and start to rehabilitate you can improve your injury condition.
In the analogy, eliminating carbohydrates, especially refined carbohydrates, when you are less metabolically flexible is akin to eliminating the offending exercises or stimuli that are causing your chronic training injuries. Likewise, providing proper nutrition, such as Paleo where we focus on increasing food quality and nutrient availability, is similar to focusing on specific modalities and rehabilitation protocols aimed towards rehabbing our particular injuries.
Now, the analogy never stops. Even though you can reverse diabetes to some extent, if you have had it for a long time you may never become insulin independent again. The same i true with injuries. If you have sustained a catastrophic injury or large enough tissue damage, then the body may not be able to heal completely. Scar issues and collagen repair is laid down instead of the original tissues.
However, on the opposite side of the spectrum we know that eating healthy and performing exercise are keys to living a healthy and productive life. On a cellular level the same thing applies. We know that by having good nutrition we are going to be able to keep our glucose in a normal, healthy range. Likewise,
we know that exercise improves our bodies in many different attributes: the immune system, neuromuscularly, musculoskeletally, cardiovascularly, etc. Our ability to be strong and productive like exercise is the same as being metabolically flexibly. It is a sign of health. Therefore, strive to be healthy and improve your performance.
Thus is important consider your health from all aspects. The big four factors that contribute to performance are sleep, nutrition, training, and stress. Focusing on these factors is important to both health and performance. If you notice that one or more of these factors are deteriorating you should strive to fix them immediately.
Workout nutrition is not a complicated topic.
Eating before workouts within about 1-2 hours may affect the quality. However, from my ancedotal observations it really depends on the person. Try it out both ways. I personally prefer fasted.
I you are trying to gain weight, I would suggest having a liquid drink that you take pre-, peri-, and post-workout. However, the most important times for nutrition are peri- and post workout.
In regards to eating after a workout instead of supplementing, it does matter slightly. Liquid nutrition obviously gets to the muscles faster so if you can do that it is preferable. But if you cannot then it is nothing to worry that much about.
Chocolate whole milk is my preference for workout nutrition. It has whey, casein, and carbohydrates for energy. And supplementing vitamin D if you are taking any during this time is good as well.
Supplements are supplements. They are only there to supplement a good diet.
Supplements beneficial for overall health — fish oil, Vitamin D. Note if you are geting outside for vitamin D then you may not need to supplement.
Supplements beneficial for mass gain — creatine, BCAAs, whey & casein (though I prefer milk), glutamine, camitine, eating a lot of food, sleeping well. If you are taking protein and creatine remember to drink a lot of water.
Supplements beneficial for losing weight - proper weight training, eating well, and sleep. There are no shorteuts! Vitamin D and fish oil may actually help significantly though.
For eliminating colds and other upper respiratory tract infections such as the flu - 10,000 - 30,000 IU of Vitamin D. Vitamin C DOES NOT HELP.
There i some degree of controversy over if you should work out when sick. If so, should you be modifying your workouts depending on the degree of illness. We will discuss these concepts.
When we workout the stress of the workouts tend to create the microtears in our muscles. These microtears from the stress are a normal process of damage and repair. The body uses inflammation to signal and start to repair the damage caused by working out. An inflammation cascade is initiated and maintained by the immune system until all tissues are repaired and strengthened against the stress that was placed on the body.
In addition, stress from activity especially sustained activity elevates cortisol levels. Cortisol helps mobilize the body's supply of fat and glucose to provide fuel for the muscle, but it is an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive. For example, cortisone is a derivative of the same class of drugs, the glucocorticoids, and is used therapeutically to reduce pain and inflammation in specific areas of the body.
Our immune system is the way that our body fights infections and other pathogens that make us sick. So you can see how diverting the immune system away from fighting infections towards repairing muscles may be problematic. I have seen it many a time where someone is sick and decides to workout. Then they get even sicker. Similarly, you can even almost be over an illness and workout a couple of days after it has gone away and then it will come back
This is similar to antibiotics. When doctors preseribe antibiotics they tell you to continue to take them for the whole amount of weeks and not to stop even if you feel better. Likewise, even if you do not feel sick anymore the body is still fighting the last remnants of infection within your body. So when you subject it to heavy stress from working out or trying to come too quickly to exercise it may depress the immune system such that the infection comes back. Sometimes more strongly than the first time
In my opinion, you should treat it just like an injury. Thus, my preference tends to be to advocate relaxation and rest during sickness. Let your body do its business and come back to hard workouts once you are healed.
The higher the intensity of the workout, the more probably it is for higher relcases of stress hormones and damage to the muscles.
Thus, resistance training or sprinting or high intensity interval training or circuit training in general will be poor choices to do while sick. Resistance training can be fine if there is less muscle damage such as working in lower repetition ranges for strength or working in some of the higher repetitions for
endurance as long as the volume is not too high. It is the moderately-heavy weight at moderate repetitions (e.g. the bodybuilding repetitions of 6-12) that tend to do the most muscle damage.
There is the common saying that you can workout if its just head cold, but do not workout if the infection is in the throat/chest or lower.
I find this to be true as long as intensity is kept low. Chest illnesses such as pneumonia, bronchitis.cte. tend to a bit more potent than head colds. However, the caveat is that lying down and totally resting does actually foster these illnesses a bit. Immobility in hospitals is why you see many nosocomial infections (illnesses you gt from being in a hospital usually on bed rest).
Thus, lying around doing nothing for the entire duration may not actually be as beneficial when sick than at least some type of movement aside from working out. Getting up and moving around to get blood flowing and doing some deep breathing to help mobilize sccretions especially if you are coughing a lot is agood idea.
I would also like to add a stipulation which is that if you have a fever you should not be working out at all. Let your body devote all of its resources to fighting the illness especially when it is most vulnerable.
Generally, if you do decide to workout then keep the workout light. Perhaps a warm-up and see how you feel or a light run may work well. If you tend to overdo it once you get started it may be better to avoid working out altogether until your sickness is over.
Any exercise that you do should leave you feeling better than you started. If you start to feel worse then it may be time to give it up for the day and rest. Remember, our muscles and bodies recover when we rest, and it is exactly the same for illnesses.
In this chapter we learned that sleep and nutrition all have big effects on the body. Thus, we need to make sure we are doing all we can to help our training by sleeping and eating correctly. I listed various tips that help improve sleep, and recommend the Paleo diet for nutrition.
In regards to workout nutrition and supplementation you can approach it from various angles depending on your goals, I am still a fan of real foods as whole milk is superior or equal to most supplements for muscle mass gain.
In general, I am not a big fan of supplementation but I deem vitamin D and fish oil important.
Finally, we learned that working out when sick is discouraged: however, if you are going to do it then keep it light.
Previous Chapter ... ... Next Chapter