The Bod Coach Blog

Sports Nutrition 101:

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:44:44 -0400

I would like to identify for you some of the most important elements regarding sports nutrition that I have found essential over my career as an athlete, trainer and coach. In my personal and professional experience it is quite clear that you will undoubtedly perform at a MUCH lower level than you are capable of; and putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage to those with whom you are performing against or competing with, if you are not properly fueled. Your body is like a computer in this sense: What you put in, is what you get out. Here is what I will cover using a brief bullet point style of writing so you get the most out of this article. If you require more detail please feel free to reach out to me to set up an appointment to chat. Topics are:

• Meal Quality
• Meal Quantity
• Meal Frequency & Timing
• What does it all mean?

Meal Quality
• Avoid convenience foods such as fast carbs that come in a box or bag
• Eat balanced meals containing carbs, protein, and fat
• Fresh is better than processed any day of the week
• Alcohol consumed within 12 hours of a competition will negatively affect athletic performance. Friday night happy hour will affect your Saturday morning activities!
• Drink your water. Or coffee, or tea, or other water based fluid. Hydration is hydration. Caffeine induced diuretic effect has been disproved for everyone that regularly consumes caffeine. The diuretic effect is only valid when you don’t regularly consume caffeine. Like a new coffee drinker.

Meal Quantity
• Keep meal sizes relatively even in size throughout the day for the best blood sugar regulation. How large a quantity depends on many factors including: Height, weight, age, sex, activity level, injury status, chronic illness, stress, lack of sleep and more! A custom nutrition analysis can reveal a “magic number” for you. I can provide that one on one if you need it.
• Even sized meals keep energy levels, your blood sugar, even through the day. Slightly larger meals are fine during the course of “standard” day-to-day living that revolves around socially important bonding meals. I am talking about family gatherings that include breakfast, lunch, and or dinner. The larger these meals, the smaller the mid meal snacks should be. In a perfect world, even energy distribution is best.
• Do you know how much you really are eating? Next time you go to eat what you consider a normal portion go ahead and prepare it. Now before consuming it, backwards measure out the food. See how much you are REALLY eating. Then read the label and you might be shocked at what you find. Did you have just 1 serving of what you are making? Old guidelines such as don’t eat anything bigger than your hand are useful to be aware of your food intake. However, taking measurements are an exact tool and can produce much better results.

Meal Frequency
• For best sports performance it is important to attempt to evenly distribute your energy throughout the day. 6 evenly sized meals is an ideal. Realistically getting 3 meals and 3 snacks is probably more in line with day-to-day living. That is unless you can commit to a lifestyle change during your most competitive seasons. Summer sport athletes can be more lax in the winter and vice versa.
• Eating 60 to 30 minutes before activity is best. As long as you are not eating a massive portion you should be able to clear your stomach within 45 minutes of any food intake. Then you will be properly fueled for your activity. If your are embarking on a long road race or ride you may want to eat much earlier to make sure you don’t create an unplanned potty break. Not fun at all. So plan ahead.
• Eating a lean protein source within 30 minutes after intense activity will ensure your muscles get replenished so you can recover and grow. This 30 minute window is a critical time in which your muscles are most open to absorption of nutrients. Some experts believe the window is even shorter. Make it 30 minutes and you are ahead of most people.
• If your goal is to improve muscular strength and development then it is important to have ANOTHER meal within 60 minutes of the first protein source post exercise. This meal should ideally consist of lean protein, unrefined carbs and some fats as well. That means that within 90 minutes you should have a pure protein source, and then a protein-carb blend meal. Fat in this meal is fine too.

What does it all mean to you?

Let’s see if I can give you more of a reason to eat right around your training and sports. If you are fueling your body properly around your exercise you need to understand what it does regarding weight loss (if that is a goal). Eating these meals reduces your available daily calorie total available to you to consume during the remainder of the day. Do the math: A meal prior to exercise, a protein source such as a protein shake right after exercise, and another meal within 60 minutes of that. Subtract these calories you need to fuel your body right, and what you get to eat the rest of the day is reduced considerably. If you are attempting to lose weight this is a critical point to understand. You may think, “ I just worked out, I need those calories”; and it’s true. But the fact that most people don’t understand, when it comes to weight loss, is that you just consumed a fair portion of your daily total of calories within 2-3 hours of the day. This is necessary. But because you worked out these are not free calories you don’t count! The remainder of the day you now have to manage what’s left of caloric budget so to speak.
THIS IS WHY THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO EXERCISE NEVER LOSE WEIGHT: EVEN IF THEY TRAIN HARD AND EAT CLEAN!
But you can’t manage a budget you don’t understand. And simply eating the right types of foods doesn’t mean that you are eating the right quantity of foods to maintain your energy balance or create an energy deficient. That is why knowing how much you need to eat in a given day is critical to weight loss or reduction of body fat. Think about it: If results were based solely on the training and the hard work you do, then why are you not the most fit you have ever been? What kills me personally is to see so many people working out so hard and not managing the most critical portion of the process; nutrition. I can help you figure out your caloric demands. If you want to know your personal “magic number”, then reach out to me and set up a time to meet. We can change how you approach your food, training and manage your mistakes along the way. Knowledge is power: get smarter about how you eat & train to improve your performance. Learn how to let your hard work show.

The Bod Coach has presented to and currently has time slots available to speak with high school athletics programs throughout Connecticut regarding these and other sports nutrition topics. Contact Karl to discuss getting your student athlete the most recent sports nutrition info available today.

Excuses

Tue, 6 Apr 2010 17:28:51 -0400

Watch this video... I have more clients like this than I care to share. Next time you don’t want to work out, or cook your own food think about doing it without all of the physical gifts you were born with. Then talk to me.
To steal a line from Yoda in Star Wars, “Do or do not; there is no try”.

The Unquantifiable Elements

Tue, 9 Feb 2010 20:19:15 -0500

Stress & Lack of Sleep: The Unquantifiable Elements

Stress and lack of sleep are your 2 biggest unquantifiable enemies. If you over-train your body on top of that all you do is make the problem worse. Your body is built to handle only so much stress imposed by a lack of sleep, work, or your training routine. When work and a lack of sleep get overwhelming, adding in training will only make your body fight back and hold onto water and body fat as defense mechanisms. Your body is getting ready for a war. A war you, my friend, are putting it through. Let me share my personal, and as usual; insane example:

Starting in November 2009, I worked managing a brand new studio, goGreen Fitness, and I still held my personal training job from 5AM until 10AM daily. Once finished there I then worked non-stop as needed for goGreen doing managing, marketing, social media, etc... 7 days a week. From 11/25 until 1/31 I verified through reports that I had taught 40 hours of Spinning. 40 hours in 60 days!! Here is the killer. I didn't over eat, except on some holiday occasions, and primarily stuck to my diet. If I overate it would make sense that I would have gained 2-4 pounds No big deal for a 200+ pound man. But imagine this: all that riding (I ride hard mind you) and I saw the scale go from 204 all the way to 215.8 pounds by 2/1/10!! Are you kidding me? How the hell is that possible????? 40 hours of cardio, resistance workouts at least 1 or 2 times per week and a fairly clean diet? What gives? How can I explain this? My calories in – calories out equation doesn’t seem to work here.

How about average nights sleep of 5-6 hours for that 60+ days? How about working 2 jobs with the success of a business riding on my conscience? It was just too much stress. Now that is bad enough, but I HAD to teach all of those classes to get the business off the ground and my body was not prepared to handle that much cardiovascular training! My body was facing the perfect storm. A storm that can never be out-trained or out-dieted. Do you find yourself in my shoes? Maybe not as extreme, but over-stressed, under rested and still working out? My extreme case shows up as 10 pounds of weight gain in 60 days. But yours may only be 5 or 7 in 5 months.

It's at this point in life it is wise that you only use exercise to release stress; not try to put more stress on your body to lose weight. It doesn't work that way. It only back fires and gets you more messed up. When you can't escape outside stressors, and you are maintaining some normal type of diet; your only play is to tread water and hold the line on weight gain. Overtraining or starving yourself adds that extra level of stress your body can't handle and you will go in reverse of the results you desire. Hold the line when you can't change your environment and you are winning this battle; your own little victory.

This proves another point: You need to have your life in order to lose weight. Weight gain is a symptom of underlying problems; not usually the cause of them. And the more weight you gain, the more stress you will feel, the more depression will set in. It's at these times that you are better served by stress management techniques; not overtraining or starving yourself. Exercise can be one of these tools. Just try not to make it regular strenuous exercise.

I know these effects are reversible first hand because I personally just ended with a big stressor, I finished working at goGreen Fitness, and I am sleeping more because I just had surgery on 2/2/10 and have already lost weight! I am more refreshed and relaxed from sleeping all the time while recovering from this surgery and feel better in general. Even with all of this fluid still in my leg (probably 3-5 pounds of water) I am still down 5 pounds from the day before I went in for surgery. That means I probably dropped 8-10 pounds in a week. How?

1. Time off from training
2. Time off from work / overworking
3. I got more than 5.5 to 6 hours of sleep like I had been previously getting

These 3 things all joined forces and allowed me to drop a real 5 pounds in a week. This should be something to consider. If this is you and you have too much stress in your life and are not sleeping well; don't fight the current too hard. The more you fight, the less you'll progress. You should just be happy treading water until you lower your stress and improve your sleep. It's again my first hand experience speaking. I just lived it. Best of luck to you. I hope that you are now aware of these unquantifiable factors. We may not be able to do anything about them; but awareness is critical. Only then can you make changes in your life to affect different outcomes.

The elusive key to training success: Intensity

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:57:28 -0400

As a trainer I get to see the varying fitness levels in my clients. I am fortunate to have a good number of clients that already bring with them, or learn from me, the last key to fitness success: Intensity. I am often asked questions about types of exercises, number of sets, number of reps and number of days of training per week they should perform to meet their goals. But what is rarely, if ever, questioned is intensity. It is the final, and most important key, to fitness success. I’d like to take this opportunity to define intensity as it relates to physical training and fitness:
Intensity- The perception of difficulty in completing a workout. Here is a simple formula for resistance training (pure cardio is slightly different):

The Great Triathlon Experience...

Sat, 3 Oct 2009 15:31:32 -0400

I just finished peaking for my final bodybuilding show, the INBF Mr. CT Natural, this past June. For those of you don’t know the final body transformation stats on me I’ll share one riveting stat: from my first show in May of 2008 to this last show in June of 2009 I had gained 11 pounds of lean body mass. That’s a very difficult thing to do. There are those in the bodybuilding community that would kill for those kinds of gains. Training for an endurance event would most likely undo some of the upper body lean mass gains. After working 12 months of hard time in the gym and endless nutrition tweaking to get these gains; most people would think me nuts to reverse all of this.
Leave it to my wife Bonnie to come up with new and exciting challenges. I guess we needed something new to focus on for our athletic goals. You know... it’s a pretty natural progression to go from a massive heavyweight bodybuilder to fast, light and quick triathlete. Am I right? Yeah. Simple to connect the dots there. But you’d have to know Bonnie and I have developed this impetus: Is there something you think I can’t do? Let me prove you wrong! Lord knows we both work very hard to continually improve our physical abilities. The word obsessive may be used in a descriptor for either of us. I’ll admit that.
I guess Bonnie has had this goal to compete in a triathlon. I thought it might be cool to do one day, but pretty much stopped myself short of thinking it possible as I have a knee that blows up like a balloon from running. But I figured what the heck; let’s give it a shot. After losing over 100 pounds, competing in bodybuilding, and finishing a century ride (100 miles) I figured anything was possible. I’d just have to believe it was.
A triathlon is comprised of three events: Swimming, Cycling and Running. All in that order. The lengths for each distance we would need to do are as follows: swim a half mile, cycle for 14.5 miles and run for 3.1 miles or 5K. Each task by itself is no small feat, but to do all three on the same day, one after the other and as fast as you possibly can would take a bit of courage and drive. Having both run and cycled successfully for races in the past, I knew that these two events would not be an issue. A bit more time in the saddle and on the road logging miles would get us into better shape to do these components. The swim would prove to be the biggest challenge for both of us.
The last time I was in a pool to exercise I think I was rehabbing a bad knee back in 2002 and prior to that it was college, my freshman year, when I was a PE major at Springfield College in 1990! Needless to say I am a lead weight in the pool. I believe Bonnie was no better off than me except she was smaller and lighter. Our extensive cardiovascular fitness from cycling and weight training did not directly translate into ability in the pool. But it did help us move up the learning curve faster than most. My experience is not average. My first swim in my neighbor’s pool was 5 minutes nonstop before I started to panic and couldn’t breath steadily anymore. 5 minutes! A conservative estimate of nonstop swimming to complete the half mile is that it would take me, as a newbie, 20 minutes. 5 minutes turned into 20 by the end of week 1. That is why my case is not average. Our general cardio fitness carried into the pool quite nicely with 4 days of swimming to engrain the movements and patterns. So at the end of week 1, with 9 more weeks to train, I knew I could complete the swim. Bonnie, however; was a different story. She was swimming for 20 minutes at the end of week one, but it was not nonstop. It got even more difficult for Bonnie when we went in open water the first few times and she could only go for 10, then 15 minutes without having to get out of the Long Island sound. It was very difficult for Bonnie to continue on trying to improve. It was devastating for someone so physically gifted in other areas to be struggling so poorly 8 weeks into the process. Both Bonnie and I improved exponentially at the end with a few good tips we picked up from friends and experts along the way. Bonnie finally overcame her open water issues and made the swim distance entirely just in the nick of time; 4 days before the race! The last week I was practicing “racing” speeds in the water as I knew I would be pushing myself come race day. I needed the experience of working hard, struggling for oxygen and having to breath smoothly in open water. It seemed to have paid off.
Race day came and Bonnie and I each had our personal goal times set. That within itself is crazy as we never did the event! So how did we have goal times? We took our best times we performed each event individually and added them together. We then added a few minutes for transitions, and a few minutes for how much slower we would be doing all three events back to back to back. Having our goal times to guide us, all we were hoping for was good weather, no accidents and no injuries along the way.
Pulling into the parking lot and moving our bikes to the transition area brought a rush of excitement. We had worked hard to get to this point and struggled through a few emotional roller coasters to get Bonnie into and out of the water safely; so I was very excited to be here in the parking lot on race morning! I can’t put into words how much fun the anticipation of the race is. For a competitive person it is a rush to have something to really compete in. It seemed the anticipation of the race, not the race or the results themselves, was the best part of the experience. The preparation culminated in this few hours before “go time”. The rest was all just executing what we practiced.
The only other really cool part was the swim start. What a rush to be in the water with all those other racers fighting for a space! You haven’t lived until you have had numerous people swim over you or grab at your feet while you are trying to swim. It’s not for everyone; that’s for sure. You need to be calm in the water and know that you’ll be fine. The swim start is a contact sport; period. Coming from a background in football and wrestling I had no problems with this concept. I’m sure it was very daunting for my wife who never really played any sports like that. My guess is that it is difficult for most swimmers, runners and cyclists. These are all individual performance sports that do not require contact. The vast majority of the field would not be prepared or comfortable with the concept of contact in an “individual” sport. That is, of course, unless they either have played a contact sport or have done a triathlon before.
The experience could not have been better for us. No injuries, no accidents and we both beat or goal times by three minutes. Strangely enough we both finished 15th in our respective age groups.
Anyone fearful of completing a triathlon should just go out there and train for the event and give it a shot! If you can run and bike and have some basic cardio fitness, you can teach yourself to swim and complete all three. As a training note both Bonnie and I did not complete a full sprint distance triathlon before the race and we both finished feeling strong. Not having completed the event in it’s entirety you may not feel confident that you can finish. I wasn’t sure what we would do either. In our training, we did complete 2 of the three events at full distance back to back, but never did we attempt all three. It worked out just fine in the end.
Now that the season is over I will focus my future posts on other training and nutrition topics. I felt it would be interesting to some of my readers to see that someone with no proficiency in running or swimming could complete an endurance event like this. It’s not something you would think most bodybuilders would be capable of doing. The entire point is this: If you don’t believe you can do something than you never will do it. Don’t place yourself in a stereotype. It’s bad enough when others do it to us. Don’t believe what others think you are. Defy the critics and do your own thing. Your accomplishments will be all the more satisfying when you do.

Eating & Activity: The junk food dilemma...

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:16:59 -0400

It’s interesting to see the relationship between eating “junk” food and activity. The reason I bring this up is that I have been on vacation for 6 days now, and have been staying in a rented house with lots of tasty, but poor quality food choices. Fat, sugar, white bread flour and salt all taste very good in different combinations. The more you eat these types of food the more you want them; almost NEED them. And when activity levels are curtailed due to very poor weather conditions; you are stuck in the house. Sitting around, on the computer, watching TV, doing extremely sedentary activities.
Being someone that is always on the go, always active, always “living” vs. “watching other people live” (ie. watching TV shows 6 hours a day); I find long periods of home arrest to be very difficult to handle for more than one reason. Lack of exercise, or outdoor activities cause me to get anxious and I build up levels of stress quite fast. This is due to the mostly daily exercise in which I am able to diffuse most of my stress with a great workout. That becomes addictive unto itself. So when I’m sitting around doing mostly nothing I find that a very common phenomena occurs. Boredom eating. I think everyone on the planet has experienced this phenomena before; some of us do it daily. A provocative thought occurred to me while on this vacation. Here goes...
Truth: The more activity I do, the more food I need to eat. That’s a near absolute rule of energy balance on a long term basis. When trapped inside for days at a time, I still seem to think I can eat the same amount; or my body keeps looking for the same amount. In just a few days of eating the “junk” food I have exhibited a lack of “will power” so to speak. I have joined in on the food frenzy and now find myself remorseful that I have. I ask myself “What if these food choices were always available?” “What if I didn’t choose to keep the foods out of my home on a regular basis?”
I have noted that the more “junk” food I have eaten the less energy I have had to work or play. The blood sugar spikes that have been created by all this sugar intake have simulated less energy. This feeling makes me less interested in working out.
Ironic isn’t it? The cleaner I eat and the more active I stay, the better I can maintain a high activity level. Also, the more exercise I do regularly, the more interested I am in eating clean. But in just a few days of inactivity and eating less clean than normal, it seems to have caused me to eat more and more junk food simply out of boredom.
the inverse correlation that I have found here is that the more activity you do, the less likely you will be sitting around to eat junk food. And the more junk food you eat, the less motivated you are to exercise or engage in a physically demanding activity.
How do we break this crazy cycle? In my professional opinion I believe that the first step is to remove the junk food from your home. Plain and simple. But then what’s left to eat? There are no “easy” grab and go foods to be found, are there? Not unless you are into eating a protein bar or shake (which is a staple food in my home). Breaking this cycle requires you cook your own food to plan ahead for your meals. If you simply remove the junk foods from your house, you may find very little in the cabinets and fridge! Then what will you do? You go out and eat the calorically dense and non-nutritious foods! Argghh! What’s the secret?
There is no quick way around the fact that you must cook your own food to be most successful in achieving a nutritiously sound lifestyle. Period. No quick gimmick diets, no cookies for life, no weeks worth of foods frozen in a box; nothing at all like that. It requires planning, shopping, and preparation on your part to be successful! It falls directly on you to take care of yourself and your food is the FIRST place to start. Not the doctors office, not the pharmacy, and not even the gym. The kitchen is where all the magic happens. It’s where it happened for my wife and I. I’m sure you are no different.
Moving forward simply requires you act. And act well by heading out there and shopping and cooking and you can start living better today! Confused? Just drop me a line and set up an appointment for a consultation. Check out my SERVICES page for a description of my services plus my current rates. Best of luck!

Karl

The Bod Coach & TRX

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:14:05 -0400

What a great combination! The Bod Coach has found a new and engaging tool to train on; the TRX suspension system. This system uses body weight to allow you to get excellent resistance training that can vary from very difficult to quite easy. In fact, this style of training is cardio, resistance, flexibility, proprioceptive, and balance all in one! A true gem of a tool.
TRX is a great tool for any fitness level as well. It can challenge the best of the best and also improve general function and balance in the most de-conditioned of people./With an amazing combination of exercises and formats the TRX fails to get “old”. In addition, it can be used anywhere.
For more information check out the TRX website directly at www.fitnessanywhere.com