What kind of shape are you in? How strong are you? How lean (or not) are you?
Are you closer to your goals than you were two weeks ago? Two months ago? Last year?
If your training and diet are working, then the answer to the above question should be a resounding YES. If your answer is anything less, take a moment now to be honest with yourself:
Am I doing all that I can?
Am I firing on all cylinders with regards to diet and nutrition?
Am I emphasizing progression in my workouts?
Am I lifting progressively heavier loads or improving my work capacity?
Am I paying enough attention to rest and recovery?
If this seems like too many questions for you, then here’s your homework; the BIG question:
Am I closer to my goals right now than I was on this day a year ago?
Let’s see…where was I a year ago? Ah - I remember now. Sigh - one year too early.
Today, as I trained my clients, not one session went by without talk about The Diet.
Yes, Michael Phelps‘ diet. I’ll refrain from passing judgment and try to talk about it from an athlete’s POV, as I feel news articles are sensationalizing Phelps - “What a freak.”
The question. “How can he eat all that and still look like this?”
The skinny bastard.
First, the info:
Now, the play by play:
Phelps is 6′4″, 195 lbs. He’s an Olympic-level athlete engaged in roughly 5 hours of rigorous swim training, as well as strength training. And he’s 23.
Using the Harris-Benedict Equation, we get a daily expenditure of 3971 Calories. Shows how limited prediction equations are.
Calculating Phelps’ BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), we get 2089.65 Calories (per day). Add in the estimated expenditure from swimming and strength training (5100) and we come up with an estimated total of 7189.65 Calories per day.
That’s impressive, but it’s still not 8000-10000 Calories. So where do the extra thousand or so Calories go?
The X factors:
Lean mass - The prediction equations I used do not account for Phelps’ lean mass (read: muscle) which burns calories all on its own. You could argue that this accounts for an extra couple hundred Calories per day.
Thermogenesis - Not insignificantly, the food Phelps eats requires energy in order to be broken down and digested. Thermogenesis is estimated to contribute as much as 10% to metabolic rate. If Phelps really is downing 8000-10000 Calories a day, then his digestive system is working overtime to process that food. This could also throw a few hundred Calories into the mix.
Age - Phelps is young (and insulin sensitive). Metabolic rate slows as we age; conversely, we can expect metabolic rate to be higher in younger folks. Being insulin-sensitive helps drive those ingested calories to muscle cells (for use as energy) rather than to fat cells (to be stored for future use). So the food Phelps eats is used immediately (whereas ’tis not so in your average American Olympics viewer).
Reality - The realistic scenario is that Phelps isn’t really eating 8000 Calories everyday, and if we use food logs of athletes as evidence, this bears out. It’s possible that he eats 8000-10000 in a single day occasionally, but that his actual daily intake averages out somewhat lower (say, 6000 Calories or so). So, perhaps, one day he has 5500 Calories; the next 9798 Calories; the next, 6211 Calories, etc.
A final note: Some clients expressed shock and horror at the thought of an Olympic athlete eating pizza and pasta (especially after being told to avoid grains, etc.). My response: Phelps would not be physically capable of downing 8000-10000 Calories a day without the hunger-attenuating qualities of the carbs to aid him. It is precisely because he eats refined carbohydrates that he is able to put away that many calories.
Here’s an experiment: Get together 8000 Calories’ worth of sweet potatoes, avocados, chicken, eggs, and leafy greens. Put it in a big pile in front of you, set a timer to 24 hours, and make that pile disappear before the timer goes off.
Ready, set, go! Good luck.
(Actually, the timer should probably be set to 16-18 hours, since I’m sure Phelps sleeps a little.)
The moral? Phelps definitely expends tremendous amounts of energy daily, so much so that if he doesn’t eat an obscene volume of food, he actually loses weight. And in order to maintain that intake level, he resorts to eating from some admittedly crappy energy sources. Ironically, those same crappy foods enable him to eat the volume of food he requires.
O harmonious universe, how you taunt us!
Not to worry, all. Check back with Mr. Phelps in about 20 years or so - I suspect his caloric intake will be much different.
Olympics time is a great time to point out the obvious, which is that world-class athletes make things look easy, even when things aren’t. In fact, you could argue that the very definition of a world-class athlete is one who makes the impossible (or the incredible) look easy.
This makes sense if you understand sport. Sport is an expression of human movement. And more often than not, it’s not merely the effort you put into a movement - it’s the efficiency and biomechanical “sound-ness” of the athlete’s movement. After all, there’s got to be a “best way” to propel yourself through the water. There’s got to be a “most efficient method” to lift that weight over your head.
These movements are considered the fundamentals of that given sport. What’s true is that every discipline, whether it be baking or judo, has certain fundamental theories, concepts, and executables at its core - and the top exponents of those disciplines are masters of the basics. They’ve spent years and years at perfecting the basics, so that to a champion judoka, executing drop seoi nage is as natural as breathing.
Take a cue from the champs and focus on your basics:
“I discovered a lucky secret the hard way about thirty years ago: you can outlast the other guys if you try. If you stick at stuff that bores them, it accrues. Drip, drip, drip you win.”
My old training partner Gary used to sum it up similarly: “You get good by doing the boring s–t.”
Don’t clutter your routine or make your nutrition overly complex. Just commit yourself to the basics, consistently, over time.
Over the next few posts, I’ll hash out a program template for a rank beginner, someone just looking to lose a little weight, feel better, and get healthier. Then I’ll get to the skribit topics. Promise.
It goes by many names, but boils down to the same root: You say you’ve got to get in shape; eat healthier; lose weight; but haven’t found the “best” program. And you can’t start until you know you can do it right. So you end up talking a lot about exercise, reading fitness forums on the web, or plowing through countless diet books in search for the Truth.
You or someone you know may have this problem. If this is the case, you’ve got to do yourself (or your buddy) a big favor and tell them to stop talking (or thinking) and start doing.
At some point, the theorizing has to stop, and you’ve got to get under the bar and lift the damn thing. No amount of understanding of how intramuscular pH drops as H+ ions accumulate as a by-product of contraction will prepare you for the exquisite pain this phenomenon presents when you’re on rep 19 of a set of 20 rep breathing squats. No amount of conjecture of the exact forces on a joint complex at turnarounds makes driving that bar off your chest any easier.
And no amount of pontification over whether it’s better to limit carbs to 63 grams per day over 89 grams per day is worth a damn if you’re still eating Oreos.
Don’t wait for the perfect program. Get started now, make your mistakes early, and get on the right track as soon as possible.
Yes, it’s best you get educated first. Yes, it’s important to know what you’re doing so you don’t veer down the wrong track. But the path to achievement is never a straight line. And every day you don’t do something, it’s worse than standing still - you’re regressing.
“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”
Of course, it’s not a “curious fact” at all. Life rewards doers. As for the thinkers, wishers, and dreamers…well, life can be a cruel mistress as well.
Go to the gym. Lift something - start small, start light, but do it. Build up (progress) over time.
Change your diet. Even a little thing - like drinking water instead of pop. One thing at a time.
Start doing. It’s ok if you don’t understand how insulin both helps and hurts you - I’ll explain it as many times as you need me to - but you will understand it better (and faster) if you drink the recovery brew after your workout and stop eating cereal for breakfast.
Are trainers expensive baby-sitters or cheap therapists? Or neither?
The two (sadly) predominant stereotypes of trainers are The Baby-Sitter (AKA The Rep Counter) and The Therapist. Go into any New York Sports Club (or, *insert name of your gym here*) and I’ll bet dimes to donuts you’ll find several examples of both.
The Rep Counter does just that - count reps. No feedback, no coaching, no educating.
The Therapist may make you feel better, but they distract you from your immediate goal - optimal workout performance.
Of course, I’m not saying a trainer can’t provide clerical or emotional support for their client. But the ultimate goal always has to be kept at the forefront: Guide the client towards their (fitness) goal(s).
Certainly, it’s important that you like and click with your trainer. But is your trainer up to task?
Trainers, it’s also easy to fall into the opposite trap and overcompensate. It’s ok if your client isn’t doing 100 different exercises in their routine. It doesn’t make you a bad trainer if your client doesn’t perform kettlebell snatches, moves weights at a 10/10 rep tempo, or can’t flex and isolate their tensor fascia latae muscle. It’s just as easy to talk a client to death (to over-instruct) as it is to offer too little (or no) guidance.
I think trainers should be helpful and conscientious, and I think it be done without acting (and looking) like acompletetool (nothing personal, guys and gals).
