Recreational athletes body types and energy system demands
When working with recreational athletes, it's important to understand their body type and the energy demands of their training and competitions. In a future post, I want to write about the protein demands for different sports. Still, it's critical to understand how to exercise's frequency, volume, and intensity impact the macronutrient (protein, carbohydrate and fat) intake requirements.
No one diet is right for everyone. The right diet should be based on many individual factors. The food we eat contains information that speaks to our genes, not just calories for energy. Science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one. It's not about "eating less". It's about eating more of the right foods that nourish and fuel the body and mind. It's not about "moving more," it's about how movement supports your health and encourages positive adaptation, not fatigue.
The need for recreational athletes to increase and maintain fat-free-mass
The two main factors that control the size of your furnace are what you eat and how you exercise. In the previous blog post, I said "protein is the key ingredient to building the components that make up your furnace. It's important to note that your body prefers to not use carbohydrates and fats as the fuel that burns inside the furnace. The body preferentially breaks down carbohydrates first, and then fats and finally proteins only if the other two fuels are depleted. This is important as proteins are generally less efficient at generating energy. In addition, proteins perform several important functions so if they were broken down several systems could fail."
Both the quality and quantity of protein has a key role to play in building and maintain the size of your furnace.
Before we start to digest the juicy protein details I want to take moment to debunk the "calories in and calories out" equation.
Why should recreational athletes stop cutting calories and start building a bigger furnace?
I've recently been digging into the research on protein intake requirements for recreational athletes. I want to write a series of useful blog posts that I can share with my health coaching clients. However, I realise that only hardcore fitness geeks (like myself) want to read a blog post that dives into a plethora of scientific studies analysing protein requirements per kilogram of body weight to improve lean muscle mass and sports performance. Everyone else might find a meta-analysis of protein research a useful sleep aid. Zzzzzzzzzz.
WAKE UP, STAY WITH ME!
My goal in this blog series is to try and make protein intake a little more digestible for the non-fitness-geeks and give fitness geeks a different perspective.
Fuelling for the demands of training
A low dietary energy intake relative to exercise energy demands (ie low energy availability) may result in an array of medical issues. Many recreational athletes following mainstream diets are under-eating. Most are not eating enough to fuel their training, to improve their body composition (decrease body fat and maintain/increase lean muscle). 99.9% of recreational athletes are not getting enough micronutrients, like vitamins and minerals, in their diet to balance their hormones, strengthen their immune system, achieve their fitness goals, and increase their healthspan.
The Fastest & Safest Way to Get Your First Chin-up - Part 1
Are you trying to get your first chin-up? Are you wasting your time with banded chin-ups? Do have shoulder pain, or elbow pain when performing chin-ups? Are you using the correct technique, or are you trying to perform a bodyweight biceps curl?
Many people want to be able to do strict chin-ups because they look badass and they are one of the best exercises for sculpting a nice back…. when performed correctly.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again STOP DOING BANDED CHIN-UP because they:
6 Steps to prepare you for your first chin-up
The chin-up requires a solid foundation of upper body pulling strength, and those who try to rush the process often end up with shoulder injuries and very little progress. At TSTM, we refuse to use banded chin-up as they are a waste of valuable training time. Using bands for a movement like chin-ups is more about entertaining a client, not training them.
If you're aiming to get your first chin-up, you would be wise to invest in the following six steps to build strength and avoid injury.
6 Steps to Mastering the Push-up
The push-up is one of the most common bodyweight exercises in the gym, but are you doing them properly? How many strict gymnastics push-ups can you do? How many should you be aiming for? When you're ready to stop being weedy and start being strong, you can begin by accomplishing a strict gymnastics push-up.
In bodyweight training and gymnastics, the push-up is viewed as an entry-level upper body pushing exercise. The strict push-up is used to build strength and movement awareness for more advanced pushing movements such as dips, ring dips, handstand push-ups, planche push-ups, and more. Mastering the strict push-up with perfect technique is an essential step in the journey of bodyweight training. Although the push-up is often seen as a foundation movement, there are push-up variations that can challenge even the strongest athletes - we'll save that for another post.
How do you build the strength to get your first chin-up?
Are you trying to get your first chin-up?
Are you trying to improve your chin-up or pull-up numbers?
Are you strong enough?
If not, where should you start?
Here are the TSTMethod’s eight steps to getting your first chin-up:
Why using the correct form matters?
It seems strange the coaches often need to explain the importance of using the right technique to improve movement quality. In our “more is better” society we seem to have forgotten the importance of movement quality.
We see so-called “high-intensity classes” encouraging people to perform high volumes of repetitions for time and rounds with very little focus on the quality of movement. No wonder so many people have terrible mobility and are riddled with injuries.
Goal Setting Begins with the End in Mind
One of Charles Poliquin’s principles was to "always begin with the end in mind." A lot of people have very vague goals like "I want to lose weight", "I want to get strong", or "I want to be fit and healthy." Vague goals lead to vague results; most of these people fail to achieve their goals because they fail to clearly define the destination. This holds true for all of our goals in life, not just in the gym.
In this post, I'm going to focus primarily on training goals, but the same principles apply to all other lifestyles, career, and business goals.