1) Assuming you’re following the Precision Nutrition
recommendations, there is usually no need to alter your typical
food selections leading up to a competition. Although your food
volume may vary, you should simply continue to eat the same way
you do at home (or as close to it as possible).

2) If your energy levels are waning during a competitive period
and you’re competing in shorter distance events, simply increase
your total calorie intake. Eat more of each of the macronutrients
with each meal leading up to an event rather than more
carbohydrates alone.

3) Only when competing in longer duration events should
carbohydrate loading be considered. In order to effectively
carbohydrate load, simply eat your typical menu (as above), but
“supplement” these meals with additional starchy carbohydrates.
Choose nutrient dense, fiber rich selections such as whole grain
breads and cereals.

4) Regardless of your event, stay away from single, heaping
carbohydrate dinners or heaping carbohydrate pre-race meals. This
is not to say avoid carbs. However, 3 huge plates of pasta for
dinner or pre-race are not necessary. For sprinters, if you’re
steadily eating more leading up to your competition (as discussed
in #2 above) you’ll be fine. For distance competitors, the modest
increase in carbohydrate intake during each meal (as discussed in
#3 above) will increase muscle glycogen without you having to
slam huge carb meals.

5) During the competition day itself, be sure to eat small,
frequent, easily digested feedings – eating your last meal about
2 hours prior to competing. Be sure to experiment with this as
some athletes prefer eating their last meal anywhere from 1-4
hours before competition. In the end, as indicated, the goal of
the pre-competition feeding should be to eat a comfortable amount
of familiar foods within the few hours prior to competing and
stopping the solid food intake far enough in advance of the
competition to prevent rebound hypoglycemia and to prevent
stomach discomfort.

Remember, food is fuel — eat poorly and you’ll perform less than optimal.

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“Coach, what do I eat before the game…and practices?”

I hear this from athletes, parents and coaches…thing is, there is so much bad information out there that it’s hard to know what’s legit or not. I’ve been reading articles by Dr. John Berardi for some time now, but when I got a hold of his Precision Nutrition System, I was extremely excited. Below is an excerpt from one of his articles. Stay tuned — I will be sharing much of Dr. Berardi’s nutritional support system.

When you wait until a pre-competition situation to decide to eat
well, you’ve waited far too long. Good nutrition is training
nutrition, the food you eat day in and day out while preparing
for competition day. Simply put, the adaptations that take place
during your training (and the food you eat during this time) are
what lead to successful competition-day performances. Your only
goal during a pre-competition feeding is to not screw things up.
So, what do I mean when I tell you not to screw things up? Well,
check out the following competition-day nutrition mistakes.

Competition Day Mistake #1 – Overeating on Competition Day
Overeating within the few hours leading up to a competition will
certainly screw things up. Some individuals have the notion that
eating a lot before a competition will give them an abundance of
energy for optimal performance; however this is an ineffective
way to fuel the body. Large feedings delay stomach emptying and
therefore this feeding strategy will simply cause sensations of
fullness, a diversion of blood flow from the muscles to the gut,
and a feeling of discomfort during competition. Rather than
eating a lot of food, eating small amount of easily digested food
(and hydrating) during the hours leading up to a competition is
the best way to handle the pre-competition period. If your event
is long in duration, drinking some energy (carbohydrate and
protein) during competition is also a good strategy.

Competition Day Mistake #2 – Eating Novel Foods on Competition
Day Eating foods that are novel or that disturb the gastrointestinal
tract causing gas, the urge to defecate, or stomach cramping will
certainly screw things up. Rather than trying foods or
supplements that you typically don’t eat (including things like
novel energy bars, drinks, and gels – supposed performance
boosters), you should stick with foods that you know will not
upset your stomach.

Competition Day Mistake #3 – Trying to Carb Load on
Competition Day. Athletes often screw things up by attempting to “carb load” prior to competition by having large carbohydrate meals within a few hours of competition. This is an unwise strategy for several reasons. First, carbohydrate loading only is effective during
prolonged exercise (events lasting longer than 90 minutes). For
shorter duration activities (<90 minutes), carb loading isn’t all
that important; so why bother downing all that food and running
into the problems discussed in problem #1 above?

Also, even if carbohydrate loading is required for your event,
eating a big carbohydrate meal is not the same as a targeted
carbohydrate load spread out over 3 days prior to competition.
You don’t get the same muscle glycogen boost.
Finally, eating a large feeding of simple or rapidly digesting
carbohydrates too close to a competition can actually dull mental
acuity and lead to rebound hypoglycemia, a condition in which
blood sugar falls low, high insulin concentrations decrease fat
utilization during exercise, and premature fatigue sets in.
That’s definitely not the way to win your races.

In the 3 situations above, I caution you against common
competition-day mistakes. In the 2 situations below, I want to
caution you against common pre-competition day mistakes.

Pre-Competition Day Mistake #1 – Eating Different Foods or Too
Little Food Before Competition Day Pre-race jitters & concerns, an exhausting travel schedule, and difficulty obtaining good nutrition can all easily lead to poor nutritional choices and under eating. Don’t fall into this trap and screw yourself up by forgetting to bring the foods you know you should be eating, by choosing easily available foods vs.
nutrient dense foods, or by forgetting to eat while traveling.
Instead, you should be following your typical nutritional intake
(hopefully “Precision Nutrition Approved” intake) as closely as
possible. From here, based on your event, you can adjust your
intake by eating less or more food.

Pre-Competition Day Nutrition Problem #2 – The Big Pasta
Dinner
As nutritional intake can be sub-optimal on the days leading up
to competition (discussed above), many athletes will try to make
up for their intake with a big pasta or other carbohydrate dinner
the night before competition. This is the athlete’s attempt at
“carbohydrate loading.” There are a few problems associated with
this. First, carbohydrate loading takes a few days to accomplish – one meal won’t do it. Secondly, not all athletes need to carbohydrate load – for those athletes who don’t, carbohydrate loading can actually be a liability. As mentioned above, specific carbohydrate loading is only really effective for longer duration events. If you’re loading on carbs for shorter duration events, you should be aware that carbohydrate loading can increase body mass anywhere from 0.5 to 2kg; this mass coming from a combination of muscle glycogen and intracellular fluid as carbohydrates hold about 3g of water for every 1g of carbohydrate stored. Therefore, during
shorter duration events, unnecessary carbohydrate loading leads to unnecessary increases in body mass — water weight.

More to come…

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The other day a woman asked me why both my girls (14/15) are in the gym so much, I guess she noticed them a few times over the past couple of weeks.  She asked me if I thought it was a good idea that they were un-supervised in the weight room, AND — did I think they were really old enough to lift free weights and suggested that machines might be a safer way to go.

First (very politely) I said that my little pumpkins have been in the gym for the past 2+ years…and their form is better than most certified trainers.  So while it’s true, daddy’s not always watching — I don’t need to be.

I’m pretty sure this woman was full of good intentions, but she kinda rubbed me the wrong way to say the least.  I had to reply to her “machines might be safer than free weights” comment as well.  Once again, I replied (semi-politely) with, “my girls learned how to groove perfect movement patterns without weight so they could perform perfect movement patterns with weights or any other form of resistance…does that make sense?”  I couldn’t tell if she got it or not as it was hard to see past the glaze in her eyes — and I’m sure by this point she thought I was nuts.

So when is “too young” to start lifting?  And should a beginner use free weights or machines.  A kid is ready when she asks and shows interest…the “secret” is to make sure she starts by first grooving the proper movement patterns regardless of age.  Teach them how to do a pull-up, a push-up and PLEASE, make sure they know how to squat.  When your son wants to lift for football and he’s 10, don’t say no, tell him yes!  How cool would it be to have kids by the time they’re in middle school be physically prepared to do more than just play video games.  Better yet, to help minimize the incidence of injury and lay the foundation for a lifetime of physical endeavors.

The beginner (at any age) should first use his or her own body weight and forget the free weight vs machines thing for now.  In another series we’ll discuss body weight exercises and what you can do at home that will take anyone to the next level.

G’nite

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Most would agree that a warm-up of some kind is a good idea.  Where people get bent out of shape is the how to, when to, and what type of stretching to do before or after an event.   Some swear by “Dynamic” only, while others still tell us to do static before we participate in activity.

In his book “Stretching Scientifically”, Kurz tells us that “static stretches improve static flexibility and dynamic stretches improve dynamic flexibility”.  He also tells us that there IS considerable transfer from static to dynamic flexibility.  I’m not sure how much transferibility there is, but at least (according to Kurz) static stretching still has a place.

Dr. Stuart McGill has stated “static stretching deadens the muscle from a neural perspective — diminishing the stretch reflex and reducing peak strength and power” and I agree.  We’ll have our clients perform static stretches at certain times for a specific purpose, but NOT soley as the thing to do prior to competition or in preparation to activity.

One of our lacrosse players has been complaining about hip-flexor pain for a month…she’s had quad pain as well.  She doesn’t live in the area, and has not been seen by a doc or physical therapist, nor has she looked for treatment…she’s really just making a bad thing worse and on top of that she’s playing soccer.   She did ask me what stretches or exercises would help.  I told her first,  we need to find out what is driving the tightness — usually we see that muscle tightness is a by-product of a poor movement pattern (s) where a muscle or group of muscles have to compensate or work harder to do the same task (running, jumping, planting or cutting, etc…) — this is why we check the gauges (often) to make sure there are no underlying imbalances.   If she continues on the same path, she’ll be  stacking fitness on top of dysfunction as she continues to “gut out” the pain during training sessions.

Is it that her hip-flexor is tight, or her glute/hamstring group is weak and or not firing (functioning properly)?  I don’t know right now, but we’ll find out and get her back to where she needs to be.

So, what do you do, Dynamic / Static…or  nothing, just go out and play?  Here’s what we do with most of our athletes and general fitness clients:  We’ll start with a movement prep of sorts, which is focusing on mobility, waking the muscles up (Yes!  some do go to sleep or kinda shut down) and then progress into dynamic movements and by the time we’re done, most have a sweat going and we’ve got the nervous system firing and ready to go.  The whole thing takes about 9-12 minutes and will be added to the video library soon.

Lastly, we will follow a game or training session with static stretching which has been shown to help facilitate recovery.

Cheers -

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Every exercise and rep should be done for a reason…duh! Perfect reps are the only reps to do…as a matter of fact, if one of our athletes cannot perform a perfect rep, we consider that going to failure, and stop the set whether it’s in the gym or on the field or court. If you perform poor movement patterns during training, pretty sure it’ll carry over into your sport / event…and life.

So when you walk into the gym or head out to the field to do your next workout, ask yourself if your planned session for the day matches your goals, and the way you feel. Yeah, that matters — the way you feel. Suppose you are scheduled to run (sprint) 4×4x40’s, rest and then 3×2x100’s, but you’re pretty sore from the squats you did yesterday and the pick-up game last night…are ya still gonna do your planned workout? Most college athletes that come home for the summer may fall into this scenario — and yes, they probably would do the scheduled workout, which may be fine. BUT…many of them would do a sub-par workout because they have not fully recovered. RECOVERY is King!

Today’s workout is determined by what you did yesterday, what you have planned for tomorrow (game, practice, etc,…) and beyond. Too often our athletes (as well as general fitness folks) treat their scheduled workouts as “written in stone” and feel like they are cheating if they go outside the box. Check the gauges, see how you feel, make adjustments and have fun.

Cheers -

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I see all kinds of stuff (exercises, good and bad technique, great and horrible drills and a few things I’d rather not mention) in the gym, on the field as well as online. Starting today I’ll be sharing what I see and obviously commenting on possibly a better way, or how cool something is and how it might fit into your program.

Day #1 – Today I saw a kid (maybe 14 years old) benching with his older brother and friends. Big bro was actually coaching some of the right things, but the kid kind of looked like a fish flopping on the deck of a boat. The obvious reason for this was the weight was too heavy and he probably wasn’t shown how to groove the proper pattern. I could write another 500 words and explain what that is, but instead will hold off until we get our picture and video library going. Reading is one thing, but watching video with coaching cues works much better.

If you cannot wait and would like specifics right away, go to our contact form and ask now.

So what happened to the kid? I jumped in and gave my two cents and tweaked his form bit. I shared what power linking was and that his current form was one big power leak. Will it stick…no! But I’ll stick with him and make sure he grooves the right patterns.

Have a great day!

JT

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Welcome to Fit 2 Play, please bear with us while we get a makeover!

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