Everybody wants to reach their goal. Athletes, weekend warriors and soccer moms all want the same thing out of their workout time: reach their goal. We see many, many people eager to get started, all motivated and looking at the end goal and looking so determined nothing is going to get in the way. Or at least, they think so. And in the process, so many of them will fail, quit and make excuses for not succeeding. The ones that will actually get to their ultimate goal are very rare. And I’m not just talking about the overweight client who shows up at a commercial gym to loose weight. I’m also talking about high level athletes who want to make it to the pro level.
They all have one thing in common; they look hungry. It looks like they are so motivated that nothing is going to stop them. But more often than not, something happens in the process, something gets lost along the way. It’s hard to tell what it is, but they loose that fire in their eyes and all of a sudden, they don’t seem to want it that bad anymore. What is it?
Some others just never loose it…
Everyone really motivated to reach his/her goal has something in common. They look at the end goal, what it is they want to achieve. But way too many of them fail to look at the process, what it actually takes to get where they want to be. Too many people don’t realize the effort, the sacrifices and the will power it’s going to take to get where they want. The athlete doesn’t realize he will have to stay home on Friday nights instead of going out with the buddies and grab drinks. The overweight dad doesn’t realize that he’s going to have to skip on the dessert at his son’s birthday party. The busy mom who wants to get in shape doesn’t realize that she’s going to have to go the gym even if she’s exhausted after a long day at work and she’ll need to cook dinner when she gets home. I’m not saying that when dieting you can’t have a piece of cake once in a while or anything like that. These are just some examples to show you that way too many times, we don’t realize what it takes.
When you set yourself a goal and really want to reach it, the first thing you need to ask yourself is: “How bad do I want it?” And trust me, you need to want it BAD! There are a million things that will get in your way; you’re going to face obstacles, it’s not going to be an easy road and it might take much longer than you first expected. But in the end it’s going to be “how bad do you want it?” You need one thing: COMMIT. You need to make a commitment to yourself and to your goal and never let go until you reach it. There are many things along the way that can help you. Surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals who are going to support you in the process, for example, is one of those things. Planning/preparing your meals ahead, scheduling your training sessions in your agenda just like any other important meeting (that can’t be canceled!) are some other things you might need to do to reach your goal.
The commitment you make to yourself, and how you stick to it is what matters. And if I ever hear of another hockey player who’s trying to go pro, but is not willing to make the commitment to drive 40 minutes every day for his off-season training during the summer….sorry pal, you just don’t deserve it. And be sure that there will be a kid out there who makes this commitment.
You don’t always have a second chance to get where you want. How bad do you want it?
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Having a good training program might just be one of the most important thing in your training. Think about it for a second. Yes, you need to bring in the effort and your program is only as good as the hard work you put in it. But if you get to the gym with nothing but good intents and you’re ready to bust your ass, and all you do is stupid stuff, not only you’ll probably end up injured, but your progress won’t even be half of what it could be with a good structured approach.
This is beyond stupid…
With a good approach and a structured program your gains will skyrocket like you could’ve never imagined. More often than not, you think that just busting your ass and doing more will get you where you want to be. While in certain cases, that might help for a while, but the truth is you’ll stagnate very quickly with this less than optimal approach. And then you’ll start to do even more to bust through plateaus, you’ll spend hundreds of dollars on useless supplements, and you’ll develop pain and aches from doing too much while in reality, a no-nonsense approach that’s efficient, time-effective and adapted to your needs will get you where you want without all the hassle.
Writing programs to get faster, to get stronger and to get bigger are not easy to write, especially for intermediate to advanced lifters. Even worst is writing such programs for yourself! For many reasons it’s really hard to write a program for ourselves;
we do the stuff we like
we avoid what’s hard and we don’t like to work on our weaknesses
we’re limited by our knowledge (exercises, training methods, etc)
it’s easy to stay in our comfort zone and we pretty much always do the same things
Writing programs for yourself can literally give you headaches
Why don’t you hire somebody to do that for you? Just like you hire an accountant to do your taxes, and you hire a mechanic to fix your car, why wouldn’t you hire a professional to write your training programs? The truth is, fitness professionals (competent ones that is, which are not that easy to find) are way more qualified than you will ever be and they WILL get you where you want faster than you think.
I have been writing programs for over 7 years now. I have worked with week-end warriors who want to put on muscle, with D-1 College athletes and pro athletes who need to get stronger and faster to make their team; I’ve pretty much worked every clientele possible. Right now, I write programs for athletes at Endeavor and for a couple of online clients. I’ve had some time free up on my schedule recently and I am opening up 10 spots for online clients as of now. If you want to take the guess work out of writing your own training programs, I can help. I will write you complete, structured and effective programs that will make you reach your goals while staying pain and injury free.
If you’re interested, visit my Services page to read all the details and see if you qualify for my exclusive services. Like I said, I’m opening up only 10 spots, so hurry up!
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I’ve written in the past about specializing too early in a sport and how bad it affects your body. Similarly, playing the same sport year round is a sure way to get injured in the long run because of the repeated stress on the body. Parents and coaches seem to strongly encourage that practice to get their kids better though; they think that doing more is going to be better and they’re scared that not participating in summer leagues and specialization camps will leave their kids trailing behind. Here’s a top 3 reasons why practicing the same sport year-round is not a wise option.
1. Playing a sport, no matter which one, will impose a certain type of stress on your body with the same repetitive motions you’re going to go through. Taking hockey for an example, the way you skate (hip external rotation and hip extension) is going to increase the wear and tear on your hips muscles, tendons, ligaments and cartilage. It is the same thing for every sports, and to a certain degree it is expected. Playing the same sport year-round will accelerate that wear and tear, and when you do so at a very young age when your body is still developing it just makes things worse. Instead of varying the stimuli imposed on your body by playing different sports with distinct off-seasons and getting good training time in to help reverse the damage, you’re stressing the same structures in the exact same way over, and over, and over again. The result is that we end up with 17 years old hockey players who need hip surgery. That is a major problem! Until we get that, we will still have 14-18 years old athletes who suffer from overuse injuries and career-ending surgeries.
2. You get nothing out of summer leagues and showcases. Coaches will try to convince parents and kids that they absolutely need that for their development, otherwise they won’t develop as fast as the other kids and they won’t get all the exposure summer leagues provide. Brian Burke, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ general manager himself, blames that type of practice; he mentioned in a presentation that they analyzed the playing time of players in summer leagues. A random 3rd line right winger gets an average of less than 5 seconds of puck contact throughout a full game! 5 seconds! This is what you call development?! And on top of that, the exposure you get from summer leagues and showcases is almost non-existent. If your kid is good enough, he’ll get noticed. Period. No need to over-expose him/her with the fear that his/her talent will go unnoticed.
If you’re kid is that good he’ll get drafted. Don’t worry.
3. Fun. Kids don’t have fun anymore. How would you feel if you were a 12 year old kid who’s being pressured by his coaches and his parents to go to every specialization camp possible and play in summer leagues every year? There is a time for specialization, but at 12 years old it’s not the time, nor is it at 13, or 14 for that matter. Kids need a break, they need to have fun playing other sports. There’s going to be plenty of time ahead to specialize in one sport and put all your time and energy getting better in one particular sport. For now, let’s have the kids do their thing and develop naturally while becoming better athletes in general by playing multiple sports and having fun.
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This has been a controversial topic for many years now. How young is too young? What’s the optimal age at which kids should start training?
I think it really depends. There is definitely no clear answers that will fit for every kid. But before I go any further let me clarify something that has been clearly misunderstood by a lot of people: strength training, when done in a safe and effective way, will NOT negatively impact growth. In fact, studies proved in the past that strength training for kids in pre- and early pubertal youth is safe and doesn’t lead to injuries or negatively affect growth and maturation (1).
What should determine at what age should kids start training is psychological maturity. Even if it safe for kids to start training as young as 10 years old, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for any kids that age. The kid needs to be mature enough to be able to focus and train seriously. Because let’s face it, a lot of kids at that age are more concerned about playing, bouncing around, having fun and their level of mental focus is not always very high.
And there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with that; this is what kids are supposed to do! We shouldn’t impose training to a kid that’s not mentally ready for it. At that age kids should play many different sports, play games, run around, have fun! There is no need to start training early and specialize when the focus should definitely be on varying the stimuli throughout different activities and learning as many new motor skills as possible. Training can definitely help do that, but it shouldn’t be forced on them.
And what when a kid is mentally ready to train? What should be the focus? How should we train kids at a young age, around 10-14 years old?
Am I too young for this?
The focus should definitely be put on the quality of movements. Kids should do basic multi-joint exercises that will teach them how to move properly. They need to learn good movement patterns that will help them move better and reduce their risk of injuries. Things like proper hip hinge, scapular retraction, neutral head and neck positions, correct tibial and knee alignment and good running mechanics are all things that should be taught to kids who start training. Those movement patterns should be practiced over, and over, and over again so the kids can move better and become better athletes in the long run. They’re gonna have plenty of time to get stronger and faster (that’s not to say that it won’t happen in the process) as they get older. But if we can establish solid foundations right from the beginning when they’re young and prevent them from developing faulty movement patterns that will get them injured, it’s going to be HUGE for them.
At Endeavor, we just put in place a beginners’ 6-months program that we are going to require ALL of our middle school and freshman in high school athletes to go through, no matter what sport they play before delving more into sport-specific training. And to be honest, I don’t know why it took us so long to come up with this idea because every young athlete, no matter what sport they play all need the same thing; they need to learn how to move properly and reinforce good motor patterns.
Our program is really simple and comprised with basic exercise patterns. We include exercises like short-distance sprints, goblet squats, push ups, seated rows, planks, side planks, pvc pipe hip hinge (that we progress into kettlebell deadlifts), etc. There is nothing fancy, nothing crazy; just basic movement patterns that should be learned at a young age anyway to help your body move better and perform better in the long run.
Goblet Squat
Hip Hinge with a PVC Pipe
So it’s really not about the physical age at which you start training that’s important, but the mental age and more than anything else what you do with your athletes in the weight room to help them move better and become better athletes.
As I’ve mentionned often in the past, I’m a firm advocate for single-leg training. I believe it is truly one of the most important part of lower body training, especially for athletes. It’s more functional, more sport-specific and better for injury prevention purposes. At Endeavor, we use a ton of single-leg lifts with all our athletes, and most of the time we use these single-leg lifts as our main lower body strength exercise.
Some of you might wonder what type of exercise we’re using, because let’s face it, you can’t DB reverse lunges all the time. So here’s a little insight to the progressions we use with our single-leg lifts.
- The DB reverse lunge is the first variation we use 99% of the time. Dumbbells keep your center of mass low, so therefore it’s not too hard on your balance compared to other variations.
A reverse lunge will allow you to use a good push off your back leg, so it is easier for athletes and clients who don’t have a lot of single-leg strength. A reverse lunge is also easier than a forward lunge because you don’t have a big deceleration component on your front leg like you have with a forward lunge. This deceleration component makes it much harder to keep a proper upper body posture throughout your set.
- The second one on our progression list is still a reverse lunge, but in which we will change the center of mass by using a back squat grip or a front squat grip with a barbell. Since the load is much higher, the center of mass moves up and it makes it harder to maintain your balance.
Another variation we use to make it harder by moving the center of mass higher is to use dumbbells overhead. This is a variation we will use more in conditioning circuits or to unload the joints, because the overhead position makes it very hard on the core and shoulder muscles. So what happens most of the time is the core and shoulder muscles will be the limiting factors before you get to a weight that’s going to be heavy enough to be challenging for your lower body.
- Third on the list would be the rear foot elevated (RFE) split squats with dumbbells (a.k.a. bulgarian split squats). Having your back foot on a bench makes it harder to get help from your back leg compared to a lunge; so, more weight is supported on your front leg. Some beginners don’t have the strength to do a RFE split squat; they need to do lunges for a little while to get their strength up before they can progress to a RFE split squat.
- Then, of course, you can progress the RFE split squat with dumbbells to a RFE split squat with a back squat grip or a front squat grip with a barbell. Once again the center of mass is shifted higher, so it makes the exercise more difficult.
- Once you’ve mastered the reverse lunges and RFE split squat variations, you can progress to a slideboard reverse lunge. Don’t let the name fool you, because it is much harder than any other lunging variation. The reason is that because of the nature of the slideboard (slippery…duh!), you can’t really use your back leg to help you much; putting more weight on the back leg would make your foot slide away from your body and dangerous things could happen. Just keep in mind that you have very little support from your back leg and you’re using mostly your front leg to pull yourself up, so you need a decent amount of single-leg strength before you try it.
- Last on the list is the single-leg squat and its variations. The main reason why it’s the hardest one is because the leg you’re not using is totally unsopported, therefore it can’t help you at all. You need very good single-leg strength in order to do this one; especially when you perform it with a full range of motion.
All in all, this might not be the exact same progression we use with 100% of our client because there is many factors to consider when building a program; how old is the client? how much lifting experience does he have? how strong is he? does he have any restriction or injury? etc. All these factors will dictate the progressions we’ll use with everyone of our athlete. Also keep in mind that there are many other ways to progress single-leg lifts and make them more challenging, but this is a basic progression that should give you a pretty good idea on where to start and how to progress athletes and clients from there.
If you have been following my website for a while now, you probably know that I’m a big advocate of an appropriate long term development plan for every athletes. I strongly stand against early sport specialization and I honestly think that if we would get away from that, we would have a lot less of injuries in sports and surgeries related to overuse. It is very hard to get people to understand that when you have 90% of people involved in sports training (parents, coaches and trainers) that advocate the exact opposite: if you want to get better in a certain sport, you need to play more and more and more and do it year-round as young as possible so you can develop better.
I went into great details in previous blog posts why this is a totally retarded way of thinking. By doing so, you’re not developping better athletes, you’re actually developping patterns for overuse injuries. That being said, it is our job as strength coaches to educate athletes and parents on why this is so bad and how they should go about training the right way and following a good development model for optimal development and long career as injury-free as possible.
The first step to take in that direction is obviously to have the different national sport associations to endorse a good development model and help promote that to organizations, coaches, parents and players. The big problem we have right now is that these organizations don’t get it. So when you see steps taken in the right direction, it’s really satifying to know that they start to get it and want to help change the trend that is currently poisoning most sports. Mike Boyle gave a presentation about the long term athletic development for hockey players to USA Hockey a couple of days ago. Coach Boyle is one of the smartest, most experienced strength coach out there; he has seen it all in his long career and he has probably trained more hockey players than anybody else in the world. Most athletes he trains, if not all, turn out to have long careers and very few injuries; so, there’s gotta be something he’s doing right. Here is the video of the presentation. I need to warn you that it is an hour and 20 minutes long, but make sure you listen to it; it’s all really worth it.
To me, to know that USA Hockey actually took a step in the right direction and took the time to listen what coach Boyle had to say, tells a lot about the organization and where they’re headed (they also made several changes within the organization and to their development model recently). Don’t be surprised to see more and more American hockey players emerge at the pro levels in the next decade or two.
Please, if you know anyone involved (closely or not) in sports, you need to forward this blog post or just the video to them, whether they’re parents, coaches, athletes and anyone else.
I know there is a book out there with the same name, and apparently it is really good.
It has been recommended to me by a couple of persons but I have yet to read it (shame on me). But just by reading the title, I’m sure I will agree with what’s in the book and I definitely believe that quote to be true.
I have worked with many athletes so far in my career, and every kid is different; every one has a different level of talent, every one has a different attitude, a different work ethic, a different interest in getting better. Simply, they all are very different. And when you train them to become better athletes, you notice things in the way they behave and how much effort they put in.
Some of them are very talented and work very hard, some of them are average players and work hard, some of them are not very talented and goof off all the time. But what really strikes me is that even at a very young age (10-12 years old) kids start making excuses for not working hard. I’ve worked with many, and I mean MANY kids over the years that don’t work hard. Some of them it’s because they’re very good and they think they don’t need to improve since they are already the best player on their team and they have the talent to make up for the lack of effort. I totally don’t agree with that mindset, as I think this is wasted talent, and worse of all, it’s going to catch up to them sooner than later. But what’s even worse are the kids that are less talented who make up excuses for not putting in the effort. Most of the time, it’s the ones who are scared to be embarassed of not being as good as the talented kids, so they don’t even try. At such a young age, they don’t realize that even if they are not currently the best player on their team right now, it doesn’t mean they won’t be the following year, or the year after, or in two years. Eric Tangradi has been told at age 12 by a well respected coach that he was not good enough and that he could never play high level hockey because he didn’t have what it takes! Yes, that’s right at 12 years old! For those who don’t already know, Eric scored his first NHL goal a couple of weeks ago! He is one of the best example of determination I know, because he pursued his dreams no matter what people told him.
This simply amazes me: how can you tell a kid at 12 years old that he doesn’t have what it takes? Especially as a coach! You simply don’t have the right to destroy a kid’s dream at such a young age.
I have been working with a group a very young hockey players (under 12) for the last couple of months and we had our last session togheter yesterday. My words to them was:”Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not good enough. If you want to become a better hockey player, you can. At your age, if you dream of playing in the NHL one day, you can. Each and every single one of you can. Whether you’re the best player on your team right now, or not. It might not be easy, and you WILL need to work hard and give all you have in every game, every practice and every training session you will have. Anything is possible. Anything is possible if you work hard. You need to stop comparing yourself to your teammates and the guys you play against, and focus on yourself and do the best you can do to become the best you can be. There is no limit to what you can achieve if you really want it. You have the potential, just use it.” As I finished my speach I looked at them and saw one of them drawing an imaginary picture on the wall with his finger. He probably didn’t get it. In fact, a lot of them probably didn’t get it or didn’t even pay attention. But if only one really got it and he makes the most out of it, I will be more than satisfied.
Talent is not what will get you to the top in the long run. Hard work and dedication will. It’s our job as coaches, trainers and parents to make kids realize that they have what it takes to get where they want; they just have to work as hard as possible every single day to get there.
People, especially young athletes, want to train like professionals. They want to do the same type of training their favorite athlete is doing. And why wouldn’t they? If they got to that level it’s got to be because of the way they train, right? Or maybe not…Let me give you a couple reasons why you might want to reconsider training like a pro athlete.
1. Athletes generally don’t know more than you do. Athletes are people just like everyone else, and because they are professional athletes doesn’t mean they know everything there is to know about training or anything else. Granted, they have tremendous skills and physical abilities to perform and they have a lot more training experience than the Average Joe. But the fact is, they are no experts in human anatomy or physiology and they chose to train in certain ways because they have been told (or convinced) by some trainer or coach that it was the best way to do things. And the fact of the matter is that, the trainer/coach in question could be a very knowledgeable one and he might really get it; but it’s also highly possible that on their way to the top, the athlete in question met a meathead trainer who’s a better salesman than he is a trainer and the athlete could’ve fallen for it. Bottom line is, some train smart and some others don’t, but it’s definiltely not because they are professionals that they actually do things right.
2. Don’t confuse what an athlete has been doing in the past versus what he’s doing now. What I mean by that is that athletes might not train the same way or with the same trainers/coaches their whole life; what they did to bring them to the top might be totally different than what they’re doing as an established pro athlete. Many D-1 Colleges have very good strength and conditioning programs that help their athletes get faster and stronger. After spending 4 years in college busting your ass and gaining strength in a good training system will do wonders for you when you turn pro. And when you get there you might do something totally different, but as long as you train you’ll be able to maintain most of those gains.
Whatever Darrelle Revis is doing right now in his training, he gained a lot of strength during his time at the University of Pittsburgh, who’s recognized for his good strength and conditioning program.
3. Money. The sad truth is, because an athlete endorses a training or fitness related product doesn’t mean he actually uses it. Big companies pay big money to have sports icons endorsing their product; it’s called marketing. It doesn’t mean the athlete swears by it nor that he uses it at all.
Did you know that T.O. actually have shares in that bands’ company?
I’m sure Sidney Crosby never even tried a pair of Zigtech…otherwise he would’ve realized how much they suck
4. Pro athletes need more rest. With all the stress, the injuries, and the incredible amount of practices and games pro athletes face on a yearly basis, they might actually need more rest than training. Of course, it all depends on the sport they play, and the length of their season; every sport faces different demands and require different amount of rest. But take into consideration that the pro level (in most sports) is the level where the volume of training (including practices, games, and strength training) is at its highest. So in order to recover, athletes may need more time off. All of this means that what some athletes are doing for their training might be geared more toward recovery rather than actually be geared toward making more gains. Some may train less or take more weeks off during the off-season. Understand that they face different things on a daily basis, and what might be optimal for them, might not be for you.
All in all, make sure what you do in your training is geared toward reaching your goals, but that it is also adapted to your situation, your strengths and weaknesses, your injuries and your schedule…in short, it should be individualized to YOUR needs.
Today being the last the day of August and most of our hockey players going back to their respective team, I can definitely feel like the summer is coming to an end. I must say that it has been an incredible summer; we had a lot of guys busting their ass in the weight room making tremendous progress during the last couple of months . They got stronger, faster and became better athletes, and I must say that I am really proud of each and everyone of them for what they accomplished this summer.
That being said, coaching athletes for 9-12 hours a day for over 12 weeks is gonna make you a better coach and it will make you learn a lot of things. Here is what I learned during this awesome summer of 2010:
1. There is no limit to how much you can load single-leg exercises to increase strength. I actually wrote a post about the case for single-leg training a couple weeks ago, but it never ceases to amaze me how strong you can get with single-leg lifts. This is Endeavor athlete Charlie Vasaturo doing 6 reps on a reverse lunge with a front squat grip with 255 pounds:
2. On a related note, younger athletes can get strong pretty quickly. You just need to make sure their form is perfect and you can start loading them up pretty good. It is very common to have athletes under 16 get to 60lbs dumbbells for reverse lunges for multiple reps within 3 months of dedicated training. Here is Endeavor athlete Conor Landrigan, 14 years old with 65lbs dumbbells:
3. This is no breaking news for anyone that speed development through sprints is great to help athletes get faster. But one thing equally important, if not more than linear speed is transitional speed. Sports are all about quick transitions, changes of direction and reacting quickly to what’s happening on the ice/field/court. I, myself, was focusing too much on linear speed and not enough on transitional speed. My good friend and colleague Kevin Neeld has been doing a good job of including all sorts of start positions (2 point start, push up start, tall kneeling start, side standing start) in the sprint work we have our athletes do, as well as including different transitional drills later on as progressions. We have seen tremendous results with our athletes using these transitional drills. Here is an example:
4. By now, I abandoned the idea that I would eventually be able to get rid of that french accent! So why not just laugh about it. Our athletes absolutely love it anyway as it can give them a good laugh. On this video, you can hear Endeavor athlete and Colorado Avalanche prospect Colby Cohen impersonating me in the back (telling Jeff Buvinow doing the stability front plank with perturbation to squeeze his butt and keep his chest up):
2 notes on that video: First, this is a tremendous core exercise as it is very specific to the demands of contact sports like ice hockey.
Second, Colby likes to have a good time when he’s around at Endeavor, but he also means business when it’s time to work hard, especially when he hang cleans; here he is smoking 230lbs for 2 reps.
5. Hockey players have a lot of problems with their hips, and I mean A LOT. Whether it is sports hernia, groin strains, hip flexor strains or hip capsule problems, hockey players will have a lot of problems with their hips for 2 main reasons: First, skating is a very unnatural movement pattern for the human body and it puts a lots of stress on the hips for different reasons, mainly because your hips spend most of the time in external rotation. Second, hockey players spend way too much time on the ice, even in the off-season where they should take some time off and focus more on training. These 2 ingredients are a good recipe for hip injury. That being said, hockey players need a lot of soft-tissue work (foam roller, massage, ART) done on their hips especially on their TFL (tensor fascia-latae), adductor magnus and hip external rotators (mainly piriformis). They also need a good balance of mobility, flexilibity and strength in their hip muscles (more on that to come in an upcoming blog post).
6. I have to give ALL the credit to Kevin Neeld for coming up with that one, but this might just be the most specific form of conditioning hockey players can do off-ice:
When you think about it, hockey is played the exact same way: holding an isometric position for a couple of seconds (while they just glide on the ice and follow the play) followed by a short burst of speed consisting of a couple quick strides. This is also one of the hardest form of conditioning you can do. Coming up with that was just a brilliant idea from Kevin!
In conclusion, summer 2010 have been amazing and made me a better and more knowledgeable coach. All of this would not have been possible without the hundreds of athletes that trained with us and were so dedicated to becoming better hockey players and athletes in general. To all of them, the best of luck for their upcoming season!
For those of you who don’t know Brian St. Pierre, he is a sports nutritionist and strength coach. He just returned to Grad School to pursue his Master’s degree in nutrition. He actually left his job at Cressey Performance, with Eric Cressey, where he worked for the past couple of years. Throughout his career, Brian has been a nutrition consultant and strength coach for a wide variety of athletes of all levels. Brian is a very smart guy with a lot of knowledge from whom I learned a lot of things by reading his blog on a regular basis and most recently from working with him to improve my diet. That being said, here are 3 things I learned from him.
1. Organic dairy products are far superior to their conventional counterparts. The quality of conventional dairy products is actually pretty bad. You need to consider these facts about dairy:
Cows are milked almost year round (compared to only 6 weeks after birth about 100 years ago) which compromise their immune system and the quality of milk is greatly diminished. It also increases the pregnancy-triggered estrogens in milk which is associated with the growth of many tumors as well as prostate and breast cancer.
Cows, who are herbivorous animals, are fed with corn and other cheap grains which leads to stomach acidity, which in turn leads to infectious bacteria and E. coli in cows. That situation then forces the dairy producers to stuff cows with antibiotics.
Casein, a protein found in milk, is suspected to be linked to different forms of cancer namely thyroid cancer and prostate cancer.
That being said, it is easy to conclude that the way dairies are produced nowadays is less than optimal to a good diet. That is why, if you still want to consume dairies, you should definitely make the switch to organic products as the cows are raised more naturally, milked a lot less, fed with food actually suited for herbivorous and not stuffed with hormones and antibiotics.
While we’re at it, why don’t you make the switch to whole milk as studies have shown that low-fat milk was associated with larger waist circumference, while whole milk was associated with smaller waist circumference. For more info on that subject, make sure to check out Brian’s post on conventional dairy on his website.
2. Make the switch to sprouted grains. This would apply to flour-containing products like bread, wraps and the like. Sprouted grain products are generally less processed than traditional whole-grain products and contain less preservatives. The benefits of sprouted grains over whole-grain don’t stop there; they’re also more nutrient-dense with more vitamins and minerals, their content in fibers is higher and they contain more protein. Ezekiel products are totally awesome if you want to make the witch as they have a lot of variety in their products and they’re absolutely delicious!
3. A drink combining protein and simple carbs (read: sugar) post-workout might not be the best option. This might come as a shocker to most of you, and I have to say that I was very surprised to learn that myself. I learned that from Brian while he was working with me to help me improve my diet. I was actually taking a protein + simple carbs drink after every single training session, and apparently that was not optimal.
You may not agree with that, but at least take this information into consideration. It is true that protein and carbs are necessary to improve recovery, but there is actually no evidence out there that proves that a protein and simple carbs drink is more efficient at replenishing your glycogen stores and improving your recovery than a whole food meal containing both of these nutrients would. It really surprised me, as I’ve always been led to believe that a faster digesting protein and carbs drink would be more efficient at helping recovery. But if you take a closer look a recent research, you’ll find nothing supporting that.
Having that kind of drink post-workout is actually not bad; just be aware that it is not better. Knowing that, what would be optimal post-workout: taking a protein and simple carbs drink that is virtually nutrient-empty or having a whole food meal that will provide you with fibers and tons of vitamins and minerals?
I still think that simple carbs have their place in sport nutrition; taking simple carbs before and/or during workout (depending on the intensity of the workout) could be very beneficial as it will provide you with rapidly available energy.
To learn more about Brian, make sure you check out his blog as he has a ton of valuable information that he shares with his audience. And if you feel like your diet needs improvement, please note that Brian is available through on-line consultation. Just visit Brian’s website for more details.
Some others just never loose it…
