Five Reasons Athletes Should Consider MAT

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If you are a seemingly healthy, well-functioning athlete, how can MAT be of benefit to you?

1) More tension-generation capabilities = improved ability to move = improved sports performanceMAT improves your muscles' ability to contract and generate tension.  More tension generation means more potential force that can be put into the ground, ball, water, etc.  This potentially allows for faster, more efficient movement and greater sports performance.

2) More muscles available for work = greater ability to work through fatigueIf you only have 75% of your muscles coming to work to their fullest capacity on game day, that may mean three muscles are trying to do the job of four.  While they may be able to handle this in the short term, if one of those guys gives out due to fatigue or stress, now you only have 2 trying to do the job of 4.  That's significantly harder.  Instead, if you have all four coming to work to their fullest capacity from the get go, you might not have any give out because they are able to distribute the work evenly over the course of the game.  When the game is on the line, would you rather have all of your guys working for you or only half?

3) More evenly-distributed workload = greater ability to recover from training and competitionIf everybody worked for you during yesterday's game, they will be a lot less exhausted the next day than if you would have only had half.  This means you can potentially recover faster from your training and competition, which means you can potentially get back to performing at a higher level sooner.

4) Inter-competition tune-upsWhat was the toll last night's game took on your body?  MAT's assessment process can figure out what positions you are having difficulty moving into, out of, and maintaining and potentially what muscles may have been inhibited during the previous competition.  More importantly, this information can be used to dictate your training and treatment process to give you the best chance to be firing on all cylinders by your next competition.

5) Injury preventionYou train hard, and you compete harder.  All of those hours can take a toll on your body, more so than you'd expect.  Even if you feel good, you could be one stressor  away from the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.  Why risk watching all of your hard work and hours go down the drain with one injury when you could give yourself a little insurance?  Once again, more muscles contracting and doing their job at a higher level means a greater potential ability to control your joints and withstand potentially negative forces.  All good things.

As an athlete, do you want to improve your performance?  Perform at a high level when fatigued?  Improve your recovery time?  Feel good between competitions?  Prevent injury?

Inter­ested in find­ing out more? Check out the “Mus­cle Acti­va­tion Tech­niques™” page.

Inter­ested in set­ting up an assess­ment time or dis­cussing this sub­ject fur­ther? E-mail Char­lie at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

Your body.  Your training.

Want to use this arti­cle in your blog, newslet­ter, or other plat­form?  You can, but be sure to include all of the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion found in the yel­low box below!

Pre-Workout Nutrition for Post-Workout Recovery

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Most of us have heard the advice that you need to drink your post-workout shake within 30 minutes of completing the workout and eat a full meal within 2 hours of completing the workout. This is due to the muscles having an increased ability to absorb and store amino acids and glucose following most forms of physical exertion. However, is the meal you eat after your workout really the most important when it comes to maximizing the post-workout recovery window?

“It’s not when you put it in your mouth that counts. It’s when it gets to the cells.” –Tim Ferriss in The 4-Hour Body

In one of Tim Ferriss’ countless experiments in his book The 4-Hour Body, he uses a glucometer to measure the time it takes for food to cause a blood glucose spike from the time it enters his mouth. What he found is that in most cases he peaked one and a half to two and a half hours after food consumption. This means that the protein shake you drink within 30 minutes after your workout may not be delivering amino acids to your muscles until 2-3 hours after the workout! This can be well after the muscles have lost their increased ability to uptake glucose and amino acids. As far as the meal you eat within two hours after completing the workout? Perhaps it’s really not any more important after all.

Timing Post-Workout Nutrition

If you want to maximize the increased sensitivity of the muscles after a workout, you need to make sure the nutrients are readily available. In other words, the glucose and amino acids you want for recovery need to be digested and in the blood stream by the time you finish your workout. Therefore, you cannot wait until after the workout to eat a meal or drink a shake, but rather, would need to consume them before the workout.

If you feel you are not responding to workouts like you should, take a look at your pre-workout meal in order to optimize your post-workout nutrition.

Do you put as much emphasis on the macronutrients and contents of the pre-workout meal as you do the post-workout meal? Why or why not?

Note: This article is intended for those who choose to eat prior to workouts. It does not take into consideration any differences in protein synthesis, insulin sensitivity, or rates of food digestion that may result from training in a fasted state.

Your body.  Your training.

Overtraining Part 3: The Systems of the Body

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In this post I will give brief explanations on how and why the various systems of the body can become overtrained.

Part 1     Part 2

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Overtraining The Endocrine System

In Overtraining Part 2: Understanding Overtraining, I discussed the different forms of stress and the systems of the body it affects.

I also stated “essentially all stress is handled the same way by the body”. What this means specifically, is that the body reacts with the same “fight or flight” response to nearly all stressors.
So… when the body receives a stress, regardless of form, in most cases it will produce the hormone cortisol. Cortisol itself is not inherently bad. Without it we would not be able to handle the craziness of an average day in the modern world. However, like nearly everything that can benefit us, too much of it starts causing problems.  With all of the unnatural stressors we face every day, intense exercise could prove too difficult to recover from.

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Overtraining The Nervous System

Performing high neurologically demanding exercises and workouts (i.e. anything done with near-maximal speed or using near-maximal load) is generally going to tax the nervous system more than a similar workout using less speed or less load.  Performing too many exercises of high neurological demand in a workout, or not allowing the nervous system to fully recover between workouts high intensity workouts, is likely to result in overtraining of the nervous system. To get a better understanding of the nervous system, check out The Parasympathetic Secret by clicking HERE.

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Overtraining The Skeletal System

Perhaps a typical weekly training split..

Monday: Chest, Triceps.
Tuesday: Back, Biceps.
Wednesday: Legs.
Thursday: Shoulders.
Friday: Arms.

If this resembles anything similar to your weekly training split, consider what this break up would look like from a joints and skeletal system perspective.

Monday: Shoulders.
Tuesday: Shoulders.
Wednesday: Legs.
Thursday: Shoulders.
Friday: Shoulders (perhaps a lighter shoulder day, though).

If you are having shoulder pain when you lift, it could have absolutely nothing to do with your ratio of pushing to pulling exercises or weak rotator cuff muscles, and everything to do with the fact that you beat up your shoulder joints in literally 80% of your workouts.

Also, consider the example of jogging 5 days a week where the exact same stressor is placed on the joints thousands upon thousands of times of times in a row.

Continuous and repetitive stress on the skeletal system is ideal for creating over-use injuries down the road.

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Overtraining The Muscular System

Blasting a particular muscle group once per week in an attempt to create muscular damage and soreness can often lead to overtraining of the muscular system if appropriate rest/recovery methods are not taken. Check out Are You Sore? by clicking HERE. Also, if the 30 minute and 2 hour post-workout windows of increased nutrient uptake are not taken advantage of, recovery can be severely compromised and even a “lighter” workout can lead to overtraining the muscular system.

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Overtraining The Digestive System

Eating foods not in alignment with your metabolic type, eating non-whole foods, eating the same foods every single day, and/or eating foods you have sensitivities/allergies to, you can overwork and damage your digestive system, leading to a variety of different problems that can show up anywhere in the body.


The Interconnected Systems

As I wrote in my book review for The Source on Paul Chek’s, “How To Eat, Move, and Be Healthy”, every system of the body is interconnected and dependent upon the others. By overtraining one system, you are putting additional stress on all of the other systems. Appropriately training the body as a whole unit, with all of its systems taken into consideration, will prevent overtraining of a specific system, and thereby preventing a “weak link” in the human chain.

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Overtraining Part 2: Understanding Overtraining

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In Overtraining Part 1: The Intended Adaptation & Intro to Overtraining, I discussed the concept of aligning your goals with the adaptations you are training for, as well as some of the signs and symptoms of overtraining. In this section, I will dive deeper into the idea of overtraining, including stress and the systems of the body it affects.

Image courtesy of http://www.simplyshredded.com/overtraining.html

Today’s world has far more stressors than that of our biological ancestors, the Paleolithic homosapien. In other words, the average caveman’s life was nowhere near as stressful as a typical American’s. To better understand what I mean, take a look at the list below:

Types of Negative Stress

1. Physical Stress - too much exercise, extended periods of sitting, improper footwear
2. Chemical Stress - tap water, plastic containers, glues and materials in houses/cars, non-organic foods
3. Electromagnetic Stress - over-exposure to sunlight, electronic devices
4. Mental Stress - negative thoughts, problems/deadlines at work, trying to remember too much
5. Nutritional Stress - eating foods that you have allergies or sensitivities to or eating in ways that does not fit your metabolic type
6. Thermal Stress - being in extreme heat or extreme cold for extended periods
7. Emotional Stress - problems with relationships, worrying about decisions

Image courtesy of http://cms3.tucsonaz.gov/wellness/stress

Incredibly, all types of stress affect the body the same way. What this means is: the more stressors you have in your life, the less physical exercise you will be able to recover from. If you have a significant amount of stress, in any of these possible forms, it will take less physical stress (i.e. exercise) for you to overtrain than if you did not have as much stress in other areas of your life. By reducing the amount of stressors in other areas of your life, you will be able to recover from more intense training and, therefore, achieve better results (once again, given your intended adaptations are actually what you are training for).

Image courtesy of http://www.stress.org/

As stated in Part 1, “Overtraining is essentially training beyond one’s means to recover”. When there is too much stress placed on the body, systems begin to break down.

These systems include:

1. Cardiovascular system
2. Skeletal system
3. Muscular system
4. Neurological system
5. Endocrine system
6. Digestive system
7. Immune system
8. Lymphatic system
9. Respiratory system

Generally, the one that will break down is the weakest link in the chain. If you pay attention, you will often notice when it is signaling there is too much stress in your life. For me personally, I generally get headaches and occasionally lower back pain when I have too much stress. Think about which system seems to give you problems when you are stressed out.

In Overtraining Part 3: Physical Stress, I will take a look at what specifically physical stress does to the body to cause overtraining. Be sure to check it out!

Tony Cates is a busi­ness man­age­ment major at Edge­wood Col­lege in Madi­son, WI.  He is a cer­ti­fied per­sonal trainer, per­for­mance enhance­ment spe­cial­ist, and the S&C Coach for Edge­wood Col­lege Men’s Bas­ket­ball.  He can be reached at catestony@gmail.com or (608) 852-7433.

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Diaphragmatic Breathing (Part 2)

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In my last post I introduced the idea of diaphragmatic breathing and gave you an overview of its benefits.  While you can clearly find moments throughout your daily life to practice this technique, understanding how to implement this into a training routine is not as well defined.  In my next post I will discuss a possible progression for training diaphragmatic breathing, but for today I want to look into when it would be most appropriate to use this breathing technique within a training session.

As always, the goals and abilities of the the individual in question will factor into when during their daily training routine diaphragmatic breathing should be enforced in order to see the most benefit from it.  I will break the training session down into four broad segments during which diaphragmatic breathing can be trained--the warm-up, intra-set, inter-set, and the PTR stage at the end.

The Warm-Up

There are a few options when it comes to teaching diaphragmatic breathing at the time of the warm-up--before, during, and after.  As obvious as these three seem, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to teaching diaphragmatic breathing during each.  If someone is new to diaphragmatic breathing, before they warm-up would be ideal because it could not only serve prepare their mind and body for the training ahead, but they will also be most fresh at this point so fatigue will be least likely to negatively affect the learning process.  Unfortunately, when some people come in to train they want to get going as soon as possible, so getting them to slow down before they have even started may prove to be difficult.

During the warm-up can help to further reinforce diaphragmatic breathing once it has already been learned and controlled.  The warm-up exercises are often done at a more relaxed pace than the rest of the training, which would make it easier to implement this new skill.

After the warm-up is where I have found the most success teaching diaphragmatic breathing with my clients.  They have started to meet their psychological need and expectations for movement during training with the warm-up and they aren't trying to execute another skill at the same time.  I have found that the people I have worked with have been most receptive to implementing diaphragmatic breathing at this point in the training day.  However, some people may feel like now that they are warmed up and ready to go, practicing the breathing technique is just slowing them down, so you will have to judge each situation accordingly.

Intra-Set

I have found this method to be the most difficult time to teach diaphragmatic breathing.  Even after somebody is able to perform it well before or after the warm-up, the intensity of their working sets may be too high for them to diaphragmatically breathe throughout.  In an ideal world, I would then lower the intensity of the working set such that they are able to diaphragmatically breath during it.  The issue that arises with this is having to balance the client's expectations of challenging them physically so they don't just feel like they are paying for breathing lessons while still stressing the importance of this technique.  Until a client fully buys in to this concept and becomes proficient enough at it such that it does not take constant conscious effort to perform, it will be very difficult to implement diaphragmatic breathing intra-set.  But fear not, because by properly progressing and implementing it throughout the other stages of their training day, they will soon be on their way to maintaining control of their breath while they exercise.

Inter-Set

This is a golden time to implement diaphragmatic breathing, especially if your client likes to talk between sets and you want them to stay focused on the task at hand.  Not only will it allow them to recover faster, but it will also keep their mind on their body and their training throughout a greater percentage of their session.

A highly effective means of improving recovery time is to stress diaphragmatic breathing between bouts of conditioning exercises.  For your competitive athletes or your more intense general population, strongly encouraging diaphragmatic breathing between wind sprints, bike sprints, or sled pushes can do wonders for their ability to recover between sets.

PTR

PTR is an acronym for a phrase I first heard from Martin Rooney:  Progress To Rest.  Essentially, this is describing the time that is usually referred to as the "cool-down".  I prefer the term PTR because it implies that there is a process that must take place in order to properly achieve the end goal of rest and recovery.  PTR is a favorable time to try to teach and enforce diaphragmatic breathing because the client or athlete often feels that this time should be relaxing or bordering meditative relative to the rest of the training session.  As I discussed in Part 1, I have found diaphragmatic breathing to be a great relaxation method for myself.  Hopefully you have not pushed them during their training that day to the point where they cannot effectively learn this skill due to fatigue, but understand that this is indeed a skill, so it may be more difficult to learn at the end of a training session regardless of the intensity.

In my next post in this series I will discuss a progression for teaching diaphragmatic breathing.

Your body.  Your training.

Char­lie Cates, MATs, CSCS

Self Made_®, Owner and Founder

Char­lie Cates is a Mus­cle Acti­va­tion Tech­niques™ spe­cial­ist and a cer­ti­fied strength and con­di­tion­ing spe­cial­ist.  He is the owner and founder of Self Made_® (http://selfmadefitness.com/) in Chicago, IL.  A 2010 graduate of Williams College, he has worked with com­pet­i­tive ath­letes and every­day peo­ple of all ages and abil­ity lev­els, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP’s to 85-year-old retirees.  He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

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Overtraining Part 1: The Intended Adaptation & Intro to Overtraining

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This series of blog posts will address the concepts of overtraining.

What exactly is a “great workout”?  It could mean something very different for everyone. Whether you are looking for sweat and a feeling of fatigue, getting a great pump, or just feeling more alive than when you started, everyone has a different idea of what they are looking for in a workout.

The individual’s goals and perceived adaptations from the workout will likely play a large part in their satisfaction with the workout as a whole. However, will the anticipated adaptation of the exercises always be the resulting adaptation? In other words, are the results you think you will get (burn fat, tone and sculpt, build muscle, increase energy, prevent injury) the same as the results you will actually get?

Note: The manipulation of training variables in order to achieve a specific desired adaption will be discussed in a later post. At this moment, I am addressing the issue of overtraining.

Will a “great workout” always lead to great results? Simply put, no.

1)   Not everyone has the same idea of what makes a “great workout”.

2)   A “great workout” may not provide the appropriate stimulus for your desired results.

Understanding the specific adaptation caused by the manipulation of training variables will allow you to align your anticipated adaptation with the results you are striving to achieve. In other words, if you know what the exercise is doing to your body you can make sure that is what you want to have happen. If you feel like you are having great workouts but are not getting the results you want check to make sure you are providing the correct stimulus. If your first reaction is that you need to start working harder, well… read on.

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Will working harder always lead to better results? Once again, no.

1)   Working harder could put you beyond your ability to recovery from the workout.

2)   The stimulus may not be what is needed to create the desired adaptation.

Overtraining is essentially training beyond one’s mean to recovery. If this is continued for a long enough period of time, progress will stop and you will likely start taking steps backwards!

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How to recognize overtraining:

1)   Increase in resting heart rate

2)   Lower motivation and energy than normal

3)   Decreased performance

4)   Feeling “out of it”

5)   Trouble sleeping

6)   Soreness lasting for days

7)   Loss of appetite

8)   Decrease in body temperature / metabolism

Hard work will not get you the results you are looking for if you are doing the wrong work. If you are unsure how to manipulate training variables to achieve your desired adaptation be sure to ask for help, research on your own, or check back for my future post on this topic. Start doing the work that is appropriate for your body and goals and start seeing results like never before.

Watch for Overtraining Part 2: Understanding Overtraining, Coming Soon!

Remember: Exercise creates an environment for change in the body; nutrition and lifestyle allow that change to take place. You cannot out-exercise a bad diet, and you cannot out-eat a bad lifestyle.

Tony Cates is a business management major at Edgewood College in Madison, WI.  He is a certified personal trainer, performance enhancement specialist, and the S&C Coach for Edgewood College Men’s Basketball.  He can be reached at catestony@gmail.com or (608) 852-7433.

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Pre-workout Drinks

Pre-workout drinks: Making lazy kids motivated and disrupting sleep quality and recovery since the airing of those first N.O.-Xplode advertisements.

By: Tony Cates, CPT, PES

We have all heard of them. Those drink powders containing various combinations of amino acids, stimulants, electrolytes, and herbal extracts. They can turn almost anyone who is tired and unmotivated into a raging mule in the weight room. In an aspect of life where a commitment to consistent hard work is the only means for success, they give hope to the overpopulated crowed searching for shortcuts and instant gratification. Though I will agree, imperfect action, or action with the assistance of chemical substances, is generally far better than perfect in-action, the abuse and addictive nature of these glorified energy drinks is something I feel deserves to be addressed.

The primary goal of a pre-workout drink is to give you more strength, power, energy, and endurance during a workout than you would otherwise have. What could be wrong with that? Better workouts lead to improved fitness and faster results, right? Generally, I might agree with this statement, except for the fact that better workouts are only being achieved through artificial means. What most pre-workout drinkers fail to take into consideration is that recovery from workouts is arguably more important than how much work is actually done during the workout. For instance, if I train more in one session than I am able to recover from, I will not be getting the full benefits of my hard work. This is where I find the primary problem with pre-workouts drinks.

Not only do pre-workouts allow users to train beyond their capacity to recover, they further prevent recovery by hindering proper sleep patterns. Caffeine, the primary stimulant in most pre-workout drinks, negatively affects the sleep cycle. The degree to which this is done depends on the time, relative to bedtime, that the caffeine is ingested, as well as the individual’s tolerance to stimulants. Whether you notice it or not, caffeine is likely disrupting your sleep, and with sleep being one of the most critical aspects of recovery, it is hindering not only your ability to recover, but your ability to progress, as well.

By taking a pre-workout product, people not only have a greater ability and desire to train beyond their capacity to recover, they actually reduce their ability to recover at the same time. This in turn leads to increasing numbers of people over-training and suffering injuries related to over-training and over use.

Perhaps it is time to re-think what actually makes sense when it comes to pre-workout fuel.

Tony Cates is a business management major at Edgewood College in Madison, WI. He is a certified personal trainer, performance enhancement specialist, and the S&C Coach for Edgewood College Men’s Basketball. He can be reached at catestony@gmail.com or (608) 852-7433.

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Hardgainers: The Big Three for Recovery

I used to believe in foam rolling and stretching for recovery, but now those modalities take the back seat. Instead, here are my Big Three for Big Gains when it comes to recovery.

1. Get Your Sleep Right

Anywhere between 7 and 9 hours of sleep both the night before and the night after a training session are a must. You cannot out-exercise a bad diet, and you cannot out-eat bad sleep. Prioritize this as #1 and see the massive results you have been wanting.

2. Pinpoint Nutrition

I gave guidelines in my earlier article, "Recovery 101: Nutrition". You can follow these if you like, but what I am really talking about here is following a pre- and post-training diet that is designed exactly to what your body needs and can use. If you can't metabolize carbohydrates, carbo loading before or after will only make you sick and bloated.

3. PMA

Positive Mental Attitude. Exercise is a stress on the body, and the body is unable to differentiate between physical and emotional stress. Because all stress is cumulative on the body, you need to make sure you keep a positive mental attitude in and outside of the gym. Minimizing unnecessary stress will allow your body the greatest opportunity to be in an anabolic state with greater testosterone and growth hormone production, allowing y0u the results you desire.

While what you do in the gym is vital to reaching your goals, everything you do outside of it trumps all that is done within. If you can't make the commitment to positively changing your lifestyle outside of the gym, don't expect positive changes to happen to your training and physique.

Get big or die tryin'.

Charlie Cates, CSCS

Self Made®, Owner

Charlie Cates is a strength and conditioning specialist and the owner of Self Made® (http://selfmadefitness.com/) in Chicago, IL. He has worked with competitive and everyday athletes of all ages and ability levels, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP’s. He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

This article may be reproduced with biographical information intact.

Is Foam Rolling Doing What You Think It Is?

I used to foam roll all the time. Every day, sometimes twice a day. I had a whole routine for my lower back on down, and in my head I thought I was helping myself. I was told that foam rolling would break up fascial adhesions, releasing tight muscles and allowing me to recover faster. In fact, in one of my most highly praised articles on EliteFTS.com I made claims about how foam rolling after a training session would help remove the metabolic by-products of training, thereby allowing you to come back the next day feeling stronger and ready to go. Now I don't foam roll at all.

I am no longer convinced that foam rolling is doing what I once said it does. In fact, based on my current MAT studies, I now believe that if you roll out your IT-band, for example, you are only smashing your vastus lateralis into your femur. Are you pressing on the fascia as well? Yup, but tell me how that piece of foam is able to only target your fascia and not your muscle fibers. It itsn't, and therefore we are back to the same argument I wrote about in my post and article "Stretching to Improve ROM and Speed Recovery: Fact or Fiction?" because now you are applying force into the muscle tissue but have no idea what it's doing.

Classic

You can use the massage argument if you want, but ask your massage therapist if you can train right after they work on you next and see what they say. Pressing on the belly of the muscle may feel really good, but it's probably not helping you as much as or in the ways that you think it is. And regarding breaking up fascial adhesions, please, fascia is adhesed to begin with! You aren't breaking up those adhesions any more than you are stretching your IT-band, which doesn't have the ability to stretch, by the way.

As far as removing the metabolic by-products of training, eh, it may be possible, but it's not the best way to go about it. In my opinion, the best way to ensure that you recover as fast as possible from your training is to make sure your muscle fibers are firing properly. The amount of force that is generated by the muscle fibers to move your body through space and time is SO much greater than you could EVER put into it with your fingers or a piece of foam or PVC pipe. If there is something that is able to move out of those muscle fibers through force, it will be moved out when they start contracting properly.

After I train, I no longer stretch and I no longer roll out. Instead, I check my range of motion in the relevant body area and perform low-intensity isometrics into any limits I find in my ranges of motion, as taught to me by Muscle Activation Techniques. I'm not sore or achy and my knees feel significantly better than they did in college. In fact, the only days they bother me are when I wear shoes too much. But alas, this subject is for another post.

Get big or die tryin'.

Charlie Cates, CSCS

Self Made®, Owner

Charlie Cates is a strength and conditioning specialist and the owner of Self Made® (http://selfmadefitness.com/) in Chicago, IL. He has worked with competitive and everyday athletes of all ages and ability levels, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP’s. He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

This article may be reproduced with biographical information intact.

Recovery 101--Nutrition

This is the first of a two-part article on basic recovery techniques. Part 1 will look at the nutritional aspect of recovery, while Part 2 will focus on training techniques to speed up recovery.

Every day I go to the gym and I see people sweating it out to get the results they desire. I also see these same people distraught when their desires never actually materialize. Now, I could write many articles about why this is, ripping apart their ridiculous training schemes and what not, but I’m going to dedicate these next couple articles to one of the most overlooked aspects of training--the time you spend out of the gym, specifically nutrition and choice of post-workout activity.

When it comes to post-workout nutrition, correct timing of what you eat and how much you eat is essential. First of all, you need to know what type of workout you just completed, meaning was it a strength training session, a movement/aerobic training session, or a hybrid of the two. Knowing how you just trained will dictate the amount of one macronutrient you eat relative to another, specifically your carbohydrate to protein ratio. If you just completed a strength training session you are looking to intake a 2:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio. If you just completed a movement training or aerobic session, then you are looking for a 4:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio. Finally, if you just completed a hybrid workout, then you need to judge based on the workout. For example, if you just completed a power-based Plyometric training session, which is technically a strength session based on the distance traveled by your center of mass on every movement, you’ll be looking at more of a 2:1 ratio. This also goes for circuit training sessions in the weight room where you are lifting the entire time but because your heart rate stays elevated it may feel like a cardio session. However, let’s just say you finished running hill sprints, which, due to the incline, definitely has a strength component to it, but due to the metabolic demand of this workout you’ll be looking at more of a 4:1 ratio.

Secondly, you need to know exactly what types of foods to put into your body. As I stated earlier, and will expand upon later, timing is crucial for post-workout nutrition. You want to take in foods that are easily digestible and will be delivered to your muscle cells quickly, meaning that when looking at carbohydrate choices, simple, fast-digesting sugars are better. Glucose would be your number-one choice here as glucose is already in a form that is usable by the body. On the other hand, fructose, which is the sugar found in fruits, takes longer to be absorbed by the muscle cells because it has to first travel to the liver where the liver will convert it to glucose. This also makes up the majority of Americans’ diets in the form of high fructose corn syrup, so that’s another reason to avoid that substance. The reason you want such fast-digesting carbohydrates is because the faster your carbs are digested the faster your insulin levels will spike. This will allow the glucose to enter the muscle cell, replenishing glycogen stores and allowing you to recover faster from your workout. A faster recovery from previous workouts enables you to work out harder the next time you hit the gym.

These same rules apply for protein as well. The fastest-digesting protein is going to be whey protein, with casein protein on the other end of the spectrum as the slowest-digesting protein. What is different about post-workout protein consumption is that you don’t want purely fast-digesting protein, i.e., you want a mix of whey and casein protein. Once again, the ratio of the two will depend on the workout you just completed. For strength-training workouts you’re looking at a 50/50 mix of the two proteins post-workout. This is for two reasons: 1) The whey protein will be digested and absorbed by the muscles quickly to start the rebuilding process. The sooner your muscles can start rebuilding the sooner they can be put to work again. 2) The casein protein will take up to seven hours to digest. This will give your muscles a slow drip of amino acids throughout the day that will aid in the recovery and rebuilding of the muscle tissue. After a movement training or aerobic session you want a 75/25 mix of whey to casein. This can be accomplished quite simply by mixing your whey protein shake in 8 to 12 ounces of milk as casein protein makes up approximately 80% of the protein found in milk. However, it would be worth investing in a separate casein powder or a mix of casein and whey protein for after strength training sessions as adding enough milk to get a 50/50 ratio would more than likely water down the powder so much that the shake wouldn’t taste very good.

Now that you know what to eat, the question becomes when do you eat it. Essentially, the sooner you can eat your post-workout nutrition the more effective it will be. However, there are a couple time windows that you should keep in mind. The first window is 30 minutes post-workout. Once 30 minutes has elapsed sine the end of your workout the effectiveness of your post-workout nutrition in aiding recovery drops off dramatically. The second window is 2 hours post-workout. After a 2-hour period from the end of your workout, any advantage that nutrition could have given you in terms of recovering for your next workout is basically gone. It is because of these two time windows that having the fastest-digesting macronutrients available to your body is so crucial. It is also why I recommend taking your post-workout nutrition with you to the gym instead of waiting until you get home to eat.

A third macronutrient that I haven’t talked about at all is fat, specifically polyunsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats contain omega-3 fatty acids, which act as a natural anti-inflammatory. Polyunsaturated fats can be found in high quantities in foods such as fish and walnuts, among others. What you have to be careful about when dealing with fats is that fat will slow down the digestion of everything else. So, although the omega-3’s found in these foods will allow you to recover from your workout quicker by reducing inflammation, I do not recommend taking in fats along with your carbohydrates and proteins. In fact, I would recommend waiting at least 30 minutes after you have already had your post-workout carbs and proteins to take in some form of omega-3’s. While this would put your fat intake outside of the 30-minute window given earlier, replenishing glycogen stores and providing amino acids for the muscle takes precedence over the anti-inflammatory effect of omega-3 fatty acids. Two of the most effective ways of ingesting omega-3’s are fish oil tablets and whole ground flaxseed. The tablets can be taken right out of the container and the flaxseed can be mixed in with yogurt, cereal, oatmeal, shakes, and smoothies. While there are recommended daily values for omega-3’s, recommended post-workout dosages have yet to be established.

Another aspect of post-workout nutrition to consider is water. You need to make sure that you re-hydrate after every workout so that your body continues to function properly between workouts, which will allow you to work out harder the next time you hit the gym. A simple way to figure out how much water you need post-workout is to weigh yourself before you begin your training and then again after your training session has concluded. For every pound that you loose during your workout you should drink 16 ounces (two cups) of water after your workout. You should definitely still be hydrating during your workout as well, but most of us are unable to keep up with our fluid losses during training so we must take extra care to make sure we re-hydrate well post-workout.

A lot of people like to drink Gatorade post-workout as a way of rehydrating, but there is a problem with that. Unless you’ve been training outside under the blazing sun for more than 90 minutes you really don’t need to be drinking Gatorade. While Gatorade can be seen as a good source of those simple sugars that you want post-workout, it also has a very high fructose content, which, as was mentioned before, takes longer to digest. Therefore, in writing this I’m assuming that you’re drinking Gatorade in additionto your post-workout carbs. In fact, the best time to drink Gatorade would be during your workout when it lasts more than 90 minutes. This would be to replenish the glycogen stores, sodium, and potassium that you burn through and loose while you workout so that you can continue to train at a high level. A better option than Gatorade if you are looking to replace electrolytes is Pedialyte. The Pedialyte Freeze Pops are portable solutions to your electrolyte deficiencies that you may encounter during or after a workout. The Free Pops contain a gram and a half of sugar, six calories, 211 mg of sodium, and 94 mg of potassium per 2.1 oz freeze pop.[1] Compare this to Gatorade’s 34 grams of sugar, 125 calories, 275 mg of sodium, and 75 mg of potassium per 20 oz bottle and you realize that with Pedialyte Freeze Pops you get a significantly more potent electrolyte replacement with only 4% of the sugar content.[2]

So, when thinking about post-workout nutrition, remember that timing is everything. Not only do you need to eat foods that are fast digesting, but you also have to eat them as soon as possible after your workout. Eating the right amounts of these foods, as well as drinking proper amounts of fluids to rehydrate, will not only allow you to recover more quickly so you can work out harder the next time you’re in the gym, but it will also ensure that you are getting everything out of your training that you are putting in to it.

Get big or die tryin’.

Charlie Cates

Self Made, Owner

Charlie Cates is a human performance specialist and the owner of Self Made (http://selfmadefitness.com/). He is a Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Enhancement Specialist through NASM and has worked with competitive and everyday athletes of all ages and ability levels, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP's. He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

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[1] http://www.thedailyplate.com/nutrition-calories/food/pedialyte/freeze-pops

[2] http://www.thedailyplate.com/nutrition-calories/food/gatorade/fruit-punch-thirst-quencher