How Nutrition Has Direct Influence on Performance

Anyone who is serious about their health and fitness goals realizes by now that nutrition is what drives their progress. This is what sets you up for success or failure. How you prepare your meals and what you put into your system has a huge and direct effect on the work out. For example, I have a new client who is out of shape and overweight. I’ll call this client Bob. I discussed the importance of nutrition with him and everyone in his life that wants him to succeed. We have been training for 3 months now and slow, steady progression has been shown in both strength and in weight loss. Where this turned into an experiment is when I had Bob do burpees for time. Remember this is the first time that my client was introduced to this exercise, so it was expected that his first time should be the slowest, with the assumption that as this exercise is performed more often, the times should improve. So here is the work out as follows:

On Wednesday, 45 burpees took 16:45; first attempt at the exercise.
He ate a good breakfast, consisting of eggs and sausage.

The following Monday, 50 burpees took 22:06. Only 5 more burpees than the first workout and it took almost 6 minutes longer.
He felt lightheaded throughout the exercise.
He ate a poor breakfast; only had potatoes and orange juice.

Then Wednesday he performed 80 burpees for time. And since he was doing well, I decided to record the times for the 45 and 50 reps as well.
So for 45 reps, his time was 11:36, which is a great improvement from the first time doing it.
For 50 reps, it was 12:51 which is a 10 minute difference from the 50 reps 2 days prior. Finally, 80 reps for. 19:49; which crushed his time from the Monday work out by 3 minutes less with 30 extra reps of burpees.
His breakfast consisted of eggs and bacon with orange juice. A complete breakfast. All the macronutrients were present; protein, fats and carbs. This breakfast was exactly what his body needed to outperform his previous workouts, which is what’s to be expected when eating well and exercising: Improvement.

Many people exercise, but they don't realize how important nutrition is to their performance and results. Anyone can go to the gym and throw weights around, but for it to be an effective exercise program, many other aspects need to be filtered in, such as flexibly and mobility, nutrition, rest and recovery and the actual set up of the exercise program.

Train for success; don't waste your valuable time and effort at the gym.
This little experiment was a great way to demonstrate that what we do outside the gym such as sleep, rest, food and nourishment for the body is what gets us the most results especially when it comes to training at the gym.

Always go back to the basics. For a good basic guide on nutrition check out Nutrition101.

Overpowering Yourself

As a personal trainer, a coach or any fitness professional, it is very common to hear the phrase "I can't". So in order to help our clients, I decided to transform this ‘I can't’ into something positive.
We tend to feel the need to say those words when we are fazed with a challenge that we need to conquer. In order to overcome that obstacle every time those words surface, we must learn to add a few words at the end, in order to finish the phrase; Such as. I can't: give up, surrender, lose, stop, let up, fail, be beaten, etc.... Now read it again. Repetition makes perfection. I can't give up, I can't surrender, I can't lose, I can't stop, I can't let up, I can't fail, I can't be beaten.
There is at least one situation where these statements can be applied helping you overcome that obstacle.
Don't let "I can't" hinder your success.