The Progress Heirachy Pyramid.

Here’s a little animation I made to illustrate the hierarchy of importance of different elements and how when they are all stacked up together they lead to success in your training related goals.

Especially online, most people just like to debate, argue and bicker. When talking about what people need to do if they want to get into shape, lose weight, be healthy, or whatever… people will latch on to some idea that they read about, some thing that they personal found helpful, and make it out to be an all important necessity that everyone else seems to be missing because they’re just not quite smart enough to get it.

In reality these points are fine tuning at best, possibly beneficial if you have all of the more important bases covered already, but for new people looking to get started with a fitness goal or a healthier life style they only serve to over complicate things and take people’s focus away from what’s really important.

What’s really important is just simply establishing the habits of turning up to the gym and putting in your best effort, regularly. People like to throw around words like discipline, commitment, will power and so on, but enthusiasm is really what it takes to get people into training regularly and consistently, and to work to the best of their ability while they’re in there.

What people seem to miss is that you can’t guilt, shame, pressure or coerce someone into feeling enthusiastic. Sure, a lot of people will begrudgingly show up once in a while because people are on their back, making them feel bad about the shape they’re in, telling them they are lazy or whatever else. Consistently though? Is that sort of negative motivation likely to get people showing up regularly and really getting stuck into training? Absolutely not. People need to be enthusiastic. They need to actually want to train, want to see results, and have a good reason to believe that they will be successful.

As we talked about recently on facebook, when you consistently turn up and train enthusiastically to the best of your ability, the sky is the limit. Providing of course that you are actually working to an effective training and fueling strategy. This is the missing piece of the puzzle for most people, and it is the crucial foundation that everything else depends upon.

Many people will get enthusiastic, show up and try their best… but that enthusiasm soon wanes if they do not see progress in terms of their performance or condition. It goes without saying that turning up and putting in the effort is crucial, but how are we applying that effort? With an effective training strategy that we can expect to produce results, or is it just effort for effort’s sake? “burning calories” and so forth?

You require both an effective training strategy, and the appropriate fueling strategy in order to see the benefits of training. On the fueling side we are really just talking about getting enough, but not too much of everything that we require, including total energy aka calorie intake.

Being enthusiastic and actually turning up regularly to train with a good program, while appropriately fueled to perform, recover and adapt… you will see results. These results mean your performance improves, your condition improves, and you’re all the more inspired. Having so much momentum at this point, this is where fine tuning can come into things on an individual level, as you find what works best for you in terms of exercise selection, meal timing and frequency, choices of foods that make it easier to hit more precise macronutrient targets, and so on.

Again, these “fine tuning” items are really down to what makes it easiest and most enjoyable for each individual to stay enthusiastic and consistent. Too often people will take those personal, individual preferences and try to make them out as all anyone else needs to be focused on, when in actual fact they might be the least suitable, least convenient things for someone else that only makes them less enthusiastic and less consistent as they struggle to put it all together.

Bottom line: being enthusiastic about showing up regularly to train to the best of your ability with any decent training program and a suitable fueling strategy to meet your individual requirements will take you a hell of a long way.

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Secret Weapons For Optimal Energy Intake

Not your standard healthy foodspo type pic, is it?

Here’s the thing.

Eating quote/unquote “healthy” foods is awesome. More vegies in particular, more fruit too... all manner of nutrient dense foods. It means you’re sure to be getting an abundance of vitamins and minerals that your body will thrive upon, and you’re probably pretty unlikely to go into excess energy intake.

Getting lots of micronutrients and not being in excess energy intake is exactly what you want. HOWEVER, particularly for active people participating in sports and/or training... an otherwise healthy diet that falls short of an adequate level of energy provision will (at best) fail to ensure great performance and results from training, and (at worst, and quite likely) actually be detrimental to health and wellbeing.

We’re encouraged to see calories / energy intake as something to be minimised. This is highly problematic. Obviously we do not want to be in the habit of exceeding our requirements, but we must at the very least meet an adequate energy provision, and as athletes we should try to push closer to an optimal level of total energy intake to facilitate best performance, recovery and results from training.

Now some people do manage to achieve a suitable energy intake while still “eating clean”. More power to them, but to me this seems like a difficult and unnecessary task.

It is entirely fine to include some foods in your plan solely for energy provision, even if they fall short of the mark on other nutritional resources. You’ll be getting those elsewhere anyway from all the healthy fruit and vegetables and whole grains you’re eating.

For me personally, a couple of thin rice cakes with raspberry jam is the perfect post-training recovery snack. Immediately after training, your energy levels are depleted, but you probably don't really want a substantial meal that requires much to digest. I find a couple of these hits the spot nicely, and I'm ready for my shake a little while later.

Shakes are another, not so secret, secret weapon.

Now, there's nothing magical about a protein shake that will ensure great results merely by adding it to some random eating habits that add up to some random amount of energy and macronutrient provision. However, when you're working to appropriate sports nutrition or Flexible Dieting guidelines, a shake can be an easy way to boost your total energy and your protein intake closer to optimal levels.

Personally my requirements are quite high, so I like to add a banana and a scoop of dessicated coconut to my shake as well as the Whey Protein Concentrate.

This is mostly all about "hitting my macros". There's a new page I've just set up with my recommendations of certain delicious foods you might want to include for their micronutrient content, with properties that are particularly beneficial for good health and for recovery from training.

That's some more great free information you can sign up for that at the top right of the this page, or click here.

The name of the game here is "stack the deck in your favour" with a plan that not only meets all of your requirements, but does so in a way that is enjoyable and not a chore. This means it is conducive to long term adherence and long term results.

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Ditch The Diet And Eat Like An Athlete

ALRIGHT SERIOUS TALK.

If you TRAIN in pursuit of any specific or not-so-specific performance or condition result, start thinking of yourself more like an athlete.
More like an athlete, less like “someone on a diet”.

Women in their late teens or early – mid twenties who are hardworking badasses in the gym, also training for and competing in sport on the weekend, otherwise busy and industrious throughout the day as well… the amount who fit this profile who have come to me over the years, unsatisfied with their condition and how their body is responding to training, and thinking they need to cut carbs, cut total cals, go keto… or any other variation of “going on a diet” in the conventional sense to FORCE the body to tap into those fat stores.

NO. NO. NO. NO!

This goes for anyone at any age, for that matter. If you’re doing all that hard work YOU ARE NOT SOMEONE WHO NEEDS TO GO ON A DIET. You are someone who needs to fuel for performance, recovery, and the creation of a stronger, lean body as an adaptation to training.

Trying to “force” the body to burn fat through massive calorie deficit through restriction and expenditure has the opposite effect. Your body will only prioritise the support of lean mass when conditions are most favourable, AKA you are (at least) adequately fueled. The closer you push to a more maximal, optimal energy provision the higher a percentage of that total will be put into the muscles while the body draws more from fat stores to fuel low intensity / non exercise activity.

The further into deficit you go, the lower that percentage being made available to support lean mass becomes and the body will conserve a higher percentage in fat stores because it thinks it is trying to survive a famine or an ice age or something terrible like that.

You are built for survival and adaptation. Put yourself into arduous circumstances with minimal food & energy intake plus maximum work load and your body will try to find a way to survive BUT IN NO WAY does this equate to “the creation of your goal body condition”.

Not in a million years could it mean that. You are built for survival and adaptation though, so provide as much fuel as you can put to use and then train strategically to do just that. Not to “burn calories” but to utilise energy and resources in creating a strong, lean, healthy and functional body condition just like you want.

Now… even if you’re thinking “ok but that’s for people who are already lean, I have all this weight to lose first so I need to be in deficit and burn more calories”, no. Pay attention.

Even if you are actually overweight. Participating in that amount, that type, and that level of performance in training and sports… whatever amount and level that is, we can run the maths and accurately determine a calorific intake that would fail to see a reduction in body fat due to being in excess of requirements.

It would actually be a massive amount.

We can also run the maths and determine what is an adequate, and what is an optimal amount that could be taken up and put to use for the very best performance and condition, and it will still be quite a massive amount, but significantly below that “too much” amount described above.

Best results… no… ANY lasting result can only occur when you are in the habit of consuming somewhere within that “adequate to optimal” range of total energy intake. The more consistently you are within that range and preferably closer to the higher, optimal end, the more consistent and the more dramatic the improvements in both performance and condition will be.

Now… you could achieve that optimal intake via intuition, but most people are so used to the “eat less” message that they’ll fall short of an adequate amount without first having a period where they identify and practice planning to meet those targets. Some people might manage to fluke it via sheer dumb luck and conclude that it has more to do with a certain selection of foods than with energy and macronutrient provision, but they’d be wrong and their advice will be detrimental to most anyone else.

You need to establish the habit of meeting at least an adequate total energy and macronutrient provision, via whatever selection of foods makes this the easiest and most enjoyable for you. Preferably, at least periodically you need to push closer to the maximum, optimal end of that usable energy range.

Also you need to train, productively and strategically for a strong, healthy body.

I happen to have a very good system for determining these requirements, and a protocol for hitting first adequate and then optimal targets for best results ever and no restrictions on food choices. Also right now I have a brand new strength training program for athletes and sports people looking to complement their sports training.

It is all available online.

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