by Daniel Roberts
Whether you’re a bodybuilder, powerlifter, strongman or general strength athlete, there’s an established wisdom about eating and training which never fails – you need a high protein (roughly 1-2g/lb of lean bodyweight), nutrient-dense diet that meets the calorific needs of progressive overload training.
The best training methodologies and diets weren’t created in a lab; they are intuitive and proven time and again by experience.
Sandow did it, Reg Park did it, Arnold did it, and every successful athlete before or since has done it. Some spread their meals, some ate three meals a day, some ate very little until after training and then gorged, but at the end of each day, they’d all eaten enough protein, carbohydrate, and fat to meet their individual requirements.
In short, they kept it simple and there hasn’t been a study to date to prove any of their approaches wrong, but have there been any studies to show a better approach?
Is there an optimal way to consume nutrients to maximise muscle and strength gains? Marketing hype would have you believe so, so let’s start with the most basic approach.
Three Squares a Day vs. Small and Frequent
The aim of any diet is to provide the macronutrients necessary to support the goals of the athlete whether that’s hypertrophy, fat loss, or strength. Determining the amounts is the tricky bit and it is highly individualized. |
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by Daniel Roberts
If you spend any time on the Wannabebig Forums, you’ll run into that perennial plea for help - ‘Should I bulk or cut?’ Chances are that when someone throws himself at the mercy of other members, they do not have a frame of reference from which to make an objective call. Thus, the replies are rarely encouraging and supportive!
Let’s put that question another way — Should the diet of a 190 lb man at 10% body fat trying to hit 200 lbs at 10% body fat differ from the same man attempting to get down to the same place from 220 lbs at 20% body fat?
This article explains why the answer is ‘No’.
In short, when both men hit their target bodyweight and composition, their diets (their caloric intake, strictly speaking) will be identical in order to maintain that physique, so why not eat that diet from the outset?
Therefore, forum questioner, save yourself the humiliation…pick a target bodyweight and composition and you’ll never have to ask the question again. You want to be 200 lbs. and 10% body fat? Eat like you ARE 200 lbs. and 10% body fat!
To quote Ben Affleck (apologies in advance) in The Boiler Room, ‘Act as if’, or rather ‘Eat as if’.
If you’re an athlete competing in a weight class, a competitive bodybuilder, or an athlete in a position where strength training is secondary to your sport, then the question ‘Do I bulk or cut?’ will have undoubtedly crossed your mind – your goal-oriented sport will have predefined markers for success, yardsticks by which to assess your physique. |
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By: Marc Lobliner
Scenario One: The clanging of Olympic plates, the grunting from a lifter completing a challenging set, the feel of oxidized iron on the palms of your hands. . . . If these are a few of your favorite things, then you’re a bonified weightlifting enthusiast.
Scenario Two: The whirling of the treadmill, the beeping of the heart-rate monitor, the incessant yapping from two female members about their workout attire. . . . If these are a few of the things you despise, then welcome to the club, you’re an official member of CHA, otherwise known as Cardio Haters Anonymous. While we cannot deny the benefits of cardio for your health and, of course, your lean physique, many of us loath that time spent in your gym’s cardio area, that seems to march on forever – regardless of how many football games are on the TV screens. There’s got to be a better way. Well good news for CHA members – there is a better way, and it involves what you love most – free weights, of course. After all, what kind of cardio workout did you think we were going to teach you?
Circuit Breaker
The concept of combining weights and cardio isn’t really new; the original concept is known as circuit training. Circuit training was popularized in the early ‘80s and involved bouncing from one free-weight station or weight machine to the next with minimal rest between sets. It was a great concept that unfortunately was dismissed by hardcore lifters because of its common association with neophytes, women in pink leotards and skinny guys wearing tube socks. Yet, those in the hardcore club that also did cardio to maintain low bodyfat should’ve realized that combining weights with cardio is far superior to the treadmill, or other cardio stations.
Iron cardio borrows the main concept from circuit training but takes it a step further, making it perfect for the hardcore lifter as a means of getting lean and maintaining muscle mass. Instead of grouping together exercises that isolate separate muscle groups like the biceps curl or lat pulldown, iron cardio utilizes just one exercise that stresses most major muscle groups each workout. The exercises of choice for iron cardio have their foundation in Olympic weightlifting, and include: |
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Most of the people that come to me seeking personal training advice have their number one priority listed as dropping bodyfat. And when I say most, I am talking about 75-80%. The sad part is a big percentage of those people were NOT fat when they started bodybuilding. Yes, they got that way trying to “bulk up”. I guess you can say they were successful at “bulking” if you consider fat to be “bulk”. What they should have been doing is “muscling up”. That is rarely done until the trainee is quite experienced. The yo-yo approach can work well if you are blessed with a great metabolism……few are. Had they done it right they wouldn’t be in that situation. But, past mistakes are best left in the past. This article is about how to leave those mistakes in the past where they belong, and give you some general guidelines about timed-carb dieting, which I FIRMELY believe is the best approach to dropping the bodyfat while at a bare minimum retaining 100% of your muscle mass, and in the VAST majority of cases, adding some muscle and lots of strength while shedding the unwanted fat.
Before I outline the timed carb strategy, I am going to go over the typical types of diets followed by those in search of their abs, and talk about the pros and cons of each technique. Lets get started!
Low calorie, low fat diets
This is probably the #1 approach taken by those that have taken the plunge into the realm of dieting and it also happens to be the #1 reason many are afraid to diet. Why are they afraid? Because past experience has taught them that when dieting, they lose hard-earned muscle. And with this type of diet you can EXPECT at least a 50/50 muscle to fat loss ratio! YES! You lose 10 lbs and at LEAST 5 is usually muscle!!! Why? You first need to understand a bit about bodyfat metabolism. Your body stores bodyfat as “reserve fuel” in case of famine. Which is not much of a problem in today’s world in industrialized countries. OK, now you’re fat and you decide to drop it using this approach. The problem is, that when carbs are present, the fat burning pathways, which are driven by an enzymatic process are SHUT-DOWN, because carbs produce the release of insulin in your system, and insulin stops the enzymatic processes that allows you to burn bodyfat as a fuel source. |
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