Fitness Advice That Gets the Most Bang For Your Buck, Part 1
In Part 1 of 2 episodes, Get Fit Guy discusses some of the best types of workouts, supplements, recovery strategies, and mental training that offer the most bang for your buck.
Ben Greenfield
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Fitness Advice That Gets the Most Bang For Your Buck, Part 1
I follow a variety of health, fitness and nutrition blogs and podcasts, and on any given morning, I’ll preview a good 40-50 articles or studies, and read the details on at least 10 of them.
One of the authors I follow is Alex Hutchinson at RunnersWorld.com. Alex and I have never met, but I like his level-headed approach to fitness, and our mutual background in the realm of endurance performance.
So when I saw that Alex had written an article entitled “Advice To A Young Athlete”, I gave it a thorough read. In the article, Alex delves into supplements, recovery, nutrition, mental training, and race prep for a young elite cyclist who had written to him asking for performance advice.
While you may not be young, elite, or a cyclist, there are still some very helpful gems in the article. In this two-part episode, I’ve give you my thoughts and commentary on a few such tips.
Supplements
When it comes to supplements, Alex highlights the proven performance enhancing effects of caffeine, the lactic acid buffering and muscle burn-reducing effect of baking soda and/or beta-alanine, and the endurance enhancing effects of beet juice.
I agree with Alex about the effects of each of these, but with a few caveats. When it comes to caffeine, many athletes who are overtrained tend to use coffee and energy drinks to mask fatigue, and often dig themselves into an adrenal fatigue, injury or illness hole that can be very difficult to climb out of.
So I recommend that when using caffeine for it’s performance enhancing effects, you use the minimum recommended dosage, which is close to 3mg/kg. Even 3mg/kg can be a hefty dose of caffeine, so this wouldn’t be prudent to use before a daily workout – only in times when you need significant performance enhancing effects, such as a high-priority race like a marathon or triathlon.
I also recommend “deloading” from caffeine every few weeks to ensure you don’t build up a tolerance to it, and so that you don’t build so many receptors (called “adenosine receptors”) for caffeine to bind to that you wind up disrupting your sleep. This can be accomplished by switching every four weeks from caffeinated coffee to a good, tasty decaffeinated version (I use organic Swiss water process decaf) for one week.
We live in an era in which an athlete can affordably undergo blood, saliva, and stool testing to identify specific hormone, neurotransmitter, micronutrient, bacterial and enzyme excess or deficiencies.
One of the most proven performance enhancing supplements on the face of the planet is creatine, and I personally use 5g of creatine per day. Creatine was left out of Alex’s article, but in fairness, his article was targeted to an endurance athlete who will probably benefit less from creatine compared to a strength or power athlete. Nonetheless, creatine has been shown to have performance enhancing effects for endurance, and also has a cognitive boosting effect.
Finally, we live in an era in which an athlete can affordably undergo blood, saliva, and stool testing to identify specific hormone, neurotransmitter, micronutrient, bacterial and enzyme excess or deficiencies. Because of this, it is possible to create a customized exercise supplementation protocol based on your specific needs.
For example, common deficiencies among athletes include red blood cell magnesium, Vitamin D, ferritin, thyroid hormone, and testosterone. Once deficiencies like this are identified, supplementation (along with lifestyle, exercise, and diet modifications) can be used to fill in the gaps – vs. a “shotgun” approach of using a supplement just because a competitor or someone else on your team or in your gym is using it.
Of course, speaking of filling in the gaps, here’s what I think is the most important things to consider regarding supplements: I was recently speaking on a “supplement panel” at PaleoFX, and highlighted the fact that you can’t out-supplement poor lifestyle, exercise, and diet choices.
Whether you’re talking about muscle gain, performance, or fat loss, supplementation might give you the extra edge of 1% to a maximum of perhaps just 10%. That’s why it’s called a “supplement”, not a “staple!” Just remember that before you decide to cut your workout short so that you can go pop a few pills.
Recovery
For recovery, Alex says not to spend too much time on methods such as ice baths, so that you don’t attenuate the body’s adaptation to training. This is probably prudent if you’re the type of exerciser who is observed in studies that show things like ice baths don’t work: that is, someone who is exercising for 20-60 minutes 5-7 days per week, is not necessarily doing a Crossfit WOD every day, is throwing down 2-3 hour runs on the weekends, and is working out 60-90 minutes on multiple days per week.
However, many of the exercise enthusiasts whoose workout protocols I’ve reviewed definitely fall into the camp of folks who need more recovery, not less. They are also probably building up such a high amount of free radical and oxidation damage to the body from exercise that they need higher doses of recovery than what might be recommended for the average lab rat in an exercise study.
Anyways, all that being said, Alex highlights the potential recovery enhancing benefits of ice baths, compression socks, massage, and sleep. But I’d throw in a few others that I’ve found to be practically effective:
- Hot-cold contrast: for example, sitting in a warm sauna for 20-45 minutes on a recovery day, then finishing up with a cold shower; alternating an ice bath dip followed by a hot tub soak several times through; or even simply switching the shower from warm water to cold water for a few cycles
- Electrostimulation: using an electrostimulation (EMS) unit to drive blood flow and to contract muscles when you’re unable to move (such as a long airplane or car ride), or when a joint is injured. EMS units are now relatively affordable, and don’t necessarily require you to visit a physical therapist’s office and shell out a co-pay every time you want access to recovery technology.
- Inversion: just like compression, inversion can help move blood out of areas of the body where blood has pooled, or where inflammatory fluids from metabolism and exercise have accumulated. From yoga inversion poses to inversion tables to hanging from ropes or pull-up bars, getting your recovering appendages higher than your heart can be easy and effective, and has the added advantage of “traction” – the pulling-apart of joints that can increase synovial fluid and lubrication moving in and out of joints such as knees, hips and shoulders.
That recovery list is my no means exhaustive, but includes just a few of my favorites. You can read more about my thoughts on recovery tools here.
I could go on, but that’s all the time I have today! Stay tuned for Part 2, in which you’ll get my thoughts on nutrition, mental training, and race or “big workout” prep.
In the meantime, if you have more questions about the fitness advice that gets you the most bang for your buck, leave your thoughts over at the Facebook.com/GetFitGuy page!
Photos of man with supplements and man getting into ice bath courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.