Speed Training Inbox

In a previous post I discussed a nutrition question that I get regularly and I wanted to show you an email I received from a coach I admire in response.

First, here is the section from the last newsletter that
I am referring to:

Nutrition

My other favorite question is that I got over the weekend but this question is also pretty frequent:

'What type of supplement do you recommend that I use to get stronger and faster, is their type of whey protein, creatine or anything else I should use?'

Now this might seem like a serious question to them until I ask them first what they had for dinner last night, what they had for lunch, and for breakfast.

Here was his response:

Dinner: fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy

Lunch: I got out of school early and got 2 JBC's at Wendy's (a JBC is a Junior Bacon Cheeseberger and if you coach high school athletes you already knew that)

Breakfast: Ohh, I woke up late and didn't have time for breakfast.

Now, I didn't make up this response, nor is it unusual nutritional habits for today's American youth. People are willing to spend thousands of dollars a year on supplements but can't take the time to eat an apple. How about trying to wake up 5 minutes earlier to make breakfast or even attempt to eat something from each food group? This isn't rocket science to come up with a balanced diet but people are getting lazier each day. Our society needs an easy button for everything.

People are just looking for me to say take this pill and you'll get stronger and faster and you don't need to change your current diet. They are pretty much saying that 'I am too lazy and I don't want to put in the effort it takes to make improvements'. Again, let's just get back to the basics in everything we do and stop looking for the easy way out, please.

Here is the email that I received in response that I thought fit in perfectly and I am sure that you have had similar experiences with your athletes:

'Hey Patrick!

Yeah, you are right about the nutrition issue. I had a high school athlete who asked my advice on how to 'gain weight.' To make sure he was serious, I had him keep a food diary for 1 week. To make a long story short, he was using various high priced supplements. When analyzing his food record, I calculated he was undereating by about 2000 calories per day.



Also, the quality of his food and beverage choices were horrible. Most of his calories were in the form of sugar rich beverages and fast foods (poor quality). We cleaned up his diet...asked him to use the money spent on high priced (ineffective supplements) to buy good quality foods and water....increased his meal frequency...1 month later, he gained 5# of muscle. The moral of the story...Use Food First!!'

- Les B.

Thanks a lot Les for the response! Other emails that I have received were for nutritional plans that I recommend. So here are 2 of them:



1). For people that are looking for actual nutritional structure and not just the latest pill/supplement then check out Dr. John Berardi:

http://www.topfitnessprofessionals.com/DrBerardi.html

2) To simply setup your meals with your favorite foods and have your meals nutritionally balanced, a great software program on Nutritional Planning, go to:

www.topfitnessprofessionals.com/nutrition.html