Weekly Recap 7/5-7/11/2020

For this week’s weekly recap, we are talking nutrition and working hard in the gym. We have an article and Instagram post on each topic. Our articles come from Kristen Scott-Dixon and MJ Perrier over at Precision Nutrition and Tony Gentilcore. Following those articles are the Instagram posts from Sohee Lee and Kyle Dobbs.

Articles of the Week

How to Overcome the 8 Biggest Diet Problems by Krista Scott-Dixon , PhD and MJ Perrier, PhD

I find that many people tend to struggle with their nutrition. As the article explains, most people know what foods they should be eating in order to have an overall healthy diet. But knowing what to eat doesn’t tend to be the biggest challenges when it comes to nutrition. PN gathered the top 8 biggest struggles when it comes to nutrition. In this article, they go over those challenges and then provide some strategies to help overcome them. I think this is a great read for anyone looking to make any type of nutrition changes. Start with choosing one nutrition challenge at a time. Focus on it and really put your effort into it. Then when you feel ready, tackle the next one that you are struggling with. Before you know it, you will be progressing towards your nutrition goals.

Working Hard vs Always Making Exercise Harder by Tony Gentilcore

Tony dives into the topic of working hard in the gym in order to drive adaptation and progress. While yes, you want to be working hard during your training sessions that may not mean that you are making the exercise harder by adding weight or increasing the weight week to week. While we would love to make progress linearly, it doesn’t work that way. Instead, focus on working hard during every training session. This may mean that some weeks the weight on the bar is lighter. We all have great sessions where we feel great and maybe hit some PRs but we also all have very crappy sessions where your warm up weight feels heavy. Regardless, of how you feel strength-wise and the weight the you are using on the bar, your intensity and effort should be the same. Keep putting in the effort. Keep working hard. Progress will come in time if you are consistently working hard.

Instagram Posts of the Week

To go along with the article above, we have an Instagram post from Kyle Dobbs of Compound Performance. Kyle talks about the need to apply enough stress in order to elicit adaptation. If you are consistently lifting submaximal loads, you aren’t doing yourself any favors in terms of making progress and reaching your goals. Don’t fear the weight and stop focusing on lifting “perfectly.” Focus on progressive overload, stress those joints, and force adaptation. That is the key to getting stronger, better and reaching your goals.

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It’s a waste of time. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ To clarify, I’m speaking in terms of RPE/RIR rather than %. Things need to be subjectively challenging respective to the quality being trained. ⁣ There’s a difference between decreasing effort due to injury and never progressing due to fear (please read that again!). ⁣ ⁣⁣ First, let’s talk about stress accommodation and physiological adaptation. ALL systems (even outside the body) respond to stress/stimulus, and that only; if you want more endurance you need to progressively challenge your cardiovascular system, if you want to increase coordination to need to constantly challenge your nervous and vestibular systems, and if you want to get stronger you need to consistently progress stimulus in training. I realize that the pendulums swings from the extremes without ever really resting in the middle but you can’t just throw out the entire principle of progressive overload just because you want the perfect stack. Rather than marrying yourself to a pattern variation that you struggle to load well you should probably pick another variation that allows you to better leverage biomechanical orientation under load. This may mean loading differently (posterior to anterior), using a different modality, or (gasp) even using machines. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Second, if you can only move in one position under light loads you are most likely cultivating an extremely fragile system. If you cannot accommodate stress outside of a “neutral” pattern you’ll have an extremely hard time doing anything athletic and will probably continue to experience the same problematic symptoms to led you to training in the first place. You’re decreasing the very biomechanical variability that you’re claiming to seek. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Lastly, you’re also not doing your joints any favor. Research continuously shows that connective tissue requires high stimulus to adapt and build (@jaketuura puts out a ton of info on this). Continuous graded exposure will also allow for resilience within these joint structures. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ So, as they say “if nothing changes, nothing changes.” ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Training low loads with “perfect” position and orientation is most likely serving nothing outside of your ego.

A post shared by Kyle Dobbs (@compoundperformance_) on

Finally, we end this weekly recap with an Instagram post from Sohee Lee. We’ve all heard the nutrition “rules” of eat small meals throughout the day to help keep your metabolism going, don’t skip meals, don’t eat carbs past 6pm, etc. These “rules” are nutrition myths. The biggest thing when it comes to being successful with your nutrition is finding what works best for YOU. To some people that may be intermittent fasting where they don’t eat a meal until 12pm or later. While someone else may roll out of bed, eat breakfast right away and go on to have 2 or 3 more meals along with a few snacks in there too. Both of these people can be successful with their nutrition. What matters the most at the end of the day is adherence and calorie control. Find what works for you right now. And what works now may change over time. Be flexible and try different methods out to see how you can be the most successful with your nutrition.

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…and I do every single one of these things now ⁣😸💃 ⁣ Nowadays, I typically don’t eat my first meal until the afternoon, I prefer bigger, less frequent times throughout the day, rice or potatoes make a notable appearance almost every meal, dinner is sometimes at 10pm or later, and fries, donuts, and pizza are my jam. ⁣ ⁣ The beginning of my fitness journey didn’t quite look like this, however. In fact, I fell for just about every nutrition myth in the book. I was obsessed with “eating clean”, I ate 6 small meals a day, and I developed a fear of anything that was considered junk food. I genuinely believed I needed to do all of this for the sake of optimizing my health, but what I didn’t realize was that these were all unnecessary, and I was needlessly forcing myself to eat in a way that I didn’t enjoy. ⁣ ⁣ In large part because of these mistakes, I am super gungho about making sure that people actually like the way they eat - while also consuming mostly nutrient-dense foods and eating in a way that aligns with their goals. There are many, many different correct ways to go about this, as it turns out. ⁣ ⁣ My current personal preferences may change over time. I may become a breakfast fiend again, and perhaps I will one day lose my love for all things potatoes (though highly, highly unlikely). You may find your own tastes evolving from year to year as well. This is ALL fine. ⁣ ⁣ #eatliftthrive

A post shared by Sohee Lee (@soheefit) on

Paul Milano