The Power of Supplementation, performance edition

In my previous post, I discussed how supplementation can help improve your diet & nutrition.  This post highlights more of how supplements can boost your performance.

Most athletes view supplements as a way to improve their performance.  In honesty, I thought that too when I first was driving into the field.  The first supplement that I had ever taken was a form of creatine monohydrate called Cell-tec (or Cel-tec, I don't remember exactly).  In any case, I was supplementing with it largely because my friends were and because it seems that what limited knowledge I had at the time was that it was supposed to get me ripped and huge.

Nevertheless, nothing is what it seems.  I can no longer take creatine without becoming violently ill.  It's a rare side effect associated with it's use.  The moment it hits my stomach I vomit, nearly every time.  Pretty terrible if you ask me.  So I go on, not taking it.

My friends & colleagues now can take it without any adverse effect.  Most of them take it so that they can lift more weight or to put on mass.  I envy them to some degree.  The primary effect of supplementing with creatine is an increase in performance, specifically lifting and sprint performance.  One of the major ways that this is accomplished is by increasing the water in the cells, of which is what binds to creatine at a molecular level.

I mentioned in my previous post BCAAs, or Branched Chain Amino Acids, these are amino acids that are primary metabolized in the muscles rather than going through a chain of events to get there.  My primary reason for use is to preserve as much muscle tissue as I can in a caloric deprived state.  I find that in hyper-dosing (a lot of BCAAs), that I don't experience the same degree of soreness as I would otherwise.

Regardless, some supplements are designed to boost performance.  The ones that I had talked about are some of the best out there.  In my next post, I want to discuss the superpower, Omega 3.  

I heart food

Food, it's what unites us.  It's what we all share and enjoy in company.  It's what keeps us alive.  And it's what we don't understand. 

Nutritionally, food is made up of a combination of protein (pro), fat, and carbohydrate (carb).  However we don't eat nutrition, we eat food.  Food is made up of all nutrients, from vitamins & minerals to macro-nutrients like pro, fat, & carbs. When we eat, we absorb all of these things to put to work in our bodies. 

Eating foods is pretty simple, and finding nutritious foods is also simple.  For example, I'm writing this on Sunday night and what we had for dinner is one of my favorites...grilled turkey breast (over charcoal), sweet potato, broccoli, and we tried these broccoli & cheese tots.  From all of this we get our pro (turkey), fats (butter if added, or from the tots), and carbs from sweet potato and broccoli.  Overall the meal, if you count out the tots, was around 300-500 cal if you account for portion size. 

I love eating like that.  It's healthy, it's tasty, and you don't make yourself feel guilty over any of it.  Plus my kids love it, which is challenging by itself.  They don't care about vitamins and minerals or macros, they care about how it tastes. 

Taste is more important than virtually anything else when it comes to nutrition.  Just because something is healthy, doesn't mean it tastes good.  Just because something tastes good doesn't mean it's healthy.  You need taste and satiety to enjoy the food, without it it's just food. 

Honestly, and the most important part I need to make note of, is that often you need to eat much more than you think you do.  Like what I ate for dinner, I was full pretty quick and only tapped into a small percentage of my total calorie estimation.  Often to fill the void, we supplement. 

Next week, my view on supplementation.  

Let them eat cake!

As I write this, I have my foot soaking in an Epsom salt bath due to a pretty immense bruise encompassing a few toes.  I actually just finished a piece of my son's birthday cake and it was wonderful.

I don't feel bad about eating the cake for a couple of reasons, and they are:
1. It was still in my calorie budget. 2. It was there in the house.
3. It tastes freaking amazing.

I honestly tend to do pretty well when I have one of these sweet treats in the after hours. What I do is I eat whatever it is, so in today's case..cake, and sometimes Oreo's. Then I go ahead and brush my teeth.  This allows for me a better chance to avoid any further temptation.

Sometimes I don't feel bad about it on an intense workout day. Sadly today was mostly just running drills, which ended up with me injured. Days like this it's best to eat less but better quality. I still ended up eating the cake.

My suggestion to you is that don't fight the temptation if it's something regular. Figure out what works best for you to not drown in this temptation. For me it's my teeth brushing and in today's case, an all important soak in an Epsom salt bath.

How to read the label?

For this video, I go into how to read the food label.  This is the first in a series that I'll be working on regarding nutrition and how to live better.  

How to see the fat melt off!

In this video, I go into Kendall's dietary schedule for you and some coaching.  This is much more advanced than the average person as she's already at a pretty low body fat percentage.  The video will give you an idea of how I go about dietary coaching.  Enjoy!

Preparation for success!

A continuation of how I approach nutritional coaching.  This time it is how do I figure out your calories and macro-nutrients (Carbs, Protein, Fats) and how do you organize a week long meal preparation for success.  

Nutritional Coaching part 1

An overview of the dietary recall, a key tool to help with nutritional coaching.  With this you have to be as honest as possible so that it can be determined how many calories you're actually taking in is.  

How do I learn about you?

A walk-through of how I go about learning about my potential clients for online personal training.  This is to show you how in depth I will look at you as my prospective client.

Please share with anyone who may be interested.....or just share in general!

Nutrition Challenge

As I talked about what I'm doing nutritionally last week, I thought to challenge you all to something that you can do relatively easy.  Unlike most nutrition plans, which force you to omit certain foods, I would like for you to time how long it takes for you to eat each meal, and write that time down.

This challenge is simple, for the first 3 days time each meal that you consume.  I use the stopwatch function on my phone, which sits there and allows for me to view it while I eat.  Next, write those times down on a post it or in a notebook, or share it in the comments section.

For any meal that you eat in under 15 minutes, these will be where you focus on first.  My suggestion would be to time for 10 minutes, and chew slowly, set the fork down between bites, and enjoy your food.  After 10 minutes, sit for 5 minutes.  This time can be spent engaged in conversation, messing around on your phone or whatever, just don't eat.  If you're still hungry, set the timer for another 10 minutes and continue with what you've done.  After, do not eat for 5 minutes and continue the cycle if you feel as if you need more food.

This process should allow for you to feel full.  Which in fact you are.  If you're anything like I am normally, I eat super fast.  To give you an idea of how fast, I can eat a foot-long sub in under 10 minutes if I want to.

This process isn't easy, but it does allow for much more wiggle room than conventional dieting goes.  It also is the way we as humans should be eating rather than the quick & ravenous way we normally eat.

Good luck!

Why exercise is only 20% of the equation and the time dedicated to it may be futile

As I've alluded to in previous posts, I tend to be on the slightly fluffier side of things.  To give you a full-fledged idea of how ineffective exercise can often be, I do 2 very intense kickboxing classes per week, 2 moderate intensity boxing classes, 4 low to moderate boxing classes, 4 lifting sessions training both the upper and lower body in its entirety, and I usually average 11,000 steps per day.  Those 11,000 steps are around an hour and a half of movement on top of everything else.  Therefore, if exercise was the solitary answer, I'd be super ripped by this point.

I've pointed out in my last post the quantity of exercise performed by the average person, which equates to about 3 hours per week.  Easily, I surpass that.  On the positive, I would consider myself much stronger than average, but also am still not necessarily the most lean person in the world.  Therefore, exercise isn't the only answer.

For novice exercisers, exercise may be up to 40% of the equation in terms of weight management.  That number dramatically reduces as your body adapts to the various forms of exercise.  However, for many people, they devote so much more time to exercise than in dietary preparation or just nutritional education in general.

Generally changing what you eat is hard.  Often healthy food consists of vegetables, which aren't the most popular things in the world.  However, the more veggies you eat, the leaner you tend to be.  This, combined with an increase in protein consumption, say around 1 gram per pound of body weight can significantly offset any fat mass that could be gained.

To maximize your exercise effectiveness, skip the cardio.  Hitting the weights can have a longer, more prolonged effect on managing your weights over traditional cardio.  This is not to say that if you like running or cycling or whatever to skip it, on the contrary, go ahead and keep it up.  However, overall the weights can have the larger impact on your metabolic rate and improve your health.

When you look at your health, think about how eating can have the more profound impact on your life.  Exercise is still important, only less so.

You know that will probably kill you?

Do you know what the leading cause of death in the world is?  It's life.  Life will ultimately kill you in the end. Our ultimate goal with "healthy eating" or "exercise" is to prolong the inevitable death that we will all face.

Not to be morbid, but it got your attention right?  At work the other day, I had a...well let's call it an encounter rather than a conversation, with someone who is probably more than knowledgeable about healthy foods and exercise.  He is another employee from our parent organization, however, we don't have the same "chain of command" and we don't have the same purpose, I'll leave it as that so I don't even accidentally let loose who or what he does.  

In any case, I was just finishing up a fairly intense workout when I went into the break room for something quick to eat prior to my going to the university for a class that I teach.  He walks in and sees that I'm pulling out food.  He came into microwave a sweet potato and I am at this point eating oatmeal for lunch. That day I packed the oatmeal, some peppers & carrots, a Greek yogurt, peanut butter, and some summer sausage that I've had since Christmas (just opened it though).  He gives me a little shit about the summer sausage having sodium nitrates, which is true, but honestly I didn't care.  

In truth, if I weren't active for the majority of my day I'd probably care about sodium nitrates.  They might kill me in the end, but they might not.  The reality is that I have probably a hundred other things ranging from accidents to genetics that will take me in the end and I really didn't care if there were sodium nitrates in my lunch.  He may have been benign and just telling me or somewhat of a douche and telling me.  Not sure, didn't feel like asking nor did I really take anything he said into great value.  

What I'm driving at here is that ultimately life will kill you, so enjoy it while you have it.  I maintain a healthy lifestyle overall, with 2-3 boxing classes per day of which I'm moving around and coaching and taking hits.  I lift 4-5 days per week, depending on which plan I'm working on.  I eat vegetables and generally lean proteins nearly every meal, though in truth I probably don't eat enough (yes, I said that; more on that concept later).  

My main concern is keeping my stress level low.  I feel like I do that, most of the time.  You can eat the cleanest diet on the planet but if you're stressed no amount of clean eating or exercise can fix that.  Anyway, I would like for you to think about the face that in the end, life will kill you, so you might as well live. 

Welcome, Who is Martin Hubner?

My name is Martin Hubner MS, CSCS, Pn1 and I'm a fitness specialist.  I have been active in the field, primarily as a personal fitness trainer, since 2010 and have had experience prior to that as part of my undergraduate internships and my military experience.

My fitness journey began in 2000 when I decided to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.  It began as a preparation for Parris Island and blossomed into an enjoyment of being fit.  While on active duty, my responsibility to myself and my Marines was to maintain a high level of physical fitness, which I did by running and performing strength training using machines.

In 2006, I got out of the Marine Corps and attended the University of North Carolina at Wilmington for a degree in Physical Education and Health, which I achieved in 2009.  While there, I continued my fitness experience and knowledge by increasing my free weight training and martial arts training.  After receiving my degree, I attended Appalachian State University for my Master of Science in Exercise Science, with a concentration of Strength and Conditioning.

I have been working in fitness actively since 2010, as I was hired out of my graduate internship at a local wellness facility.  Since then I've had the privilege of working with clientele with a variety of backgrounds.  I've also had plenty of opportunities to learn more about myself and my particular training style.

First and foremost, my main clientele suffer from various neurological/neuromuscular disorders such as Parkinson's and Stroke.  These people have touched my life in such a way that I want to give them 110% every time.  Most of the methods that I use are through strength training, boxing, and manual manipulation.  These individuals comprise of about 50% of my clientele.  The remainder is distributed amongst individuals with varying other needs, rarely do I receive a competitive athlete or figure athlete as a client, as that's not my specialty.

My second highest percentage of clientele are those who predominately need exercise programming only.  These individuals are the most highly motivated and for the most part they see me once a month or week to verify technique or to undergo the workouts where a partner is necessary for successful completion. They supplement these one on one sessions with online training so that they can maximize their potential.  Often they only need the program and to touch base on a regular basis to keep them on track.

The remaining cliente are usually the ones who require the appointment to hold them accountable for their actions.  These are the toughest overall because they are the most resistant to any outside options.  They also account for about 15% of my clientele.  So while not a majority, they do comprise of a significant amount.

I only wanted to break down my varying array of clientele to show you what my specialization is. I can work with a variety of others, but those listed above are what I do on a daily and weekly basis.  Included in many of their exercise programs are nutritional programs, which complement the exercise.

I'll be posting regularly in this blog sometimes providing fitness advice, sometimes nutritional advice, and others about my clients and the journeys each of them are on.

Thank you for taking the time to read.  I would appreciate "liking" and "sharing" each post so that others may be influenced to take a healthier life.