Hip and low back health w/ Gluteal function

The vast majority of people I see and assess on a daily basis are terribly deficient in hip mobility and function. Especially in the strength and recruitment of their glutes. The glutes are possibly the most important muscle in your body. Well I should say it's probably the most important muscle that is being left out of your training and movement throughout the day that can lead to a life where you can move more efficiently, stronger and feel much better. 

The gluteals

1. It is a single joint muscle, meaning it attaches to the bottom of the pelvis and to the femur (one joint) so it has huge benefits to keeping the lower back and hip region healthy if it is strong and able to function optimally. The hamstring on the other hand is a double joint muscle, meaning all but one head attaches from the hip all the way down to the bones of the lower leg. Problem because this can lead to hamstring dominance if the glutes are not functioning the way they should, and leave the lower back up for problems due to the glutes not kicking in when they need to. The glutes function in hip extension is pivotal for performance as well as lower back and hamstring health.  
2. The glutes are also a very thick muscle so they are incredibly strong. They should be the biggest, strongest, fastest muscle in the body. This has huge implications on speed and strength development. They are also the direct center of the body, furthering their importance in connecting each part of the chain. If the glutes are lacking not only are you setting yourself up for injury but you're also drastically reducing your abilities because you will not be nearly as strong or as fast as you could be.       
3. Almost every person I see has some sort of pelvic tilt issue, and usually their hips are sitting in Anterior tilt. So the anterior portion of the hip (hip flexors) are too tight and the glutes are inhibited from functioning and therefore very weak, and this also usually leads to gluteal atrophy. So when the glutes should be extending the hip they are actually many times unable to fire (contract) and that's when big problems start. The body compensates and your low back and hamstrings take the load, and if you're lucky enough to not blow out your back you're severely at risk of hamstring issues and other problems.  Most of the time anterior pelvic tilt is due to something like this.
4. The glutes also have many functions that we don't really take into account. For instance the anterior side of the glute medius has a different function than the posterior. This has many implications as the glute complex is actually three different muslces: minimus, maximus, and medius, all with different functions in different planes on differing sides. There is a ton of stability going on through the glute, for proof stand on a balance pad for one minute on one one foot. The glute should also be able to produce tons of force and movement when recruited (even though many are unable to recruit them). To keep this blog from going on for days lets just say the glutes are extremely important

Alright how are we fixing this? Well....I'm actually going to be a jerk and get into that next time, but it'll include some Muscular Activation Techniques and some Mobility stuff then. And I'll leave you with this. Now you'll be sure to understand why the glutes are so important. 

Obviously this girl has not experienced gluteal atrophy. 

Some Kettlebell Basics

Today I'm throwing out some kettlebell basics. This is a video of yours truly performing some very basic Kettlebell exercises. Kettlebells are great for the training affect you can get from them and versatility of how you can use them. 

First is the High Pull, then Cleans, and last is called a snatch. 

Notice the way the kettlebell travels back between the legs eccentrically (muscle lengthening) loading the hips and how you'd need to produce force in the opposite direction concentrically (muscle shortening) to overcome this. Perfect for corrective exercise and speed and strength development. Especially of the musculature through the core, which should include the hips, and the development of the posterior chain (low back, glutes, hamstrings).

I've written about the benefits of training the hips and the rest of the posterior chain before. But as far as tools to use this may be the most beneficial when it comes to hip and back health and posterior chain development. When I see an athlete performing a swing I see a ton of glute function, I see him/her building stability of the entire back but especially through the low back, I see the feet having to grip the ground, I see grip strength building through the hands as well, and I see a strong development of movement that they will actually use everyday as well as in competition.  

I usually explain it in terms of jumping. When you watch the profile of an athlete jumping, especially during broad jumps, their arm action and hip action is incredibly similar to the swing. Coincidence? Not even close. 

This type of movement is unlike the affect you can experience with a barbell or even a dumbbell. The offset center of gravity being lower than your hand allows you to perform exercises differently than these other devices. Not that barbells are dumbbells don't have their place. They most certainly do, and they are used in almost every program I write, but so are the good old KB's and anything else that will be effective and useful. 

I'll get some more information on how to make these tools more versatile in the future and how you can incorporate them to get more specific to your goals. Until then thanks for reading. 

Compliments, kettlebells, and farm machinery???

I really wondered how the day would start today. I had a absolutely awesome weekend, monday was not a typical monday at all it was grrreat but last night was interesting. I actually somehow ended up back on the farm where I grew up helping my dad practically rebuild a planter. Which means laying in dirt, rolling around positioning yourself while holding odd shaped and awkward heavy pieces of machinery while trying to somehow get a free hand to use. By the time I was done my back was happy to be finished. I'm lucky I am in my deload week.

This is actually the exact same planter.

So, I wondered how things would go in the morning. Well I woke up, back felt great. Which is awesome considering I grew up feeling like my back could pretty much go at anytime. So that was a good realization. Learning functional anatomy, Abdominal bracing, Muscular Activation Techniques and kettlebells have really changed my life.


Then I get to work and a new member decides to retake my kettlebell class. GREAT! That really got me going. She had taken one class before and this class is not for everyone. It's hard, and you get sore and all that. So I usually worry that I'll never see people a second time. Then at the end of class she happens to give me possibly the greatest compliment I think I've ever received. I had told her that I worried she'd never come back, and she replied,"No way, it's the best workout I've ever had." That was awesome to say the least.

So there you go, throw out the planter and it's been 5 phenomenal days right in a row. I love it!

Where did the METTLE go?

Met⋅tle 

–noun

1.	courage and fortitude: a man of mettle.

2.	disposition or temperament: a man of fine mettle.

—Idiom

3.	on one's mettle, in the position of being incited to do one's best The loss of the first round put him on his mettle to win the match.

Synonyms: valor, pluck, vigor, ardor, nerve, fiber.

Aside from being one of my favorite words, it is also strong and having this can allow you to make massive changes in your life. But it has become lost in many lives. I see it all too often. The unwillingness to put in the time, the work, the effort. We are in the times of 'ready for you...". Ready for you meals, Home makeovers in under an hour, and all sorts of stuff similar. Success does not happen this way.

As a coach, I wouldn't have my quarterbacks practicing hail marry passes everyday or every week for that matter cause he might not ever get to throw one in his whole career. I will have them practicing the fundamentals everyday. Working handoffs, short outs and drags, things that he's going to have to perform every game. Doug Fluttie may be remembered forever for a hail mary but the rest of us are going to get it done one exercise, one lift, one practice, one play at a time. That is how it's done, and you're going no where without some mettle.

Whether you're losing fat, building strength, getting ripped, or having the life you dreamed of it's gonna take work and grunt work. That means mettle.

With all the promises you see all over the media it's no wonder we're in the mess that we are. Everyone wants the 30 days to lose 200lbs. Well what if that diet also makes sure that in the next 30 days you'll put it all back on again. Or, the vertimax, nautilus, hammer strength machines that are supposed to make you a better than ever athlete. I'll tell you the truth; most of this stuff isn't worth a penny. Those salesmen would have to pay me alot and I mean a shitload of money to use their stuff, and even then I'd sneak off to get an actual workout in.

Nothing is going to take a short time. Losing 200 lbs is going to probably take close to 2 years, and it's one workout, one meal, one pain stacking pound at a time. But once you get there you've created a lifestyle that you can continue to maintain and it'll lead to a much happier life.

It takes years to develop as an athlete. Tons of lifts, and running, practices and competitions, and many of them on days when you'd rather not do anything at all or when your body is just not doing as you'd like.

Wrestling may be the best example I can think of. There is no shortcut to victory, or success. Everything is earned. There is one wrestle off, then one match at a time, and one meet at a time. Emotionally and physically this is the hardest sport on the planet. (moral of this part. Don't mess with a wrestler, no matter what size they are.)

All those 6 am lifts and practices are going to prepare you for much more than your sports. They're preparing you for life. If there's one thing I can get across to an athlete it is to give him/her the greatest challenge there is....To do the absolute best that they can possibly do each and every time.

It's gonna be hard, it's supposed to be hard.

Get your mettle. Build it, make it as strong as your body. Because without that everything else will not matter. A strong body with a weak mind will crumble every time.

Test your METTLE!!!

References:

http://dictionary.reference.com/audio.html/lunaWAV/M03/M0376100" target="_blank"><img src="http://cache.lexico.com/g/d/speaker.gif

The Biggest Loser!

I wanted to post on this today due to all the craze and questions I've been receiving. But I happened to check in on a guy's blog that I very deeply respect for his knowledge and passion that he brings to training and fitness. His first post was on the biggest loser, and I don't think I could agree more but I also don't think I could say it any better. So here it is, straight from "the man" Mike Boyle himself. 

"Just got a Facebook note from a friend about the latest episode of The Biggest Loser.

“I didn’t catch all of it last night (mainly because it hurts to watch the show), but a 210lb woman had to leave the biggest loser because she had a stress fracture in her hip. Maybe from running every single day?”

I am going to do something I don’t like. I am going to criticize a show I didn’t see. I hate The Biggest Loser. I watched it once. It made me ashamed and embarrassed to be in this field. What surprises me more is that there have not been more serious injuries in the show. The way they train the people on the show is an embarrassment to all of us who claim to know anything about working with overweight clients. I’ve been lucky enough to have helped my friend Hank Morse lose 115 lbs in less than one year but, we did it with no injuries and no abusive exercise.

I have said it before and I will say it again. If we abused any group besides overweight people, on television, for entertainment the way we abused these people on The Biggest Loser, there would be a huge public outcry. I guess we are doing something to combat obesity but boy do I wish we could do it better."

Just to let anyone that doesn't already know who Mike Boyle is. He is a world renowned strength and conditioning coach. He's produced tons of great information with dvd's, books, articles, and he trains all kinds of people, professional athletes to the general public. In fact, he's probably forgotten more about the body than I have learned, and I consider myself to be in the top 99% when it comes to trainers and strength coaches. So, when he talks I listen. 

Stay tuned. I'm sure to continue to shake your dogma some more in the future.  

Quality vs. Quantity: for fat loss

Sometime things just get to me a bit. Today I was reviewing an article on nutritional basics and the idea of the article was to stop trying to complicate things. This was written by a ridiculously smart guy and he did a great job, but one thing got me.

Just like the article states, in order to lose weight you need a negative energy balance. Too true, without doubt.  

More calories burnt/used than calories eaten. Pretty simple. 

After that he layed out some strategies to create a negative energy balance. 

• The first one eat less. Okay.
• The second one: exercise more. True. 
• Third: do both. Well, Tell me something I don't know. 

All of these are fine, and living an active lifestyle with ample exercise (some types obviously better than others) are great. Also, burning extra calories through the day and during exercise are going to help you lose fat.

Where I disagree is later when he layed out a plan for fat loss. Here if his clients are simply maintaining, not losing weight or gaining weight, then he'll advise them to increase their exercise time from 5 hours a week to 7 hours a week. 

This is where I go the other way. I can completely and whole heartedly agree with increasing the number of hours you spend being active in your daily lifestyle. By this I mean recreational type activities, playing with kids, going on a nice enjoyable walk or bike ride, just getting off your butt and having old fashion fun. As far as actually increasing the time that you are exercising whether it be at the gym or wherever I do not agree with that. 

So what should you do. 

1. Get a more active lifestyle: Rock climbing, biking, rowing, boxing, exploring nature, underwater basket weaving, who cares. But this is going to help you a ton, even if it seems small. 
2. Time exercising should not be looked at in terms of quantity (as it is here using hours). It should be looked at in terms of QUALITY. What are you doing while you workout and in what ways? What exercises are you doing, what intensity, volumes, rest times, and things of that nature. 

This is something that can make or break your success. 

Let's make a made up person. She is 5'6", has been sitting on the couch for six years and ballooned up to 300 from a healthy weight of 140. She's having all kinds of joint pain from lugging around all the extra weight so she begins to try and lose some fat. 

She starts eating better and begins walking one hour every day. That's 7 hours a week. In the first 3 months she drops 24 pounds (completely doable). She sees success so continues the same thing. In the next 3 months she only drops 16 pounds, and then she plateau's. 

Why? because her initial success was just the fact that she started doing something. It could've been anything and worked. But as she continued to get into better shape her body not only became more efficient so she was just plain and simple better at walking, but it also only had the one stimulus. On top of that, the type of training that she was doing would only work for someone in that situation. Hardly anyone is going to see good results doing this type of cardiovascular type exercise, but that is not the point of this blog. 

The point is, increasing the amount of hours that she walks is not going to lead to more fat loss and what's she suppose to start doing, get to the point where she's walking 3 hours a night? NO, it doesn't work that way and who has that much time. 

This is where QUALITY comes in. The quality of the workout and not the quantity. You want to lose alot of fat fast, you need to be burning tons of calories in short amounts of time in a very specific way in terms of the energy systems you want to be utilizing. 

In other words exercising smart for a short time is going to do much more for you than exercising for a ton of time.  

Different kinds of training

So you've finally figured out that treadmills are killing your feet, knees and Nervous System.

Body Pump has lead you down a road too often taken straight to the hospital for surgery and/or rehab.
Yoga and Pilates felt good (and is great 3/4's of the time) until you helped a friend move and received a herniated disk for it.
And I know you are way smarter than to be using pre determined range of motion machines that have inadvertently led to more injuries than Bill Romanowski can list off the top of his head (by the way that is a lot).



In light of this, I'd like to show you an innovator. Will Jones just produced his first workout video. Please enjoy.



Aside from the outfit, the awkward and unsubtle adjustment, and the music I think this kid may go far.



In reality the truth is that treadmills do cause problems, large group lifting classes (like body pump) with less than knowledgeable trainers are not going to be able to provide workouts that are safe or healthy, yoga and pilates are great about 3/4's of the time other than that you should love your spine more, and a sad truth but machines can be the worst place to invest your efforts.


It's really too bad, but it's true. And the best solution? Leave the implementation, the exercise prescription, the programming, and the training to an expert. To someone that understands functional anatomy as well as functional movement, and is able to implement that into workouts.


This starts with assessments, goes in with programming, and all the way through with the actual attention to detail during training.


Remember that 'how' is always more important than 'what'.

You think you know big? Lifting Approach

So I've hit on nutrition to a point. Now I'm gonna attempt to get you lifting and working to truelly make some big gains. As we've gone over, if you don't eat you will not get strong, faster, or larger. Same goes for lifting. Don't expect to have soft workouts and get anywhere. You know what lifting hard means? I'd say approximately 80-90% of people lift like complete panzies.

When I say lift I mean get after it in the weight room. You know when you're working and when you are not. Get some guts and GO HARD. You cannot use a few stupid machines, get a slight sweat going and then talk to your friends for 5 or 10 minutes come back and do more. 

1. Machines are not going to help you in any way: health, performance, strength, growth, etc... 
2. This type of training requires no work ethic.
3. Training like this does not create enough stimulus to make any changes. 

When I say lift I am also not even a little bit refering to mirror curls. As if staring at yourself in the mirror is going to help that bicep get larger. Lifting is also not using any machines, especially leg curls and leg extensions. It is definitely not a sweatless, slow paced, no grunt or grit excursion through some iron. Wimps lift like that. 

You don't want to be a wimp. You want and need to be that great big, amazing, dominating athlete, not some punk that's not willing to put in the sweat, blood, and tears that it takes to be great. That's part of the reason you're reading this right now. Right now, you're doing your part to make yourself smarter and that is called putting in the effort, and that will take you places. 

Wanna get big? 

• You gotta bust your butt 
• You gotta get off of stupid machines (which means almost all of them)
• You've gotta live it. Everytime has to be the best you can possibly do, the most that you can put in. (and by no means am I saying you should load the bar as heavy as possible each time, that is a very very different deal. Think 'HOW' not 'WHAT'.)

I actually used to write the word EVERYTIME on paper and pictures that would set me off to remind myself of where I've been and where I want to go. It was very affective. One picture was of me after the first time I had dislocated and tore up my shoulder real bad. It was my freshman year wrestling picture and I was tall and skinny and looked weak and useless, and the worst part was that I obviously had no fire or confidence to me. It was like looking at all the wanna be athletes that disgusted me. This drove me to make huge changes. After my shoulder was healthy, I was cleared to lift in June. I gained 40 lbs by the end of august and kept a consistent body fat percentage. When I came back to school some people were afraid to talk to me cause they didn't know who I was. Plus I looked scary as hell, cause I was on a mission. My freshman year of football I had figured out how to hit. My sophomore year people actually went down. It was a good feeling. 

You want to be a freak? You wanna be the best? You wanna get fast, strong, and huge? These are the money lifts that are going to take you there. 

1. Squat: It's number one for a reason. Yeah Yeah, everybodies doing them right? WRONG! Start squatting (and do it right: butt back, knees out) and you'll see big changes. Power, Box, single leg, split, cambered bar, whatever your variations are, get them in. 
2. Deadlift: You want massive weight put on while keeping your body healthy and anhilating your competition then it's time to get in some deads. 
3. Pullup: Speed, size, strength comes from the upper body as well and this is where you make big gains in each of those categories. Especially when you start adding weight. 
4. Cleans: For some reason I feel I need to justify doing each of these exercises, but really if you can't figure this one out you need help. the posterior chain is going to take you a long way and this lift is working it in a strong explosive manner. Figure out how to do this correctly and it'll take you far.   
5. Heavy pushups: I very rarely see a correct pushup but sometime kids are actually strong enough right away for these. Start them and they will soon be your best friend and wreak havoc in competition. 
6. Horizontal pulls: you want to keep your body healthy and strong then you need to pull like crazy, especially horizontally. Build your back and you'll notice yourself doing every other lift faster and stronger. 

And you gotta take it with a vengeance. There's a reason some guys get big, there's a reason some are good and some are great. Same thing here. If you're not wiling to put in, then you're not going to be the guy you thought you wanted to be. 

No one is gonna give you anything in this life. You want something you gotta take it. The best you have, EVERYTIME. Believe me you'll come out on top if you have the heart to actually do this. 

You think you know big? Amounts

Alright, yesterday I went into an aggressive way to gain muscle for high school age male athletes. Now, the principles still hold true, but I left out some important info. Mostly how much of everything. So here you go.

Protein:

As with anything else it always depends. But most people should be getting between .08-1.2g of protein per lb of body mass. This is a very general scale and should be taken that way. Most athletes that hit this are going to be getting just enough. If you want to grow hard and fast eat more than 1.2g/lb of body mass. Some people get upwards to 3g/lb of body mass. Divide that up among your meals and you'll be fine.

Example: Lets say you weigh 170lb and you want to eat 240g of protein per day. You're eating 6 meals a day, that means you need 40g of protein/meal. By the way 1lb of chicken has around 18g of protein.

Carbohydrates: For the high school age this is more of a type and timing issue than an amount.

• Before and after a workout you want quick carbs to use during your workout and to replenish your stores that you just burnt, and also to begin the recovery process. This should be 1-1.5 hours before and up to 2 hours after, and include carb sources like rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, and liquids.
  
• The rest of the day your carbs should be coming in the form of low glycemic, highly nutritious foods. These would include most fruits and all vegetables, oats, quinoa, amoran, stuff like that. The rest of the day should not have any breads, pastas, rice, or other sugary type foods.
  
• By the way the glycemic index and the glycemic load of whole wheat breads and pastas are almost the same and the same goes for brown rice and white rice, so substituting these doesn't work like you might think it will.

Fruits and Vegetables: How much??

• Tons!! Load them on. Eat as many of these as you want and for those that choke them down you need to eat as many as you can.
• Fruit: 7-15 servings is good. Sound like a lot, well it is, and you need a lot cause you want to grow. Especially fleshy fruits like most 'berries'. Dark fruits are great, but you're not going to hurt yourself getting fruit (especially in high school). Avocados are a superfood as well and should be in everyones diet. You need so many of these because this needs to make up a large portion of your carbohydrate intake throughout the day.
  
• Vegetables: 5-12 servings is good. Just about all are good, especially green leafy ones. Broccoli is a superfood without doubt so you can't go wrong there, unless you are covering it with crap, like 10 layers of velvetta cheese. Asparagus is also good, and for more than just making you pee smell funny.
  

Fat: Source is key but you have to have it. Especially if you're trying to gain muscle.

This is a subject that has mislead dieters and many so call 'nutritionists' for a long time for some reason. You have to have fat in your diet (no matter who you are). Fat and Protein are actually the only two essential macronutrients, which means your body could not survive without them (by the way there are three macronutrients: protein, carbohydrate, fat). And yes I just said that your body can survive without carbs, but that is not the topic nor would you want to live that way.

Our bodies use the fat from our diets for tons of stuff other than burning it for energy. It is where we derive our hormones for one. Does that interest you? It should, since that can make the difference in you growing or not. We actually use cholesterol to make testosterone so it is important to get that in the diet as well.

But most importantly is if we are getting enough EFA's (Essential Fatty Acids) these are the good fats, and they cannot be produced by the body so we need to get them from our diets. The problem is hardly anyone gets close to even the minimum amount that we need and their health, goals, and life are suffering from it.

EFA's would be EPA, DHA, CLA, and ALA. EPA and DHA are typically associated with cold water fish and fish oil capsules. CLA is actually associated with beef but is the concentration is much higher in grass fed beef than grain fed beef. ALA is actually a plant based fatty acid, but it has very potent antioxidant power, so much that taking too much can negatively affect your body.

You need these in your body, they will help decrease chronic inflamation, help with recovery, keep your brain and other organs operating great, improve your tissue qualities, and pretty much solve and prevent any disease you hear about regularly. They are quite incredible, but most people are not even close. You should be close to 1:1 on good fat to bad fat in your diet but I've heard reports of diets being 1:12 and other reports at 1:50-70. Now that's bad, really bad, but that's the common numbers in our population. Especially in the midwest where you're just not going to get a good quality, fresh, wild, cold water fish. 

So, how much fat do you need? If you are eating a ton of animal protein you are probably getting enough fat. But loading up on EFA's is going to improve everything you are doing even further. Sorry had to put the answer at the end so you'd dig through all that other crap first. It's good for you.

• Most people need at least 900mg of some type of DHA/EPA source everyday. This would solve tons of problems, especially in the long term.
  
• With athletics and sports we want to be as healthy as possible to live, train, and compete at our top level. This means getting all the nutrients you need during the day, of which FAT is included.
  
• Sources: Salmon, Tuna, Mackeral, Sardines, Cod, and also Flax seed

By the way, I eat tons of fat and get still take 1800 mg of DHA/EPA daily, along with some ALA in the form of capsules and flax seed. 

You think you know big?: Highschool

Alright, So I have a couple guys that I really care about but don't get to train or see on a regular basis simply because of distance. Both want and need to gain weight, both are still in high school, so both are still in a very heavy growth phase whether they are lifting hard or not. This changes the game a bit, but it doesn't need a new set of rules. If you know what I mean? Just to let you know, I'm not getting into lifting or supplements today, but I'll hit them soon.

1) Eat as often as possible. At least every 2-3 hours. NO MATTER WHAT. You gotta eat and eat often, and you should be eating about 6-8 meals throughout the day. By doing this correctly based on the other rules below will raise metabolism and the higher it is the more food you can eat, the muscle you can gain, the more fat you can burn. It will also increase endocrine system activity in a safe natural way. So you will see a rise in testosterone, HGH, and IGF-1, and an increase in insulin sensitivity. All these hormones are your anabolic types, the ones that make you grow muscle and lose fat.

2)Develop a drinking problem, Water that is. Drink yourself full all day long. For a high schooler trying to gain lean mass the old 1/2 your bodyweight in ounces of water per day is not enough. I say get up to 2/3 your bodyweight in ounces of water/day, and that is outside of meals and workouts . You're going to feel like you need to head #1 all the time at first, but after a couple weeks your body will adjust, your blood plasma levels will expand and you'll be able to retain more of that water, which is where you are trying to get. This does a ton of stuff, but you're mind will work more efficiently, your muscles will be much healthier, you will have dramatically decreased your risk of injury, and you'll start seeing muscle build up and fat dissipate.

Most need to get close to 1 gallon/day

3)Don't eat like a horse. Who does that? I'll tell you who, vegans do that. Ever met a muscular vegan? I'm guessing probably not. You wanna get big? Eat like a freakin LION that's how you're gonna get big. MEAT, pile it up. You need that protein, you need it with every one of your meals throughout the day. Especially complete protein, which means it has all 8 essential amino acids. Anything that comes from an animal is going to be a complete protein. And aside from putting on muscle this will also lead to an increased thermic effect. Your bodies temp will rise, which means an increase in metabolism, more fat loss during cuts, and less fat gain with high calorie diets like these two high schoolers need.


Lions are huge and eat alot of food.

4)Stay healthy too. You need vegetables and fruits. They are going to enhance everything: your workouts, competition, and all your other day to day stuff. You need more than 6 servings of each everyday. A serving can be as simple as a cup or what you can fit in the palm of your hand. Now, I may not be going on and on about this one, but it may be one of the most important. You will not grow near as quickly as you could've if you miss this step. Get your vegetables and get your fruits.

This link will send you to a great resource for making this stuff taste better

So you've got all these things down so far. Great, lets move on.

5) EAT, EAT, EAT!!!

I said to eat every 2-3 hours before but I didn't say how much. You gotta eat till you're almost sick. When I was in high school I gain 40lbs in one summer and I went from 145lbs at the beginning and end of my freshman year to weighing well over 215lbs at the end of my senior year, I maintained a low and healthy body fat percentage the whole time and only grew 2 inches taller. How? Well, looking back I could've gained more and done much better had I known then what I know now, but I did pretty well.

Try this out for a week. For 3 of your (at least 6) meals/day weigh in before and after the meal. If the scale does not go up 5lbs by the end of the meal go back and eat more. Sound ridiculous, well that is what it's gonna take. But you're not done yet, once you've downed 5 lbs of food, start drinking milk, put as much as you can down. That oughta do you well.

To some of you 5lbs may seem like alot to others it may not. For me, this is still a typical meal, and people wonder why I can put on 10lbs of muscle in a one or two months when they've been trying for months upon months for minimal gains. It's because I can put down about 12lbs of food at almost any given time, and I can do it multiple times during the day.

It is not going to be easy, but this is what it takes. I hear all the time about how athletes will do anything, well this is one of those things. It takes conditioning, just like training and lifting. When I'm in a growth phase my diet is just as hard as my lifts. Sometimes its a grind. Especially in the morning, which brings my to my next point.

6)The breakfast of champions is not a bowl of wheaties, but yes they are tasty.

This needs to be big, your biggest meal of the day. Breakfast means at least 4-6 eggs, a big bowl of oatmeal, add some healthiness with some ground flax seed and fruit, you can add bell peppers, onions, garlic and stuff like that to your eggs as well, and get at least one glass of milk. You need water in the morning as well, or you could get some decaf tea's if you like something warm but stay away from juices and sugar filled crap like that.

7)Lay off coffee and soft drinks

You are too young to be having coffee. Unless you want to stay the same size you are right now, then go ahead, but that would defeat the purpose of you even reading this. At this stage caffeine is not going to help you one bit, neither will tons of sugar and all the other crap that is in pop. Your body is going to have to work just to get rid of that stuff rather than be working on building your muscle like you told it to do when you were putting in that grueling workout.

8)Get your pre workout meal in.
The Preworkout meal is 6x more important than your post meal because it has 6x the affect. You cannot grow from a crap workout. Eat to fuel your workouts first and recover from them second. Treat your workouts like competition, which you should already know.

1-1.5 hours pre workout/competition you need:

• High glycemic foods like: White rice, pasta, bread
  
• Lean protein: Turkey, lean hamburger, ostrich, stuff like that

The high glycemic foods spike the sugar in your blood that you are going to need during a strenous workout, and the protein is going to kind of 'grease the load' when it comes to amino acids. You will be delivering many more amino acids to your muscles while you workout not just after, and it will help you perform. Protein during a workout actually improves mental acuity, and endurance (anaerobic endurance obviously), and enhances recovery.

9) Get bedtime and midnight snacks.

Eat before you go to bed every night. Lots of vegetables, lots of protein, and ONLY LOW glycemic carbohydrates (oats, quinoa, most fruits). You want your metabolism rolling all the time, especially when you sleep. Tons of stuff is going on then and you want you body to be using those nutrients to repair itself and let you get stronger and faster, and gain muscle.

Midnight snacks, some can get away with this, but don't be setting an alarm or anything to wake up in the middle of the night. Sleep is way to important for that. But do keep something to eat beside your bed in case you wake up. BCAA's and a protein drink are a frequent favorite of mine. It's quick, it's easy and I like the taste.

10)Sleep

You're in high school, you have tons and tons of time. Sleep is anything but overrated. At your age you need 9 hours a night and a nap in the middle of the day. When you sleep you recover. Not enough sleep is going to lead to a decrease in hormone production, especially HGH and Testosterone. It will also lead to increased stress, which means more cortisol and that means your body is going to be storing more fat and gaining less muscle. It will lead to crappy workouts and it'll make your school work harder (snowball affect). This may be the most important tip of all. So if you are reading this at midnight, stop and go to bed, it'll be here later.