weight and gymnastics ive i

[Ryan Hutchins]

Sorry if this theme has already been addressed. I'm on my phone and can't skim all the topics.

My problem is with my ideal weight for gymnastics. I'm 5'11 190# and 29 years old. I've never been this heavy in my life and have recently had some downtime due to a stress fracture in my shin. Being 190 makes everything harder obviously in gymnastics. I'm working on several strength holds like iron cross and planche. And I can currently do BL FL Flag press HS and muscle up among other things. So I'm not weak by my estimation. So I'm not sure if I need to change my diet or up my conditioning or what.

I generally eat the following:

1 1/2 Oatmeal with spread and brown sugar.

Or 3 eggs scrambled with toast and sausage

A sandwich on whole wheat with ham. For lunch

Or baked chicken with frozen vegetables

Dinner

2 pork chops. Vegetable.

Baked chicken and vegetables

Cheeseburger on grill with fries.

I can give more specifics if necessary. But generally I eat about three times a day when I don't train. When I do coaches WOD I eat four times. And I generally eat those kinds of foods without much deviation. I have been fast food free for three months now.

My workout is coaches Rxd WOD with about 6 hours of additional gymnastic training thru the week. So my basic question is if I need to slim down what's the best way to tailor my workouts to accomplish this goal? And if my diet is bad then how should I change it to suit that goal? Or am I ok and should I just keep it up and not worry about weight?

[Nicholas Sortino]

If you did nothing but cut out the bread and brown sugar and maybe replace those calories with some more veggies or meat, I think you would be fare a lot better. There are a lot a threads on diet in here, I suggest giving the nutrition section some read throughs.

On a different note, are you able to hold a XR HS with elbows locked and rings turned out? If not, coach would advise against cross training due to the stress on your elbows.

[Ryan Hutchins]

If you did nothing but cut out the bread and brown sugar and maybe replace those calories with some more veggies or meat, I think you would be fare a lot better. There are a lot a threads on diet in here, I suggest giving the nutrition section some read throughs.

On a different note, are you able to hold a XR HS with elbows locked and rings turned out? If not, coach would advise against cross training due to the stress on your elbows.

Ok. I'll x out the bread and sugar and see how that goes. More meat and veggies are ok in my book.

As far as iron cross training goes. I can hold my ring HS fine. Fully open and rings out. I'm in phase three of steven lows iron cross guide . So now I work on it five days a week of theraband x pullouts. I graduated from a blue band to a red band. So I'm ok in that department. I do all my planche training on rings as well.

I feel so heavy at 190 so I really want to do everything I can to ensure I'm on the right path with my diet and exercise. Thx

[Nicholas Sortino]

Heh, I am at 180 right now and I wish I was about 20-30lbs heavier. Of course I would like that mass to be muscle, although I am sure I will gain a few pounds of fat in the process of getting there.

Grains in general are iffy. Even if not all of them are harmful in some way, they are nearly nutrient devoid for the amount of calories. They are pretty much an empty calorie food. Gluten grains are harmful to anyone, even if you are not celiac. So if you don't want to give up grains completely, definitely stay away from the gluten stuff. Soy and sugar are the other two big ones to avoid. And of course most vegetable oils (all PUFA ones)...

[Ryan Hutchins]

Looks like we're on similar paths just different directions. Last time I checked my body fat was around ten. I'm curious to see if that went up recently. Even on my phone I'm scouring the forum right now for info. I found out a lot about carbs and nutrition. So I'm gonna drop bread alltogether. I may give up the oatmeal... But it is good in the morning from what I understand. As far as soy goes I'm lactose intolerant and I drink silk. Are you saying this is bad?

Well I hope you reach your goals. I had the hardest time gaining weight when I was 20. But I was Super active and hated eating.

[Nicholas Sortino]

I wouldn't drink it. Goats milk may work, it still has lactose, but a lot of people are not intolerant to it, even though they are to cow's milk. Almond or coconut would also be better substitutes.

[Joshua Naterman]

Looks like we're on similar paths just different directions. Last time I checked my body fat was around ten. I'm curious to see if that went up recently. Even on my phone I'm scouring the forum right now for info. I found out a lot about carbs and nutrition. So I'm gonna drop bread alltogether. I may give up the oatmeal... But it is good in the morning from what I understand. As far as soy goes I'm lactose intolerant and I drink silk. Are you saying this is bad?

Well I hope you reach your goals. I had the hardest time gaining weight when I was 20. But I was Super active and hated eating.

I was going to ask what your BF was... you are reasonably lean, which means your body seems to want to be the size that it is. If you are going to focus on ring strength I wouldn't be surprised to see you get closer to 200 as time goes on, I mean I'm 215 right now since I've dropped all the fructose-containing items out of my diet with the exception of a fruit shake that I make in the mornings and after a workout. My fat (well, what little I have anyways!)is just melting off, it's weird but awesome. Outside of that I eat quite a lot of brown rice these days as it is very cheap and I am very poor, and it's not affecting me at all now that the fructose is out of the picture.

If you get real bread from a bakery you should be much better off, real bread only has 4-5 ingredients and none are fructose containing. The bread from the grocery store shelves is crap! Don't think of that as bread.

Even though I have dropped 8 lbs in the past two weeks, my muscles are getting bigger. I expect to be 225-235 when I am at my gymnastic peak, quite honestly, as I love the ring strength! I'm nowhere near where you are at, but I will be. Anyhow, if you want to figure out how your weight should go, take a picture of Van Gelder, Yao Ming, or Chen Yibing and scale them up to your size. I mean literally scale the photo in photoshop or something and compare the physiques. Chances are that they will be bigger than you are in the upper body, though you're a pretty big guy! That will tell you a lot about where you are going size-wise. I wouldn't worry about the numbers so much, they are different for everyone. Just worry about your health and your performance and you should end up right where you belong, whatever weight that may be. Sorry if that isn't very specific!

[Ryan Hutchins]

Thx for the reply Sliz(zardman)

So apparently i'm gonna be even bigger than i am now? Thats a lot to take in. I always wondered how my height was going to affect my gymnastics. I was just never a Big guy until now. i was always slim and strong. I guess it was bound to happen. Well no matter what weight my body wants to be i'm fine with it. What i do want is to be eating the foods that i need to be to keep up maximum training and performance. So from the advice and all the information that i read i have gleaned the following....

feel free to correct me

i need to virtually eliminate sugars and fructose from my diet

carbs should be ate in the morning and right after your workout but should otherwise be kept to a minimum

potatoes, pasta, bread, sugary stuff bad because your body will readily burn these items as fuel instead of fat already in the body

also a question...

what in the world do you drink then???

i'm changing back to rice dream now that i found out silk is not good for what i'm trying to do

most green tea has fructose in it, pop is gone, what about juice? i love juice but it is naturally sugary.

All in all thx. i didn't need specific. i needed general. and generally gaining weight as a gymnast is fine as long as it doesn't affect my other events.

[pogo69]

I am *so* far from being able to give advice on the "larger" man's path to lean strength, because I'm of rather slight build, can't comfortably eat more food than that which has kept me around the 65kg mark since I was 15 and have come to terms with the idea of just being as strong as I can within the confines of my current size. So I'm leaving the generalities alone!! :wink:

also a question...

what in the world do you drink then???

i'm changing back to rice dream now that i found out silk is not good for what i'm trying to do

most green tea has fructose in it, pop is gone, what about juice? i love juice but it is naturally sugary.

but... hehe... I *had* to comment on this. all I drink... and I mean the *only* liquids that I consume are water and straight black coffee. so many people seem to find this odd, including my own children. it's like they'll all die of thirst if there's nothing left to drink but what comes straight out of the tap if they'd just care to turn it on!!

you don't *need* anything but water; all your nutritional requirements can be met by eating food and it will be far better for you. there are caveats of course, when chasing optimal athletic performance; for instance, coffee for the pre-workout caffeine hit (I drink because I like it and no-one will ever change that) or protein shakes for the optimal delivery of nutrients pre/post workout etc.

[Joshua Naterman]

i need to virtually eliminate sugars and fructose from my diet

carbs should be ate in the morning and right after your workout but should otherwise be kept to a minimum

potatoes, pasta, bread, sugary stuff bad because your body will readily burn these items as fuel instead of fat already in the body

That is one way to go. The one thing that really does need to happen is the elimination of fructose outside of your very first meal and your PWO period. In both cases you wouldn't want to get up over 15-20g. It's ok then because your liver will use it to directly restore liver glycogen. Outside of that, you would be best off avoiding fructose if possible.

As for the the other carb control, you don't need to worry about that stuff being present in the diet so much as you need to make sure that a) it doesn't have sucrose, honey, or HFCS in it and b) you aren't taking in more calories than your body can process in the time it takes to digest them.

There is no good data on how well low carb diets work for higher level strength athletes, but it certainly has no ill effects on endurance athletes from what I have been able to find in research journals. The best thing for you to do here is to follow the basic rules of no trans fats, no hydrogenated fats, no fructose outside of the two periods I mentioned, and lots of whole foods.

We know from guys like Ido that you can be a very high performance athlete with the diet you described, I am certainly not detracting from that. I am simply stating that performance will be similarly high as long as you follow the basic rules. You may not be quite as lean, but I don't know. That all depends on how big you are... it's hard to be below 8-10% BF on a regular basis when you're my size, but that's still pretty darn lean.

also a question...

what in the world do you drink then???

i'm changing back to rice dream now that i found out silk is not good for what i'm trying to do

most green tea has fructose in it, pop is gone, what about juice? i love juice but it is naturally sugary.

All in all thx. i didn't need specific. i needed general. and generally gaining weight as a gymnast is fine as long as it doesn't affect my other events.

Juice is no good, that's like 15g of fructose per 8 oz. Same goes for most rice milks and other nondairy milks. Check the label, divide the sugar grams in half, and that's your approximate fructose per serving. That much in the morning is fine, but you will be better off with whole fruits by far. That's because juice is pasteurized, and the heat from that destroys most of the important nutritional value in the juice. Most of the phytochemicals, all of the enzymes, and many of the vitamins get destroyed or changed in such a way that they are no longer useful to the body. The only good juice is freshly made juice from real fruit that is consumed immediately.

Now, if it's sweetened with just dextrose, sucralose, or some sort of sugar alcohol you should be fine as long as you don't have so much at once that your body can't use all the energy. Be wary of maltitol, it affects the blood sugar levels just like table sugar does. It is not low GI.

[Felipe]

Using metric system you should weight, with less than 10% BF and full armor of muscles, about 1 kg per cm after the hundred es. 172cm @72kg.

This rule of thumb is not very precise, and applies for all athletes who havent problems regarding weightclass or weight/power ratio.

Gymnast are quite sensitive about that and can have some kilos less than this. Weightlifters can be more, or less if competing on other class.

This come after some vague read of sport bios and forum opinions .

[Razz]

I've noticed the same sorta deal Felipe, it's a good base to go from at least.

[Newguy]

Also to drink, Grass fed, Organic, Non Pasteurized, Whole Cow Milk (Not 2%) Not only does it taste amazing, its also really good for you

If your milk is anything less than this it pretty much becomes bad for you

[Razz]

Well sure milk has growth potential, but to say it is good for you is actually a point where I've changed my mind. It's highly insulinogenic so definately not something for anyone who wants to lean out.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

Milk is great, but a lot of people can't handle dairy at all. Just be on the lookout for any digestive problems if you drink a lot of it.

[Felipe]

Support to my height/weight cm/kg theories http://www.leangains.com/2010/12/maximu ... ntial.html

[Joshua Naterman]

That is darn close, for sure. I know that when I was a verified 7% I was 205 lbs or 93kg @ 189cm. Dropping to 5%, assuming no muscle loss (which there would be) would have dropped me to about 90kg, with Berkham's formula saying I should have an average of 88-89kg. Looks accurate to me.

Of course, as he said you're looking at 10-15 or so extra lbs when you're around 10-12% BF. I'm around 12% right now and I fluctuate between 214 and 218 ATM. Pretty darn accurate numbers once again. Of course, I am not eating enough to get bigger than that either hahaha! Still, I do think that is a very good ballpark method fro the drug free.

[AlexX]

I always thought the first step to a good diet was cutting everything drinking wise out except for water and occasionally plain tea or coffee. That usually yields a huge reduction in bf levels, especially if the person consumes a drink or two a day of alcohol. I guess a lot of people still drink juices. I have an occasional glass of orange juice when I eat breakfast out but that's only because portions are stupidly small in most places. Slizz how many calories do you consume on a daily bases?

[Joshua Naterman]

I have no idea, but not enough to maintain this weight. I don't know how I don't get smaller than I already have, I'm down to 214 from 222. I'm pretty poor ATM.