Can you train strength + hypertrophy at the same time?

I think for a person of average genetics, if you want to gain or lose weight, more focus must be put on diet.

However, if you are just trying to stay at the same bodyweight with low body fat and get as strong as possible (which is what gymnasts want), diet does not play that big a role as long as you are eating enough to have energy to train and are not losing or gaining weight.

Of course if you want to max out your potential/reach your genetic limit, you will have to control both diet and training with great discipline over a period of 10+ years.

As to the original poster's question, I think it depends on how fast you gained the muscle. If you are already past puberty and you gained something like 10kg in 1 year, it is likely that the hypertrophy is mostly sacroplasmic and not myofibrillar and hence you wouldn't gain as much strength as you would if you did it over a period of 5 years.

When you first start off, of course you can gain strength + hypertrophy regardless of how old you are, but once you reach the intermediate stage that is where things get more complicated. Just as Joshua mentioned how there is a strength level you reach where you will have to get bigger if you want to get any noticeably stronger, there is also a strength ceiling where regardless of how heavy you get, you can't get any stronger. That's why not all the weightlifters in the 105+kg category are like 180kg.

Food for thought. o.O

Edit:

Sorry, I thought about what I typed regarding staying at the same weight. I think that this only applies if you are very close to your own 'base' bodyweight (which is a weight you would be if you only ate 3 normal meals a day and trained something like 1-2 times a week).

If for example, you worked your ass off to gain like 10-20kg 'functional' muscle over a period of 5 years to reach an 'optimum' bw for the sport you are competing, the above about how diet does not matter as much will cease to apply. For example, the optimum weight for weightlifters (to maximise the weight they can lift in the snatch and clean+jerk) who are 175cm tall is something like 94kg, diet becomes very important if you want to retain your strength and hypertrophy, especially if you aren't naturally that big to begin with.

Coach Sommer said:

4) Drink more water.

5) Sweat is the number one supplement, followed closely by Time.

It's nice to see you posting in the forum discussions, Coach.

Number 5 is particularly easy to accomplish if you live down here in South Mississippi! My 100% cotton t-shirt is wet by the time I am done with my warm up and FSP and it's dripping by the time I am done with the workout (2-4 hours). I actually drink about 150 fluid oz of water and tea/sports drink during my workouts and I'm sweating so much I don't need bathroom breaks. LOL!

As they say around here, "Drink water... or DIE."

Edit/

Perhaps Joshua is underestimating the importance of exercise on body composition, but I agree with Coach Sommer that if near perfect exercise can overcome generally poor nutrition then the results of near perfect nutrition and near perfect training ought to be incredible. I think either extremes are incorrect though. Nutrition being supreme over training or training being supreme over nutrition. I also think that in certain situations, nutrition can be more effective and important than exercise, but not necessarily for the average athlete...

I feel your pain, I was in North Carolina for a number of years. Coming back from a run it would be as though I had just gotten out of the shower. In fact sometimes after the actual shower, I wondered why I had even bothered to attempt to dry off.

However while 'sweat' can certainly be taken literally; I was using the term to illustrate that hard work is absolutely the most important supplement in regards to GST success.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

Joshua Naterman said:

Quality of food and nutrient timing affects how your body recomposes much, much more than exercise.

Joshua Naterman said:

Exercise alone does not significantly affect body composition.

Nonsense. How do you explain all of the gymnasts in the world?

The fact of the matter is that the world is full of people who look and perform like crap, despite focusing heavily on their diet. The reason? Insufficient exercise to stimulate the body to take advantage of all that wonderful nutrition. Exercise is of supreme importance to the body with 'sweat' being the number one bodybuilding supplement followed closely by 'time' in second place.

Over the years, ALL of my gymnasts have had the poor nutritional habits of the standard American diet and were hardly shining beacons of nutritional wizardry and yet they still outshine the vast majority of bodybuilders in terms of both physique and athletic performance.

In fact some of the great Russian gymnasts built their physiques and won Olympic Gold medals on diets heavy in cabbage soup! And the Chinese diet is hardly a bodybuilders dream; and yet many Chinese gymnasts carry significant amounts of muscle. Anyone remember Mingyong and Chen Yibing?

Now this is not an assertion that diet is completely unimportant and that you are free to run out of your house and begin binging on garbage. Josh is correct that diet is very important; not only in terms of athletic performance but in terms of overall health. He just overspoke when he stated that diet was more important than exercise itself. The existance of the gymnast physique and athletic capabilities do not support this contention.

Here is however something to give you pause; what would be the results if a gymnast took the time to actually adhere to a nutritonal protocol of the type that Josh favors? Just the thought of the amazing physique that would be the result is a little overwhelming isn't it?

Joshua Naterman said:

You can walk into any gym in America and watch people work their butts off consistently and still look like crap.

This is simply a function of their using ineffective exercise protocols; coupled with improper cycling of intensity and volume.

The late great Jack Lalanne (who was himself a former gymnast 8) ) said it best, "Exercise is King and nutrition is Queen. Together they build a kingdom."

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

+1 Exercise is always the most important of the two in my opinion. Great quote from Jack Lalanne there.

But I don't know what you mean by saying that gymnasts from your gym outshine bodybuilders in terms of physique? Bodybuilders have the best combination of the most muscle, symmetry and the lowest fat% of all the athletes. If it's your personal opinion that a gymnasts physique is better looking than a bodybuilders it's like a long distance runner to say that he thinks long distance runners outshine gymnasta in terms of physique. It's just an opinion.

I am of course speaking in terms of a functional physique. In this regard, the gymnastics physique has no equal.

As to it being a matter of opinion; of course. Is not all of life simply a matter of discovering and refining our own personal opinions and preferences? And then arranging our lives to reflect these preferences so that we live out our days with a relative sense of personal satisfaction and fulfillment?

The only difference in regards to the validity my opinion is that thousands of people around the world, as well as my own elite athletes, demonstrate its efficacy every day. 8)

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

I am of course speaking in terms of a functional physique. In this regard, the gymnastics physique has no equal.

As to it being a matter of opinion; of course. Is not all of life simply a matter of discovering and refining our own personal opinions and preferences? And then arranging our lives to reflect these preferences so that we live out our days with a relative sense of personal satisfaction and fulfillment?

The only difference in regards to the validity my opinion is that thousands of people around the world, as well as my own elite athletes, demonstrate its efficacy every day. 8)

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Aha okay now I understand what you mean =)

Functional can mean so many things. For exampel if you wan't to be a good boxer and to get the most functional physique for boxing, boxing that is the most functional you can do. I you wanna be a good bench presser the bench press is the most function thing you can do and so on.

But gymnastics is a great blend of coordination, strength, explosiveness, flexibility and so on.I think it's a good complement for many sports =)

Rik de Kort said:

Joshua Naterman said:

1) Nutrition regulates body composition

2) GOOD nutrition means eating the right stuff at the right time in the right amounts. The right amount depends on your activity level during that part of the day.

3) Exercise combined with good nutrition causes much more rapid body recomposition

4) Even on its own, exercise helps protect your health.

We'll go with that then. So much for my foray into nutrition territory; not my strong suit. I'll update my post.

Don't worry about it! The awesome thing about this board is that each of us has different strong suits, and it won't take you much time before you know everything I do because I will have put it all out there. You may very well end up knowing more than me, or have an important insight into all of this that I do not. That's kind of how the advancement of our training knowledge goes, and is my favorite thing about this board.

Everyone is different... every time I got a response like this in the past where I said something that either didn't make sense or was just wrong I spent a bunch of time reading up on the subject and asking questions to my professors, and ended up learning an enormous amount in a short time. I happen to be very good at integrating knowledge bases and seeing connections between different systems and being able to update overall physical performance practices by understanding the interplay between the new knowledge and how it forces me to re-visit the other stuff I "knew." That has led me to where I am today.

If nothing else, don't take it personally! You are a great addition to the GB crew! Taking those updated axioms and applying them to your training will most likely improve what are already good results, and that is always exciting! Those personal experiences will mean much more than any words and will enable you to help others even more than you might have been able to yesterday!

I am learning new things all the time myself, very exciting and humbling!

I think my question fits somewhere in this topic, so I decided not to open a new one for it.

There is a lot of information on how to train for hypertrophy/strength... Is it even worth worrying about them? As far as I understand the body has a limit on the maximal amount of muscle it can build in a month.

Would doing them all be redundant if I train correctly and have a decent routine (for example the WODs). For example:

I have read it in a lot of places and it has also been mentioned in this topic that the strength and hypertrophy depends on the number of the repetitions.

Also I have read on some forums that there is a similar correlation to the resting time between exercises and hypertrophy/strength. (60 secs rest is better for hyp. and 3-5 mins is for str. according to some sites).

According to Pavel's book a great way to train for size ("the bear") is to pick 2 exercises do 5 reps with the max weight, 5 min rest, 5 reps with 10% less, 5 min rest then another ~10 sets (as long as you can keep good form) of 5s with 10% less weight, with ~1 min rest.

I've gained a lot more muscle from doing 5x5 dips/pull ups on rings though (and I was just monkeying around on them for the first few sessions as it is really fun and novel ). It got me thinking if I did the above mentioned routine on rings, would it mean better results or would it just be redundant?

Stop a minute..shake you're brain out....is your current plan working? Producing good balanced results and no injuries or burn out?....Do not fix what is not broken now. There will be a time to change the program up as you advance. This will vary depending on goals/needs and your response to training.

Smec said:

According to Pavel's book a great way to train for size ("the bear") is to pick 2 exercises do 5 reps with the max weight, 5 min rest, 5 reps with 10% less, 5 min rest then another ~10 sets (as long as you can keep good form) of 5s with 10% less weight, with ~1 min rest.

That's not what he said.

He said:

"1) reduce the reps to 4-6 per set to allow for heavy weights;

2) perform many, 10-20 on average, sets;

3) terminate all the sets a couple of reps before failure to avoid premature

fatigue which would force the reduction in weights or/and sets.

ŠA little comrade who wants to become the Big Brother should not stop there. Reduce the weight to 80% of the first "money" set, and keep doing sets of five reps with short, 30-90sec, rest periods. When you have had enough, that is you cannot lift 80x5 in good form, call it a day. It might take five or twenty five sets, everyone is different. Just do not call it quits too soon."

As an aside, how would you be able to adjust the intensity with a bodyweight exercise like with weights here? I know that obviously any bodyweight exercise you do with weight on, like weighted pullups, is easy to adjust just like weights.

But with un-weighted HeSPU's for example? How do you get %'s of your 1RM if you don't use weights?

It becomes 80% effort and the ability to scale the movement to that standard. Another note with the "Bear" program is the need for adequate rest and copious amounts of food.

Taking it down to bare essentials. First set is approx. 90% then drop to 80% intensity for 4-6reps and continue until you cap out at 80% of your work capacity for that day for that movement.

Coach Sommer said:

In fact some of the great Russian gymnasts built their physiques and won Olympic Gold medals on diets heavy in cabbage soup! And the Chinese diet is hardly a bodybuilders dream; and yet many Chinese gymnasts carry significant amounts of muscle. Anyone remember Mingyong and Chen Yibing?

I find this and some of your other quotes from the past couple pages very interesting. I've been thinking for a while that the amount of recommended daily protein intake is out of whack (even by standard nutritional guidelines... not just bodybuilding stuff). I read a really good article on this which I should have bookmarked, but didn't and I can't find it now.

Anyway the article recommended I think 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight per day. I know some people probably think this is insane, but based on my own nutritional habits it can't be far off. If 1g of protein were needed per lb of body weight (or whatever is recommended), I would have wasted away to nothing by now.

Over the past few months I've stopped worrying about protein intake and haven't been feeding myself whenever I get hungry (like I used to in fear of losing muscle), and I haven't even really been worrying about consuming much post workout. My strength doesn't seem to have been affected at all.

Anyway Coach, I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on the whole protein thing. I'm not sure if you're saying that these people's diets were based mainly on cabbage, or if they just at a lot of cabbage in addition to other stuff. If it's the former that is very interesting.

I think professional nutrition is for professional athletes. Everyday people think that with proper nutrition they will be a beast overnight without too much training.

I've always been doing sports (canoeing, later bball) since i was 7. When I was 19, my ankle hurt and i was getting off the team. Like most guys in such situation I began bodybuilding. I trained hard, but heard in the gym: hey, its all about nutrition; and the magazines told me the same. "If you don't drink your protein after training in 30 minutes, why do you train?" etc. The hope of success led me to read all about nutrition i could get. I was counting fat grams, carb grams and was having diarrhea of protein. Always been nervous eat right and in time. My weight was between 125-135 kgs at 191cm (mostly 135 kg).

Thankful for it to my two little kids, i didn't have time going in the gym so i hav begun bodyweight training (GB kind) for a year. Since then I eat when i'm hungry, only take care of not eating garbage. I'm 120-125, and always see my ab muscles, and I'm a lot-lot stronger.

My experience: If you train for strength the right amount of hypertrophy will come. Watch your body, get it know, it will tell you what you need (eat, sleep etc.). Train hard, but smart.

Coach Sommer said:

In fact some of the great Russian gymnasts built their physiques and won Olympic Gold medals on diets heavy in cabbage soup! And the Chinese diet is hardly a bodybuilders dream; and yet many Chinese gymnasts carry significant amounts of muscle. Anyone remember Mingyong and Chen Yibing?

And what about use of anabolic steroids? Back when communists ruled things around here in Czech republic, almost every professional athlete, man or woman, was "juiced". This was just how things went around here, we just had to represent our country in the best way possible, failure was not accepted.

I've been thinking for a while that the amount of recommended daily protein intake is out of whack (even by standard nutritional guidelines... not just bodybuilding stuff).

Reducing the amount of protein consumed is something that I have personally found quite helpful. Is a reasonable amount of protein necessary? Absolutely. Are 200 to 300 grams a day necessary? Absolutely not.

Joshua and I have had some very good conversations regarding this very topic. Perhaps he will share some of the research he has found in support of this.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

And what about use of anabolic steroids? Back when communists ruled things around here in Czech republic, almost every professional athlete, man or woman, was "juiced". This was just how things went around here, we just had to represent our country in the best way possible, failure was not accepted.

This might be a good time to point out that there has not been a world class Czech gymnast since Miroslav Cerar in the 1960s.

Seriously though, there is no anabolic in the world which can increase coordination and agility.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

People misunderstand anabolics. They in and of themselves will not make you stronger, faster etc. What they really do and do well is increase the ability for the body to recover and adapt from training. This allows for increased training demands in both intensity and volume. I have no love for the use of PED's but do not make the mistake of thinking that they do the work for the athlete.

In a sport such as gymnastics they really highlight being primarily for recovery, especially from injuries. Understand the mechanism they work in.

Coach Sommer said:

And what about use of anabolic steroids? Back when communists ruled things around here in Czech republic, almost every professional athlete, man or woman, was "juiced". This was just how things went around here, we just had to represent our country in the best way possible, failure was not accepted.

This might be a good time to point out that there has not been a world class Czech gymnast since Miroslav Cerar in the 1960s.

Seriously though, there is no anabolic in the world which can increase coordination and agility.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I'm not talking about gymnasts only, steroids were widely used in all sports in the past around here, well, they still are everywhere.

I agree they do not improve coordination and agility, but they do improve strength, so you can recover from workouts faster. I have no evidence, but I have heard that even international level gymnasts were using steroids to bulk up for the rings, well, especially ring specialists.

And Coach, you are absolutely right, czech gymnastics nowadays are very poor. Although even we had elite level gymnasts a very long time ago, for example Alois Hudec, gold medal on rings, Berlin 1936, first man ever to do an inverted cross.

My two cents regarding exercise and body comp. It's also so important the type of exercise. Time and time again i'll see people who slug away with cardio to change their body comp with poor results. I know heaps of people who purely train to get stronger and they have a better body composition than these cardio warriors, and if they are at all diligent with their nutrition, look out!

I do also feel that the really aesthetic physique that everyone loves has a lot to do with genetics. It's not hard to see even among professional athletes those that perform the same, I'm assuming their diet is not dissimilar and there is a marked difference in terms of the look of their physique. This is true even among elite gymnasts.

Hi everybody,

this is my first post to this awesome forum. I'm frequently reading here for over a year now and learned a lot of you guys.

Currently my training regime follows more or less the killroy70 style. So each FBE plane only once a week.

I go for max strength in one week and hypertrophy the next week and so on.

I try to follow the plan of Joshua in this thread: Martin Berkhan: Bodyweight training is worse for hypertrophy

I currently do 10 sets of 3 reps of my 6rep max like: 10*(3push, 3pull, 30sec rest)

I will try to add one extra set every time.

Joshua Naterman said:

I gave my opinion in the other thread Rag, but to put it succinctly, you would simply have one workout where you focused on basic strength movements and used more TUT per set with 3-5 sets per exercise. We're looking at 30-45s of TUT for your hypertrophy specific goals. That could be ten reps at 202 tempo (up/pause/down in seconds) or five 404 reps. Typically muscles produce more overall force when moving slowly because there is no momentum to detract from the total force needed at any given moment in the ROM, and this leads to greater motor unit recruitment for greater periods of time, which leads to more growth.

What would you recommend for TUT/tempo for the above plan (10 or more sets * 3reps)?

I also somewhere read that it would be good to add some high rep training. But I don't know where to put in in.

Perhaps Week 1 Strength, Week 2 Hypertrophy, Week 3 Low intensity high rep?

Thank you!

Boris said:

I also somewhere read that it would be good to add some high rep training.

Don't trust everything you read. I read a proof that 1=0, but it was incorrect, but the error was very subtle if you don't handle mathematics on a daily basis.

I note that the thread starter is looking for advices regarding combined growth and strength gains. He has been training for about one and a half month and is now frustrated due to small gains. There is also a discussion in this thread regarding nutrition.

I thought it might be interesting to share also my experience. I am new to gymnastic training and am currently training mainly endurance, since I enjoy that particular type of training. But, I used to lift weights in a gym, focusing only on size gains. My experience is that there are three important things that one really has to nail in order to grow:

1. Training.

2. Rest.

3. Nutrition.

I used to train more than my body could handle. My gains came when I lowered the weekly dose to slightly less than I thought was needed!

In stressful periods, I didn't notice large gains. In fact, I had A LOT of tasks to handle during half a year, during that time I missed only very few training sessions, however, I made no gains. (No loss either, though.)

In order to grow, I HAD TO EAT ALL THE TIME. This is for real. In periods where I ate until I felt sick, I grew. In periods where I ate only when hungry, I did not grow. Now, looking back, maybe another diet composition would have changed that, I do not know for sure (currently I eat a lot less carbs than I used too, for example). I have always been very, very thin, and, totally unable to become fat, so, while this is my experience, it may not be something which can be applied on anyone.

Last, but not least, in my experience, size gains are hard to notice. I used to measure my arms and legs, and they grew really, really slow. In my opinion, it might be hard to notice size gains in such a short time as six weeks. In my experience, training results are easier to measure in strength gains, even when training for hypertrophy. When I was able to lift heavier weights more repetitions, I took that as a hint telling me I was heading in the right direction. Strength gains was an excellent indirect measurement of size gains, for me.

Time is the best weapon of them all. I my opinion (be aware of my lack of experience, though), as long as you are continuously becoming stronger and learning new skills requiring more strength - size is coming. But while strength gains can be measured maybe as often as each week, gains in size are best measured perhaps two or three times a year.

I also noticed that someone wrote about the importance of learning what works for you. While extremely hard to accept, this is probably the most important thing to learn. I could get very "wordy" here, discussing the fact that we only have one life and that we should use it in a satisfying way, but, that would probably not add any value to this thread. However, it is my definite view, that we should train process oriented rather than goal oriented. When we start enjoying the process of getting to know ourself and our bodies while training, investigating, defining and moving our limitations, results (like size gains) suddenly become both less important and better.

Ok, school started up and I've been busy typing some other stuff, so I haven't managed to post this even though I wrote most of it days ago... but here it is. It's long, sorry.

Short version: Exercise, as a single protective factor, provides more health benefits than perfect nutrition without any exercise at all, but that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about changing the way you look, either losing fat or putting on muscle or both. There are neural adaptations that are an automatic part of training and teach the body to make the most of what it has, but that should not be confused with actual physical remodeling of lean tissue and fat tissue due to exercise. Neither can happen without nutritional support. The nutrition is what determines how you respond to exercise in those two ways.

Full version, AKA grab some tea and don't try to read this if you have a 5 minute break:

When it comes to changing your body composition, nutrition is what matters. You can exercise all you want, and I have quite a number of friends who are exercising about as perfectly as they possibly could, yet still don't look great with a shirt off. They are massive and strong, but covered in a layer of flab. They don't change how they eat, so they don't change how they look. America is full of physically fit people who look normal or even slightly out of shape, and this is why. That's my whole point. You want to change how you look, you can not make a significant impact without changing the way you eat to reflect what your body needs on a real-time basis. The closer what you eat matches that need, the better you look.

There is no workaround for that aside from some people who literally have mutated metabolisms due to genetics and look great no matter what. I had a classmate like that last semester, it's crazy to look at... he could be a fitness model and he doesn't exercise at all. We can't pay attention to those people for anything except gene therapy

No matter what you eat, regular exercise will teach your body to make the most of what it has, and it will do its best to not lose any lean tissue. That should not be confused with actual re-composition, which is losing fat and/or building more muscle. To do that requires the right amount of energy at the right time, and the right amounts of carbohydrates, fats and proteins at the right times. This is obviously a sliding scale, and the closer you get to perfect the better you look, the more muscle you carry, and the better you perform compared to anywhere further down that scale. That is an immutable fact, and no level of achieved performance can change this.

The gymnasts with poor nutritional habits accomplish what they accomplish in spite of poor nutrition, not because exercise somehow circumvents anything. They usually have enough energy flowing in, and that's the single most important thing with kids. Together with the exercise, their bodies develop impressive abilities because they have their basic needs met. We are able to survive and perform fairly decently on nearly any diet, as long as it has .5-.8 g/kg of protein (which is almost impossible to not give to a kid, even on purpose) but to thrive and excel we need proper nutrition. If you had one kid who was actually getting ideal nutrition you would most definitely see them shine more than before in terms of physical development, but pre-adolescents don't have the same mass-gaining ability as adolescents. That's the developmental time frame that makes the most difference. You obviously have about zero control over what the parents do with their kids once they leave the gym, so it certainly has nothing to do with you, but that doesn't change the fact that the nutritional issues are holding each and every one of those kids back. In a way this is probably not a bad thing for a gymnast, because it's easier to be a good gymnast when one is shorter, and the less perfect the nutrition the less of their height potential each kid will reach. Kids are also very, very light and compact. They simply don't need as much muscle to do many of the skills and the build-up is gradual from looking at the progression of the required routines from year to year. Their size doesn't change all that much from year to year until they hit puberty, so it's not like they need to be building giant muscles quickly... their poor nutritional habits simply aren't going to keep them from developing as long as there isn't clinical malnutrition going on... From that perspective, taking 10 years to build up to a level 10 routine can probably be accomplished by the vast majority of kids (if not all) who put the time in and have the spatial awareness to handle the acrobatic portions. It is almost certainly possible to progress much faster than that if the correct nutrition was available and administered on an ongoing basis. The skill portion would still be dependent on each gymnast, but the strength? Superior physiques could be developed far more quickly if the kids were actually fed what their bodies really need. The same is true for adults.

The professional gymnasts of the world, by and large, start off before they ever get fat. They start as children who stay active and are protected to a fair degree from the physical and aesthetic ravages of garbage foods, and their gene expressions as well as the number of fat cells they have can be permanently and favorably altered when this continues through the end of adolescence. Childhood fitness is the most under-rated aspect of long term health on the planet. We simply are not aware of how important pre-adolescent and adolescent activity is to our health... it is the most plastic time of our lives and the most resilient.

My primary point is that nutrition is by far the most important factor in body re-composition, regardless of age. In terms of adaptation to exercise, it is also the only factor we have any control over, I mean we can't recover without the raw materials and we can't build new muscle or stronger connective tissues without the raw materials either. Exercise is by far the most important factor in performance from a raw standpoint, in that no matter who you are or how you eat, if you work out you will get stronger and become a better athlete. You are not going to be come a better athlete by eating perfectly, athletic improvement requires a physical stimulus. However, no one can grow the way they should if they aren't getting the right nutrition at the right time.

As long as you are eating, you will get good results with a 17 to 18 year training plan, which is what gymnasts have if we are following them from 4 years old to their first Olympics. It is absolutely true that with this kind of time, impressive athletes can be built despite fair to poor nutrition. In spite of. These athletes are not what they should be. The nutritional difference does slow down strength acquisition by many years, but the combination of small athletes and a 10+ year training plan really goes a long way towards making it possible to be a great gymnast without great nutrition. You do, however, see more injuries from "overuse" in these athletes. In reality, they are often injuries of poor recovery due to under-nutrition, most commonly stress fractures and more commonly in females than males due to time-honored poor nutrition practices in female gymnastics that get passed down from coaches who have this insane belief in caloric restriction. I can't remember if it was the entire female Olympic gymnastic team suffered immensely after the Olympics or just a few of the members that went, but when they went to... I forget the gym, I think it was in Athen's GA, for training afterwards their body composition and performance was terrible because they went from a really well-structured dietary regimen to total crap that included a calorie cap that didn't even meet BMR. Exercise didn't change, but the nutrition was awful and it had an enormous impact. I will have to ask Dr. Doyle or Benardot for the details, one of them shared this with us a few semesters ago. It might just have been Dominique Dawes, I can't remember... I heard the story too long ago.

Anyhow, food is absolutely incredibly important to visible results, much moreso than exercise. That is part of why many of these gymnasts took so many years to develop what they have, and their ability to thrive on a diet that is less than ideal combined with a very high workload is to a large extent a result of great genetics. We all know that. Most of us can't do that, and none of us can achieve peak performance without excellent nutrition. Whatever we achieve with so-so nutrition, no matter how great, can be easily eclipsed when we really dial it in, even (and especially) when on a perfect training plan.

As something of a case in point to both sides, it is true that gymnasts have always had excellent physiques and that they are and have always generally been the most visually admired athletes. However, look at the average gymnast of the 70s and the average gymnast of today in the Olympics. Today's athletes are leaner, stronger, and (on the rings especially) far more muscular as a group. There are outliers, to be sure, like Balandin (who is incredibly lean and muscular, but nowhere near as thick as most of the others) but he is the exception. People like him almost certainly have advantageous attachment points that simply require less physical tissue to generate the forces needed to perform as he does. That was a stroke of genetic luck and is not normal. There have been training improvements but importantly the nutrition of many of the top athletes at international levels, especially the Chinese, is incredibly scientific and has an awful lot to do with their success as a team, though it is easily arguable that at a world level technical expertise is really the primary factor. Same goes for many other nationally sponsored teams where the athletes have two jobs: train to win, and actually win in competition. Nutritional practices vary widely around the world and accounts heavily for the success or failure of various national teams in sports across the athletic spectrum. I am not talking about winning a world championship in a sport, which requires the combination of superior technique with a body that doesn't break down. I'm talking about the fundamentals that govern our response to exercise in terms of losing fat and gaining muscle. That's 100% nutritional and genetic, but the nutrition is the only factor we have any control over.

The visible look alone can be replicated fairly quickly by someone with good health, normal genes and proper nutrition. The strength and skill of a high level gymnast still takes a long time but with proper nutrition the strength comes much, much, much more quickly. As for the technical performance and perfection of skills... that's a completely separate topic and nutrition has minimal impact.

Every single person who has applied the nutritional advice I have given here has experienced this, to my knowledge. I have not seen one comment in 3 years that has suggested otherwise. Not trying to put myself on a pedestal, simply establishing that nutrition is a primary factor in how we adapt to exercise along with genetics. Nutrition is what makes the biggest difference by far, because it is something we can all control and no matter who you are or how crappy your genetics are you simply have to work out and have your nutrition in place and you will see impressive results. Even with a less than ideal workout, ideal nutrition produces impressive results.

Ideal exercise + ideal nutrition is by far the most impressive result-producing scenario. Once you have your nutrition implemented properly you will see massive changes in your results by programming your exercises for your goals. In my experience the gymnastic work absolutely produces the best looking bodies and by far the most athletically capable bodies. I wouldn't be a part of this community if that were not the case!

dnj is right about nutrition being the easy part but the rest of that post isn't very solid. I have no idea how supplements came into the picture... this goes to show that many people have no idea what the word nutrition really means.

We have been led to believe nutrition is about bottles and pills, but that's a pile of crap. Proper nutrition is 100% about your food. As far as I am concerned, there is very little to be done with supplementation when you have proper food intake. Genetics are less important than you think, largely because proper nutrition and exercise literally changes the genes that are being expressed. What your body expresses now is not what it will express when you are truly on point.

You don't need to know much to make this happen, all you need to know is:

1) Make sure plant matter is in your diet. Leaves, veggies, fruits.

2) Make sure you get enough protein. 1.2 to 2.0 g/kg of bodyweight is what you need for maximal adaptation, though more highly trained athletes seem to utilize more like 1.5g/kg. Just so people know what not to push past, 2.8 g/kg is the theoretical safe upper intake for protein. This is seriously almost impossible to screw up, even for vegetarians (not meant to be an insult to our veggies, just trying to point out that even the "least ideal protein sources" are more than sufficient for an athlete when #3 is followed)

3) Get enough energy (calories), and get it when you need it. Just had a workout? Make sure ate food before and eat lots after, so that you more or less match the amount of energy you burned in that workout with the amount you eat around that time. Nutritiming helps a lot with this, and there is no reason not to be able to perform at a world level as a vegetarian as long as you are fulfilling your caloric requirements... that's the hardest part of being a vegetarian.

That's seriously it, I mean details like lower GI foods do make a visible difference but it's the difference between pretty darn good and HOLY CRAP. It's not the difference between "whatever" and "good," you know what I mean? Long term health and wellness is more heavily affected by these details, but that's not what we are talking about in this thread.

Exercise is certainly more complex for most people, especially the gymnastic stuff, but the 2nd edition is going to make this a breeze.

In the end, athletic performance is always a result of learning to do the most with what you have. Proper nutrition simply allows you to build more muscle, retain less fat, and heal more quickly from your exercise. These properties are why a well-fed, well trained athlete with above average but not superior genetics can often keep pace with the physical ability of a supremely gifted athlete when that more gifted athlete is not particularly well fed. If you give that gifted athlete the nutrition he or she really needs, that above average athlete isn't going to stand a chance unless there is an accident or incredible stroke of luck in their favor. I am not talking about skills, just raw physical power. There are, of course, some people who are simply in a class of their own but they are exceedingly rare.

I don't know how else to say it... there is certainly all kinds of room for opinion, and no matter what you eat a lifetime of exercise will carry you extremely far and will protect your health more than a sedentary lifestyle with perfect nutrition (to a point... there are many high-performance athletes with atherosclerosis), but if you want to change what you are looking like as an adult or be all you can be, your nutrition is where you will find nearly all of your answers.

As an aside, Jack Lalanne felt just as strongly about perfect nutrition as he did about exercise. He talked about it all the time, from the Jack Lalanne Show to his internet sites to his books to his products. He realized very early on that it took both great nutrition and great exercise to produce a great body for the vast majority of people, and that ALL of us need both to maintain optimal health.

Ok, so in support of what Coach is saying about the protein, the bulk of research, and this includes studies done on natural bodybuilders (please, please don't think I put natural in there for fun, that's an important distinction), have shown that humans have what is called an "anabolic maximum" for protein intake.

That means that beyond a certain point, we can not use protein to make more muscle... the extra just gets burned as energy.

This limit is a zone between 1.5 and 2.0 g of protein per ok bodyweight.

Now, this is the MAX. For me, at 96.5 kg that's 193g ofprotein. That's 212.5 lbs or so, for our non-metric people. 300g of protein is toxic for someone my size. Literally.

Also, as a clarification to the long post above, I am not saying exercise is worthless, because that would be ridiculous. You need exercise to grow, but your body cannot make new material without the nutrients. You can't make new proteins out of other proteins or carbohydrates without vitamin B-6, for example. You also can't make much of anything without the EAA's, because we literally can't make them (either at all or in sufficient quantity to be useful). That would be like trying to make a car with no axles... doesn't quite work too well.

Now, it is also true that you can build muscle with so-so nutrition because you're going to have enough protein with so-so nutrition (though nowhere near as quickly as with great nutrition) as long as you are getting enough calories or too many calories. As long as you are getting those calories and around 0.8 to 1.0g per kg of protein you're going to grow for quite a while. You are, however, going to grow chubby or stay chubby unless those calories are delivered in the right quantities at the right time, AND unless you have very good food selections. This works even better when you truly get all the carbs your body really needs.

The bottom line is the same, though: The nutrition is 100% in control of how your body responds to the exercise you do.

Great exercise + crap nutrition = crappy results.

Just barely adequate exercise + great nutrition = very good looks, not much strength

Great exercise + great nutrition = your ideal body, performance, and health.

Joshua Naterman said:

The bottom line is the same, though: The nutrition is 100% in control of how your body responds to the exercise you do.

Good discussion, however once again I feel that this is far too strongly stated as I have seen far too many real world results to the contrary. And this is from someone who is absolutely in favor of heathier eating.

The fact remains that many gymnasts have both great physiques as well as abysmal eating habits. If nutrition was 100% in control of how their body responded to exercise than their results should not have been possible. But the results did occur and so the basic premise that "nutrition is 100% in control of how the body responds to exercise" is false.

The body adapts to the environmental demands placed upon it. Gymnasts look the way they do not in an attempt to procure a certain aesthetic, but because the body was forced to develop this way to survive and then thrive under the demands of GST.

If perfect nutrition was the primary key to success and not exercise, then those people in the world following such a nutritional protocol would possess gymnast-like physiques without the necessity of GST . . . but this is clearly not the case.

Now do I agree that better nutrition could have resulted in even more impressive results? Absolutely. Or that a more balanced nutritional approach would allow fitness enthusiasts to progress with less effort? Yes, again. But let's be quite clear that exercise is the primary stressor to which the body is responding with physical adaptations. Perfect nutrition in and of itself may magnify the results of that adaptation, but is in no way a substitute for that primary stressor.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer