Welcome to the Baker Barbell Podcast. I'm your host Andy Baker, owner of Baker Personal Training in Kingwood, Texas, and co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training with Mark Ripeto, as well as the Barbell Prescription, training for Life After 40 with Dr. Jonathan Sullivan. My co-host today is Coach Dan Flannick, owner of Scan Strength in Upstate New York. Thanks for listening today, and let's get started.
Welcome back to the Baker Barbell Podcast. My name is Trent Jones and I'm the producer of this show. Last week we did a little bit of a different thing, and we did a simul cast. So we published on this show, in episode that originally aired on the Wates and Plates Podcast, featuring Andy Baker being interviewed by Robert Santana. And we said we were going to do a podcast swap, and that's what we're going to do today. So today we welcome Dr. Robert Santana,
starting Strength Coach and PhD in Nutrition onto the show, where Andy will be interviewing him about all things training, nutrition, and diet. And this one was a whopper. It was over two hours. So we're going to break this one up into two parts. Today you're going to hear part one, and next week we will air part two. So if you like this show, and you like Dr. Santana, you can follow him on the Wates and Plates Podcast. We'll drop a link in the show notes below.
There's a lot of overlap between the contents of this show and his show. So that's why we decided to do this podcast swap. All right, without further ado, let's get to the show. Welcome back everybody to the Baker Barbell Podcast. I'm your host Andy Baker. We are in episode 28. Super excited for this episode because we've got a guest with us. And for you guys that have been listening, you know, I haven't done a whole lot of guest work. And so this is a guest. I'm super, super excited to have.
I think he's going to add a ton of value to the podcast. You know, I think he's going to give you guys a lot of great information on nutrition and training and quite frankly, I was telling Robert before we got on that some of these questions that I have in here just out of my own curiosity. So I figured, you know, if I have the questions a lot of you guys will too. So my guest today is Robert Santana of the Wates and Plates podcast.
Robert's also the owner of the Wates and Plates gym, which is in the greater Phoenix area. So Robert is he's a guy that knows what he's talking about. He's got a PhD. He's a registered dietician. So I consider him, you know, a real expert in the area of nutrition.
You know, and I also respect the fact that he's a practitioner as well. So lots of lots of lots of guys with lots of initials after their names that do a lot of research and publishing papers and that sort of thing. But I always really respect the guys that actually, you know, put their knowledge to the test working with real people both in the gym and online.
You know, you guys know, I put a lot of value on the practicing of what we preach to make sure that what we're out there telling everybody to do and and and prosely sizing to everybody actually works. And so Robert, I just want to say thanks for joining us. I'm excited to have you on. Yeah, thanks for having me Andy. So, and I'm sure you guys listened last week. I was on Robert's podcast. So, you know, we're doing what do they call us in TV.
This is the crossover event that everybody's been waiting for. Maybe not. Maybe not. But we decided it was a good idea. He'll do my podcast. I'll do his and we'd get a lot more content out there to everybody. So, and I really, really enjoyed our conversation last week. So I'm looking forward to this one as well. Last last week, we talked mainly training.
Maybe touched on nutrition a little bit, but in this podcast, because Robert's the expert and he's a guest, we're going to talk. We'll probably get into some training stuff as well, because we're that's, you know, kind of what the podcast is all about, but we're going to focus more on nutrition.
I told him before we got on air that I've got a list of like 25 different questions, you know, and I know that we're not going to get to all of them, but we're going to try to get to as many as we can and we'll just see where this takes us.
So I think where I want to start with, and this is, you know, I kind of generated this list of questions based on, you know, what are the, what are the questions that I get as a coach in my gym and with my online clients, what are the questions that I get from from my people all the time, because that's the ones I, you know, and I have my thoughts and my ideas on them.
You know, perhaps I'm wrong or maybe I'm, maybe I'm only partially right and could be, could give better advice. So let's just start, let's start with protein, you know, we're all lifters here. We're all trying to get bigger and stronger. We know that protein is important.
The notion that's been around since the beginning of time and strength circles is, is the gold standard, which is that anybody that lifts weights anybody that trying to build strength build muscle needs a gram of protein per pound of body weight.
And that's, you know, I happen to think that that's a decent, a decent place, but I don't think it's necessarily universally accurate. So what are your thoughts on the protein requirements for somebody who's very serious into either strength or physique.
Well, that's a good question. I was talking about this at the gym last night because I've been writing this article that I've kind of dragged out for four years for starting strength. They asked me to write a series of nutrition articles and I wrote the ones on macro nutrients and body composition, but then I got to vitamins and I just kind of kept putting that one aside.
And, you know, it's kind of a similar, there's an overlapping question there. So it's always like, do we need extra vitamins because we train and you might want to ask me that later, but it also, you know, when I was explaining that to somebody at my gym, I got back on the protein topic and I was like, it's the same kind of thing, you know, because I think the person I was talking to is also an RD.
And she was bringing up how she's in a clinical setting now, she used to work in eating disorders. And so it's change of mindset, you know, totally different settings, you're looking at different things, but looking at some of the same things. And she's like, what is with them in this point eight, you know, they're all fixated on this point eight point eight grams per kilogram for those of you who don't know that's the recommended recommended dietary allowance points eight grams per kilogram. So a lot less than a gram per pound.
And there's so many things wrong with that recommendation. The most obvious thing is the way they arrived at that number was through nitrogen balance studies, which have since been refuted as not the best measure of protein status. But she was asking me how to, you know, justify more and I'm like, well, there's no upper limit for protein, first of all. So they have what's called a tolerable upper limits or ULs. And there's not one for protein for healthy adults.
So this notion that more protein is bad, which stems from this fear of kidney disease comes from the fact that it can accelerate already existing kidney disease, but nephrologists, which are kidney doctors, those of you who don't know. Nephrologists are split on this. You have one camp that says, well, you know, if their kidneys are failing, they're going to fail more. It's a progressive disease. I don't want them to get malnourished before they get on dialysis. I've had doctors say this to me.
Then you got others that are like, oh, well, no, we got a restrict protein and, you know, prevent the progression of the disease. I'm kind of with the first camp on this. And that's kind of how we practice when I worked in a dialysis center. So that's always been the fear with more protein. But it has never been established that a high intake is going to cause kidney disease.
It can accelerate that, which is already there. But there's trade offs like anything else. Life's a series of trade offs. You know, if you were strict protein, you slow the progression of the disease, but you become malnourished, which is probably the greater of the two evils.
If you talk to somebody in that business. So that's the first part of it. I generally recommend a gram per pound. And like I told the girl yesterday, if you look at the NIH's AMDR accepted macro nutrient distribution ratio, that brings a lot broader than the RDA.
It's 10% I believe or 15% to 35%. So once you start getting to that higher end, you start falling closer to that gram per pound. So, you know, when I'm writing academic papers, you know, I'll cite the AMDR, you know, just to check that box off because I know it probably falls within what I'm recommending.
But more importantly, there's no upper limit. If you eat more, you're not going to use, you may not use 100% of it to build muscle. But that's something else that I've written about is you have.
You have a lot of proteins in the human body. Your muscle proteins aren't the only ones. I think they're 60% of the proteins in the human body. But it's not like, you know, I had one professor once say, oh, you know, you're drinking way protein powders like or drinking way protein powders like drinking the world's most expensive urine.
And I'm like, this guy, he had an EDD, but still, you know, I'm like, this guy is teaching a nutrition class. He's, you know, presenting himself as an expert, nice guy. I loved him, but he was just wrong on this issue. And, you know, when you look closely at it, it's like you're not just pissing out protein and not using it, you're using all of it. You're just may not be using all of it to build muscle. So to come back to your original question, treating a gram per pound.
And it's too much, you know, not that you can measure that. Let's say that you overshoot. Hey, it's not going to harm you. There's no upper limit and be it will be used for other shit, you know, that's my right. And I've always told people to like, it's not quite as consequential, like, especially when you're really trying to maintain body composition or or scale weight or whatever.
You know, excess and carbs and fat is a little bit more consequential, consequential there. I've always found that, you know, a little excess and protein, you know, provided it's a relatively lean source of protein and not a super high fat source tends to be a little less consequential in terms of moving the scale weight or the body composition.
You know, I suppose if you went like way overboard, it's kind of like the, you know, it's the protein dangerous to the kidneys. I get that all the time, especially from older clients because their doctors have told them, you know, make sure you don't eat too much protein.
If you're going to lift weights because it'll harm your kidneys are in. You know, I've always told them, look, the amount that you, if that, if that, you know, if that upper limit exists, we don't really know what it is because.
Trust me, you're not going to hit it, you know, you're, you know, if a lot of my new clients, especially in the gym, you know, if I can get them to eat 100 grams a day, I've, you know, maybe doubled or tripled the amount and that's still inadequate, you know, the average person who pays no attention to what they eat generally is way under in protein.
So whatever there, if there is an upper limit, they're so far away from hitting that you literally have to be force feeding, you know, chicken steak and protein shakes and they're just, you're not going to get there. So don't worry about it.
And I prescribed the Graham per pound to and really like I have no data on that. Like you said, how do you really know what's exact it's an estimate I'm going off of off of people like you and others or I'm kind of trusting, you know, kind of the consensus on that. I think from practical experience with myself and others, it's shown that that's that's probably a good amount.
You know, going far and above that, I've, I, there was a time where I much more than than that. And I, you know, since then I've backed off of that and I can't tell a single bit of difference in terms of more muscle build or better recovery or anything. So I think the Graham per pound is good. The only time and you can speak on this as well, the only time I adjust that recommendation is, you know, usually that Graham per pound is assuming that someone is kind of in a normal body fat range.
I tend to bring that down with very heavy clients. You know, someone that's maybe 25 30, you know, if you got you get a guy that you're working with that needs to lose weight and let's say he's, you know, use a client is like 330 pounds, you know, and is carrying a lot of body fat. I'm not going to give him 330 grams of protein per day. Right.
Right. You know, and what I'll do and you can tell me if this is wrong is I'll kind of estimate their body fat and I'll say, okay, I think this guy's maybe 30% body fat or more. And I'll just take, you know, so I'll feed, I'll take 30, I'll reduce his body weight by 30% something like that.
And then, and then feed him approximately that amount, although it may be even less than that because I think I heard you say this as well. And it, this is something that I've, is that most people, most men are going to be between 150 and 250, right? Like somewhere in that range, like it's pretty rare that you're going to have somebody that needs to eat an excess of 250 grams of protein per day. Yep. Yep. So you've been reading. I wrote that in an article.
Yeah. Somebody, somebody said that to me that you, there was a relay to me and I don't, I don't know where it was. But I, when I heard that, I was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense because very few, very few men that you're going to work with, you know, if they're eating 100, they're, you know, if they're trying to gain a lot of weight and they're severely underweight, I may bump them up over that.
Just like you said, just to make sure that we cover all of our bases, but it's, it's, it's pretty rare that protein is going to be less than 150 or over 250 for most adult males. I would, you know, I just, I just thought about it because, you know, the bigger guys that I've trained that are, you know, muscular and not taking a bunch of drugs.
When you look at their body composition testing, they're in the upper 100s. Sometimes over 200 is what I've noticed. You know, you get a taller jacked guy, you know, that number's going to get higher, but often you're getting a strong man that's like 6, 8, you know, 300 pounds. You know, like, that's not typical, but most guys that I'm working with are between, you know, 150 and 300 pounds, depending on size.
You know, if we're talking about non overweight obese guys, typically between 150 and 250, right? For total body weight. And then when you start looking at body composition, I don't see too many guys that have lean mass that's recorded over 200 pounds, whether you want to, you know, you know, whether you want to acknowledge that that lean mass is mostly muscle or not, totally different argument, but, you know, it's probably somewhere around whatever these instruments spit out.
So, you know, if 200, 200 pounds of lean mass is a big giant dude, and most of the guys you're training are not big giant dudes, then, you know, that's probably probably going to be in that range, 150 to 250. That's just working with lots and lots of people. Yeah, you have outliers for sure. You know, you might get some really jacked dudes, you know, that are just big, you know, and you would certainly recommend more for that.
Something else you maybe think of was, you know, when I first started learning about this, you know, was more in the magazine, bodybuilding.com setting, this is before I started studying the academic position on this, you know, these extreme protein intakes were like real popular, like, oh, I want 300 grams, I hear 400 grams.
And now I get guys that are, you know, more in the bodybuilding side, and probably have, you know, some eating disorder stuff or disorder eating, and they are fixated on 3, 4, 500 grams of protein and just can't stop eating protein. That's crazy. So, yeah, I have a couple guys like that that will just chomp down extreme amounts of protein.
And while back I started thinking about this, and I'm like, okay, how do we get here? You know, we're, you know, listen, the old school bodybuilders from the 70s, 80s, you'll hear them talking about it too. I'm like, how do we get here? And then I start thinking about it. I'm like, bodybuilders take a lot of steroids.
Yeah, I think that's where it comes from, honestly, I think it's two places. I think one, it's, it comes from guy, when you're on really heavy, PED use, I think your ability to synthesize more protein increases. Exactly what I was about to say. Yeah. Right. I started thinking about that. I'm like, okay, what do drugs do? They increase your protein synthesis. That's how you gain muscle mass. So, of course these fuckers are going to be able to eat more protein and use it for that purpose.
You know, again, we're using it. We're using 100% of the protein we eat. But if you're on a lot of PEDs, you're going to use more of it to build muscle. You know, it's just plain and simple.
So what applies in that situation does not apply in the situation of most of the guys walking through the door to talk to us, even, you know, an old, you know, in a guy on some TRT that's not going to elevate it that much, you know, where they're going to need three 350 grams of protein or whatever the hell these guys need to, you know, because again, we really don't know. We know that they probably need a lot more because they're turning over protein a lot faster, you know.
Yeah. And it's, I mean, we talked a little bit about, you know, one of my main influences in bodybuilding in the last episode, you know, Dante Trudelle was a guy that with his DC training, you know, back in the day, he was, he was kind of famous for taking already big bodybuilders and making them massive. You know, he had, you look at some of his clientele from back in the day. And he made, and he was, he was a guy that was pushing, you know, massive protein intakes, like you were talking about.
But you have to remember, you have to, I always tell people, look, when you look at the messenger, you have to put their message in context, who are they talking about, you know, and it was, he was working under the assumption, most of the people that he was talking about, he's working under the assumption, they're under a lot of PDs.
He wasn't talking to the average gym goer or just, you know, the guy that wants to train to be healthier, you know, get jacked at the pool. He was looking for the guy that's on a lot of shit and wants to weigh, you know, wants to weigh 320 in the off season, you know, type of thing.
And so it's a totally different conversation. The other thing I would say about that is I think there was an incentive. There's another player in that you talk about the age of the, a lot of our listeners, I may not know this, a lot of the younger guys come to this that, you know, with the, the, the muscle mag days, the flex magazine and muscular development. That's where most of us got all of our early information because they're just the internet wasn't even around.
That's all we had. Yeah, and there's just what that was it. And so, you know, when you knew there, you kind of took to a degree, you took it with a grain of salt. But, you know, like my age late teens early 20s, you're impressionable. And so, you know, you didn't realize that most of those articles were ghost written and all that kind of stuff.
So, but, you know, there was another player in that that was incentivized to push the, you know, 300, 400 grams of protein per day. And that was the protein shake. You know, you look at a, you look at an old flex magazine and every other page is an ad for a way protein supplement. Well, I mean, it's really hard to get 300 grams per day of chicken and steak. Right.
So, I mean, you're going, in order to hit those types of numbers, they're going to put, you know, it makes sense that that, you know, whatever company is making the way protein would tell, also tell you that, you know, you need to hit 300 grams per day because then they're selling the solution. Right. So, because you really can't hit those numbers without a couple of protein shakes per day for most people.
It's funny how that shit works. I've always been skeptical of advertising and news media and shit like that growing up. But back in those days, when I would read all that stuff and then every other page was a supplement, you know, and I try to look at the programs, I try all the programs. And I just remember on the other side of that, I don't know at some point, I just got to a point where like, I was very focused on.
Perhaps too much focused on the diet side of it and the supplement side of it, not enough on the training side of it. It took me about, I'd say about 11 years from when I started reading muscle mags, until to where I found rip and started learning how to train properly and live properly. But up into that point, you know, I'd always lose weight, no problem.
I just followed the calorie restriction, whichever, you know, flip a coin, whichever one, you know, I'd find. And then I'd always end up in the same place. And I'd be, well, what's going on here? It must be something in my diet. And now I'm seeing it, what still happens with the younger guys, I get guys that hire me. And they're like, I need the right diet for mass. And you know, this is not me minimizing diet.
We talked about this last week diet is very, very important and becomes more important for the more advanced you become. And I'm now seeing the finer effects of it, but what the problem that I'm addressing is there's a lot of guys that it's diet in spite of training. Now that's a problem. And yes, and now as you're talking about this and bringing up the muscle mags, I'm like, I think just that my eyes seeing those pages of supplements and shit and diets.
Like it just kind of draws you there subconsciously because it's kind of what it turned into. I got really good at manipulating my diet. And then my training wasn't going nowhere. And it wasn't until I think three years before I met Rip, I started keeping a training log.
And but halfway through that third year, I'm like, my lips haven't gone up since the first year. I'm like, fuck, you know, but look, I was already in the gym for seven years before I kept the training log. And I knew all this diet stuff, all the supplement stuff. So I was this diet and supplement expert. And yet my numbers weren't moving. And then I found starting strength and you know, I've been progressing ever since, except on the damn bench press, which we talked about before.
I got here, but it's another story, different problem. But yeah, man, like there's a lot of guys that are fixated on diet in spite of training. And that's a separate issue.
But yeah, and even worse than that are the ones. And this is, I mean, I think this was probably all of us. I think it's like a right of passage when, especially if you start lifting when you're a teenager, teenagers seem to be the target market to be honest for a lot of the supplement companies, you know, teenagers and, you know, early 20s, whatever.
You know, they figured out who the most impressionable market is. So, you know, diet diet in place of training can be a problem, but supplements in place of diet. It's really even bigger problem.
And yeah, and you know, that's, that's like an even bigger sin. And, you know, I would tell there's so many kids that, you know, walk into a GNC or, you know, one of these places or, you know, now probably order online. And they're ordering, you know, how many hundreds of dollars worth of all these different supplements. And it's like, man, if you just take all, especially nowadays, it's so expensive, take all that money and go to the grocery store.
You know, and, and, and because there's so few over the counter supplements that are actually useful. You know, most of the stuff that really, really works is banned. It's illegal. And so, yeah, Criatine, does it work? Yeah, to a degree, but, you know, it's the effects of Criatine are pretty, are pretty marginal. I mean, they certainly don't replace, you know, they certainly, they certainly don't replace the effects of being on a good diet.
You know, that supports your training and your recovery. So, it's like, but there's still a lot of people who are, like you said, they're the supplements is the focus. And that's, to me, that's like, that's like the last 2% of the equation.
You know, once you get the training and the diet fixed, you know, maybe there's something out there that helps. But most of this stuff that's over the counter in my opinion is, unless you have some sort of deficiency or, or whatever is just, you know, I think, I think that is a bunch of expensive pits.
And I, and I don't count protein supplements as a supplement. To me, protein powder is a, is a convenient food. So a lot of, I'll tell my clients that when they'll ask me about supplements, I'll say, you may not worry about that. Let's get your training right. Let's get your diet right because that's going to eat up enough of your budget and enough of your time and brain energy that we really don't need to worry about this other stuff right now.
And of course, the next question they'll ask, well, you recommended a protein powder. And my, my thought is a protein powder. I don't necessarily view that as necessary. I think you can certainly get all of the protein that you need through whole food sources, you know, chicken beef, eggs, you know, fish, whatever. But I just, to me, like, for me, a protein shake is that's pretty much my breakfast on most days.
Just because I'm in the gym with clients at like five o'clock in the morning. I don't like, you know, I just, I'm not in a position where I can cook eggs or whatever I want something quick or whatever. I still try to get the majority of my protein through whole foods. So I try to limit, you know, my protein shakes to like one a day. And I try to get the rest through whole foods.
But it's a matter of convenience. If you're, if you're traveling, if you're on the road, if you're not, you don't want to pack a bunch of Tupperware and have dishes and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
And a protein shake is a really convenient way to get the protein in, you know, and it's, and it's quick. It's like, if you're not doing that now and you want to do two scoops away protein per day, you just added 50 grams to your day. That's 350 grams of protein added to your week. And I think that that, you know, that can go a long way. Absolutely.
Okay. So stay on the protein topic. You had mentioned before about there not being any upper limit to protein in terms of just kind of your overall consumption. What are your thoughts on kind of the, the idea that, you know, a given amount of protein per day. You're eating 200 grams per day. The benefits of breaking that feeding up into smaller doses more frequently versus eating, you know, let's, you know, let's just say, you know, 100 grams twice a day versus 40 grams five times a day.
The idea that you, you really can't that you absorb more of it and utilize more of it in smaller doses, let's say versus, you know, just one big giant feeding at one time or two big giant feedings. You know, what are your thoughts on, on that? Well, the argument has always been that you're going to use more of it to build muscle. If you spread it out into smaller feedings.
So again, it goes back to what I said before you're always using all of it. You're just not using it all for muscle building. My thoughts on it. You know, I think that, you know, generally advise against eating your entire 200 grams of protein in one feeding, you know, for a lot of reasons, you know, doesn't feel good and get constipated and, you know, just from a logical standpoint, like you have to digest these foods and protein.
Protein has the highest energy cost of all the three macro nutrients in terms of digestion. They call it the thermic effective food. So it takes some work to break that down and it's going to take some time if you're eating it from regular food. I mean, if it's way in certain other proteins, it's a little faster. But if you're, you know, eating three pounds of steak, you got to digest that.
And then there's fat in there too that you got to break down. And then there's other things we don't just typically eat protein. I mean, you can keto guys do. But you know, fiber and other things in there as well from it. Yeah. And fiber interferes with protein as well in terms of digestion.
So you got to get those amino acids out of the food that you're digesting and into the bloodstream. So I think it makes sense in theory that, you know, I'd say something like, you know, 20 to 50 gram feeding every few hours is probably good for most people.
I think even 75 is probably a good upper limit for that. You know, once you're eating like 100 plus grams of protein, it's just a lot of extra food. You probably don't need, you know, I don't have a p value for you on this. But, you know, I don't need it. Yeah. Anybody does to be honest. I think I can never measure anybody say that it's always just been. And I think a lot of it's anecdotal. You know, how do you feel?
You know, like you said, I think digestion is one of those things that you see a lot more people talk about now, certainly in like, you know, in the performance circles and powerlifting and sports and bodybuilding. You hear a lot more talk about digestion now in that, you know, my buddy.
I don't know how familiar you are with Nathan Peyton, but he's a friend of mine. He's a, he's a diet guy that he works with basically all of the top strong men in the sport right now, Brian Shaw, Martin Leesis. I mean, he's really does a lot of great stuff with these guys. He really, really knows a shit and he actually lives in Kingwood. And so I know him personally, but I've also worked with him. You know, I have a lot of clients that he that I push to him.
I've worked with him personally for a lot of stuff. And so his shit works and he always, he always used to tell me, you know, it's not it's not how much you need to tell much you absorb. And a lot of that he was referring to digestion and that, you know, just, you know, if you miss miss a meal, you know, try or miss two meals and then you try to cram all that, you know, in it's like he would always say it's like trying to fill a drinking glass with a fire hose.
You know, it's just, it's not the most efficient way. So, you know, that's, that's always been my thoughts to is I kind of set like on myself like an upper limit of usually around 50 grams per meal. You know, and so I'll do four or five meals a day of 40 to 50 grams seems to work seems to work good for me again. Like how do you know could you do 60? Could you do 80? Would it be better if you do 30? It's all kind of guesswork. But, you know, I usually break things up four or five
feedings a day is usually I think good for most people. Yeah, I do three to four just for logistical purposes. I kind of fell into that over the years, but you know, same concept. It's, you know, you have to factor in that as well. But, you know, I like that, you know, 20 to 50 is probably good for most people ideally.
Yeah, you know, you're going to get the guys is all working for several hours and this that the other and I say, OK, well, you know, at least get three and then a, you know, fourth one before bed. Right. And that works pretty well. Yeah, it's a big deal to have a couple things, you know, a little couple cartons, a Greek yogurt before bed or something.
Yeah, no big deal. And that can it adds up, you know, if you add it up over the days and weeks, it's it's a lot more protein added to the diet, even if it's just a little serving like that. OK, so I think I think we're pretty much an agreement on that and what the kind of the main dream thinking is is, you know, divvy up your protein a little bit. Don't try to get it all in one or two big feedings a day.
You're you're unlikely to meet the requirement, I think, and even if you do, it's probably less efficient than then breaking it up a little bit more. And this kind of it's kind of the what kind of finish up with the protein thing here, but this kind of dovetails into a much, much larger topic, which is the whole.
The concept of pre and post workout nutrition. This was a it's still a big deal. And again, I think largely pushed by the supplement industry, because you I mean the the the amount of focus now on young lifters on your pre workout supplement is like nothing I've ever seen and pre workout always been around. Yeah, the stimulative based stuff and then there was you know, it was all back in the day, it was all kind of fat burner based, it was Xenadrine and hydroxy cut.
And there was like, you know, and that you know, yeah, yeah, and it was all based on these ECA stacks of the effedron and the caffeine and the aspirin, which is what the white willow bark or whatever they call it. And you know, that was kind of the three that kind of the holy grail or whatever. And then, you know, I felt like actually a lot of those work. I think when they stripped the effedron out, you know, when they started having guys dying and they were found in.
Lots of a fedron in their system and all that that they took it off the market. I think they became less effective. You know, do I know that I don't know. But but these pre workout supplements have been around for a long time. And then at some point, maybe it was early 2000s, the the nitric oxide supplements came out. Yeah. And then now that and they they've kind of stayed around, which the whole idea with that is that, you know, you get a better pump.
You know, and I've never taken them. So I don't I don't really know me either. You know, but but basically that was the idea was that these things, the increase, you know, kind of like it works like kind of like Viagra for your biceps, right? Yeah.
You know, it kind of increases blood flow to the target tissue. And so when you're doing curls or whatever, you know, maybe you really couldn't feel your arms that much. But then you're doing the curls and then boom, you've got this amazing huge pump. You can see that you're doing a lot of vascularity. Maybe that you normally don't see. And so the thought is that, wow, I'm growing like I'm getting there. It's like you're not growing. You're swelling.
You know, you're just you're just got a little bit more blood into the muscle than maybe normally do to the degree that that stimulates a whole bunch of more, lot more growth. I'm skeptical. Yeah, the where we are now with the pre workout supplements, but you know, to me, I've I've always used a couple a couple black coffee for a pre workout supplement. And that's given me all the, you know, the boost that I need in terms of the the caffeine stimulus, which I which I do believe is effective.
You know, and so I've always used. Yeah, I mean, you're going to get the caffeine that you don't need. You don't need it. And most of those pre workout supplements, the the only really active ingredient is the caffeine. And then they're loaded up with what is by large a bunch of inner crap. And they're, you know, but so you don't pay for anything other than the caffeine, which can be a couple black coffee from your, you know, your mister coffee and your kitchen.
You know, that's that's always my advice to people, but, but so on the pre and post workout stuff. I'm not too concerned with the stimulants and all that kind of stuff. But the idea there was a book that came out years ago and this kind of it kind of got all the the the nutrient timing, I think that was the name of the book. I forgot who wrote it. But anyways, it didn't matter.
It that it really, really got that kind of the the performance side of things, the bodybuilding crowd, the lifting crowd really, really, really hung up on the idea that that pre workout and post workout nutrition were the keys to everything. As with a lot of things, I don't I don't think that pre and post workout nutrition is unimportant.
But I don't think it's necessarily the keys to unlocking your gains. So what are your what are your thoughts on on that in terms of specifically, is it relates to protein, the idea that and I used to be religious about this when I was a teenager in my early 20s. I mean, the minute that I was done with that last set, I was hitting a protein drink. Yeah, say me because it was like I was totally bought into the idea that you were completely catabolic at that state and your muscle weight.
You're literally wasting away like by the minute and that and again, this is a lot of it was pushed by the supplement industry, right? Because and that you and not only not only did you need protein like the minute that you were done with your last set, but it had to be way protein. It had to be in liquid form because anything else you were wasting too much valuable time.
And it's I mean, now you look back on it and it's kind of it's kind of ludicrous. You know, I do think it's a good idea to get some protein in within, you know, say an hour or so after a workout. But you know, what are your thoughts on that? The idea of post workout protein timing.
This ties into what I said earlier, I was, you know, back in the day, I was majoring in the miners and I think we have a big problem with that in the industry. And this is one of those situations. So I would, I think I used to at one point I was taking a protein shake before and then a protein shake after then later on I added dextrose to it because I read something about that.
And I was going to get it in that in a minute. Yeah, just to kind of throw my position on it. I typically recommend eating, you know, within three hours before you lift, you know, typically something reasonably high in carbs and protein, you know, load of moderate and fat because you know, fat takes longer to break down.
Better consumed further away from your workout. That's kind of the whole deal there. And then sure, you know, we're after working out. I tell people to do that, you know, is it going to make all the difference probably not, but it's, you know, it's important and you're hungry anyway. So I mean, it's it's logical what hell wouldn't you.
I'm not protein shakes are palatable after workout. That's the other. Oh, yeah. And that's another thing is that it's and I'm not telling people don't have a protein shake after you work out. If that's a habit that you've established, I think that's good. I just it's not as critical as maybe they make it out to be.
I did all of these things in the context of subpar training and that was the problem that I was having is, and you know, we talked about this in the last episode. The part of it was just equipment limitations. I couldn't go up by quarters, you know, it just wasn't happening.
And everybody else was pulling it off. So I'm just sitting there, you know, stuck at the same weights for years. And meanwhile, I'm doing the protein before the protein after the, you know, I think I took creatine at one point ever stuck with that. I took the vitamins, took the, beat the amino acids. I remember with the guy at the supplements store said, oh, you're basics are multivitamins amino acids and way protein.
So, you know, I did every one of those things. And, you know, my conclusion just from the problems that I was having was it was training like shit, you got a train. But no, to answer that question. I think it's important that you know, you go in with some food in you. And I think it's important that you eat reasonably soon after now some of the science behind it where all this comes from.
When they've, there's a lot of papers dating back prior to the early 90s, you might, I think you might find stuff in the 80s. I did an extensive review of lit on this when I was in my masters and, you know, I redid it again, reviewed it again in my PhD. And what the professional researchers have done is they've investigated the acute effects of doing a, you know, high volume workout typically is what they're doing.
So, they might do, you know, five, ten sets of ten on any extension or something like that. This could have changed. I haven't researched anything after 2018, you know, so maybe there's newer papers that did something else. But typically, if they can one or two exercises, maybe a whole workout. And they'll do these tracer studies where they put it what's called a tracer into your bloodstream.
And, you know, they injected into, I think it's into your veins. And then they can see, you know, what goes in and what goes out looking at the difference between what's in the hard reason, what's in the veins. So, they, it's like a tracking device, so to speak, but not really, you know, just my oversimplification, when I explain it to a layperson, they're basically putting a tracker in your body to see where these amino acids are going.
And they're typically looking at losing because they've identified that losing is the key amino acid for protein synthesis. And this is all interesting, of course, but what we're looking at is a snapshot in time, right? So, what we know is when you finish a workout or finish an exercise, and protein breakdown is up, protein synthesis is up. So, you're broken down muscles, so markers of muscle breakdown are elevated, but then you're also trying to rebuild them.
So, markers of muscle buildup or protein synthesis is also elevated. So, what they've done is they've compared what they consider slow proteins versus fast proteins. So, a way is considered a fast protein, meaning you digest it quickly, you know, so that the amino acids get extracted. And into your bloodstream, very fast.
Casing and egg protein are, quote, unquote, slow proteins, so they digest slower. That's why I typically recommend casing or egg white protein powder if you want to use it as a meal replacement. And, you know, I mean, you get the same effect if you mix your way with milk, but, you know, I typically recommend those from meal replacement. They're thicker, they're more filling.
And what they found is that when you take a way protein shake versus a casing or egg protein shake, immediately after a hard workout, you get a greater rise in protein synthesis in that post workout window. Versus, if you take casing or egg, you get a more prolonged rise, but you don't get that acute rise. It doesn't, you don't get as much of a spike right after.
So, what does this all mean? You know, in theory, okay, well, if that's happening and that single snapshot in time, does that mean you're going to gain more muscle? Maybe, maybe not because there's a lot of other variables, right? So, a paper I looked at years ago, in mind you, all studies are studies and human subjects are limited by humans. So, always keep that in mind when you're evaluating these things.
And when I'm talking about them, I am not citing them as fact or the end all, I'm just telling you what they found with the methods they used. There was one study that did one of these tracer type deals where they were trying to look at the acute effects of a workout plus a protein shake versus the chronic effects of training for several months, right?
And they were trying to see if there were relationships between acute changes in protein synthesis and changes in body composition, right? Which I thought was a good thing to look at because I'm not entirely convinced that some of these measurements are good predictors of changes in body composition because of all the other variables involved and adaptive mechanisms that could be taking place in between week one and week 16, right?
Or week 24, however long you're training for, right? And they didn't find a relationship there. They said that the acute variables, the acute measures of protein synthesis were not correlated with changes in body composition from training. So, what does that mean? That means that your protein shake after the workout sure it's elevating your markers of protein synthesis, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to gain lean mass and a dexar or a bod pot or whatever they're using.
Which made sense to me because not necessarily that, not necessarily saying that, okay, if you do that every time it doesn't help, what I'm saying is there's so many other things that play into it. They may not actually capture the effect, right? They're not housing these people, they're not feeding these people, they're not making sure they're training hard in every workout.
Like, you know, these people typically come in and they go home and there's all this other shit. And that's what these, that's what I met when I said human subjects research is limited by human subjects because you can't control humans.
Yeah, and that was, I guess, one of the benefits of the Soviet Union, right? You can lock people up and, right, you know, still do you like rats, you know, in our system, we have to let people go home and the typical university student, how do you control for sleep?
How do you control for, you know, are they, are they drinking, you know, at night or on the weekends, you know, are they actually, you know, you prescribe, you try to control for diet, you try to give everybody a similar meal plan. How do you know who's following it, who's not?
You know, the, like you said, the quality of the training, I mean, that's a massive one that you can't, you know, then that's kind of what I'd always say is that, you know, the, to the degree that the, the timing or the source of the protein post workout matters.
I think it probably does. I mean, I think it's probably better if that, you know, spikes proteins, but how, you know, it's probably a marginal effect like a lot of things in that it's outweighed heavily by say the total amount of protein in your diet is going to be a much more, you know, getting 200 grams every single day, seven days a week is going to be more important than getting a smaller amount at precisely the right moment post workout.
Dude, when I first took over the starting strength boards, I mean, this was what five years ago, I want to say five, six years ago, I'm a nutrition board. I kept getting all these fucking questions about how do I increase my protein synthesis? And I'm sure you get, you got similar questions on your board.
Yeah, because at the time that was like every, because they wanted to, from a, from a training standpoint, they, there was this idea that well, every time you train, there's an uptick in muscle protein synthesis, therefore, train more, you know, and that if, if you're, if you could get elevated amounts of protein synthesis in your, in your biceps from training them, well, then why not train them seven days a week?
Because every time that you did it, you got this spike and every time you got to spike, you grew. So if you follow that logic too far, it was like, you know, the more, the more you train, the more you're going to grow.
And that's not, we know that's not true. You know, muscle group seven days a week. So we know that training a muscle group, you know, once every 10 days is not optimal, most likely, but training, you know, training at seven days a week is also where's the, like you said, where's the kind of the cutoff point to, to how much does that, does that affect, you know, take place versus where you start to get diminishing returns.
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, what I kept telling people my, my blanket response was, you know, we're trying to build muscle mass and put weight on the bar. We're not trying to increase protein synthesis in the lab right now. So let's just focus on that, you know, how strong are you and a lot of the times, you know, they were skipping workouts, not lifting enough or not eating enough overall.
And then they're asking about this very, very specific variable that lab scientists look at, you know, right. And it's just not productive. The other thing too. And this was something I thought through, even in that one study, I just cited. If you really wanted to look at this, you'd have to run those tracers every single fucking day from day one to day, 180, you know, if you're doing a six month program, right.
And that's not practical. Stick in some of the needle every day, right. So you're making an assumption that that response is identical every time you train, right. But as you and I know, there's a stress recovery adaptation cycle, right. You adapt to training over time, right. So my guess is, I don't think that that response is as pronounced the longer you train.
And that's something else that I don't know if you've read about it recently. I remember at one point I was reading something that said as you become more advanced, you turn it over more efficiently. Yeah, I mean, I don't know to be honest, you know, I mean, it's, it's an, isn't an adaptive process like a lot of other things that you become more efficient at at the more that you do.
Like, you know, like kind of like neuromuscular recruitment. I mean, it's a totally different system. But, you know, the more you squat, the better you get it squatting from a from a patterning standpoint. You know, so does your body adapt those other, you know, those processes at the, say the cellular level that we don't see and are almost impossible to measure. Do they get better at that as well with with time? Does it does it know what you're trying to do.
I don't know, I have no idea. It'd be completely guesswork on my part. Yeah, I know that and you could probably speak to this too because you've been training longer than me even. But I know I can, I know I don't have to shovel as much protein as I used to when I first started and when I was running linear progression and it was heavy every fucking workout.
I don't need enough protein. I felt it in the weight room. And it just doesn't seem to be the case now until I come at the end of a training cycle and I've accumulated a bunch of stress and I'm getting ready to, you know, hit some serious PRs. Then I notice I have to like eat a lot more and be more specific with it. But when I'm like building up to that, I don't, I can get away with eating less food than I used to.
Yeah. And I think it, it's like with training, right? The amount of training that it takes to maintain muscle is less than what it takes to build it. You know, you can, you can maintain your muscle mass with a little bit less work than it takes to build it. You know, and I think, yeah, you're right. I mean, I'm, I'm 40, I'm fixing to be 41. I'm five foot, four inches tall.
And you know, at, at, let's say, two, 10, I'm pretty lean at two, 10. You know, if I die it down, like it's hard for me to get down to say one night. So that's, I mean, objectively, I'm not like bragging on myself or what I mean, I'm, I carry a lot of muscle mass. And, and I don't, I don't necessarily lose it that often. And I go through periods of where I'm really, really good adherence to my diet and times where I'm not so much.
And same with training. And it doesn't really, and that, that may have something to do with body type. I mean, we were, I was going to maybe talk on that a little bit too in terms of the ease at which, you know, some people put on muscle and fat versus others where they, you know, they really struggle with one area or the other.
So it may have something to do with just kind of a, of genetics of that, you know, when I started training when I was a teenager, part of the reason I got into it at such an early age was because I had a, I had a pretty dramatic response to it. So I may be genetically predisposed to carrying more muscle mass than the average guy, which would mean that maybe I just, I need to do less in terms of nutrition in order to mean, in order to maintain that muscle mass.
You know, I don't know that, but it makes some sense. Sure. Sure. There's always biological variability with everything. Yeah. So, so this, this kind of goes. This idea that the post workout protein, I mean, it ties in perfectly with the kind of the next question, which, and this has been around forever. This is still really debated.
I've heard my thinking on it has changed over time based really based on my own personal training experience and nutrition experience, but the idea of the post workout insulin spike. You know, that was something I'm sure, you know, in the muscle mags pushed really, really, really heavy was that not only, and if you look back in a lot of the old magazines, I mean, anybody who read the magazines in the 90s remembers the pages and pages of ads for celtech and nitrotech.
And, you know, for younger guys, you may not know what we're talking about, but literally every other page was a celtech or nitrotech ad. And I don't know how many millions of dollars they must have spent in order to get that amount of advertising in there. But, you know, for those of you guys that don't know celtech and there was a ton of other supplements like it.
And it was basically, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, muscle tech was the company. And I think they actually owned a couple of the magazines, to be honest. But the idea was, and it was based on this kind of nutrient timing book was that there was this magical ratio of this four to one carbohydrate to protein ratio that you needed to achieve directly after the workout for, you know, optimal growth and glycogen replenishment and all this kind of stuff.
And so that the idea was that when you consumed your post workout protein that you needed approximately four times that amount of fast acting carbohydrate at the time. So, wallah, you know, the celtech and nitrotech came together, which was they would always recommend.
And so, you know, one scoop of celtech was like 20 or one scoop of nitrotech, which was the protein powder. And it was just a way protein. It's all it was. As you know, one scoop was like today 20 to 25 grams. And then two scoops of celtech was like 80 to 100 grams of pure dextrose with like a little bit of creatine thrown in there.
And so, I think that was the magical thing. And it was based on this book that came out that had I guess research behind it that showed that there was some this magical ratio of this four to one carb to protein ratio that you needed to hit. And that the idea behind it was that you needed to have this massive insulin spike through a really, really high consumption of fast acting carbohydrate immediately after training.
Otherwise, your body couldn't it wouldn't absorb all of the carbohydrate and then and also that when when the insulin was spiked in the glycogen was, you know, the all the glucose was converted into muscle glycogen and shuttled into the cells that it brought the amino acids in. And without that insulin spike, you really couldn't get you really couldn't absorb the protein that you needed. I don't think really hardly any of that is correct.
I mean, does it spike insulin? Yes. Does is it necessary to spike insulin to that degree after a workout? My thoughts on it now after having done it both ways is that no, I mean, you don't want. You're never really truly glycogen depleted. I mean, it takes a lot to really, really you do, I think locally to a degree, but it takes a lot to really get someone glycogen depleted, right? Am I wrong on that?
No, you're correct. That was John Ivy, by the way, I just looked it up. And I remember him quite well because I cited him heavily when I was writing my master's thesis because that's all he did. He just studies on carbohydrate supplementation protein combo and he did a lot of stuff with endurance athletes as well, if I remember correctly.
That's where a lot of that came from. I think a lot of that research that came out was that it did come from a lot of like really long duration triathletes and Ironman competitors and that sort of thing. I think they probably do run possibly more of a scenario where they do get really glycogen depleted versus somebody who's going in and doing a shoulder workout.
Yeah, so, you know, yeah, yeah. I think a lot of lifters misunderstand what's going on with endurance activity because a lot of us don't do it, you know, definitely train for it. So, you know, the way that I'm going to answer this question, I'm going to first explain, you know, there's just like there's training and exercise in the weight room. There's training and exercise when you're running or cycling or doing an endurance activity. Endurance training is hard.
And when I was younger and didn't understand the bioenergetics as well as I should have, I assumed well, you know, they're running. It's light. They're probably burning a lot of fat. I would assume that, but that's not actually true. If you're a competitive marathoner, you're running right at the line of anaerobic. You're like right about, you're right at the edge of sprinting for 26 miles, the really good ones, the guys who trained for this real hard and are good at it.
They're running the entire, they're probably running about 25 of those 26 miles right at the edge of a sprint, right? And that's what they call your anaerobic threshold. And some of them are swimming is probably like 10X that. Yeah, so for whatever reason, I need to, I'm not that well versed on the differences there, but I do know that running produces higher VO2 maxes than swimming.
And part of that instrumentation, it's hard to measure that when you're in the water. VO2 maxes a measure of aerobic capacity for those of you who don't know that's volume of oxygen consumed. And the higher that number, the apparently more aerobically fit you are, although it doesn't, it's not necessarily the best predictor who's going to win a race because you got running economy and all these other things involved.
Just kind of like muscle and strength, right? Biggest guy doesn't always win. Yeah, there's strategy and stuff involved. Yeah, there's all these things that play into it, but it's a pretty good predictor. And they have this point. And when you're doing a VO2 max test, they basically put you in a treadmill and they raise the incline every so often depending on which protocol you're using and they try to get you to essentially fall off the treadmill after a period of time.
And they have wearing a mask and you're breathing into the mask and they're taking the area of breathe out to estimate how much O2 is going in. This is how they do that, right? So when you're, when you get past certain point, you reach what's called your anaerobic threshold where now you are into sprinting territory versus jogging slash running territory right now.
You're sprinting that becomes more anaerobic. It's closer to lifting, you know, than it is going for a jog really good endurance athletes will go right up to that line and maintain that the entire time they're going. And then at the very end they will do an all out sprint at the very end.
And that will break down a lot of glycogen. So it's not really a predominantly fat burning activity. Like if you're sitting on your ass or lying down, you're burning mostly fat because you're not doing very much.
Or you know, you're shuffling on the treadmill at the Y while you're watching TV. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, as the intensity of an activity goes up, whether you know, you go from sitting to walking, walking to running, running to jogging, jogging to running fast, running fast, to sprinting, the more you rely on carbohydrates.
Right. So your carbohydrate utilization goes up the more intense the activity. You can manipulate that. You know, if you go into keto, that will flip that, of course, you could do stuff with diet to manipulate that doesn't mean you're going to get the best performance.
And typically it leads to work worsening performance. That was another funny story. I saw a guy argue that with one of those keto, a keto adaptation scientist that was named art. I think I was an Arthur Finney Finney, he wrote a paper in the 80s saying that
oh, keto adaptation endurance athletes, but then when you look at the measurements, they were taking the people who were the most keto adapted perform the poorest. But yeah, that's a whole separate topic. My point is endurance athletes burn up a lot of carbs. If they're actually training for endurance, it burns up a shitload of carbs because they're teetering right there between sprinting and running fast. Right.
So when you're lifting now, first of all, if you're running several miles, that's thousands of strides, probably, you know, exactly, but the thousands of muscular contractions, thousands of muscular contractions that are obviously lighter than lifting away, but thousands of muscular contractions when you're lifting, they're more intense contractions, but you're not doing as many of them. You're using a lot of creatine.
First of all, so you're using ATP and creatine, that's your first energy system that you use for explosive or high force output activities. And then I think as you, you know, produce set after set after set, you know, an hour of this, you're probably breaking down some glycogen, but you're not getting anywhere near depletion unless you're going keto, you know, if you're manipulating your diet to achieve that. Sure.
So where do carbs become useful in the context of lifting, because I always everybody knows I push a lot of carbs, right. I think that number one, carbs don't just release insulin and replenish muscle glycogen, you store glycogen in your liver.
And that can get easily depleted. That's why in the mornings, if you go and go and fast, and you probably found out, you're like, shit, I'm dizzy, I feel like shit, right. So I think carbs become very important for the guy who works, who wakes up first thing in the morning and trains and hasn't really eaten for 12 hours, right.
Because your liver is the primary regulator of your blood sugar blood glucose, right. Your liver releases glucose or sugar into your bloodstream. Your muscles can't do that. Muscles are very selfish. They deposit glycogen and they feed themselves with it. They can't release it into your bloodstream.
So although your muscle mass is the primary storage of glycogen, you store about 400 grams of glucose glycogen in your muscles versus think about 100 or 125 grams in your liver, you can't release it. You can only be used to feed the muscle.
So your liver is constantly releasing it into your bloodstream to keep your blood sugar up and deliver it to all the various tissues, including the muscle, you know, circulates your blood, goes to your muscles, your heart, all your organs, etc. So if you go into a workout without enough carbs, you got problems with a little blood sugar, right.
Carbs are also excellent for hydration. So for every gram of sugar that you take in, you're taking in triple the amount of water, the three mills of water for one gram of sugar. So that's why Gatorade's formula formulated the way it is. It has sugar, it has sodium, it has liquid, it has potassium.
So that sodium and sugar travel on the same transport or in the body. I'm not going into a whole bunch of physiology here, but it helps pull the water into the intravascular space very quickly. So that's the whole thing about Gatorade.
So there are two things that you could that are worth worrying about, especially if you aren't AM early morning trainee, hydration is one of them. You know, you're waking up after a long fast, you know, you have an eaten eight to 10 hours, maybe 12, maybe 16, it depends on your last meal was, right. So you could get symptoms of low blood sugar or low blood pressure, low blood pressure from not having enough body water in you.
And low blood sugar from your liver being depleted and not being able to release sugar into your bloodstream, not has to go into your muscles or possibly your fat stores to create glucose.
So that's going to impair performance, you know, it's not necessarily that you don't have enough glycogen to tap into. It's that, well, you're dizzy, the rest of your body is not getting sugar and you feel like shit, right. So that's why I always say make sure you have enough carbs so that you're hydrated enough, your blood pressure is normal and your blood sugar is normal.
I started thinking that through deeply when I was running up my press six, seven, like six, seven years ago and kept getting dizzy and fainting. Then one day I trained in the evening and it didn't happen. And I'm like, am I belt hole went up one. And I'm like, it's fucking carbs. I'm coming in. I'm not hydrated enough. I don't have enough fluid enough enough sugar.
So then I started thinking through it. Why the press always tanks on a diet because the it's such small muscles when you change the leverage at all on that when you when you start losing a little bit of muscle glycogen and also therefore water around there because your carbs are low calories are low. That's why I think the press. It suffers more than any other lift just because the the the decrease in favorable leverage is more consequential on that lift than it is on any other lift.
For me, it's a fucking bench press, but that went down to the press went down to. So in terms of the insulin response, I think there's something there. I mean a lot of bodybuilders take insulin so they can eat more clearly effective when you take it exogenously and do all that which I don't recommend. I've never done it.
I think that's I don't think most people will, but that's an incredibly dangerous way to say I've always thought that exact thing. I'm like, okay, you know, I always understood testosterone and why they do that once I started hearing about insulin. I'm like, I don't want to fuck with that. You know, I wouldn't recommend it.
And I think that goes back to a lot of like that. Just like again, knowing the context of like when you see people's training in a snapshot and you look at say an IFBB pro bodybuilder and you see like a ton of really, really high rep training like like the types of protocols were, you know, four sets of 25. Yeah, that sort of thing. And you see those types of protocols and also and then doing that sort of thing and then also coupling that with massive carbohydrate intake post workout.
Yeah, like seven 800 carbs a day. Yeah, you know, what the fuck? And I don't think the average person doesn't understand that that has to be considered in the context of taking insulin, you know, which most of the top guys I would assume do, you know, at the top of the IFB.
And so that that that training protocol, if the average natural lifter tries to do, you know, four sets of 25 or whatever on a bunch of these lifts and just turns into a big ball of inflammation in terms of getting into instead of getting jacked. Well, that's why because all three of those things, the insulin supplementation, the super high rep training and the excessive amount of carbohydrate intake.
You know, those all three go together and a lot of that is is prepping them for the day of the show where they need their body to be able to because they get so depleted prior to and then people don't realize that they're so depleted leading up into the show and then, you know, the day of the day before a couple days before they start loading back up massively on on carbohydrates to fill out those muscle bellies.
And that is something that has to be trained for you have to kind of set the stage for that you can't just you can't just to plead yourself and then eat a shitload of carbs and things you're going to swell up like a body builder like those that like that is a trained.
It's just like peaking for a powerlifting meat like there's a certain things that you have to do in that that all of those things together are part of what say a pro body builder does that has almost no bearing on what the rest of us do.
Yeah, so to you know answer your original question. Sure, if you take carbs after your workout and I'm not saying a boat load of them because again physiology is different in this situation and you take it with protein probably going to deposit it a little bit better just in theory it makes sense, but you need to load up any like 150 carbs and like you know 75 grams of protein probably not for most people you know, but I don't I think it's probably a net positive to take in some carbs some fast acting carbs.
After a workout if you're training in the morning, you should definitely take a little lot more carbs and you would at night. So when I'm people that are the idea of the idea that I've always told my training, especially the guys that trained real early like five or six.
AM that you know they'll wake up and it's hard to get in like a ton of carbs and then just immediately hit the gym. I for one don't feel good when I eat a ton of carbs and then go train immediately. I like to have an hour to to let them digest and I'll tell them just buy us more of your carbs towards the nighttime meal before you go to bed and it's still going to that's still going to be there.
I think so you know I think so something that's like slower digesting like oatmeal or something before bed right. I mean you know some people can stomach that at night, but you know just one example you know beans or another one berries etc. But you just want you do want to be able to release glucose into the bloodstream so that you're not getting hypoglycemic or hyper intensive or hypotensive sorry hypotensive during the workout.
You know I guess at Gatorade's great if you can drink that in the morning, I've done dextrose typically in those morning hours you need more because of the effects of low blood sugar, low blood pressure and that comes from the overnight fast, but if you're loading up before bed, I think that works just fine. I have guys like man woke up full you know and then they're fine.
I used to get dizzy because I eat pretty normal during the day and I don't load up at night, but that's usually what I'll have them do is something like oatmeal or rice at night and then and then wake up in the morning and hit a smaller amount of carbs like Gatorade or something like that that's easily digestible and then and then go train. Yeah.
And I agree with you, I think that you know some post workout carbohydrate is a good idea along with the protein. I mean for most people, you know most of the meals that I prescribed them are are kind of a combination of both protein and carbohydrates, so but I don't necessarily
do anything special in that post workout meal to try to massively spike their insulin and I've also and you can maybe confirm this real quick in terms of protein taken in a high I'm say 50 grams away protein also has an insulin spiking effect in and of itself even without the presence of carbohydrates that is that accurate. I don't know I mean I don't measure my blood sugar anything like that, but I've heard that as well.
I'm not entirely sure on that I have to read up on it some more, but my thought there would be well those shakes aren't carb free usually there's some carb. And amino acids can be used to make glucose as well. Right. I don't know that you don't know that you do. I've heard that.
I know Nathan does he does a lot of work with with people that you know are really insulin resistant type of thing and he's always said that he kind of avoided you know like massive protein feedings even even carb free with them just because of the the spike in insulin from from that as well. That will make sense because you can you can certainly make glucose from those amino acids. Right. And I can amino acids. All right. That's the end of part one. Like I said, this was a meaty discussion.
So we decided to break this up into two parts. We will air the rest of this episode next week. In the meantime, if you want to check out more of Dr. Santana's work, you can go to the weights and plates podcast, which we have linked in the show notes below. At the underscore Robert underscore Santana. All right. We'll talk to you again next week.