Fitness Fiasco
Fitness Fiasco
015 What Works for You: Female, strength with half-marathon training (6mo post-op knee)
This episode provides a detailed exploration of personalizing training and nutrition for individuals like Gloria , who is preparing for a half marathon while managing post-surgical recovery. We discuss the importance of addressing fitness goals, creating balanced workout routines, and maintaining an appropriate nutritional plan for optimal performance.
• Analyzing the fitness avatar of Gloria, who is a coach herself
• Discussing the balance between performance and aesthetic goals
• Exploring the intricacies of her strength training and running regimen
• Providing nutritional guidance focusing on maintaining muscle while training
• Highlighting the critical role of recovery and proper sleep quality
• Emphasizing the importance of individualized coaching and communication in fitness
Send us a voice note, check out show notes and more at our site: https://www.fitnessfiasco.com/
Host Mike - https://www.instagram.com/mikeosunafitness/
Host Erik - https://www.instagram.com/erikbustillo/
Host Rob - https://twitter.com/RobStrength
The Fitness Fiasco Podcast provides general information on health, wellness, and fitness and should not be regarded as professional medical advice, treatment, or diagnosis. No doctor/patient relationship is established through this podcast. Listeners are responsible for their use of any information or resources shared in this podcast or associated materials. This podcast's content should not supplant consultations with qualified health care professionals concerning any existing medical conditions. It is crucial for listeners to avoid disregarding or delaying professional medical advice based on the information provided in the podcast. Remember to consult your health care provider for personalized guidance on your health and wellness journey.
Are we a go, Rob we're a go. We're a go, we're back. We're back for season. We don't even know what the season is, are there?
Speaker 2:seasons Never ending. Season one Never ending, all right.
Speaker 1:We'll just keep going, all right. So, rob, if you want to explain real quick what we did on my social media and what we're about to pull up, yeah.
Speaker 2:So Mike posted on his social media earlier in the week asking for Avatar, essentially, and what we're going to do is we are going to provide our own advice, based on our specialties, for an individual, a real person, who submitted who they are, what they're you know, how tall they are, how much they weigh and what their goals are, what their current exercise activity looks like, what their current nutrition is and what their real life looks like, and we're going to provide our our advice, as if they were our client, on what we would do to help them reach their goals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. That's exactly what it is, rob. So I did get permission from some of these people that chimed in on my Instagram to say their name and give them a shout out. So the first one that I'm going to give a shout out, it's actually one of my old employees, one of my old coaches. Her name is Gloria Rodriguez. Her Instagram is let me look that up real quick because I do want to give her a shout out and I appreciate her actually chiming into which she's a former coach and she's still reaching out for help.
Speaker 2:That says a lot, because I know a lot of people are afraid of, or maybe not afraid, but are a little embarrassed about, reaching out for help when it comes to your health and or diet. And don't be afraid, we've seen.
Speaker 1:We've seen a lot worse than whatever you're presenting us with you know, I also think that it it's also a different approach, right. So I I get I'm sure you guys get spammed all the time um, either for business coaching or physique coaching or performance coaching, and a lot of times they have free guides, right. So I signed up. I mean, lane Norton does all the time. There's a couple other guys that I follow that you know are really experts in the field that I signed up just because I want to see their approach. Like, what are they doing on either the business side and or the coaching side, or shit? Should I come out with a free ebook or whatnot? So I sign up for them a lot too. So I kind of think it's funny on their end when they see, like, all right, this is a coach's a coach also as well. So I think gloria is kind of doing the same thing. You're like, all right, what approach would you guys take to this? And obviously she knows all of us, and so I think she highly respects our opinion, you know. So, all right. So it's, her name is Gloria Rodriguez and her Instagram is glowglorodriguez with a Z R O D RI G Z. So uh, gloria, I appreciate you reaching out to us and give us this information.
Speaker 1:So, female, fit, five foot five, 138 to 140 pounds is what she weighs. She's 30 years old, uh, she's a wellness coach, uh, and she goes for walks five to seven times per week. She exercises six times a week and she runs. I'm sorry. She does six training sessions. Three of those are endurance running specifically, and three are strength training. Now I didn't really pick apart her training, like I didn't ask her to be specific on what type of training that she's doing. So we're going to have to kind of guess some of these things. I know I would follow her pretty well on social media, so I kind of see some of the things that she's doing. I could chime in on that, but I think that's important, especially when we do our assessment forums.
Speaker 1:I ask, obviously how many times a week do you train? And then let's get down to the specifics of this training Are you lifting weights? If you are lifting weights, is it CrossFit, is it hypertrophy? Is it powerlifting? And then we discussed cardio. So I really try to get as much in-depth details as possible as a person's current training program. I did not do that with Gloria or any of the avatars, but then I asked her what is her goal? And she wrote performance wise, she wants to run a half marathon. She's post knee surgery. I don't know how long. I'm going to guess about six months, cause I know her.
Speaker 2:If she's cleared to exercise, that's good enough from our approach. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. And physique she wouldn't mind toning up a bit, losing up a little bit body fat, uh, but concerned with it, um, it's not her primary goal. So it seems like her primary goal is performance. At walking around at 138 140 pounds, she has a good physique. Um, aesthetically pleasing, food wise, she's currently maintaining, uh, which is 2,000 to 2,200 calories per day. And that's all the info I got, and we could just add some fill in the blanks for some of the stuff that we were trying to do first. So how do you guys want to type this? Do you guys want to type the performance side first?
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I think the first thing we got to do is kind of dissect and prioritize her goals and and go from there Right. So basically, what we did here is is we're we're doing a needs analysis, um which we're figuring out what her needs are, and then we're going to analyze what she needs to to accomplish those goals. And she has her goals, and then we might need to reprioritize some of them, but in her case, she's generally healthy. I don't think we need to say like, hey, you shouldn't be worried so much about big biceps right now. We got to focus on losing weight. It's like no, she's, she's healthy. What are her goals?
Speaker 2:Maybe the only thing that we would need to prioritize is is minimizing overtraining. You know, my guess is she's probably, you know, she might push the border of what is too active, but I'm going to I'm not going to factor that in here because she's not she's working out six times a week. She's not working out six times a week and running. So I think she, I think she's monitoring that well. So her, the number one goal I heard was run a half marathon and kind of, while running, while training for that half marathon, maintain what she has, if not muscle mass yeah correct, correct.
Speaker 2:So if she's running three times a week and doing three strength training exercises I'm going to start to, you know I would then my first thing would be do you need a running program? You know, are you just getting out there and doing mileage or do you need a program targeted for a half marathon? Right, which is, you know that would be. That would be step one, and then step two would be to look at the strength training and make sure it factors it. It factors in for for her running, you know, for her goal of of running the half marathon, which generally, at age 30, with miles on the body, as we, as we get up here, especially as a coach, it needs to compliment marathon training and that's going to be a lot less lower body than you think. Um, it's not like you're not going to go for a 10 mile run on Monday and then do a whole lot of lunges and Bulgarian squats on Tuesday. All right, so our, your marathon training generally. I'm going to start to. I would probably start her on a very, um, my, my initial, my initial programming would start to look on making sure she's able to have eccentric control. Uh, specifically working in stuff like, like depth, drop lands. But I'm not talking 24 inches, we're saying three inches, six inches. Step off a three inch step and land. I'm looking at the knees, I'm looking at the ankles. Um, while we're doing that if I'm able to see her in person, oftentimes with high volume running we're going to start to look at issues with um, calf range of motion, ankle range of motion, and there's always the potential there for Achilles strains and tears, which we're seeing a whole lot of, you know, in sports these days, and a lot of that comes down to just limited ankle dorsiflexion range of motion. So I try to get an assessment on that, while working on just our eccentric control, and start to work on the capacity to do ballistics and plyometrics, which might seem pretty advanced, but ballistics and plyometrics are going to be the best compliment for someone who's experienced for working on, for getting them ready for a half marathon, and that will also be. You know you can work that into her approach on.
Speaker 2:On recovery from the knee surgery. We started looking at eccentric control of the knee stuff. You know, bulgarian squats would be a good exercise here. But again, trying to avoid high volume on the legs. You need to modulate that. But you can do stuff like single leg drops with a Bulgarian squat. So you're in a Bulgarian squat at the top and then instead of just descending into your squat, you actually kind of do like a little, like a little hop and then land in in the bottom. Um, and those are all very challenging exercises. You know those aren't for everyone, but then you know I think what can she do?
Speaker 2:Where am I starting with her? And I take it back to are we just doing stuff like supported pogo hops, low box, jump, repeats, big fan of so, just like a three, like a 45 pound plate, and you're just hopping back and forth, back and forth, on and off 20 reps, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, type deal, getting those reps and making sure you're working on, you know, stable middle, which is so important for running, but just that elasticity through the calves, achilles, hamstrings. So that's one thing in this case I would start is kind of one of my longer progressions for ballistic, plyometric, eccentric control, because that's a great way to maintain lower body strength and muscle mass and compliment with endurance, endurance performance, because they're getting the muscle volume we need, the nervous system volume.
Speaker 1:Would you do these on her strength training days? So she wrote she does three and three. So I'm assuming she does three strength training days, three, uh, running days. So you would do these on her strength training days and this is how you would start off the workout.
Speaker 2:You start off with some plyo, some ballistics yeah, yeah, my typical workout structure is is going to be a five minute warm-, five to ten minute warm up where we're looking at general dynamic movements, reverse lunges, lateral lunges, good mornings, right. After those five to ten minutes, then we do the gentle, the gentle knurls, which are going to be your plyometrics, your ballistics. And again, it depends on you know, you say ballistics or plyometrics and you either think of what Instagram people do or you know all these wrong exercises, or just super advanced plyometrics where people are jumping off four foot, you know four foot boxes and landing. It doesn't have to be that much, right, just if you just jump.
Speaker 2:Jumping jacks are ballistic or plyometric, right for, for example, um, you know, and? And so after that 10 minute warm-up, five to ten minutes of these neurals and then we would start to work into the, the lifts. So that's where, whatever you know, again, for her, because she's getting so much leg volume, it would be more bias, more towards upper body. Granted, every workout would be total body. So I'd say, like there's a total body pull emphasis, total body, push emphasis stays.
Speaker 1:Got it. So then, on her running days. So now she attacks her running days. Would you do some sort of linear periodization with that Working days? So now she attacks her running days, would you do some sort of linear periodization with that, um, working her up to a half marathon, looking for her peak, and then maybe, like a taper week, walking into that?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah. So for for running for a half marathon, that does depend on, like the depending on on what her her goals are. Um, like, is she just trying to accomplish a half marathon in which, in which case, then, we're just trying to get up, get up the volume, uh, which a big fan, a big fan of of like the walk, run type stuff. Um, I know footworks does a good job with with getting people ready for their first half marathon, where they you know they're, they run two miles, then walk a mile or something like, and you just build, build that up. That's a great way of of building up volume. If you've not run before, um, I'm not a big fan of of running too much further than a mile anyway, myself. So you know it's, uh, do it, do as I say, not as I do, in in in in this case. Uh, but if she is more experienced with running, then we're going to start to look at how far out is this half marathon build. You know the there I would. I would love to say that you don't need mileage to be good at endurance performance, but all the research suggests that you do need mileage on the road to be good at endurance performance. However, it's much slower than most people do. Um, you know it's, it's almost the speed as if you were training for a hundred miles is going to be your, your LSD runs, your long, slow distance training runs.
Speaker 2:And then I just was talking with Jose Otero the other day. He's a Uber distance runner, great distance runner, that's been involved with our CrossFit gyms for many years. Um, your CrossFit gyms that I worked at. Um, but, uh, um, and Jose was has moved away from some of the half marathon marathon training and got into some really long training and he's like Rob, it's. It's amazing, when I slowed it down, how much more recovered I am, how much easier my, my training feels.
Speaker 2:And it's just, you take it a notch below your marathon pace to this LSD pace, which is, you know for, is going to really help with fat metabolism as well. That's one of the training benefits of it. So you're going to get your miles that way, you're, you're going to get your mileage that way. In the beginning you'll probably just do two or three of those really slower, longer ones a week and then you can start to work in your intervals uh, short intervals, long intervals, tempo training uh, tempo training would be like at race pace, or even faster, mile repeats. 800 meter repeats would be my, you know. 800 to mile repeats would be the longer intervals. 200 to 400 repeats would be the shorter intervals um 800s are gross.
Speaker 2:Yes, they are. Yeah, they put you at a weird pace. Your, your 800 is your fran. Time is as always. That's why fran sucks so much and that's why the 800 sucks so much, because you really just push that, that anaerobic glycolytic capacity of you, completely, but the yeah like, and then you just kind of modulate the training volume.
Speaker 2:So there's, there's a concept where it's called a training impulse score and every type of every mile that you run, or every interval that you run, has a has a number associated based on the difficulty, and that's how you track your training tonnage with, with running, and it's called a trim score. All right, so a long slow distance, one mile equals one, whereas for tempo training, um, you know, tempo training, that is where you're doing, let's say, a hundred or two or three miles, recover two or three miles, but you're doing it at or below your, your race pace. So it's a, it's a much faster pace. That would be like a training impulse score of a three. So 10 miles of long slow distance, you accumulated 10 points, whereas, uh, nine miles of tempo training on a hard workout later in the week, let's say, that's a lot of miles, but either way, that would be, that would be 27 impulse points. So the impact on recovery is much greater from that and that's how you would make sure that you are progressing and do have those deload weeks built in Right.
Speaker 1:So if you so, if you earn a certain amount of points, you're going to get weeks built in right. So, if you so, if you earn a certain amount of points, you're going to get um the opportunity, once you hit that threshold, to take a deload week or recovery time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I use the words points there, but it's not so much accumulating points as much as it is for the coach to modulate volume, it's just making sure that you're progressing at a safe, at a safe rate, adding a few extra training impulse points per per week and taking, taking it off when necessary and when you say you spoke about run, walk uh protocol along with the interval training, what's the recovery time?
Speaker 1:let's say on that uh that 800, right? So if they run an 800, how much recovery time would you give before the next 800 uh?
Speaker 2:one to one is going to be where one to one and one to two is going to be the most common work to recovery ratios. They're're, um, really dependent on on on what you're looking at. Um, you know, you could, you could cut it short a little bit, you can go a little bit longer. It depends on what they're strong, what they're they're stronger at. Uh. So if someone is better aerobically, like if someone runs a lot of marathons and they're now they want to improve their, their half marathon or even their 5k, 10k times, so they need more experience in that anaerobic threshold, then you're going to want to um, then you're going to want to, to increase that rest, to push the pace during the run right, whereas someone's the opposite. If someone's much better, like myself I'm much better at 400 or 800. And I want to run a half half marathon I need to work more in that one-to-one realm than the one-to-three realm to work on what I'm bad at To get you back on the track, to work on that endurance side of it.
Speaker 2:Correct. Correct, because a one-to-one work-rest ratio is pretty typical for aerobic one-to-one, one-to-two. Now, if we're talking speed works, going strength and conditioning style, like you're doing 40s, a work-rest ratio there would be like one-to-20. So, if you're doing a four second, let's say you're doing a flying 40 or a flying 30, for example, it takes four seconds, right? What's 20 times four seconds? You're looking at an 80 second minute, 20 recovery, and that's why you see these people do flying forties every 30 seconds. You're not working speed, you're just doing aerobic conditioning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. Um. I'm sure you've run hundreds before on a football field and then old school was just okay, walk around the football field and make it back, and sometimes if you're pacing too hard, by the time you make it back you're just not ready to go for the next one. It's just not enough time, correct? It's an incredibly slow walk.
Speaker 2:And what speed is football at? It's at full speed. It's not at that jog speed. And then shout out to Coach Swayze who got the head football strength and conditioning job at Colorado yeah, with Coach Prime right now. So he was a big pioneer in my early, early days as a graduate assistant on seeing speed training in person.
Speaker 1:That's very cool, as much as I try not to be a Colorado fan. Then they bring in Sapp, and then they bring in Swayze. I'm like God. These guys are just making me want to like them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so all right.
Speaker 1:So let's just kind of catch up where we're at now. So she's training three times a week. She started off with some ballistic plyo in the beginning that she's going into her compound lifts, mostly focusing on upper body, ish, right, so three times a week to the body.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wouldn't Emphasis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's it'll bias towards the upper body just because, again, the lower body is getting that. That poundage on the road Got it. You'd be surprised how you know how much you know. If you go for a long run and you get in the next day and into the gym the next day and try to squat, your legs and knees are just not feeling it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so she's also doing some uh track work or, you know, road work, three times a week with a protocol that we kind of just went over there. She's probably still going to maintain muscle mass. If not, she's probably going to shed some body fat. So let's talk a little bit about uh. Just because her training volume is so high, let's talk a little bit about her food. One thing I do want to throw in before we get to eric really, quick is for for pacing wise.
Speaker 2:So to understand what your pacing is, um, I would do all of that and that is best done if I have a good 5k time for you. So if you know your 5k time, I can estimate VO two, max VO two max pace. A half marathon pace, marathon pace, 5k pace, 10k pace, and I'd get your fast intervals, short intervals. So if you do want, like endurance, specific training, if you have a 5k time that makes you know, I have equations that would then make our job very easy of figuring out what pace you need to go at, whether you're going at a miles per hour or a heart rate or yeah, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's important. Your initial question is is she just trying to complete a half marathon, like a Disney half marathon, or is she like going for the gold type of thing, right? So that's a good question to ask. We would typically ask on our intake forms, what, through Instagram didn't get that in depth, right? Yeah, so we're just guessing here. So, eric, five, five, 30 years old, 140 ish pounds, 40 pounds, and she's eating about 2200 calories. She said I'm eating at maintenance and I'm going to guess she's deducing that she's on maintenance because she's not gaining or really losing any weight. So you know, theoretically she's pretty much on point, which I think is good at her. What would you do? Is there anything you would add or change her macros in any way?
Speaker 1:I guess she didn't get specific on that but let's assume that she's a newcomer and doesn't even know how many calories or macros that she's in For sure. Yeah, she's a newcomer and doesn't even know how many calories or macros that she's in For sure.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, the first thing that I would do is, when I look at those numbers female 355, 139 pounds I'm going to calculate the BMR just to see where it's at. And that puts her at around 1350 of the basal metabolic rate, which we did an episode on that.
Speaker 4:So, go listen to it and then I'll factor in all right, based on her training, like there's going to be this activity factor which, in her case, something like multiplying that BMR by like a 1.5 or 1.6 or something along those lines, and that puts her right around that like 2000-ish calories, 2000, maybe 2200. And who knows, maybe she did exactly that and that's where she got maintenance from. I don't know if she's tracking her weight and all of that, and I came up with that number just like. For me it was just kind of like a generic estimation, since we don't have more information on exactly what her workouts look like.
Speaker 4:Three days of strength, three days of running, for all I know she's running one mile. Running one mile is not going to make a huge difference on somebody's nutrition, you know so, and not knowing wherever her macros are at. But I do know that she says that she doesn't particularly care about her weight. So okay Then, if you're fine with what your weight is, great. She did mention something about toning, so that would be supporting body composition, but she never says that she would want to be lighter. And now I don't know how experienced of a runner she is, but some people who have been running for a while or or maybe are just in the space they kind of know like, well, if I'm a little bit lighter, I'm gonna feel a little bit better. So and maybe for her she feels good where she's at, so she's not focused on her weight.
Speaker 4:With that in mind, assuming that she's okay with where her weight is, from a protein standpoint, I would recommend that she's at a minimum, at around 110 grams of protein per day, with the assumed level of activity that she's going to be taking in.
Speaker 4:And Rob alluded to something that's important too as far as like going longer, runs, slower tempo, and like fat oxidation for fuel. So now we're getting a little bit into like metabolic flexibility right, where you're using fat when needed and using carbs when needed in her case, again, not really knowing much about and this is like I think it's important for people to hear, like the more specific you are with telling us what you're trying to accomplish, then the better we can make the suggestions for you and tailor your program for specifically for your training, specifically for your nutrition um, there's a reason why there's 20 apps that you can get for general advice and we cost a little bit more than that for sure, without a doubt, and and even to that point, even if the general app because I mean with algorithms and people's experience like they can do a good job of anyone can calculate a bmr, you go on Google and you put BMR calculator or whatever.
Speaker 4:But I think the important thing for people to your point, rob, for people to understand is, like it's coaching is a conversation, right, like the app will potentially maybe maybe not come up with the same numbers that I come up with, right, but then it's like the art is kind of in the explanation, the art is in the adjustment as needed. The art is also knowing their past medical history, their past experiences with their nutrition and all those sorts of things, because I mean apps and AI and all those things. They're helpful tools. I mean apps and AI and all those things. They're helpful tools, but nothing will ever replace, like our knowledge, our experience and all those sorts of things, which that's what makes a coach a great coach.
Speaker 2:At least within the next few months.
Speaker 3:Nothing will replace us.
Speaker 4:I don't think we'll ever truly be replaced, as good as ai can get and all those things, but either way, um, so in in in her case. Um, I'm obviously going to want to make sure she's still getting an adequate amount of fat. Now, how much that's going to depend on things like medical history, what training looks like, um, preferences, all those things. And then, of course, carbohydrate is going to be an important aspect here, where a lot of people might think I'm doing endurance, I'm going for long runs, I have to go higher fat because you know what I just said about metabolic flexibility. But I think they misinterpret that, because maybe she is going to do like tempo runs.
Speaker 4:Like when I hear people that do CrossFit that they go on low carb, I'm like you're doing yourself a disservice. You know what I mean. You need that, that. So it depends on what the training looks like. So, ultimately, um, at least for the start, yeah, maybe keeping it at around 2200 and see how she feels. There's a good chance that the number of calories will go up, um, especially as training goes ramping up, uh, and just with that in mind, there's going to be a chance that the macros are going to shift as far as like the percentages and all of those things, because the macros are going to go up as well. As calories goes up, macros are going to go up, obviously. So it just, it really depends, but that's, that's just generally my, my suggestion for all right, eric.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to put some hypotheticals here. Right? So, because gloria is a wellness coach I think we all know, unfortunately, how this game works, right? Especially with the advent of social media we got to look good on camera, we got to look like somebody that other people want to look like. So I'm just going to add some details here to Gloria's quick little recommendations and say that she wants to lose 10 pounds because she wants her four pack to pop out and I don't know if Gloria has a four pack or not now, but I'm just going to assume that she doesn't.
Speaker 1:So when she says something like I want to tone down, I want to tone up a little bit, I mean, we all know what that word, tony, mean. It basically means get rid of body fat so that your muscles pop out a little bit. Right, so we got to get rid of a little bit of body fat. And if she says I not only want to get leaner to look aesthetically better on social media, I also feel that if I drop down to 132 pounds you know, in the light 130 thirties my uh half marathon performance would be better. So if she tells you I've been eating around 2000 to 2200 calories uh per day and I've been stable at 138 pounds. What would be your next move there to get her to lose a little bit of weight while still keeping her performance?
Speaker 4:I would want to. Well, for one, I'd want to know what her training is going to look like and how long she's been doing this. For A lot of times, my advice is to do absolutely nothing, just keep it where it's at and let's see. But also, it depends on how long that's going to be for. So, if her miles are going to start ramping up, like Rob is changing up her program, right, and he's saying like we're going to do this, that and the intensity is going to go up, and, of course, how is she feeling?
Speaker 4:Like, again, this is where, like the, the communication aspect is huge. It's this two way street of learning like, all right, this is how she's feeling, is how she's performing, and should I make certain changes now or just kind of sit on it? Um, so let's just say, if she's been doing this for a few weeks or so and her weight hasn't moved at all, a few weeks or so and her weight hasn't moved at all, um, the first thing that I would recommend is, well, before I say that, when is the race? That's going to be important for us to know too, like I hope people are really seeing, like, how much detail and nuance goes into all of this because when is the race is going to dictate the ramping up of volume or ramping down of volume, and I would more than likely do nothing for the moment. I would want to make sure you know where's your protein, where are your carbs, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:So you want to do nothing to make sure that she is actually eating between 2,000 and 2,200 calories, based on the new training protocol, and then see what happens to her weight.
Speaker 4:Correct. I would want to make sure that she's just staying there, from a caloric standpoint and a macro standpoint, um, to see how her body continues to respond, because more than likely it's going to start. The training is going to start ramping up right. So there's going to be a deficit regardless, and I'm not trying to encourage like under fueling or anything along those lines. That can have an impact on other things too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would assume that, based on my experiences here, I would assume that she would probably start to lose a little bit of weight as the training volume increases, even without focusing on a caloric deficit. And if you do start to focus on a caloric deficit, then I would be really mindful of of modulating recovery.
Speaker 2:I would see that would that would start to take a hit as well. Um then I would be really mindful of modulating recovery. I would see that would start to take a hit as well. So I'm with Eric on that 100%. What he's saying is the experiences that I've seen for individuals in these same situations. The training volume will increase, the weight will come off a little bit as your body's getting ready to perform 100% For our audience it doesn't quite catch.
Speaker 1:What we're talking about here is calories in, calories out. So if right now she's eating at 2,000 calories at her current training protocol but then she hires Rob to train her for the summer Disney 5K or half marathon, so he's going to increase the calories out portion of it, now they're going to be putting themselves in what may be their slightly or somewhat aggressive deficit. Eric doesn't touch their calories and all of a sudden they start losing weight because of the calories outside of the equation, right, yeah, so, um, that's the same protocol that I take when I bring somebody on is like let's just start off, let's truly find maintenance and then let's go from there, let's see how it says from there. Clients have a tendency which I'm sure you guys have experiences that they get impatient. They want to see results right now as opposed to, uh, fighting. That whole concept of under fueling is what you said.
Speaker 1:And, eric, I repeat this a thousand times we want you to lose weight eating the most amount of calories possible, and a lot of that is due not only in the macronutrients but the micronutrients. You know the vitamins and minerals that come with that food. So, um, you know there's that come with that food. So you know there's two different ways that you can put yourself in a deficit either nutritionally or training or both. And the fun part is finding that happy medium of is how do we ramp up your calories out portion of it and keep your calories in where you're still maintaining, you know, health and wellness and fitness and vitality and your libido doesn't suck. And there's a series of questions that we ask when we do put somebody in a deficit. It's part of our look, feel and perform protocol where we're trying to just gauge on what are the ramifications or the consequences of putting you in a deficit on one side or the other.
Speaker 2:One of the guys I roll with at jujitsu cut down to a lighter weight class. He's like libido sucked energy sucked everything. I'm like, yeah, well, don't come down to, to my weight class boy.
Speaker 4:God, that's important though, because people need to understand, like what, what are they willing to sacrifice, right? Right, if you're doing a combat sport, um, well then I hope you know that you got into a sport that's going to require like feeling pretty crappy, like depending on whatever weight you're trying to to to roll that or to fight at, and so on and so forth. So it's like, what's the most important thing for gloria here, right is, does she really care about the half marathon, her time and her performing as best as she can, or she's just like? You know?
Speaker 2:I just I just want to finish it, yeah, and and feel good, or somewhere in between, or somewhere, and that's where the coach will. Then you know for sure we make tweaks as needed and all of that so she goes on it.
Speaker 1:She's there for, call it, three weeks. Weight stays the same. She's still eating about 2 000 calories. Um, rob has already employed. She's been doing rob's new implementation of training protocol with the increased volume for the 21 days. At that point would you start putting her in a little bit of a caloric deficit and if so, what macros would you pull from first?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I potentially would, and I say potentially because I well, at this point we would have already had a conversation about what her history was possibly like. If she's, like, had a history of crash dieting and all these things, um, and how, how soon to doing this, did she experience that? Um, and obviously, having the conversation of, like, is she getting her period and all of that? Um, there's the possibility of maybe even increasing the calories to see how she feels. And if she starts to feel better and then her output increases, now the calories out aspect is going to improve because now you have more or better gas in the system for the system to function at a higher level, maybe, right, this all depends on history and how she's feeling and all of that.
Speaker 4:If I'm doing it just mathematically, then yes, what I would recommend is all right, I'm going to cut back on her overall calories. Let's say she was at 2250 calories. Um, I might try to cut her back to, like maybe by a couple hundred. All right, let's see how you feel at 2,050-ish calories. And then, depending on what the training that Rob would prescribe for her, all right, we might have to mess around with which macros we're taking from, but more than likely. There's a chance that I would probably just keep protein and fat the same and just dance around with the carbohydrates, but never getting carbs super low. But just play with. Play with those and see how she responds. Maybe it will be, you know, a couple hundred calories worth of carbs. Maybe, maybe not. It really depends how she's feeling during the sessions.
Speaker 2:One variable we haven't discussed yet, which is very important, is Mike, do you know what I'm going to say?
Speaker 1:Sleep, sleep, yeah, a hundred percent sleep. So that's, um, that's what I would also tackle and I'll take on the sleep portion of it. I would obviously give her my recommendations once she comes out to this training program and I would say look, we're looking for seven to eight hours, go to bed at the same time, wake up. And when I say at the same time, you're roughly looking at anywhere between 45 to 60 minutes. So if you're going to bed at 9 pm, you're looking for sleep time between you know, uh, let's call it 8 30 and 9 30. Trying to go to bed at the same time, trying to wake up at the same time. The minute you wake up, once the sun rises, go outside, get your 10 or 15 minutes of sunlight, um, try to set your circadian rhythm. Uh, then, throughout the day, obviously expose yourself to blue light, you know, stay active, save, say vigil, and say if you're gonna take a nap, make it a short, quick little 15, 20 minutes if you need it, and then start. The biggest mistake that I see with all of us and I would be guilty of it as well if I didn't adopt this one habit the babies go to bed, my phone goes to bed. So the babies go to bed around 7.30, 8, that little half hour window and the minute I'm done I input my dinner macronutrients into my phone because I need my phone for that and then I put it to sleep. I put my my whoop alarm and my two other alarms and I put it by my bed, I plug it in and I do not look at it the rest of the night, because if I look at it and I see a text message, I feel the urge to ask it or to answer it, and then my fault, for my thumb has this weird way of going onto Instagram and doom scrolling again. So I put my phone to bed and I recommend this to all my clients. As a matter of fact, one of their daily tasks is called a digital detox and it's basically bedtime, kind of the same protocol, obviously, like you said, alluded to many times, eric is I try to figure out their lifestyle.
Speaker 1:I have a client right now. Her name is Margarita. She has five kids and they're twins and they're all below the ages of five, so her world is a little bit different than you know. My 22-year-old badass that's, you know, trying to become an MMA fighter, right? So two different protocols but I still try to figure out how much sleep they're getting. And then, once we implement this protocol, then I follow up with how are you sleeping? Are you waking up in the middle of the night? Are you sleeping soundly? You know what's your performance feel like. How do you look? Do you have any, uh, reoccurring illnesses, like little colds or flus or whatnot? How do you feel in the gym? How's your libido Are you looking forward to?
Speaker 1:training today.
Speaker 2:Correct yeah.
Speaker 1:Are you motivated, ambitious, ready to take on the world? Or are you just sluggish, right? Because then I'll look at the other two factors. Okay, then, what's training look like and what's the calorie intake look like? So-.
Speaker 2:Resting heart rate If she's plugged into, if you're doing this through trainer eyes, you can get resting heart rate data and checking that every morning within five to 10 beats Outside of that, you start to worry about overtraining or undersleeping.
Speaker 1:I love my clients to have a WHOOP because I bring them out to the whoop community and I look at their HIV HRV and make sure that they're getting the proper recovery there as well. So sleep, rob, and you knew that I was going to answer the same thing, because that's a huge component of it is, especially when it's performance-based, like Gloria is. Now we're really going to make sure that oh wait, you hired a strength coach and you hired a nutritionist. Then we got to focus on the recovery side of it, because that's the third and most underrated pillar when it comes to whether it's fat loss or whether it's performance or just overall wellbeing. The sleep side of it is huge.
Speaker 1:So, gloria, I hope that you uh enjoyed our advice and, uh, like I said, we're friends. So reach out to us if you want a little bit more, you know, clarification on some of the things we talked about. And good luck on your half marathon. You won't see me there. Like Rob, I don't run more than a mile, but you know I appreciate you reaching out to us and giving us your information.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Fitness Fiasco podcast. You can find more information about the topics covered today and in any other episode on our website, fitnessfiascocom. If you're looking to connect with our hosts, you can reach Eric on Instagram at Eric Bustillo, that's E-R-I-K-B-U-S-T-I-L-L-O. Mike on Instagram at Mike Osuna Fitness, that's M-I-K-E-O-S-U-N-A-F-I-T-N-E-S-S, and Rob on Twitter at Rob Strength.
