I'm planning on starting to do two work outs a day, a few times a week, pretty soon. Plan on alternating cardio and lifting in the mornings, and BJJ or Boxing in the evening.
My main concern is recovery and when to supplement.
Is it okay to take N.O., recovery supplements, and protein twice a day? Or is it recommended to only take it either in the morn or evening?
The best recovery supplement would be to add another hour or two of quality sleep.
stampy hit the nail on the head.
Rest and eat right. Supplements are rarely needed.
Thanks guys.
I would love to have 10 hours of sleep a night, but the thing is I have a new born and I work 10 hours a day. Not bitchin, lol, but those are the circumstances.
Any more input or advise...
eat lots. eat till you're about to puke, then eat more. Protein shakes will be your friend here.(You're simply not going to eat 4-5k calories of whole food a day)
NO supplements are pretty worthless.
Sometimes quality is more important than quantity.
yakumomutsu - Thanks guys.
I would love to have 10 hours of sleep a night, but the thing is I have a new born and I work 10 hours a day. Not bitchin, lol, but those are the circumstances.
Any more input or advise...
Reconsider doing 2 workouts a day, that sounds like a recipe for burnout and/or injury if your days are like this.
If you do this like 3 times a week and the rest are rest days then you might be fine.
If more than that then your recovery must be superhuman with a newborn and 10 hour work every day.
I'd say you can do two a day workouts if you keep them fairly short - say 30-60 min. In between, take a nap. I've done this regime for 3 weeks every July using a road bike riding the flats at a very brisk rate and have had good improvement in condition.
The body can go into 'supercompensation' and keep this up for about 21 days. Then it's best to take a break.
As stated above, you improve during rest, so I recommend taking a nap in a dark room for about 40-60 min in-between sessions. I'd normally ride at 8-10 am, then again at 5-6 pm, and could keep this up for three weeks, riding at about 18-20mph for ~50 min.
Bear in mind, as I've said in other posts, it's something you should build up to. I was riding about 100 miles/week for the previous 6 months consistently (at age 50), and then went to 2/day rides, bringing my mileage up to about 150miles/week, a 30% increase. If you're younger and in good shape you can probably do more.
But it's not some empiric value. You MUST log your workouts and look for improvement. Use a HRmonitor or gauge by how fast you return to resting heart rate or something. It's hard to see/follow progress unless you journal your workouts and recoveries. If you are not recovering fast enough, back off a little, or if recovering well, ramp it up. Then with this 3 week experience, you can gauge yourself how to continue in future efforts.
HTH.
And don't be a nazi on yourself. First sign of overtraining is the body is fine but motivation to train just isn't there. Don't force yourself in those instances, because recovery might be a problem for you.
If you do what Widespread said, build up slowly and keep the sessions reasonably short, I think you can do it. Training is also a kind of rest if you are stressed out from work and what not.
Get enough sleep, water, protein and the good kinds of carbs and fats first. Consider a zinc-supplement and maybe fish-oil. Do active recovery on off-days. I'm talking going for a half-hour easy walk or something similar.
Fair enough.
In a nutshell, the most important thing you can do for recovery, outside of sleep :), is to replenish glycogen stores after a hard workout. For a 175 lb athlete, this can be accomplished by consuming up to 700 calories of carbohydrates and 175 calories of protein (depending on the length/intensity of the workout) within the first two hours after the workout.
The rest of this is more detailed info. The protein requirement section I have copied from another recent post I made. This is a long post, but I currently spend a lot of time recovering in bed from an injury so have plenty (too much!) time on my hands (or more literally, time on my backside). I did not compose this linearly, but hope that I tied it all together. If not, then I blame my concussion :)
Supplements should be used as a last resort--for most of us non-Olympians, they will rarely be necessary. There may be some cases when supplements are more convenient, but with a little planning that can usually be overcome.
Many people use supplements as an addition to fix something that is wrong with their normal diet...it is better to fix the diet first. For the purposes of this discussion, I use “supplements” to mean any non whole food item. For example, milk is a food, whey protein is not.
Your question focuses on three supplement points...protein, other supplements, and NO. You also asked about timing. Additionally, calories have been mentioned. I'll take them one by one.
PROTEIN
Question #1 is, How much? For a simple overview, check out
http://weighttraining.about.com/od/nutritionforweights/qt/protein_howmuch.htm
In particular, their advice is:
"While the protein requirements for adult males are less than one gram per kilogram of body weight per day, estimates for athletes based on studies that evaluate nitrogen balance, a product of protein breakdown, suggest that up to 2.5 grams/kilogram/day may be required in exceptional circumstances. However, 2.0 grams/kilogram is used by many sports nutritionists as an upper ceiling of protein intake for athletes, weight trainers in particular. (Divide by 2.2 to get protein in grams/pound body weight/day.) Much less than this is going to be sufficient for moderate or less intense exercise."
(The figures are somewhat of a shorthand—e.g. 2.0 grams/kilogram means 2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight, and it is understood that the figures are a daily average.)
Many people will pounce on this and think, Oh, I'm training pretty hard, so I fall into the "exceptional circumstances" and need one gram per POUND of body weight (2.2g/kg). Unless your name is Lee Haney or are being paid obscene sums of money for your sports prowess, you do not fall into the 2.5 grams/kilogram, or even into the 2.0 grams/kilogram. More likely, you are much closer to the 1 g/kg.
Okay, for more scientific-based reports:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1474076 (recommends 1.76 g/kg for strength athletes, but I didn't read far enough to know what the training was like)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15212749 (recommends 1.0 g/kg, and says that the only time more protein is needed is "in top sport athletes where the maximal requirement is approximately 1.6 gPRO/kg/d"
Again, look closely at the recommendations. 1.6 g/kg is for “top sport athletes”. Based on these studies, 1.0/kg is likely enough for the average weekend warrior type athlete. That answers question #1.
Question 2 is “How much protein are you currently getting?” The only way to know this is to track your intake. Guesstimates are a starting point, but most people will underestimate current intakes. Fitday.com or another tracking site will help you with this.
The answer to Question 2 will tell you whether or not you need to increase or decrease protein from your present intake. If you DO need to increase protein intake, then do it by incorporating more protein rich foods into your diet. By food, again I mean real foods. Food is synergistic, meaning that in many cases the nutrients in foods are better utilized by the body in the presence of other nutrients in the food—isolate the nutrients, and they do not always have the same effect.
OTHER SUPPLEMENTS:
A couple of areas where the convenience of supplements may outweigh the “whole food” rule:
When training periods last more than an hour, supplements can help rehydration. Think “Gatorade” or similar products. Homemade recipes are just as good.
For training periods of over two hours, glycogen intake may be necessary in order to avoid bonking. The body generally stores enough glycogen to fuel about two hours of steady exercise. “Hitting the wall” was used by marathoners to describe what happened to them at the 20 mile mark—about two hours for good marathoners—as glycogen stores became depleted. An intake of simple carbs will overcome this—think banana (whole food) or a packet of GU (supplement), for example. For longer efforts (generally four hours or more) a medium-chain carb (maltodextrin, technically short chained but still longer than simple sugars such as glucose) is likely more helpful.
Edmund Burke (and others) also advocate increasing Vitamin C well above RDAs during periods of intense exercise. (Reference #1 at end of post)
NO:
The Nitric Oxide pathway is outside of my knowledge comfort level, from what I do know is highly dependent on arginine and...surprise, vitamin C. Perhaps another good reason to add Vitamin C into the diet, but again I'm on shaky ground here. NO levels are likely higher in trained athletes than in the sedentary population, but whether or not NO levels can be increased by supplementation is, at this point, unknown. (Reference #3 16344941at end)
There are a few studies on arginine supplementation; one of these studies states “The results of this study suggested that short-term arginine supplementation had no effect on nitric oxide production, lactate and ammonia metabolism and performance in intermittent anaerobic exercise in well-trained male athletes.” The athletes used in the experiment were college-level judo players. (Reference #2, 18708287, end of post)
Looking at the ingredient list of NO Xplode would not lead me to believe there is anything “special” in NO Xplode. Their advertising states that “Many of the ingredients in NO-Xplode are completely unique and relatively unheard of, and to date have never been applied to a product of this magnitude.” This type of hyperbole is often used when there is no scientific basis for the product.
TIMING:
Post workout: after a long hard workout, the body needs most to replenish glycogen stores. Dr. Edmund Burke (who has done some pioneering research in this area) recommends one gram of carbohydrate per pound of bodyweight to restore glycogen, taken within two hours of exercise. Additionally, the body's uptake of glycogen is increased in the presence of protein when in the ratio of 4:1 (4 grams of carb : 1 gram protein). If you're 175 lbs, this means 175 grams of carbohydrates (700 calories) and 44 grams of protein (175 calories) ingested in the first two hours after heavy exercise. Fat intake should be minimized. (Reference #1 at end of post). This intake can be either in the form of whole foods, a recovery drink such as Endurox, or a mix of the two. (Reference #1 at end of post)
Protein intake timing:
For strength training, there may be some benefit to a small amount of protein intake before exercise. For cardio training (which MMA workouts would likely fall into) there is a benefit for post exercise intake, which can be met by the 4:1 carb:protein intake plan above. (Reference #4 12831698 at end)
PART TWO FOLLOWS
PART TWO
ONE LAST ITEM, CALORIES
How many additional calories will you need? The Mayo clinic gives some guidelines here:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/SM00109
I think some of their numbers for higher intensity exercises may be overstated—they may be using calories per minute x 60 = one hour, but most classes are not full intensity every minute. Since you'll be ingesting 875 calories in the first two hours after exercise in order to replace glycogen stores (as above), this will likely replenish most of the calories burned in your exercise period, especially if you've also taken in calories during exercise.
It is all too easy to get too many calories in the standard American diet (SAD), as witnessed by the growing epidemic of obesity in this country and in other countries that have even somewhat adopted the SAD. You may find the additional calories consumed after exercise are going to reduce the calories needed from your normal sit-down meals.
I think that's about it, for now. Hope this helps some. Good luck with the newborn and the new lifestyle that must encompass! And remember, training should be a stress on your body, but not on your life.
Stampy
References:
(1) http://books.google.com/books?id=vtVLXxnD1kAC&pg=PA155&lpg=PA155&dq=burke+glycogen&source=bl&ots=LPWYwanXzI&sig)
(2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18708287?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
(3) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16344941?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
(4) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12831698?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Holy shit stampy!!! Thanks man, appreciate it.
Don't have time to read it now but I'll get to it.
Thanks to everyone else as well...
1L of chocolate milk after your morning workout, and whatever you normally have (protein/gatorade/etc) after the night time workout
i swear to allah this is beautiful
Holy fucking shitball that was a great 2 part post
I should add that the post-recovery grams of carb (1 g/lb bodyweight) resulting in 800+ calories post workout is Burke's recommendation when dealing with cyclists doing workouts of a couple of hours (or more). Again, for workouts of less intensity/duration, the number will need to be scaled back, often dramatically.
And for the short version, just look at ndenis post :) That's about all that most will need.
Stampy
ttt