Pre And Post Nutrition Made Easy by Lance Jensen

Lance explains below the importance of pre and post nutrition for your workouts in gaining strength and muscle. This is a really important area. It doesn’t matter if you have the world’s best home gym filled with mickey mouse gym equipment. If you are not getting the right nutrition you will simply not get the results.

Results Start in the Kitchen

Your diet & nutrition is critical to achieving goals from your training. It does not matter how hard you workout. If you are not supplying your body with the correct fuel you will never get close to achieving optimalresults.

Training stresses your body. Every workout breaks down muscle fibres in an effort to move the resistance. Pre and post nutrition is the key to allowing your body to recover optimally from a workout. Without the right foods and supplements you could be wasting large amounts of time and money in the gym.

The human body responds extremely quickly to training and adapts to the training that you do. By ensuring that you are taking the right nutrients and following that up with variation in your weight training you will achieve your goals.

Fuel for the Onslaught

Your body goes through a stage called neural adaptation. Effectively your body’s nervous system prepares itself for the onslaught of a workout. The nervous system actually gets accustomed to your method of training. Overtime it does not fire nerve impulses to as many muscle fibers. This is why it is imperative that you change your training routines and feed your body appropriately.

Let’s not kid ourselves here. We know that pre and post nutrition plus supplementation is massive in assisting with performance. In a world that is fixated on getting bigger, stronger and faster, serious money goes into research and development.

Pre Workout Nutrition

Pre workout supplementation has been around for a long time. The first effective pre workout supplement was creatine back in the 1990’s. Since then things have evolved dramatically. However, not all pre workout supplements are based on sound evidence to assist with increasing endurance and strength through the workout.

A lot of pre workout nutrition mixes include large amounts of caffeine. This is to get you hyped up and ready for a workout. This may work for a short period of time however invariably the big high is followed by a big low.

Essential Ingredients

Here are your most important ingredients for pre workout nutrition supplementation:

Arginine

This increases blood flow to the muscle. More blood flow means there is more oxygen and nutrients available for the muscle. More oxygen also means that your lactic acid, the byproduct of energy production will be eliminated at a quicker rate. This means that you can recover quicker between sets and push harder.

Beta Alanine

Intensive exercise causes your muscle’s pH levels to drop (become more acidic). This affects their ability to contract resulting in a drop in performance. Beta Alanine assists by maintaining your PH levels therefore increasing endurance through your workout. Beta Alanine also assists with recovery due to PH levels remaining fairly constant.

Micronised Creatine

This increases glycogen uptake in the muscle. Glycogen is used by the muscle to create energy. Because glycogen takes water into the cell as well, you end up with a much fuller looking muscle. Generally people will put on around 2 to 3 kilograms in the first couple of weeks using this product.

Multidextrose and Dextrose

Simple sugars in the blood cause an insulin spike to transport creatine into the muscle cells. Insulin is released due to sugars in the blood. Insulin is responsible for opening the doors to the muscle cells to allow blood sugars and creatine to be absorbed.

In summary, the pre workout nutrition formula will basically provide you with the ideal internal environment to workout extremely hard for extended periods of time. The pre workout formula (Xtreme Pump) will also assist dramatically with recovery. Due to the correct (backed up by research) amount of beta alanine. All going well this will translate to more strength.

Another advantage of muscles working more efficiently is “The Pump”. This is when your muscles are flooded with blood and feel twice the size as normal. “The Pump” can lead to addiction to weight training! This is the good stage when you can’t wait to get to the gym to get the blood pumping.

Post Workout Nutrition

There have been numerous studies conducted on the post workout response. It is apparent that post workout there is what is known as the anabolic window. This is a period of time when the body’s metabolism is 6 to 8 times faster than what it normally is.

During this anabolic window, which is just an hour post training, we can actually digest and absorb up to 33% of our total caloric intake for the day. This is huge and represents a great time for us to replenish glycogen stores. Plus assist the muscle to rejuvenate and grow.

Avoid Catabolism

We have just depleted all of our glycogen stores in the muscle due to the workout. If we do not replace this glycogen quickly we will fall into a catabolic state very quickly. Catabolism is a term used for muscle wasting. Therefore replenishing glycogen stores immediately is essential and probably the most important part of the workout. Without replenishing glycogen stores you are better off not working out. That is how important the post workout mix is.

The Anabolic Window Nutrition

However, the critical element to the post workout anabolic window is the nutrients ingested. Your body can not digest and absorb rice, pasta and bread in one hour, it would take around 2 to 3 hours minimum. We miss the window if we take them in this form. You must take in nutrients in the forms of liquid.

Powertec Matrix Program

Carbohydrate replenishes your glycogen stores in the muscle therefore creating the ideal anabolic (growth) state for your muscles. They work in conjunction with the whey protein concentrate or isolate consumed. The ideal amount of carbohydrate required post workout is around 100 grams.