-: When we look at the different phases,
they're all gonna require different nutritional support,
both to actually perform in that type of a workout,
and to achieve the stimulus.
There will be certain micronutrients and macronutrients
that you need to have there in order for those things
to happen, so if you look back at what we did
in cellular physiology and we looked at systems biology.
We looked at how the body interacts.
You can see that there are gonna be certain nutritional
conditions that are needed for these metabolic conditions
to take place and for us to achieve those stimulus
and adaptations,
and then we're gonna need certain macronutrients
to replace and recover if we're gonna repeat
these type of efforts.
So we're looking at metabolic specifically.
We'll start with a pre workout meal.
One huge thing you need to know going in
is what is my carbohydrate status?
And by that I mean, do I have carbohydrates to use
on demand, and we're gonna talk about that in,
in terms of glycogen, so where do I store glycogen again?
In the liver and in the muscle tissue,
and we know that like my capacity to be able to perform
is very different between having muscle glycogen
and liver glycogen, so I need to know if the muscles
that I'm training go in are depleted.
Is my liver depleted?
If so, and I'm hoping to actually get like output
and stimulus from this metabolic workout.
My goal is not to continue to deplete,
'cause there are times when we would look at that,
but we're not gonna get into that today.
We're mostly focused on, we're trying to achieve
this metabolic stimulus.
I'm gonna want to have a higher carb meal pre workout.
Now, normally we say not to have high carbs pre workout
because the insulin is gonna bring down intensity,
it's gonna lower dopamine, which will decrease neural drive.
It'll, I'll just have less intensity in my workout.
When you are doing the type of training
that is involved for metabolic stimulus,
what you're gonna see is you will push through that
otherwise insulin lull that you would have
because there's such an energy demand from this style
of training, and you're also going through a tremendous
amount of glucose during this type of training
that the insulin effect is gonna be mitigated.
If anything, actually having that insulin is gonna
amplify the effect because simultaneously,
this type of training is gonna be turning your muscles
into sponges and being a hey,
let's direct the nutrition here.
Insulin and that combined are gonna amplify the effect
of getting carbohydrates toward that tissue.
The other thing is, is because of this type of activity,
what goes on in terms of neurological and from a,
like a hormonal perspective like cortisal's
gonna wanna come up.
We're also gonna mitigate that insulin just in terms of
our hormone change as we start this type of workout,
because of the amount of catacholamines and whatnot
that we would be replacing here.
So, you shouldn't have to bee too concerned.
Now that's not a license to eat like 400 grams
of carbs pre workout.
Obviously there's a point where this becomes unrealistic,
but having, you know, 50, 100 grams of carbs
before a workout now, we're not talking like eating them
and then stepping onto the gym floor.
We're talking adequate digestion time,
but that's not gonna be an issue when we're going
into metabolic training.
Keep in mind, we put this in the context of that is
if you are depleted.
If you're not depleted, then by all means,
you don't need to have those carbohydrates in your
pre workout meal.
You can maybe take advantage of having higher intensity
at the beginning of the workout and having a lower
carbohydrate meal pre training,
if you're coming in and you have good amount
of muscle glycogen because you either refueled
after the previous workout or the night before,
or you know, some other time during that week
you had a loading day to get those muscle glycogen levels
back up to where you want them to be.
We really want to have lower fats.
Obviously if we're having higher carbohydrates in the meal.
So those two are always gonna be, you know, fairly inverse.
Obviously if our goal is to focus on body composition.
We're trying to burn body fat,
we don't want to be fueling that workout with a bunch of,
you know, external fat that we're taking in to the diet.
We wanna be focusing more on being able to utilize body fat.
That being said, the one fat that sometimes you will
incorporate into a pre workout would be something like
MCT oil, but in the case of metabolic training,
we shouldn't be trying to use MCT oils to amplify
the performance, because we really wanna be burning
through a lot of glucose.
The thing that I would use MCT oils is
for like the mental benefit.
If there are people that get a little bit of better focus,
better clarity, they're, they're able to execute better,
they're just less distracted in the training
if they have some of those fats pre training.
Then we would incorporate those,
but I would ideally like to do that in the lower carb meal
than in this higher carb meal still.
So if we look at pre workout supplementation,
one common thing that people always want to know about
pre workout is this, you know, should I take caffeine,
should I not take caffeine.
I will always say that you should save caffeine for
the workouts where you really feel you need it,
because, you know, it does drain some nutrients from
the adrenals.
It depletes the taurine and the Vitamin C from the adrenals,
and that if you don't need it,
I prefer like things that boost your metabolism,
things that boost your brain function and your focus
and your drive in training that aren't
necessarily stimulatory, but in this case,
there will be times where an athlete needs caffeine,
or you have somebody in, you know,
that are kinda dependent on that caffeine.
A metabolic phase would be a place where you could
have caffeine and carbohydrates at the same time.
One of the mechanisms of caffeine is it tends to
make blood sugar stay elevated.
Now, if our goal is to burn through a bunch of glucose,
well then having some glucose hanging around in the blood
isn't gonna be a big deal.
In fact it's actually going to increase my output
a little bit more, so when we look at caffeine
as a performance aid, it tends to work best
on the two extremes in the most metabolic
or the most neurological, and where I would really avoid it
is in the hypertrophy phases,
but we'll get into that into the hypertrophy module.
Only smalls amounts of nootropics should be needed.
Now I say needed.
That doesn't mean you can't use more.
That means that with this type of training,
you tend to get a natural, you know, exercise high.
You get an endorphin rush, because it's more dense.
You're moving faster.
There's a lot of contractions,
a lot of neurological activity there after the other,
so you tend to elevate your mood as your doing
this type of training, but if you have somebody
that's slow coming in, or they're coming in
after a workouts, not workouts, but after work,
and maybe they're mentally just a little run down
and need that little pick me up to have
the first few minutes of the session good,
well then maybe you don't wait 10 minutes into the session
to really have them mentally going.
Maybe you still give them some nootropic benefits,
you know, you still get them something to increase dopamine,
and acetylcholine.
We'll talk deep into neurotransmitters
in the neurological phase, but like,
here it's not gonna hurt you to have some, some tyrosine,
some acetyl carnitine, or some alpha GPC.
If you don't know a lot about those things,
just hold on, we'll get to them later.
And if you're training for body composition,
trying to get as much fat off as possible,
you're gonna wanna focus more on things that are
gonna boost dopamine, because those also are going to work
on elevating thyroid hormone.
So dopamine is like, think of it almost as like
you're healthier cortisol.
So when dopamine is high, you don't need to make as much
cortisol and as much stress hormones for energy,
because this is providing a shift to say,
hey, we're able to do things and it's also gives you
mental energy as well.
So, having higher dopamine levels will be really good,
not only for getting more of your metabolic hormones active,
but it'll also reduce the amount of stress hormones
that you need for this type of training,
which will enhance your recovery, enhance you ability to get
nutrients into lean tissues after the workout.
Carbs here as well if you're coming in depleted,
so we said carbs pre workout meal,
so we're talking like 50 to 100 grams,
with enough time to digest, so maybe that's
an hour and a half or so before the workout.
Then you're coming in immediately before the workout.
Here we're not talking about like another 100 grams,
but we are talking like, you know, in the realm of like
10, 20, maybe for a really big variance on
a sensitive individual, maybe 30 grams of carbohydrates.
Most people like, they're gonna be more benefited
by having a smaller amount of carbohydrates here,
and then a larger portion into our next section,
which is gonna be the intraworkout area.
Digging a little bit deeper to pre workout supplementation.
B Complex.
So B vitamins are huge for energy production,
energy usage, fuel consumption, fuel usage.
So the big ones, the B6, B9, B12,
are gonna always be the ones that most people are
depleted on or are not very efficient at using.
That being said, I say B Complex in here.
You want these guys in their active forms so that
if there are any genetic limitations,
you're just kind of skipping that.
It's better to be safe than sorry unless you know for sure
that you use the non-activated version of those vitamins
very well, but vitamin B1, like Thymine, very important
for body composition.
Same thing with B5, and then when we look at like,
riboflavin, niacin, like all of the B vitamins
play some role somewhere in terms of your metabolism,
so a good B Complex that has everything in there
is going to be the best solution,
and then if you do some testing or something,
and you need additional B6 because you have a deficiency
in that one or whatnot, then I would say okay,
you do a B Complex and then you can go and add additional
or maybe you find a formulation that's biased
toward what you need a little bit more.
Acetyl Carnitine or Carnitine Fumarate.
Now I'm gonna talk about these two variations
of carnitine probably multiple times.
The Acetyl Carnitine is what we call the brain Carnitine.
It, that acetyl group is what allows it to cross
the blood brain barrier, meaning that it is gonna have
more of a energy enhancing effect on the brain.
It's gonna amplify any stimulants or nootropics
that you take that work at the brain level.
So if you take things to boost dopamine,
acetyl carnitine is gonna amplify that.
If you take things to boost acetyl choline,
the acetyl carnitine is gonna amplify that,
'cause this helps energize the brain.
Now the other role that carnitine has that's very important
in terms of body composition and metabolic training
is carnitine is used to shuttle fat into the mitochondria,
so you can get fatty acids into the cell from the blood,
but that doesn't mean you can burn them as energy yet.
The two things you have to have is one, healthy mitochondria
to be able to burn it, but two, you have to actually
be able to get the fat from the cytosol,
like the outside of like, the outside of the inside of
the cell to fuel.
Into the actual mitochondria.
So, the transport mechanism that we use is
carnitine based enzymes.
So carnitine can help shuttle more fat into the mitochondria
to be burned, which is very beneficial if you're trying
to burn more body fat.
That being said, taking carnitine at an infinite level
does not mean you will burn an infinite amount of fat.
You're still subject to how much the mitochondria can burn
and how much you can get into the cell,
and then ultimately your ability to just utilize
that carnitine to make those enzymes.
So, bring carnitine.
Other types of carnitine are gonna affect us more from
the peripheral, right?
So they're gonna affect our ability to utilize fat
in the muscles that we're training.
So, carnitine fumarate is one I really like
that affects the periphery because it's also biased
a little bit more towards the heart.
So I tend to see that anything that's aerobically demanding,
which good metabolic programs tend to also be
aerobically demanding.
They tax your cardiovascular system simultaneously,
so carnitine fumarate is going to add
a performance interval there and your heart, you know,
as it's pumping, it's a muscle that's working a lot
during that training, so it's not just the muscles
that you're lifting weights with.
When you're doing metabolic, you're doing dense training,
you notice that your heart rate stays elevated.
It's burning through a lot of calories.
Let's make as many of those fat as possible as well,
so I really like carnitine fumarate
in this instance as well, so what I will do often times
is I will use a mix of these if I, you know,
have the, the, the funds or the budget to do so,
or I'm willing to, you know, work that much on my diet
or my supplementation, is I will use a combination of those,
one to get the brain energy and the increase dopamine,
and also improve my ability to use fat in the periphery.
Citrulline.
This is our, what I would say is like my go to vasodilator.
So, with the malate version, that's adding another co enzo,
or co factor for the citric acid cycle,
so you're gonna get a little bit more
energy enhancing benefit out of citrulline malate
over just straight citrulline.
All citrulline and citrulline malate are both
gonna be beneficial in terms of improving vasodilation
or blood flow to the tissues that you're training.
The reason I like this over arginine based supplements
is one, arginine has issues with the gut,
so you have issues absorbing it,
and so it can cause GI distress.
The other thing is that a lot of times
when you take arginine, what our body does is
it increases the enzymes to break down the pathway
that would get that arginine into nitric oxides,
so what happens is you take those arginine based
pre workouts, they work initially
and then they never work as good
as they did the first couple times that you used them.
Citrulline, because it enters in a different portion
of the cycle does, it basically bypasses that part
where it would increase that negative feedback,
so citrulline tends to continue working long term
and so you can continue to use that on a regular basis,
and it tends to be easier on the GI tract as well.
Creatine.
Not essential here, but one of the things that most people
don't know about creatine is creatine
is very expensive to make in terms of methylation,
and things that are needed to run the methylation pathways
are these B6, B9, B12 and acetyl choline,
like a lot of these nutrients that are hard to get by
or people have trouble using.
So by taking creatine, it allows me to save more
of my B vitamins and save more of my acetyl choline
for my brain and for my muscle contractions
because I don't have to burn that nutrients
to make creatine, so I like having creatine in there
as kind of a passive nootropic if you will.
Not just for the benefits that everybody knows which is,
okay it's gonna help me in that ATP transport and recycling
that we talked about in the cellular physiology.
Yeah, most people understand that part about creatine
and that makes pretty logical sense.
The thing they don't know is how sparing it can be to
some of these other very important nutrients that are needed
for us to synthesize creatine when we have to
do it on our own.
Beta alanine.
So what beta alanine does, multiple things,
but in the context of metabolic training,
is it is gonna allow us to push the threshold of our
lactic base work to a greater degree.
It basically is going to make the cell more tolerant
to being in that kind of metabolically stressed state
and it improves our efficiency to work there,
so if you take beta alanine, well does it kinda make
lactic training quote unquote easier?
You could say that, but in reality what it should do
is give you the ability to push a little bit further,
do another rep or two, go a little bit deeper.
So it's like, it's like if you could push the gas pedal
down another inch, well okay, if you don't go there,
well then it's not harder, but now if you have another inch
to push it, now maybe we could burn a little bit more fuel,
we could maybe get a little bit stronger stimulus,
but if you aren't gonna train hard, well then don't bother
taking the beta alanine.
It might actually work against you.
So, I like it in there for people
that are willing to work hard.
The other thing with beta alanine is it helps increase
muscle carnosine, and when we have good levels
of carnosine within the muscle they tend to do better
with carbohydrates, they tend to have better insulin
sensitivity, so I like beta alanine for that case too,
because one of the things you're doing
with metabolic training is sometimes
you can create some inflammation, you can,
and we're also trying to get a lot of carbohydrates
to these cells at the same time.
Anything that can help with those two aspects of
me being able to get a lot of nutrition in to that tissue
and not lose the insulin sensitivity
because maybe we're producing a little bit of inflammation
that's going to be beneficial.
You may say, why don't I just take carnosine,
and the issue is we tend to break down carnosine before
it makes it into the muscle cell, so we don't actually get,
so if we take dietary carnosine,
a very small portion of it actually makes it into our cells
as free form carnosine.
We tend to break it down,
where as when we take beta alanine,
we tend to be able to transport that well
and increase muscular levels of carnosine over time.