Food for thought. Despite being a foundational piece to human performance and what we do as coaches, why does it seem as if nutrition seems to be fairly misunderstood or at least misapplied?
There are a lot of possible options-from applied theory to physiology consciousness. I think what winds up happening is that most coaches, dieticians, and nutritionists tend to opt for methods over principles approaches. This is hardly their fault. The curriculum in mainstream academia remains largely outdated other than some fundamental biology while many of the progressive, continuing education is difficult to standardize. Without getting into politics or a broken system, I think we can all agree that the quality of many of these practitioners, doctors, and similar folks tends to rely on a combination of their foundational training and how rigorous and progressive they tend to be with their research upkeep, n=1 experiments, and in-the-trenches case studies. In other words, it’s hard to know what’s worth trying.
General Energy Metabolism
“If we learn to see problems in terms of a general disorder of energy metabolism, we can begin to solve them.” -Ray Peat, PhD.
I believe the strength & conditioning and athletic community would be best served to reconstitute their principles from a place of general energy metabolism. What’s neat is that this is where the thermodynamics crew (calories in, calories out laws) can harmonize with the functional medicine & preventative health crowd-a gap that’s long-needed bridging. East meets West. Classically-held ‘Woo woo’ meets Western science.
“If someone tells you calories don’t matter, they have no credibility. But if someone tells you calories are all that matters, they have even less.” -Martin Berkhan
To look at health and performance in terms of general energy metabolism is to see everything we do to who we are as requiring energy-from our sheer life force to a godlike expression of athleticism on the court.
Energy on a more macro level can mean eating a sufficient amount of calories, and it can also mean aiming for nutrient-dense foods that provide our health (& performance) physiology with the micronutrient ammunition it needs to properly function. It is both succinct and a bigger picture. In the end, all of our energetics can boil down to mitochondria.
Flashback to the bio class most of us didn’t pay attention in. Our mitochondria are the energy-producing molecule of the cell. Our mitochondria play THE role in energy production so we can regulate metabolism, produce energy, and have energy on demand.
From muscle firing to thinking, our mitochondria are the common denominator that underpin all of it.
This highly simplifies things while also giving us an appreciation for their complexities.
This isn’t purely nutritional, either. ALL of our epigenetic inputs are either a hill or a hole, to borrow from my original major in economics.
Athlete Alchemy
The definition of alchemy-the original science-was to essentially take various essential inputs and turn them into your desired result. This is the same way we should all look at health, athletic performance, and energy.
I bring this up to highlight the fact that the general energy metabolism model goes beyond nutrition. Everything we do fits in this larger bucket.
Take the sample old school esoteric transmutation circle above. Everyone has their own level of inputs around that level. For better or worse, these inputs meet in the middle and interact with one another-and genetic predispositions-to form each athlete’s own, unique physiology.
This is highly empowering as practitioners because it allows us to ask the right questions and begin (again, begin…) to solve recovery-related questions that govern athlete health and performance.
In the end, it all comes down to learning who’s in front of you, appreciating who they are, and where they are at. You can then meet them at their level.
Energy At Every Level
Let’s take a look at a couple examples. What do a middle-aged woman suffering from chronic fatigue and an underperforming athlete presenting with all the hallmarks of overtraining have in common? Deficits in energy production-just at their own respective levels.
The woman has lead a high-stress lifestyle for many years, chronically undereats in general, constantly fails to intake a sufficient amount of protein, sleeps poorly, and hardly has a minute for herself.
The basketball player is juggling an impossible schedule of traveling for games, team strength & conditioning, also chronically undereats, doesn’t intake many nutrient-dense foods, and sleeps enough hours but has poor sleep hygiene.
In each case the common denominator is a lack of energy availability. The fatigue each are expressing verbally or physically-quite literally-is that their cells are in a low energy state. This is why it’s key to train your athletes to simply tune in and listen to their body rather than be dissociated and think their way through everything.
The woman’s lack of caloric intake is an energy deficit. Her insufficient sleep is another. Her busyness not only demands energy but her lack of downtime to rest also results in unintegration of charged emotion. The downstream effects leading to cortisol storms and prolonged sympathetic nervous system tone-always burning energy-like taking an 18-wheeler every day as your commuter car. Left unchecked long enough and this can manifest in a number of directions-from hormonal issues to neurodegeneration. There are no free lunches.
The athlete’s lack of energy is the same concept-just occurring at his respective level a bit higher up on the health & performance hierarchy. Instead of chronic fatigue, possible neurodegeneration, etc. he’s not putting up the same numbers in the gym, is starting to dovetail in his velocity based training, and his per-game stats are coming down. His problems are a little more gold-plated at this point…but they are still very real and have underlying broken physiology behind them. What can start as a deficit in performance can manifest as an injury, metabolic dysfunction, or even a career cut short.
I liken this to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a reference. At the bottom (the woman), is autoimmune conditions and ailments. Approaching the top (the athlete) is peak human performance. We need the right epigenetic inputs in each area (nutrition, sleep, etc.) to ascend.
Yes, exceptions exist. We all know the story of the athlete who eats poorly yet still thrives. The more I’ve worked with elite athletes, the more I’ve seen how sometimes their superpower is in their inherent genetic ability to overcome some (not all) bad physiological inputs. That doesn’t mean we should let them get away with it without at least educating them about possible downstream effects that may not be present now-but may be in the future.
For example, you may have heard of the research linking inputs like diet and sleep quality issues to injuries? Yet again, energy. The lack of energy available specifically shows up in the nervous system. Lack of ATP to perform necessary reactions in a timely manner at the neurological level resulting in improper muscle recruitment, leading to improper contract & relax cycles, leading to improper load mechanics.
What’s incredibly exciting is that this model allows us as professionals to ask the right questions and work backwards from there. Obviously, the unique areas of energy deficit lead to some different possible outcomes. One athlete’s ‘overtraining’ may wind up being the result from insufficient carbohydrate intake and that would be the place where you would start. At the end of that road, we’d still be feeding energy reserves. Another’s performance issues may result from an inflammatory response in the gut from junk food robbing the athlete of necessary energy reserves.
By the way, it’s almost always multifactorial when you’re starting with athletes…
By asking the right questions, we can follow the path to know which area-nutrition, sleep, rest & periodization, light/environment, mindfulness, etc. we specifically need to apply the needed ‘energy’ intervention. From here we can work as a team with the athlete and other professionals as necessary to do the right tinkering.
Inputs and Outputs
The easiest way to look at this model is like a bank account. Everything we do is either a withdrawal or a deposit. Prolonged and/or excess caloric deprivation? Withdrawal. Eating nutrient-dense, energetic foods that supply our physiology? Deposit.
We as professionals need to take a look at athletes’ overall bank account, bark up the right trees to discover where the red is, and address the minimum effective doses in each area. We can then build upon each area of the above alchemy circle as the athlete develops. Just the same way we develop and plan their training cycles, we can begin to parallel & periodize their physiology right along with it.
We then need to be careful about our nutrition & health planning, as well.
Nutrition Periodization
Something I really appreciate is the Phoenix Suns current training staffs view of training planning and periodization. Cory Schlesinger and Daniel Bove model stress holistically and organize strength & conditioning in conjunction with tactical, sport specific work. This way, the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. The staff knows when the athletes are being loaded the most in the gym and on the court-and can plan accordingly.
You really want to think of health & nutrition the same way.
By now, we’ve all heard of possible good hormetic stressors-stressors that nudge each athlete towards being a stronger, more resilient organism. Hell, what we do as strength & conditioning professionals is a hormetic stress.
Instead of looking at things like fasting protocols, caloric deprivation, lower carb/higher fat templates, the carnivore diet, cold exposure therapy, and more as black & white, good or bad, yes or no…maybe we just add context?
I know it’s not the sexy answer, but again-principles > methods. The above are methods. Tools in the toolkit, as it were.
Maybe in the middle of the season, a low carb, high fat diet is a horrible idea. Remember, we want our diets to be a deposit-not a withdrawal. But hormetic stressors are withdrawals. Do we really want to stack the stress of the in-season that the athlete has to adapt to on top of a diet that induces some stress they have to adapt to?
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a time or a place for this. In his book, Nutrition Periodization for Athletes, Bob Seebohar (M.S., R.D., C.S.C.S., C.S.S.D.) writes that the off-season can be a great time to ensure an athlete has a flexible metabolism-meaning that they can be able to utilize both carbs and fat for energy efficiently. I hold that certain times during an off-season can be ideal for an athlete to rewire their metabolic gears to better prepare them for the unique energy system demands of the in-season. Perhaps when systemic energy is less taxed, we can use a block of lower carb, high-fat dieting as a means for metabolic management.
Perhaps certain fasting protocols-which has been shown to-potentially harm performance in athletes-can have benefits in the right context. We also do know there are some potential positives-like autophagy, cellular apoptosis, protein folding, neurosynaptic autophagy, and various out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new cellular pruning processes. Perhaps the off-season is an ideal time for the right, occasional fasting intervention to analog blood sugar levels or to cue up the nervous system with the right cellular wiring. As far as examples in the public eye, Marc Gasol credits some of later career longevity to a regimen including some fasting work and light time-restricted feeding.
Maybe an athlete suffering from some autoimmune-type issues (WAY more common than you think), could do well to address this in the offseason when performance demands are lower? I’ve had athletes with GI issues also present with focus issues, a noticeable slowing of reaction time, and more. Remember that the gut and brain are linked and with the nervous system being one of the centerpieces of what we do, addressing this can bring with it gains in athletic ability. For example, a one month-only carnivore diet may help kill off unwanted bacterial overgrowth in the gut and silence some autoimmune issues.
For most, this doesn’t have to get too much more complex than simple nutrition periodization of macronutrients and calorie cycling.
When are the safest times to have lower calories? Rest days, light days, aerobic development days, and days of lower-level conditioning-only work. These days can be a bit lower in carbohydrates, higher in fat intake, and high in protein. This is to match the energy expenditure of the activity demands. Nothing crazy. Simple enough to follow.
On days where a recovery demand and energy requirement is much higher-e.g. game day, plyometric & speed work, strength & power training, intense practice days, etc.-overall calories need to be higher, carbohydrates need to be a lot higher, meals tend to need to be a bit more frequent, fat can be moderate, and protein can be moderate-moderately high. Thinking on a bigger level, you can manage your macro cycles this way, too. Again, to give an example in the public eye, John Wall and Rudy Gay famously ate a lower carb, higher fat (for them) ancestral diet to silence inflammation to promote injury healing and tissue quality, while simultaneously matching energy demands. As the off-season evolved and energy demands turned from oxidative to more glycolytic-driven, so did their nutrition.
Breathing mechanics, anxiety & stress levels, neuromyofascial wirings for exercise economy, and more can alter metabolic effort of course, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Jumper Cables Guide
As for some added specific takeaways, please see below. With the obvious difficulties of giving recommendations without unique athlete context in mind, go easy on any hatemail stemming from disagreements or confusion of the information below.
- Macros should mostly match energy system utilization. Do your best to match macronutrient assortment (ratios of protein, carbs, and fat) to energy demands and activity types. Protein is a goal, fat and carbs are energy levers. Know what to pull.
- Tailor caloric inputs in accordance with caloric exports, taking into consideration training cycles, season demands, and lifestyle. Know when demands go higher, energy should too. Understand when surpluses are needed and when deficits can be safe.
- Avoid, “energy-stealing foods,” or ‘bad information.’ For most, these are going to be PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids) coming in the form of vegetable oils (other than olive), American wheat & gluten (due to pesticides & farm practices-not celiac prevalence), artificial sweeteners, and food dyes.
- Test vegetables and safe starches. Picture your gut microbiome like a wild ecological system. Various vegetables can have varying outcomes in various athletes. n=1 rules the day.
- Aim for nutrient density. Think, you are what you eat-has eaten. Properly raised animals & plants will transfer the nutrients you need into your athletes.
- Proteins, emphasize grass-fed beef, grass-fed lamb, free-range eggs, wild-caught shellfish, wild-caught fish, game meat, followed by organic turkey and pasture-raised/free-range chicken. Athletes should emphasize protein as the centerpiece of most meals.
- Fats, emphasize the fat naturally found on healthy, properly-sourced meats. If you add fat in occasionally, opt for extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, grass-fed butter, grass-fed ghee, or some of the ‘ancestral/primal’ condiments available.
- Carbohydrates, emphasize fruits and safe starches like rice, yam, sweet potato, taro, and the resistant starches.
- Prioritize sufficient salt, electrolytes, and remineralization.
- Prioritize drinking at least a decent quality filtered water (e.g. Berkey filter), as well. We are mostly water, electrolytes, and amino acids-ensuring we are hydrated goes down to cell-to-cell communication and metabolism. Subcelluar, too.
- Do not eliminate sugar. Sugar can cause systemic de-stressing of the body. There are a lot of junk foods high in sugar that promote chronic inflammation and are energy sapping, but natural, fruit sugars-in the right doses-can generally be had with benefits, much less consequence.
These are incredibly general tips just to wet your whistle and get you started, as well as a framework from which athletes can root in, test, retest, and tinker.
In general, if the body is needed to perform at a high level, we want to minimize the amount of stresses it incurs. Diet-induced stress, such as having to mine for energy from fat in excess (lipolysis), fasting (for most athlete populations), perpetual caloric restriction, super infrequent meals, etc. should be avoided. There is room for customization depending on age, sport, global stress levels, etc. Remember that the common denominator, weekend warrior, and high performing athlete can all exist with the same principles but there is room for waving and weaving, reading and reacting. Because the body works on a systemic protect-perform continuum, we want to minimize-or at least be careful with adding stress from the diet and other areas of recovery if the athlete has to overcome a lot of them, otherwise.
About Matt Cooper
Matt Cooper (Coop) is a nutrition consultant, strength & conditioning coach, and human performance coach from California. Driven by an obsession to expand human performance, Coop spends his time researching, experimenting, doing nerdy things, and building better humans in general at Stand Out Performance (Fast Twitch LA) in Compton, California.
Coop works with athletes and individuals-from developmental to professional levels-remotely and in-person to optimize their health, performance, and fitness.
Coop translates research, experience, and human performance technology to design one stop shop services and programs that address relevant areas, including nutrition, health, training, sleep, mind/body integration, the nervous system, recovery, and beyond.
Coop’s own personal journey began in athletics and fitness-until poor health and mental states befell him at an early age-this lead to him becoming his own practitioner and fuels his current work, marrying functional medicine and human performance to help others become superhuman.
- Certified Nutrition Consultant
- Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS)
- NeuFit Electrotherapist
- Speed of Sport Affiliate; Certified Sport Performance Specialist
- Director: Wellness I Performance I Sport Science; Fast Twitch LA
- Director: Wellness I Performance I Sport Science; Black House MMA
- Consultant: The Third Wave
- Chief Scientific Officer, Ketone Score
- Over 1K Clients Helped (pro/developing athletes, individuals, businesses, addiction/trauma)
- Co-Author, The Ketogenic Diet: A Metabolic Manifesto For Dieter & Practitioner
- Communications; SSU
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