Why Rest Is Essential for Muscle Gain

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Guest Blogger: Julie Germaine

How much sleep did you get last night?

If it was less than eight hours (I know everyone requires a different amount), you are not help your body produce the muscle gains you want.

Now, I am 100% guilty of sometimes stealing time away from my sleep to get all my ‘to do’s’ done. You have likely had some late nights or early mornings yourself when you know you are not rested. You can relate to how much more difficult it is to get in a great workout that day. During those days it is normal to crave more sugary foods because your body is looking for quick, easy energy to overcome the fatigue.

There are many reasons not to deprive yourself of a full night’s rest, one of which is how your body reacts to this routine. In addition to the points above, sleep also has a huge physical impact on muscle recovery.  

Exercise Breakdown

Here is a quick summary on what is happening when you exercise. Your body is breaking down muscle tissue to repair and regrow stronger. Basically, during each weight repetition, you are proving to your body that the area of your body you are training is not strong enough for the daily requirements of the work demanded, so that area needs to be strengthened.

You have to be consistent with your training and put effort in to see results. If you are not pushing yourself during your workout, there is no need for your body to adapt and change. Your body only adapts and changes when it sees it can’t perform the work demanded of it, so it needs to grow stronger.

Exercise Repair

Next, the body needs the right foods to effectively develop lean muscle mass

Additionally, the body needs to be able to focus on the recovery of the damaged muscle tissues, and that happens during rest, in other words, when you sleep.

There are two stages of sleep, REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM. The brain follows cycles during sleep, which occur in bouts of 90 to 120 minutes. REM is usually later in your sleep cycle, closer to when you will be waking up. REM energizes your brain and keeps your decision-making abilities sharp. Non-REM is essential for muscle repair and development, and takes up about 40% of your total sleep time.

During non-REM sleep, the brain is less active, so the muscles are able to demand an increased blood supply to enable them to grow. Your pituitary gland also releases growth hormones during non-REM sleep, which, as you may have guessed by the name, aids the muscles in growth.

To fully benefit by your body’s natural recovery process and promote your best health, experts recommend 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night – of course, this range does vary by person.

Hack Your Sleep

If you aren’t convinced to prioritize your sleep to help with your muscle gains, this data may convince you: in 2011, researchers discovered that people who consistently get 5.5 hours of sleep a night had 60% LESS muscle mass than those who got 8.5 hours of sleep.

Here are some simple tips to enjoy good quality sleep:

  • Avoid caffeine in the evenings
  • Eat before bed so you don’t got to bed hungry, but don’t make it a large meal, have something relatively light (ie: protein shake)
  • Don’t exercise late at night if possible
  • Avoid watching TV/movies or texting on your phone right before sleep
  • Relax your body (and further promote muscle recovery) by soaking in a warm bath before you turn in at night
  • Try to stick to a consistent sleep routine all week and weekend
  • Try to destress your life, and don’t take on upsetting tasks or conversations at night
  • Don’t use sleeping pills

Check out this pretty great interactive infographic that explains what’s going on during a good night’s rest!


Visit Julie Germaine’s website for more information on nutrition, exercise and overall health to make achieving your fitness goals possible! www.juliegermaine.com


What Foods Maximize Your Body’s Ability to Recover After Exercise?

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Guest Blogger: Julie Germaine


High Five!! … You did it!

Your workout is D-O-N-E!

You can feel great about being well on your way to achieving your fitness goals.

… EXCEPT that you are wasting your time working out if your nutrition isn’t aligned with your training efforts.

Food and Exercise

The whole point of working out is to fatigue the muscles. This then causing the body to acknowledge the need for enhanced strength in that area and begin the process of building up that strength.

When you workout – most often with resistance training, your muscles are actually torn microscopically. During recovery, this tissue damage is repaired and makes your muscles comeback to the next workout even stronger.

To optimize your potential muscle strength gains, it is absolutely critical to eat the proper food (macro- and micronutrients) that fuel the healing process.

Why Protein Matters for Muscle Recovery?

Among many other functions, protein plays a pivotal role in exercise recovery. Without getting too in depth, proteins are composed of amino acids, and the human body uses just 20 types of amino acids daily.

Some of these are ‘essential’ amino acids because the body cannot produce them, so they must be consumed through food (or supplementation). There are also conditionally essential amino acids, which are required during infancy, injury, or illness.

Below is a list of Essential Amino Acids and food sources associated with them:

  • Histidine – meat, fish, chicken, seeds, whole grains
  • Lysine – meat, eggs, soy, black beans, pumpkin seeds, quinoa
  • Methionine – eggs, grains, nuts, seeds
  • Phenylalanine – dairy, meat, chicken/turkey, fish, nuts, beans
  • Threonine – cottage cheese, wheat germ
  • Tryptophan – wheat germ, cottage cheese, turkey
  • Branched Chain Amino Acids
    – Isoleucine – meat, fish, chicken, eggs, cheese, lentils, nuts, seeds
    – Leucine – soy, legumes, beans
    – Valine – soy, cheese, peanuts, mushrooms, whole grains, veggies

This is a list of Conditionally Essential Amino Acids:

  • Arginine – red meat, grain products
  • Cysteine – grain products, meats
  • Glutamine – chicken, fish, cabbage, spinach
  • Glycine – meat, poultry, grains
  • Proline – grain products
  • Tyrosine – meat, dairy products, grain products

Your Post-Workout Meal

So how can this knowledge help you get better results from your fitness program? Well, the ideal moment to kickstart muscle synthesis is immediately post workout, so preparing the body by topping up on amino acids, including BCAAs (Branched Chain Amino Acids), before, during and after resistance training will help everything run smoothly so the recovery process is extremely efficient and successful!

It is commonly accepted that the post workout meal timing is extremely important. Bodybuilders would rush to smash their protein shake and quality carbohydrates within twenty minutes of completing their last set.

However, science has shown that, though this meal is still valuable, the window of opportunity is much broader as long as protein intake was adequate before the workout (unless if the athlete is exercising again within 24 hours, in which replenishing as soon as possible affects performance).

The best way to ensure full and healthy recovery is to consume 1 to 1.2 grams of carbohydrates per Kg of body weight four-to-six hours post-exercise. For protein it is recommended that athletes consume 0.25 to 0.3 g/kg) of high-quality protein after exercise. Your mileage may differ as everyone is different.

Some examples of nutritious carbs / lean protein after workout meals are:

  • Chicken breast with vegetables and potato
  • Lean bison on whole wheat bun with tomato slices and lettuce
  • Whey protein shake with fruit (ie: banana)

Which Whey?

It is convenient – and delicious – to use protein powders to bolster your daily requirements, so which kind is best?

A general rule of thumb: whey protein is right for post-workout meals, where-as the more slowly absorbing casein protein has a perfect place as a nighttime snack, gradually releasing amino acids into your system when the body recovers during rest.

Your major takeaway from this article is that ‘recovery food’ is not just your post-workout meal, but a totality of all the healthy, protein-rich foods you consume throughout your day that enable you to reach that sweet spot for cell regeneration, being 0.8 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, on the higher end when you are an active person. As always, please consult your physician to see what makes the most sense for you. This article is for informational purposes only.


Visit Julie Germaine’s website for more information on nutrition, exercise and overall health to make achieving your fitness goals possible! www.juliegermaine.com


Five Ways to Make a Bodyweight Workout More Effective

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Guest Blogger: Chelsey Hendriksen


No Weights = No Workout? Not So Fast!!!


While you may prefer working out in a fully loaded gym, there is no reason you can’t get in a killer workout at home – even if you have zero equipment other than yourself.

Many people prefer the gym, or a large selection of equipment because it makes designing workouts a little bit easier. But when you’re trying to improve body composition, progressive overload is key to seeing results week after week without hitting a plateau, not fancy equipment. Many people simply don’t know how to program bodyweight workouts effectively and get bored doing the same routine week after week.

In this article I will cover some ways you can change up your standard bodyweight-only exercises to not only diversify your at-home options but also to challenge you to look at bodyweight training in a new light.

The key with most of these methods is changing up the amount of time you are spending under tension and in what portion of the movement. Since we don’t have weight to work with, we need a different way to challenge ourselves and spending more time contracting your muscle is a fantastic way to achieve this.

The Mind Muscle Connection

First things first, when training using only your body to create a stimulus, it’s more important than ever to have a strong mind to muscle connection and to not just go through the motions. It’s easy enough to flail around for 30 minutes, actually focusing on the muscle you are working on and using proper form and technique takes skill. Using these techniques is a great way to improve areas that may need extra attention and focus. Paying attention to the quality of the movement becomes extremely important when you’re spending more time in the contracted portion of a movement. I’ve included video demonstrations for the examples I’m going to be sharing so you can see what they look like in action.

Eccentric Phase

Spending more time in the lengthening phase of the movement is an excellent way to change up a seemingly easy bodyweight movement. A standard bodyweight squat may not present too much of a challenge but add in a 5 second eccentric to each rep and your set of 10 just got significantly more difficult. What’s important when you’re doing eccentric movements is that you’re contracting your muscles and staying tight.

Lengthening the eccentric phase is my absolute favorite way to make bodyweight classics like pushups and squats more challenging.

In my video demonstration, I am showing a pushup with a three second count down to the floor

Isometric Phase

Isometric exercises involve remaining in the contracted point of a movement for a specific period of time. You’re recruiting muscle and exerting tension without actually lengthening or shortening the muscle. This is a great method to intensify any exercise since you can choose different points of a movement to add a hold to. Isometric holds are a wonderful option for movements where you can regularly perform 20+ repetitions with ease. If you want to know what pain feels like, try doing a 10-30 second isometric hold at the bottom of a split squat position followed by 10 regular tempo reps. Your legs will feel like jello in the best way possible.

One-and-a-half Reps

By performing an extra half rep, you’re overloading the mid-range of a movement which maximizes muscle tension (which leads to better results). You can add a half – or even quarter – rep to almost any portion of a movement. This is yet another excellent way to increase time under tension and use that as a means of creating change since adding weight isn’t an option. A 1.5 rep Bulgarian split squat is one of my client’s least favourite exercises because none of them can believe how much more challenging that seemingly simple half rep makes the exercise. Pushups, squats and lunges are all awesome choices to add an extra half rep to.

Combining Time Under Tension Methods

If you’re a workout buff and are looking to really crank the intensity dial then you can consider pairing a couple of these time under tension options together. Here are some examples:

– Bodyweight Squat – 1.5 reps with a 3-sec isometric hold at the bottom of the half rep

– Pushup – 3-sec eccentric + 3-sec isometric hold

– Split Squat – 15-sec isometric hold + 10 regular reps

– Lunge – 3-sec eccentric + 1.5 reps

The possibilities are truly endless and using these techniques gives you a ton of options to take your bodyweight workout to the next level.

 


Guest blogger Chelsey Hendriksen is the creator of the Macros Matter Method. Find her on Instagram: instagram.com/powerhousechels and learn more about her programs: https://sales.powerhousechels.site/macros


 

Quiz: How to Find the Right Protein for Your Fitness Goals

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Guest Blogger: Julie Germaine

Happy New Year! January is always a wonderful time to hop on the fitness bandwagon and feed off the good energy surrounding you to lose those holidays pounds and start working on your summer body. This CAN be your year!

Taking a closer look at your diet is the right place to start, before you even think about picking up a new fitness routine.

Any fitness buff will be quick to offer you this reliable tip – Be sure you eat enough protein! Sound advice.

Of course, if you’re like most of us, you have a busy schedule that doesn’t allow for complicated food prep for every meal of the day, which can make it tough to consume the one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight that is recommended. This is one of the reasons that protein powder is such a popular and widely-used food product. That, and if you choose the right brand, it also tastes really delicious.

There are many different kinds of protein powder to choose from, so I wanted to help you streamline your online shopping experience with this simple, five question quiz that evaluates your fitness goals and pairs you with the best variety to achieve them.

1. My number one priority when it comes to my fitness goals right now is:

  1. To build lean muscle mass quickly.
  2. To lose body fat and get a more defined mid-section
  3. Develop optimal health
  4. To avoid rebounding to an unhealthy weight, I want to maintain healthy weight
  5. Improve mobility and fight signs of aging

2. When are you the most likely to consume your protein supplement?

  1. One hour before working out
  2. Late at night
  3. No specific time
  4. As a meal replacement
  5. With breakfast

3. Do you have allergies or food preferences to consider?

  1. None
  2. Limited artificial sweeteners
  3. No gluten
  4. No dairy
  5. No soy

4. Which of these is the most important factor when choosing your protein powder?

  1. Fast absorption
  2. Slow digesting
  3. Hypo-allergenic
  4. Feeling of satiety
  5. Full of nutrients

5. Which answer best describes your diet:

  1. Healthy and well-balanced
  2. Keto
  3. Vegetarian
  4. Vegan
  5. Protein heavy

ANSWERS:

If you answered mostly A: muscle development and weight gain:


I’d suggest whey protein as the right protein for muscle development and weight gain.

Whey protein
is inexpensive, absorbed by the body quickly and contains all essential amino acids, it is a complete protein.

If your goal is to gain lean muscle mass, you will benefit from trusting the research that confirms whey’s positive effect on muscle development and recovery.

You could opt to go with either a concentrate or an isolate. Concentrated protein powders contain slightly less protein (80%, as opposed to 90% in isolates), so you are getting in 10% more carbs and fats, which can benefit your gains if used properly. You can also look into specially formulated weight gainers.

If you answered mostly B: fat loss and weight management

I’d suggest Casein protein as the right protein for fat loss and weight management.

Casein protein digests slowly, so is ideal as a bedtime meal and will keep you feeling full for hours. It is a complete protein so your body is getting the nutrients it needs to support a healthy metabolism.

If you answered mostly C: allergens are an issue

I’d suggest either of the following if allergens are an issue for your protein powder intake.

Hemp protein is a gluten-free, plant-based supplement that is not a complete protein but has the added bonus or healthy omega-3 fatty acids.

Rice protein does contain all nine essential amino acids, however it is lacking somewhat in leucine, which can be topped up by making the perfect marriage and combining with pea protein.

If you answered mostly D: vegetarian or vegan

I’d suggest soy or pea as ideal protein powder options if you are vegetarian or vegan.

Soy protein is a complete protein ideal for vegetarians or vegans. As with whey, it comes in isolate or concentrate, the later often preferred for overall taste.

Pea protein is another good option for you. It is hypo-allergenic, rich in iron and also contains all nine essential amino acids.

If you answered mostly E: recovery and anti-aging

I would suggest egg-white, collagen or BCAAs for muscle recovery.


Egg white protein
, Collagen, or BCCAs (soy-free) are all fantastic for muscle recovery and bursting with all the right nutrients to fight the signs of aging and keep your body feeling great!

Please note that these suggestions are exactly that, suggestions and are for informational purposes only. Please check with your healthcare professional before starting or changing any healthcare or nutrition routine.

Article Resources:

https://www.sweat.com/blogs/nutrition/types-of-protein-powder

https://www.runnersworld.com/nutrition-weight-loss/a27079077/types-of-protein/

https://greatist.com/fitness/protein-supplement-nutrition-guide#8

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/whey-protein-isolate-vs-concentrate

https://www.todaysdietitian.com/

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/best-protein-powder#TOC_TITLE_HDR_10


Visit Julie Germaine’s website for more information on nutrition, exercise and overall health to make achieving your fitness goals possible! www.juliegermaine.com