thibs, im just wondering if you have ever worked with diabetic athletes, and if u have, what are some tips that you might recommend?
hey Thib,
I have a certain muscle weakness that I can’t locate. I was wondering if you could give me any pointers on finding it and dealing with it myself.
Whenever I do chinups I peter out and breathe really heavy easily. Infact I feel slightly dizzy. I don’t feel anything like it even with heavy squats.
My biceps and lats have strength to spare, but somewhere below my chest (possibly upper abs) or some other stabilizing muscle right below the chest is weak. I don’t feel any specific muscle or burn… just a quick loss of stamina in the upper stomach area.
I know you can’t do any sort of “diagnosis,” which I am not looking for. I’m just wondering if you could give some sort of self tests for self-discovery about this weakness.
Hey Thibs,
I’ve been going hard for 12-14 weeks without a deload. For the past 4 weeks I’ve been “stale” and not progressing really at all… Anyways so this is end of deload week #1 and my question is,
do you believe/heard in dramatically increasing calories by 30-50% for 3 days to help combat this? I eat 3,000 on workout days, about 300-350g in carbs so thinking 4,000-4,500 range for 3 days. If yes, I’m kind of scared to throw in more carbs, so I was thinking if I normally have 350g on workout days, do just 270g and up the healthy fats by a ton? I’m not sure, just kind of scared of upping the carbs when I’m only lifting 60-70% of my normal weight…
And my other question is directly related. I have low testosterone (doc says - going to endo soon) - could this be why I seem to overtrain easier than most? I’ve been stuck on doing low volume 3 days a week for a while and wanting to change it up to a 4 day split of some kind with a bit more volume.
Thanks a lot for your time Christian!
(strong first post ha)
Thib,
I found the article excerpts below online and was wondering if you generally agree with the numbers given in the excerpts and at the end or if these estimates are way off the mark.
Excerpts
"As few as 15 grams of carbohydrates per day has been shown to limit nitrogen loss and 50 grams of carbohydrate per day severely limits the need for the body to use amino acids for gluoconeogenesis. Not only will it maintain blood glucose and insulin at a slightly higher level (thus inhibiting cortisol release), it directly provides glucose for the brain, limiting the need to break down protein in the first place.
Ketosis (if desired) will generally still develop under those conditions. So although the physiological requirement for dietary carbohydrates is zero, we might set a practical minimum (in terms of preventing excessive body protein loss) at 50 grams per day. I realize that most ketogenic diet authors use 30 grams/day as a starting point but, frankly, I have no idea where that value came from."
“In general, assuming zero or very low levels of activity, an intake of 100 grams of carbohydrates per day will prevent the development of ketosis, just providing the brain with enough carbohydrates to function ?normally?. So, for folks who want (or need) to just avoid ketosis, 100 grams per day will act as a practical limit.”
“Summing up so far, we?ve set a practical minimum of 50-100 grams of carbohydrates per day depending on whether or not you function well in ketosis. I want to mention again that this shouldn?t be taken as a recommendation that such an amount is ideal; it simply represents a minimum intake value.”
"Let’s sum up, looking at both practical minimum and maximum carbohydrate intakes under different circumstances. For the g/lb recommendations, I’ll use a lifter with 160 lbs of lean body mass and put gram amounts in parentheses
* Physiological requirement: 0 g/day
* Practical minimum to avoid excessive muscle breakdown: 50 g/day
* Practical minimum for individuals who function poorly in ketosis: 100 g/day
Note: all above values assume no exercise.
* Additional amount to sustain low intensity exercise: minimal approaching zero
* Additional amount to sustain weight training: 5 grams carbohydrate/2 work sets
* Typically recommended amounts by bodybuilding experts: 1-3 g/lb (160-480 g/day)
* Typically recommended amounts by mainstream nutritionists: 2-3 g/lb (320-480 g/day)
* Average intake for endurance athletes: 5 g/kg or a little more than 2 g/lb (320 g/day)
* Recommended intake for endurance athletes: 7-10 g/kg or 3-4.5 g/lb (480-720 g/day)
* Practical maximum for non-carb loading individuals: 8.8 g/kg or 4 g/lb (640 g/day)
* Maximal intakes for carb-loading: 16 g/kg or 7 g/lb (1120 g/day)"
Hey Christian,
I am training for a couple of years now and on the moment i am on the anabolic diet for 6 weeks (excluding metabolic shift period).
I am a lean person and the reason why i started ad is to gain a lot of lean muscle.
After being on the diet for a couple of weeks i notice a couple of things:
- more energy during the day
- better recovery (high protein)
- strenght decrease
- a bit leaner
- a lil bit of muscle gain
- higher testosterone
- being flat almost the whole week exept weekends
I am a strenght athlete and fighter so strenght is my #1 priority and after that i would like to add as much muslce as possible. So i am a bit dissapointed about the diet. On carbs i was much stronger and added muscle mass quicker but on the other hand i love the energy and increased levels of testosteron(a bit more agression and libido).
So my question is, how can i get the best of both worlds? The energy and testosterone of a fat diet and the strenght and fullness(thick muscles) of a carb diet?
I thought about a few things that maybe can help me:
adding more carbs during the day, increase to 200gr? at the moment i am getting only 30gr or less.
Adding 60 gr dextrose pwo (i train 3 times a week fullbody)
50% carbs 50% fat energy nutrients? (what is the best time for carbs/fat)
At the moment i am not fighting because of a couple of injuries.
Do you have any experience with fighters or endurance athletes with fat diets, if so how do they respond?
Its a pitty that there are no good strenght coaches like yourself in the Netherlands.
Cause i would love to be coached by someone with the knowledge like you.
I hope you have the time to answer my questions.
Greetings
Tom
Christian,
are you a fan of organ meats?some times they get a bad rap because of a fat called purines,
what do you feel yourself?
lambs liver is a bit of an old irish cuisine that was forgotten in the “low fat” era
Hey Thibs,
I preemptively apologize if this is a dumb question. Well here it is: A little over a year ago I did your HSS-100 program and I enjoyed it and got good results. Would it be ok to do the program again soon or should I not since I have already performed it once before? If its a bad idea, do you have any other programs similar to this that you would recommended?
Thank you very much for your time.
CT, with your metabolic pairings (yes, I’m still doing them), all of the Combo 1 pairings use burpees, but my lower back does not like burpees because of forward flexion when I drop down and then stand up. Can I used any of the other secondary exercises from the other combos instead of the burpees for the Combo 1 secondary exercise, such as swings for instance, or do you have a particular move you recommend?
BTW - I know you hate it when people tinker with your programs and substitute exercises, but try not to get too pissed off here. I have a ruptured disc that’s two years old that’s healed very well on its own, but still gets angry with any forward flexion. Squats, DLs, and cleans are no problem as long as I maintain a tight arch.
Thanks, CT.
[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:
CT, with your metabolic pairings (yes, I’m still doing them), all of the Combo 1 pairings use burpees, but my lower back does not like burpees because of forward flexion when I drop down and then stand up. Can I used any of the other secondary exercises from the other combos instead of the burpees for the Combo 1 secondary exercise, such as swings for instance, or do you have a particular move you recommend?
BTW - I know you hate it when people tinker with your programs and substitute exercises, but try not to get too pissed off here. I have a ruptured disc that’s two years old that’s healed very well on its own, but still gets angry with any forward flexion. Squats, DLs, and cleans are no problem as long as I maintain a tight arch.
Thanks, CT. [/quote]
No problem! The basic concept is simple… one strength/resistance exercise + one bodyweight ‘‘energy draining’’ exercise + one abs movement.
Feel free to mix and match the exercises you want
[quote]Stone101 wrote:
Hey Thibs,
I preemptively apologize if this is a dumb question. Well here it is: A little over a year ago I did your HSS-100 program and I enjoyed it and got good results. Would it be ok to do the program again soon or should I not since I have already performed it once before? If its a bad idea, do you have any other programs similar to this that you would recommended?
Thank you very much for your time.[/quote]
AS long as you had a ‘‘wash-out’’ period (i.e. been away from this specific program for a while) you can repeat it.
[quote]NiallC wrote:
Christian,
are you a fan of organ meats?some times they get a bad rap because of a fat called purines,
what do you feel yourself?
lambs liver is a bit of an old irish cuisine that was forgotten in the “low fat” era[/quote]
I personally never use or recommend organ meat. I’ve never liked them taste-wise, so they never really came up to mind when planning diets.
CT-
This is a broad questions that can probably go to all trainers, but how do you exactly do you design a workout? I have read ur “how to design a damn good workout program” article. What I’m asking is, I know you later focus on exercise selections, reps, sets, tempo, etc. Before that though, Is it just a general out line like…
compound lift
isolation
etc?
He wrote a bunch of articles addressing this, called, “The Thib System”. Four articles to be exact. Perhaps that’s what you want?
Sorry for the hijack CT, just meant to save you time.
Hey CT, I looked in your article discussion and couldn't find an answer, so I was wondering:
In one of your discussions on the reality mass circuit you have a three day week planned out consisting of the circuit on one day, the metabolic workouts on another, and some type of whole body strength or hypertrophy day.
Do you have any recommendations on how to lay this day out? I was thinking of just picking a few exercises for weaknesses (single leg movement, Glute Ham raises, rear delt and arms) and doing them with standard rep ranges. Would there be a better way to do this?
Thank you.
Hey Thibs,
The product information for Leucine says not to take more than 20g a day. That is four servings.
If someone is eating 6 meals a day, are there recommended times for taking the 4 servings? I.e. breakfast, before dinner, etc?
Also, if I’m not taking Surge pwo, would it be better to take leucine along with my pwo meal/shake?
Coach, I’m looking to build up both my clean and my snatch. Do you suggest trying to make gains in both lifts in the same training phase? Or should I try to build up each lift in separate training phases?
BTW, do you happen to know of any Olympic lifting coaches in the Seattle, WA area?
Hi coach,
After reading a lot on the internet i guess I go for a 50% carbs 50% fat diet. Yes i did some more research:)
I read that i have to sepparate carbs and fat. That leads me to this question:
What are the best times during the day to take my fat + protein meals and what are the best times of the day to take carbs + protein, considering training in the evening.
i was thinking of something like this
1
oatmeal (its not really oatmeal but i dont know the name)
whey
2
a fat meal, 6 eggs with green veggies?
3
10 slices of bread with chicken(100gr)
4
dinner potatoes and some meat
pre workout
whey + 5 gr creatine
pwo
whey + 60 gr carbs + 10 gr creatine
6 rice and chicken
7 nuts / eggs
Thank you,
Tom
[quote]tumtum wrote:
Hi coach,
After reading a lot on the internet i guess I go for a 50% carbs 50% fat diet. Yes i did some more research:)
[/quote]
So you have 0% protein in your diet? 
[quote]tumtum wrote:
I read that i have to sepparate carbs and fat. That leads me to this question:
What are the best times during the day to take my fat + protein meals and what are the best times of the day to take carbs + protein, considering training in the evening.
[/quote]
Easy, the meal prior to your training have a small amount of carbs, post-workout have carbs and protein, 90 minutes later have another carbs+protein meal.
The rest is protein and fats.
[quote]GoDawgs wrote:
Coach, I’m looking to build up both my clean and my snatch. Do you suggest trying to make gains in both lifts in the same training phase? Or should I try to build up each lift in separate training phases?
BTW, do you happen to know of any Olympic lifting coaches in the Seattle, WA area?[/quote]
Both lifts can be trained an improved at the same time since the basic motor pattern of these two lifts is similar.
You could use the ‘‘regular’’ olympic lifting template of training both lifts in the same session (snatch before clean) or the one used by Pierre Roy, former coach of the Canadian national team, who devoted two days a week to the snatch and two days a week for the clean.
[quote]kellerdp wrote:
Hey Thibs,
The product information for Leucine says not to take more than 20g a day. That is four servings.
If someone is eating 6 meals a day, are there recommended times for taking the 4 servings? I.e. breakfast, before dinner, etc?
Also, if I’m not taking Surge pwo, would it be better to take leucine along with my pwo meal/shake?[/quote]
The only meal where there is no need for added leucine is post-workout IF you use SURGE (it already has 13g of BCAAs, including around 5g of leucine).
I’d take 3-5g with all the other meals.