The guide for natural trainers Regeneration

In this four-part article series, I will cover everything a natural trainer should know about building muscle without using banned performance-enhancing substances. Part two will cover recovery between training sessions.

There are three types of people in the gym:

First, there are those who train exceptionally hard and believe that their ability to recover is infinite. They live their lives with reckless abandon and it seems (at least to themselves) that only their minds define their limits.

Conclusion: Even if their attitude is admirable, there are physiological limits and training must therefore be followed by sufficient regeneration and recovery. You can only train as hard as you can recover and these individuals need to focus much more on the time (both mentally and physically) that they are not training.

On the other hand, you have certain individuals who need to constantly show off their workouts all over social media. These are the guys who are constantly fighting with the weights and posting selfies of it on Instagram.

Bottom line: I have nothing against you using social media to support your lifestyle. But if you're spending so much time posting selfies during your workout, there's a good chance you didn't really accomplish much during your workout. You might want to learn how to train really hard first.

Lastly, there are the individuals who understand the demands of training and choose to change their lifestyle to support their goals. These people don't rely on social media to justify their training decisions - they follow a logically planned progression and don't need external validation.

Conclusion: Interestingly, these are usually the same people who make moderate and sustained progress towards their body development and strength goals. They understand the need for adequate recovery because they have experienced the difficulties of hard training themselves. This article will only scratch the surface for these people, but they will probably already be following the recommendations given here anyway. Regardless of which category you fall into, here are a few simple strategies that everyone can benefit from:

1. a good night's sleep to all

When it comes to recovery, nothing is more important than sleep. There is no single supplement, dietary protocol, soft tissue massage program or prescription medication that can ever match consistent, good sleep.

Of course, this is not groundbreaking in any way - most people understand how important sleep is - and yet many are not getting enough good, restorative sleep. Don't assume that you don't fall into this category - just because you're sleeping through the night doesn't mean you're getting quality sleep.

Here are a few simple questions to ask yourself the next time you think about the quality of your sleep:

• Can you wake up (at least roughly) at the same time every day without having to set an alarm clock?
• Do you dream regularly?
• Do you wake up more than once a night to go to the toilet?
• Do you need caffeine first thing in the morning to function?
• Do you drool or snore when you sleep?
• Do you wake up with a dry mouth or have trouble breathing through your nose after waking up?
• Do you typically feel an incessant urge to take a nap between 1 and 4 pm every day?

If you answered "no" to questions 1 and 2 and "yes" to questions 3 to 7, then you have some work to do. You'll never be able to train as hard as you want or build muscle and lose fat until you get your sleep issues under control.

Don't believe me? Here's the result of a study on the subject:

"Sleep deprivation reduced fat loss by 55% and increased the amount of lean body mass lost by 60%. This was accompanied by markers of increased neuroendocrine adaptation to caloric restriction, increased hunger, and a shift in relative substrate utilization toward reduced oxidation of fat." (1)

Subjects who slept only 5.5 hours per night lost 60% MORE muscle mass and 55% less fat during a period of caloric restriction compared to subjects who slept 8.5 hours per night. But not only that - their ability to regulate hunger and burn fat was also impaired.

Do you still believe that training is the most important part of the equation when it comes to body composition changes? If so, you should think again.

2. close the window and open the door

The hierarchy of regeneration is as follows:

1. Total calorie intake
2. Macronutrient composition(protein, fat, carbohydrates)
3. Nutrient timing
4. Food composition
5. Supplements

You'll find different versions of this hierarchy on the internet, but the real message is always the same: as long as you don't get your calorie intake right, none of the other factors matter. So the whole discussion must revolve around the above hierarchy.

Your recovery ability will not magically double just because you focus on proper nutrient timing. So take care of the basics first (calorie intake) before considering the following supplements.

PRE-workout nutrition (before training)

• Consume 25 to 35 grams of protein from a high quality source (meat, dairy, eggs, etc.) 1 to 3 hours before your workout.
• Add 30 to 60 grams of easily digestible complex carbohydrates (rice, potatoes, fruit, pasta, oatmeal, etc.) to increase blood sugar levels.
• Avoid high-fat foods during the pre- and post-workout window, as these slow down the rate of digestion and absorption of nutrients.

INTRA-workout nutrition (during training)

• Consider consuming liquid carbohydrates (30 to 60 grams per hour, depending on the intensity of your workout. People with a higher training volume can start at the higher end of this range).
• Supplement with 5 grams of creatine monohydrate to improve cellular hydration status.
• If you have not consumed a pre-workout meal in the 1 to 3 hours prior to your workout, consider consuming a liquid whey protein source (20 to 25 grams) during your workout.
• Pro tip: BCAAs are worthless compared to whey protein when it comes to stimulating muscle protein synthesis.

POST-workout nutrition (after training)

• If possible, you should ensure a high predominance (50 to 60%) of carbohydrates around your training window in order to increase the uptake into muscle tissue via GLUT4.
• If you have eaten your pre-workout meal within the last 1 to 2 hours before your workout or if you have consumed a liquid protein source during your workout, then you can safely wait 60 to 120 minutes after your workout to eat - let your hunger be your guide. There is no post-workout anabolic window during which nutrients need to be consumed - they should be consumed during the entire training window (before, during and after training).
• Salt pre- and post-workout meals generously and consume potassium-rich foods to ensure replenishment of electrolyte reserves.

3. friends, family and food

This may sound slightly esoteric, but the concept is inherently simple - we as humans want to be part of a community. We want to belong, we want to be accepted and we want to be part of something bigger.

We need others to survive and we need to meet our own basic needs - food, water, a roof over our heads, etc. But we also have psychological needs that we meet through relationships - the need for love, for encouragement, for respect and for support.

"People want to feel something - anything. They want to connect with the world and other people. They want to stand out from the crowd. They want to connect with others through shared effort and pain." - Dr. Ben House That's the beauty of social media. It allows us to connect with others who share a common interest or hobby with us. It provides us with a platform that allows us to spread education or ideas and communicate.

Not surprisingly, the use of social media platforms has exploded among millennials and Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2012), who spend more than 10 hours a day on screens, much of which is dedicated to social media.

However, social media is a double-edged sword - it promotes the idea of connection without physical interaction. It seems as though communication has been limited to a 280 character limit with interspersed likes, tags and endless scrolling.

"Constructed emotions form neural networks around personal past experiences AND shared social constructs. For hundreds of thousands of years, we were primarily influenced only by those we came into direct contact with and were primarily surrounded by tribes of family and close friends.

The technological revolution has changed the way we generate emotions, categorize experiences and with WHOM we share them. We are now more frequently inundated with more virtual (and less experience-based) information, while at the same time losing connection with the real people around us. We often unconsciously generate substantial emotional constructs based on our biased projections." - Kyle Dobbs

Get to know people, spend less time on social media and spend time outside with the people you love. You'll be surprised how much better you'll feel.

Simplicity may be boring, but it works

Remember the Pareto Principle I mentioned in the first part of this article series?

Pareto Principle (i.e. the "80/20 rule") - for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

You may notice that this article did not discuss the influence of infrared compression bandages, beet juice or transcranial magnetic stimulation (tDCS). All the recommendations were seemingly rudimentary in nature.

And that is exactly the point. Most people will never achieve their goals simply because they are always chasing the latest industry trends and overlooking the obvious:

• Move well
• Move often
• Go outside
• Eat like an adult
• Listen to your body
• Go to sleep before 11pm
• Wake up with the sun.

Repeat this for 10 to 12 weeks and see what happens. Don't just take my word for it, try it out and see for yourself.

References

1. Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity

Source: https://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/natty-lifters-guide-to-recovery