Nutrition
Or Training - Which Is More Important?
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Legendary bodybuilding
trainer Vince, "The Iron Guru" Gironda was famous
for saying, "Bodybuilding is 80% nutrition!"
But is this really true or is it just another fitness
and bodybuilding myth passed down like gospel without
ever being questioned? Which is really more important,
nutrition or training? This IS an interesting question
and I believe there is a definite answer:
The first thing
I would say is that you cannot separate nutrition and
training. The two work together synergistically. Regardless
of your goals - gaining muscle, losing fat, athletic conditioning,
whatever -you will get less than-optimal or even non-existent
results without paying attention paid to both.
In fact, I
like to look at gaining muscle or losing fat in three
parts - weight training, cardio training and nutrition
- with each part like a leg of a three legged stool. pull
ANY one of the legs off the stool, and guess what happens?
In reality,
it's impossible to put a specific percentage on which
is more important - how could we possibly know such a
number to the digit?
Nutrition and
training are both important, but at certain stages of
your training progress, I do believe placing more attention
on one component over the other can create larger improvements.
Let me explain:
If you're a
beginner and you don't posses nutritional knowledge, then
mastering nutrition is far more important than training
and should become your number one priority. I say this
because improving a poor diet can create rapid, quantum
leaps in fat loss and muscle building progress.
For example,
if you've been skipping meals and only eating 2 times
per day, jumping your meal frequency up to 5 or 6 smaller
meals a day will transform your physique very rapidly.
If you're still
eating lots of processed fats and refined sugars, cutting
them out and replacing them with good fats like the omega
threes found in fish and unrefined foods like fruits,
vegetables and whole grains will make an enormous and
noticeable difference in your physique very quickly.
If your diet
is low in protein, simply adding a complete protein food
like chicken breast, fish or egg whites at each meal will
muscle you up fast.
No matter how
hard you train or what type of training routine you're
on, it's all in vain if you don't provide yourself with
the right nutritional support.
In beginners
(or in advanced trainees who are still eating poorly),
these changes in diet are more likely to result in great
improvements than a change in training.
The muscular
and nervous systems of a beginner are unaccustomed to
exercise. Therefore, just about any training program can
cause muscle growth and strength development to occur
because it's all a "shock" to the untrained
body.
You can almost
always find ways to tweak your nutrition to higher and
higher levels, but once youve mastered all the nutritional
basics, then further improvements in your diet don't have
as great of an impact as those initial important changes...
Eating more
than six meals will have minimal effect. Eating more protein
ad infinitum won't help. Once you're eating low fat, going
to zero fat won't help more - it will probably hurt. If
you're eating a wide variety of foods and taking a good
multi vitamin/mineral, then more supplements probably
wont help much either. If you're already eating natural
complex carbs and lean proteins every three hours, there's
not too much more you can do other than continue to be
consistent day after day...
At this point,
as an intermediate or advanced trainee who has the nutrition
in place, changes in your training become much more important,
relatively speaking. Your training must become downright
scientific.
Except for
the changes that need to be made between an "off
season" muscle growth diet and a "precontest"
cutting diet, the diet won't and can't change much - it
will remain fairly constant.
But you can
continue to pump up the intensity of your training and
improve the efficiency of your workouts almost without
limit. In fact, the more advanced you become, the more
crucial training progression and variation becomes because
the well-trained body adapts so quickly.
According
to powerlifter Dave Tate, an advanced lifter may adapt
to a routine within 1-2 weeks. That's why elite lifters
rotate exercises constantly and use as many as 300 different
variations on exercises.
Strength coach
Ian King says that unless you're a beginner, you'll adapt
to any training routine within 3-4 weeks. Coach Charles
Poliquin says that you'll adapt within 5-6 workouts.
So, to answer
the question, while nutrition is ALWAYS critically important,
it's more important to emphasize for the beginner (or
the person whose diet is still a "mess"), while
training is more important for the advanced person...
(in my opinion).
It's not that
nutrition ever ceases to be important, the point is, further
improvements in nutrition won't have as much impact once
you already have all the fundamentals in place.
Once you've
mastered nutrition, then it's all about keeping that nutrition
consistent and progressively increasing the efficiency
and intensity of your workouts, and mastering the art
of planned workout variation, which is also known as "periodization."
The bottom
line: There's a saying among strength coaches and personal
trainers...
"You
can't out-train a lousy diet!"
If your nutrition
program is your weakest area, either because you're just
starting out or you simply don't have the nutritional
knowledge you know you need to get results, then be sure
to take a look at the Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle program.
About
the Author:
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Tom Venuto is a lifetime
natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal
trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning
specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling
e-book, "Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom has
written hundreds of articles and has been featured
in print magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN,
Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise
for Men and Mens Exercise, as well as on hundreds
of websites worldwide.
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Articles By Tom Venuto
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