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Baseball Physical Preparation : Oxidative Fitness For Baseball by Pat Davidson

October 29, 2015 by Chad Rodgers 3 Comments

Note from Chad and Andrew: We are absolutely fired up that Pat Davidson and Doug Kechijian have decided to come on board at Show Me Strength and address all things physical preparation for the baseball athlete. Pat and Doug are two of the most knowledgable, yet humble professionals we know, while also doubling on the side as savages. We couldn’t be more pumped to have them on board.

For this follow up to Doug’s installment yesterday, Pat thoroughly dissects the science from a series of questions we posed on the topic of oxidative fitness in baseball. What follows are his thoughts on the subject.

The baseball athlete does not appear to be one who would benefit greatly from focused oxidative training. The activities within a baseball game are ones that feature brief bursts of high intensity and high velocity movements interspersed with great rest.

If we examine muscular behavior below surface level observances, a case may be made for benefit coming from possessing oxidative fitness.

The model presented in this article will focus primarily on the benefits of possessing higher levels of mitochondria and capillary density found in the musculature associated with baseball movements, and in an enhanced ability of the athlete to recover post training/competition with a more robust cardiorespiratory system. Possessing more mitochondria and a greater network of capillaries in baseball specific muscles would create a situation where these muscles would be able to alternate between excitation and inhibition from an electrochemical perspective.

Scientists such as Stuart McGill, and coaches such as Charlie Francis have explained that the primary difference between lesser athletes and greater athletes from a neurochemical/neuromuscular perspective is the rate at which muscle is able to inhibit following excitation at a local level. The content of mitochondria found in specific musculature appears to be related to inhibition rates. From a recovery perspective, the ability to replenish the components of the phosphagen system (ATP and Creatine Phosphate (CP)) is accomplished through oxidative energy system capabilities.

The movements performed in baseball are powered through the actions of the phosphagen system. The ability to repeat these movements with the same level of power would be largely based on the capacity to replenish the substrate associated with the phosphagen system, which is driven through oxidative means.

Finally, the recovery and regeneration of the organism is accomplished in the post exercise time period through parasympathetic derived means. The ability to reach a deep parasympathetic state is primarily based on allowing the system to relax fully. Tissues that are operating through oxidative means will have lowered physiological cost associated with their behaviors, and a lower resting heart rate would allow the autonomic nervous system to function in a greater parasympathetic manner.

Baseball is a sport where athletes must be able to demonstrate biomechanical proficiency to perform the sporting movements with fluidity and power. The ability to rotate the lumbo-pelvic-femoral complex, the thoraco-abdominal complex, and the temporo-mandibular-cervico-cranial complex smoothly and gracefully are the hallmarks of a baseball player who can achieve optimal mechanics in throwing, fielding, swinging, and base running.

These movement capabilities are driven through the ability to demonstrate optimal joint positioning, which is highly related to the ability to inhibit chains of musculature.

Inhibition of musculature is a neuro-chemical process. This neurochemical phenomenon is greatly linked to the energy system demands of the tissues. Tissues that are working in a non-oxidative manner for prolonged periods of time (particularly at rest) will largely be unable to relax, and will have reduced ability to achieve electro-chemical inhibition. This reduction in inhibition capacity will reduce the fluidity of movement and will delay the ability of the tissues to recover post training and competition.

Increasing the number of mitochondria found within muscles will allow them to work oxidatively to a greater extent, which will foster an enhanced ability of these tissues to inhibit. Greater inhibition capabilities can then feed into an enhanced ability to smoothly execute the mechanics of the movements associated with the game when the athlete is practicing these movements.

Fitness gains can only be maximized if proper recovery from exercise takes place.

The recovery process is based on anabolic processes. Anabolism is the storage mode of the human body. The human organism cannot go into an anabolic storage mode unless a parasympathetic state is reached. Parasympathetic states are permitted to take place when heart rates decrease substantially, the emotional setting is one of comfort and control, and the organism is safe and relaxed. Reaching a state where the organism is safe and relaxed is based on reducing threat to as great a level as possible. Threats come in both conscious and subconscious forms. The primary physiological threats to the mammal are temperatures and pH levels that go outside of the window of comfort. Therefore, if the internal environment of the organism is not maintained at a level that is very easy for the system to control, threat level goes up and the ability to fall into a deep parasympathetic environment is compromised.

An elevated resting heart rate, inabilities to breathe freely and easily (poor rib cage mobility), having tissues that exist in non-oxidative states at rest (trigger points, diminished afferent signaling from poor joint positioning, etc.), and having internal organs working harder than they need to in order to maintain the system (gut problems from a poor diet) all are potential subconscious threats that will prevent optimal recovery through a highly dominant parasympathetic response.

From a training perspective, if we are interested in increasing the number of mitochondria for the purpose of improving inhibition capacities, we should utilize approaches that foster the physiological phenomenon of mitochondrial biogenesis. The main thing to think about in this area is that we do not want to create local muscular environments that are highly acidic, as this uncouples the mechanisms inside the nucleus of the cell that leads to the making of new mitochondria. Instead, we want to perform exercise that stays short of creating acidic environments.

Another conceptual piece to consider is that mitochondrial biogenesis is an adaptation inside a skeletal muscle fiber.

The only way that muscle fibers are capable of going through adaptation is if they are recruited and fatigued during an exercise bout. Muscles are recruited based on the size principle, wherein slow twitch fibers are recruited first, and as force increases, faster fibers are called into action in a gradated fashion. Fatigue of fibers is a nebulous topic that is based on a point at which a fiber shows a demonstrable decrease in the mechanical work output. Baseball movements are typically explosive in nature, and because of that, fast twitch fibers must be targeted for mitochondrial biogenesis.

While increasing the oxidative capacities of fast twitch fibers may sound like an oxymoron type statement, it is a physiologically valid approach. One of the primary training methods used to increase oxidative capabilities of fast twitch fibers is high intensity continuous training (HICT).

High intensity continuous training involves repeated high force movements done at a pace that keeps the heart rate from going over the point of lactate threshold. An example of a HICT protocol for the lower body would be 2 to 3 sets of 20 minutes of step ups where all the step ups are high force (wear a heavy weight vest, and drive really hard on the effort), and the heart rate never spikes above the threshold point at which the athlete would enter a non-oxidative dominant state. The athlete may have to intersperse each step up with a 5 to 6 second break to keep the HR below the anaerobic threshold to avoid accumulation of acid.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the theoretical rationale for why developing an oxidative system is important for baseball players, and it is not intended to be a detailed training prescription; however, some thoughts will be provided in this paragraph.

Creating a specific training approach that increases the oxidative capacities of the baseball specific muscles is not the easiest task to accomplish, and may be largely a fool’s errand from a strength and conditioning perspective. From the perspective of increasing the mitochondrial density of fast twitch fibers of the body, pick a few good methods for the lower body and a few for the upper body and stick to them rather than trying to mimic the exact movements of baseball in a training environment. Fast twitch fibers are not the only fibers needed for targeting in baseball players. Slow twitch fibers, particularly those of the pelvis, abdomen, and thorax need to be developed so that many of the static and slow speed positions and movements associated with the game (the leg raise of the pitching wind-up, the stride of the batter, cocking positions of throwing, etc.) can be improved with specific training protocols that recruit and fatigue these fibers. Baseball players still need to do traditional strength and conditioning protocols aimed at strength and power parameters as well as the hormonal system.

In closing, it should be stated that there is a physiological cost associated with every piece of mechanical, cellular, electrical, and transport work that the organism performs. The organism has many strategies that can be used to perform work; however, there is always an easiest possible physiological strategy that involves the least amount of cost. If you are tight, you can still power through movements; however, it takes more effort compared to someone with less internal resistance doing the same movement. If you are using the glycolytic energy system to power the performance of your sport movements (or the recovery in between bouts of repeated efforts); however, you will experience fatigue faster than an athlete using oxidative means to accomplish the same task (even if that task is recovery).

The greater the cost you have to pay over your athletic career to accomplish the things you do in your sport, the sooner your career will burn out. Those who find the most energy efficient way possible to move, train, recover, and exist are those who will last the longest, be able to have more repeat great performances, and who will have longer, happier lives after their playing days are done. The oxidative energy system is our efficient system, and it is the one that requires the least physiological cost for utilization. Develop your aerobic capabilities for easy power, easy recovery, and the long haul of your athletic career.

Now read: Nutritionally Controlling the Autonomic Nervous System

About the Author :

Pat Davidson is the current Director of Training Methodology at Peak Performance in New York City. He has a PhD in Exercise Physiology and is a competitive strongman in the 175 pound class who has finished in the top 10 at the North American Strongman (NAS) National Championships and has competed for the Amateur World Championships at the Arnold Classic in previous years. Pat has coached many strongman athletes, including multiple NAS National Champions in the 2014 calendar year. Pat bases his training methodology on his interpretation of block program design, and he relies on information from the Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) to guide him in his understanding of biomechanics and the strategies he utilizes to keep athletes feeling healthy and happy. You can contact Pat at pdpdavidson@gmail.com, as well as check out his awesome strength and conditioning program, MASS by clicking the link or picture here.

Aerobic Work for Strength Athletes by Pat Davidson

August 14, 2014 by Andrew Ferreira 3 Comments

Note from Andrew: We are privileged again to have this guest post from the man, the myth, the legend Pat Davidson today. For those of you who don’t know, Pat has a PhD in exercise physiology from Springfield College and is one of hell of a strongman competitor as well. A badass combination if I may say so myself.

For many strength athletes, the terms cardio or aerobic development is completely cringe worthy. Images of skinny runners dance through our heads, and the fear of losing any of our hard earned muscle mass and force production gains is a major assumption and fear. In addition to this, maybe you have unpleasant memories of having to run endless laps for sports practices in high school or college. In the strength and conditioning community, the old mantra was, “train slow, be slow”. I realize that these are common thought processes, in large part because I’ve thought all of these things in my head at one point or another along the way. My thought process on adding in oxidative work for ultimate strength and power development has changed as I’ve continued studying anatomy and physiology along with the coaching methodologies of some of the true greats in the history of our field.

Charlie Francis is one of the greatest track and field coaches ever. He was a tremendously bright man who had a firm grasp on the human body along with training paradigms. If you read his works, you will quickly see that Coach Francis makes some really strong cases for why sprinters should utilize training methods that improve oxidative fitness. Coach Francis was ahead of his time, and it seems that many of us are still playing catch up with his theory and practice for developing athletes to the highest points they could reach for performance. In the world of strength and conditioning, it seems that we are finally catching on to the benefits of utilizing oxidative fitness methodologies for the acquisition of much of our training volume.

Changes in fitness are largely driven by the amount of training volume you can accumulate on an annual basis. In international weightlifting, you often times see charts showing the total annual tonnage accumulated by lifters from different eras and different countries. Track and field people are always interested in the total yardage accumulated during training cycles, and what intensity level these yardages were gained through. Ultimately, it seems as though you need to perform large amounts of mechanical work if you’re going to change your body and realize your performance gains. So the question becomes, what is the best way to accumulate volume, and why is this the case?

Former Bulgarian Weightlifters

If you are a competitive strength athlete, you realize that the intensity that you display in an actual contest is almost super human. You go places that you could never possibly reach during training; however, if you don’t ever simulate these conditions to some degree in training, you’ll never be prepared for how to handle the experience and some of the adverse factors that can pop up during these times. So it is very clear that a good chunk of your training needs to be of the highest possible intensity, and that it has to be specific to exactly what you’re going to do in contest. Actually competing in strength athletics is a different experience than what anyone ever thinks before doing it. Contests are nothing like training days. Often times you have to sit around for a long time between events, and then with little or no warm-up time you have to perform at the highest level of your physiological output. You can quickly tell who the veterans are and who the new guys are based on what they’re doing in between events. Veterans relax and conserve energy. New guys are constantly doing dynamic warm-up moves or hopping around or something else that saps you of your overall competitive energy. In the coming paragraphs I’ll explain some of the underlying scientific concepts related to why incorporation of exercise within the oxidative intensity level is beneficial for strength athletes, and why the physical adaptations that come along with possessing decent levels of oxidative fitness are surprisingly useful for competition days in particular.

Medvedyev, the great Russian weightlifting coach and sports scientist explained that the biggest difference between outstanding lifters and average lifters from an electrical perspective of muscle actions is the rate at which a muscle can be inhibited after it fires. Lesser lifters are no different from the most elite lifters in terms of how quickly they can turn muscles on; however, the great ones are able to oscillate between excitation and relaxation of the muscle tissue while performing their contest lifts compared to everyone else. Stu McGill always seems to reference what he calls, “The Pulse” when describing the physiological difference maker between great athletes and lesser athletes. The pulse is the alternation between excitation and relaxation of muscle. So what is inhibition, and how do we improve this quality? Inhibition refers to being able to make a muscle return to a mid-range length where it can relax and turn off tone. The road to inhibition is one that can be achieved via position of major bones and by the downstream effects of changing the chemistry of the blood. In addition to this, the number of mitochondria found within a muscle is highly related to the ability of that specific muscle to be able to move into an inhibitory state.

If your body is stuck in an extension pattern, it will be very difficult to achieve inhibition. How do you know if you are extended? If you are a lifter and your pelvis is positioned in anterior tilt, your rib cage pops up away from your abdomen, you have a clearly defined six pack with a vertical line cutting between the left and right sides of your abs, and your legs are turned out in external rotation, you are deep in extension. You probably complain about a tight lower back, trigger points in your traps, tight hip flexors, and maybe you get hamstring and calf pulls a lot…especially on the left side. Why is it hard to achieve inhibition if your body is positioned this way? Because this position is also referred to as the inhalation position of the body, and the inhalation phase of breathing is a sympathetic nervous system based phenomenon. The sympathetic nervous system is the branch of the autonomic nervous system that releases the chemical epinephrine and norepinephrine into your body. These chemicals accelerate the heart rate, tend to vasoconstrict blood vessels, and lead to activation/facilitation of skeletal muscle.

If you are stuck in an inhalation posture, and your sympathetic nervous system dominates over the parasympathetic nervous system, you create a situation where some muscles in your body are always on, they can’t relax, and ultimately the ability to deliver blood and oxygen to these muscles gets compromised. The most common muscles in a strength athlete’s body to be constantly on are the spinal erectors, lats, traps, and superficial neck muscles. These muscles are always on because the extension position elevates and externally rotates the ribs. When the ribs are in this position the diaphragm is not positioned in a manner where it can work effectively. The diaphragm is supposed to be the muscle that causes inhalation by its concentric firing pattern. When the diaphragm contracts concentrically it flattens. By flattening it creates more volume inside the chest cavity. More volume inside the chest cavity reduces the air pressure inside the lungs. If the air pressure inside the lungs is reduced to a level below the air pressure of the external environment air moves down its concentration gradient and moves from outside the body to inside the lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes, it domes back up. When it domes up, it takes up more space inside the chest cavity, therefore reducing the amount of chest cavity volume. Less volume increases the pressure inside the chest cavity. If the chest cavity pressure is greater than that of the external environment, air moves from inside the lungs to the outside world, this is the exhalation. If you are stuck in an extended/inhalation position, the diaphragm gets stuck in the flattened position. The diaphragm can’t relax and dome, and if it can’t dome, it can’t really be a player in subsequent inhalations. As an organism, you have to bring air into your body or you’ll die. If your diaphragm isn’t positioned properly to inhale for you, your brain recruits anything and everything it possibly can to get you to be able to inhale. Necks and backs are the most likely locations that are recruited on the strength athlete’s body to achieve the inhale when the diaphragm is not available to do this duty. So the very first thing you can do to achieve an inhibition state is to spend more time exhaling during the course of your day. Get rid of your air, let your abdomen relax, let your rib cage move down towards your hips, let your thoracic spine go into flexion, slouch, keep your weight on your heels, and if possible, pause for at least five seconds before inhaling with the tongue on the roof of your mouth. Simply by doing this you will be doing oxidative work for your body. You’ll be opening up blood vessels, allowing nutrients to reach overworked, overburdened muscles, and you’ll probably feel like a million bucks.

Okay, now let’s talk about tissues and then we’ll talk about training. Tissues get hypertonic (really tight) and painful when they exist in a low chronic oxygen level. Tissues are always doing some level of work at the cellular level. They’re making new proteins, balancing ionic levels, and rephosphorylating ATP. To perform these actions, cells need to spend energy. The energy currency of the body is ATP. You have to split the third phosphagen off of ATP to release energy which can be used for all cellular actions. After you’ve broken ATP apart, you need to put it back together again (rephosphorylation). To put ATP back together again, you rely on the energy systems of the body (oxidative, glycolytic, and phosphagen). Cells are happy and working with high efficiency when they are able to rely on oxidative functions to rephosphorylate ATP. Cells require a constant delivery of oxygen to be able to function oxidatively. This means that the status of blood vessels is intimately linked to the type of energy system utilization that is happening at any given cell. If blood flow to a cell diminishes, oxidative dominance is not possible, and if the cell is to continue to perform work, it must shift to glycolytic or phosphagen system reliance. Glycolytic and phosphagen system ATP resynthesis is very rapid and powerful; however, these energy systems ultimately do not have great staying power. If you try to rely on the non-oxidative energy systems for extended periods of time, ultimately they will be unable to meet the cellular demand for ATP. When you cannot provide a muscle cell with enough ATP, a typical chemical cascade ensues. The end result is that calcium will remain in the cytosol of the muscle cell bound to the actin molecule, and myosin will be locked to actin. This is identical to rigor mortis in cadavers. So you must appreciate that your trigger points, super tight muscles, and chronic pain spots are really local rigor sites. Sure the foam roller or lacrosse ball gets some sensory information into that area and some blood flow, but this isn’t getting to the root of the problem, and is a temporary fix at best. What you need is to figure out why these tissues are not working oxidatively. This can be a can of worms, but I’ll tell you this much, it ain’t flexibility or mobility in most cases. You’ve got yourself a stability and motor control problem almost every single time, and you’ve probably created a reciprocal inhibition strategy that is rooted in the nervous system. Pretty much the only weapons you have at your disposal to truly fix this situation is proximal bony positioning, hitting monster exhales, maintaining stability reference centers, and finding some systemic flexion in your life.

Now let’s talk about training and volume. The great coaches within the world of strength and power sports have come to the realization that you should probably avoid playing in the middle. Make your intensity real low, or real high. Real high in the world of resistance training means playing with loads greater than 80%. Real low means playing with loads below 65% and stopping well short of failure. The main goal is to play with very high levels of intensity as much as possible. That’s where you make your big gains, and increasing high intensity volume on a yearly basis is the main focus of any good training plan. The problem most people have with trying to pull this off is that they actually don’t have the fitness to be able to realize this goal without ending up getting hurt in the pursuit of it. Avoiding injury and building the underlying fitness to be able to handle tremendous high intensity volume is where developing a great oxidative system comes into play.

Oxidative fitness development generally allows you to accumulate tremendous amounts of volume without stressing your system too hard. It provides you with tissue adaptations that lead to increased capillarization and mitochondrial levels. These factors will allow you to inhibit muscles. If you can inhibit, you can display good biomechanics and not move deep into muscle imbalance syndromes. Fitness development also speeds up your ability to recover from high intensity training sessions. The only way you can recover effectively is via living in a parasympathetic state. The lower your resting heart rate, the greater the overall parasympathetic environment for your system. If you get the majority of your volume from glycolytic type work, the intensity is too high to be able to really recover from on the next day, and it’s too low to be able to really get much benefit from in terms of displaying freaky levels of strength and power. As Charlie Francis was fond of saying, you should train your white fibers to be extremely white, and your red fibers to be very red. Do not try to cross the streams (lesson learned from Ghostbusters as well).

The final noteworthy point regarding the benefits of oxidative training for this article is in regards to how it may benefit the strength athlete during a contest day. Contests involve a lot of sitting around doing nothing, and then suddenly having to get ready to do supramaximal efforts. This is a tough thing to do, and very different from a typical training day. You need to be able to heat up very quickly if you’re going to perform at your best. The carrier of heat in the body is blood. If you want to get heat deep into performing muscles there must be blood vessels present in those locations. This is one of the reasons you need oxidative work. You’ve got to develop a high level of capillaries in the working muscles. If you have capillaries present, you can deliver blood to that region. Blood will heat up the muscle. The more heat you have in your working muscles, the faster the electrical impulses will be that travel to those muscles. Electricity is the ultimate driver of contractile actions. You don’t see too many lightning storms in the winter.

In closing, I want to ask the reader to question what they do. How much of your training is probably middle of the road type stuff? Is that stuff really doing much positivity for you? Is that middle road work sapping your recovery energy from being able to do more very high intensity work? Do you think that by scrapping your moderate intensity work for lower intensity work, that this might help you ultimately do more of the good stuff? When it’s all said and done, the more big movements you do with big weights with great technique, the greater your overall development will be as a true strength athlete. Are you doing everything in your power to give yourself the chance to do more of this kind of work in your programming?

Nutritionally Controlling the Autonomic Nervous System by Pat Davidson

July 30, 2014 by Andrew Ferreira 6 Comments

Note from Andrew: We are privileged to have this guest post from Pat Davidson today. Over the past couple of months, I’ve gotten to know Pat and everything he does is next level. From training like a savage to integrating PRI concepts in the pursuit of Herculean strength, he is the real deal. This piece takes nutrition to the next level…Enjoy.

How to Think About Food

The main thing that I think about with food is the way it effects my autonomic nervous system.

The nervous system is the controller of the other organ systems. Electrical messages are sent along axons, which reach the terminal end of the wire, and then a chemical message is sent to a receiving structure. The chemical message, when sufficient to cause a voltage change inside the receiving cell causes the cell to open gates and to activate G protein second messaging cascades. When gates open or second messaging systems are put into action, cellular behavior changes in rate.

Cells typically alternate between exergonic and endergonic chemical reactions. If the cell is behaving in an exergonic manner it is giving energy off, and endergonic behavior involves the cell taking energy in. The electrical/chemical messages coming from nerves are a major player in determining whether cells are trending towards exergonic or endergonic function.

The nervous system can be divided into the somatic and autonomic divisions. The somatic nervous system controls the excitation of skeletal muscle. Every other organ system function in your body is under autonomic control. This means that digestion and absorption at the gut/endothelial lining, as well as circulation of foodstuff, and the movement of substrate across the cellular lining are all phenomena that fall under the domain of autonomic control.

This article, will explain two ways where we can respect the autonomic nervous system and honor the authentic functionality of each branch via proper nutrient timing and eating foods that do not promote an inflammatory/immune system activating state.

The autonomic nervous system is housed within the medulla in the brainstem. The brainstem is in the hindbrain, which is a primitive brain location from an evolutionary perspective. The forebrain is where conscious thought resides, and the hindbrain is where subconscious brain matters are located. This is fortuitous because it would be very demanding from a conscious thought perspective to have to regulate heart rate, the opening and closing of arterioles, determining the extent of liver action, kidney filtration and reabsorption, and the countless other organ actions that must take place on a constant basis to survive as an organism on this planet.

The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic centers. Each branch effects the organs of our body in different ways, often times in a way where the two branches mirror one another. Finding balance between the two branches of the autonomic nervous system and being able to alternate from sympathetic to parasympathetic dominance is critical to the overall health and performance of the human organism.

Generally speaking, activation of the parasympathetic nervous system is essential to be able to digest food. The parasympathetic nervous system is also associated with the secretion of broken down food products into the blood stream, and it tends to promote the secretion of many of the anabolic hormones within the body. So to maximize the ability to absorb nutrients from food that you eat and to get those nutrients into cells where you can promote anabolic (endergonic) cellular reactions, shifting the body into a parasympathetic state is extremely desirable.

If we cannot escape from a sympathetic state, we cannot maximize digestion, absorption, and cellular uptake of nutrients. Furthermore, the sympathetic nervous system is also associated with activation of the immune system. When the immune system is activated, this tends to promote an inflammatory state within the body. Inflammation is associated with closure of blood vessels, which prevents nutrient rich blood flow from being able to reach tissues of the body.

Foods that promote an inflammatory state and an immune response prevent us from being able to shift solidly into parasympathetic dominance and being able to digest, absorb, and deliver nutrients to cells. Therefore, this is a relationship between food choices and autonomics. Since autonomics is the controller of every organ system of your body this means that to some degree the food choices you make determine everything about the function of your body and your overall health and wellness. In essence, you are what you eat.

My main focus from a dietary perspective is to respect my autonomic nervous system and to not insult the balance between the two divisions.

My sympathetic nervous system is my driver during waking hours. It excites me, fosters an exergonic state, helps promote my ability to perform mechanical work, and keeps me focused. My sympathetic nervous system is not my primary digestion, absorption, and cellular uptake driver. Based on this, I do not eat much food for breakfast and lunch on most days.

My parasympathetic nervous system is most dominant at night while I am asleep. Sleep is the greatest regeneration period for the human organism, and it is the time where we can really accomplish some good high quality digestion, absorption, and cellular uptake of nutrients. Based on this, I eat the majority of my calories at night before I go to bed.

This is of course the opposite of what most nutritional recommendations from government sources and registered dieticians say to do, but as a country we’ve been consistently getting fatter and fatter since we started following what those governing bodies had to say, so I naturally do exactly the opposite on principal alone. It’s nice that there is a very logical explanation that supports my nutrient timing beliefs that stems from authentic knowledge of anatomy and physiology as well.

The immune system responds to tissue trauma and to foreign invaders that can be found in the blood stream. When trauma or a foreign invader is detected, the immune system sets off a cascade of events that results in white blood cell proliferation, inflammation, vasoconstriction, and a host of other chemical responses. This chemical cascade is fairly stereotypical and reproducible. The immune system response is one that is initiated because a threat has been presented to the body. From an autonomics standpoint, the sympathetic nervous system is the division that is activated in response to threat. We must therefore ask the question, are there foods that create a threat to the body? The answer from an autonomics and immune system perspective is yes.

Gluten and Inflammation

The gluten protein is a casing that surrounds the sex organs of wheat based plants.

Plants do not have any desire to provide other animals with nutrition. Plants are trying to survive and pass their genes off to the next generation to keep their species alive on this planet. Plants have developed defensive strategies to be able to prevent their sex organs from being destroyed when an animal eats them. The gluten protein is one such evolutionary plant based defense strategy.

The human digestive processes are not capable of breaking down the gluten protein during digestion in the gut. This means that when we absorb foods with the gluten protein, the gluten casing is still intact when it enters the blood stream. Gluten is something that the human body perceives as being a foreign invader, and as a result, the immune system is activated, and a sympathetic state ensues. Some of the signs and symptoms of an activated immune system include leaky gut syndrome, an increased prevalence of auto-immune conditions, inflammation, swelling, gas, and bloating.

The medical community as well as many nutritionists seem to only focus on Celiac disease when it comes to gluten. This is a mistake because anything that is activating the sympathetic nervous system and the immune system can exert effects on any organ system in the body, and which organ system is most effected will be a highly individualistic experience. Gluten is probably the most insulting inflammatory and immune system activating food choice for most humans; however, it is certainly not the only food choice that can set off this cascade. Dairy, legumes, and nightshades are also high up on the list of offending agents.

What I Do

So what do I do from a food choice perspective and a nutrient timing perspective to maximize my autonomic responses on a daily basis?

First, I go with the bulletproof coffee (BPC) in the morning. Caffeine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system which gets me going. The sympathetic nervous system, with its release of epinephrine and norepinephrine is a powerful agent for causing fat burning because these adrenaline based hormones activate hormone sensitive lipase which liberates fat from fat cells.

In addition to the fat mobilization properties coming from caffeine ingestion, the medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) that go into the BPC are optimal for cellular uptake at working cells that can burn fats. MCTs do not oxidize within the blood vessel (and therefore do not promote endothelial lining inflammation), and they readily cross the plasma membrane and can be quickly broken down to Acetyl CoA to enter the Krebs Cycle via Beta Oxidation inside the cell. The protein that is added to the BPC provides an amino acid influx into cells for protein synthesis, which is nice for a strength athlete, and the ingestion of protein has a powerful satiety effect for preventing extreme food cravings during the course of the day. I also add cinnamon to my BPC due to the fact that this substance has been shown to have outstanding effects on sustaining appropriate blood glucose levels.

The second thing I do is I wait until late in the day to have a big meal, and this is the time when I deliver carbohydrates to my body.

Typically I train during the middle of the day. I don’t worry about post workout supplementation or anything like that. Yes, the research shows that there is a tremendous uptake of amino acids post workout within the anabolic window, but it also shows that there is a big drop off in amino acid uptake and protein synthesis later on.

So, in my mind it all evens out, and worrying about getting food in during the mysterious and elusive anabolic window is something that could be stressful for people to have to worry about, which could ultimately do more harm than good for some people from an autonomics perspective.

The exercise bout during the day does something really fantastic for me though, it dramatically increases my insulin sensitivity. The primary function of insulin is to promote the cellular uptake of blood glucose. Delivering glucose into cells is a very valuable action because it can promote increasing stores of glycogen, which is a powerful energy substrate for high intensity exercise bouts, and glycogen stores must remain high to prevent the release of high levels of cortisol.

If I wait until later in the day to eat my carbohydrates, particularly if I perform exercise prior to carbohydrate ingestion, I will maximize the binding of insulin to its receptor on the plasma membrane, and this will drive a powerful response of cellular uptake of sugar and protein…the two primary ingredients for promoting muscle growth, and muscular performance. In addition to these responses, it seems that glucose and insulin also promote a parasympathetic shift in the autonomic nervous system as well. If I can drive this shift later on in the day, this will be a nice way to prepare my body for sleep, which is the most important regenerative activity for the human body.

Experts?

It seems that we are inundated with dietary recommendations on a daily basis in the United States. Every expert seems to have some kind of plan for you.

How many of these people ever really trace their recommendations all the way down to the most fundamental levels of anatomy and physiology though? Very few from what I’ve seen. Most so called experts regarding food still focus on calories in vs. calories out, which is a nice concept from a superficial perspective, but ever since our country really bought in on that concept we’ve done nothing but get fatter and more diseased.

In truth, the laws of thermodynamics are unavoidable, and calories in/calories out still is king; however, if you’re counting the calories going into your mouth as the critical ones, your perspective is all wrong. The only calories in/calories out counting that matters are the ones entering and exiting your cells. This calories in/calories out concept is an endergonic/exergonic matter, which is an electrical/chemical matter, which is a sympathetic/parasympathetic manner. Food equals autonomics and autonomics equals organ regulation. Organ regulation equals health. Health equals feeling great, looking your best, and performing at a high level. Respect the hindbrain.

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