Structuring Your Own Training Program, Part 3
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Loading ...Supplemental work, in my mind, refers to work or mini-workouts that you do in addition to your normal routine(s).
This can refer to grip training, for instance–not enough to be called a “workout” in its own right, really, but it goes great as a finisher after a lifting session. Other things you might consider supplemental work:
- Forearm work. Slightly different from grip, but also very important for putting good snap on your throws. Think forearm curls, with the palm facing towards or away from you. Think wrist rolls, and bar twists (with extra leverage as you improve–hold the bar further and further off-center). A good ultimate player, more often than not, has well-developed forearms, or at least one on his throwing arm.
- Core work (but see here for a discussion of what core training really is, and give some thought to the work you’re doing)
- Single-leg work (this can make its own workout as well, but things like stability ball squats, while good for balance/proprioception/etc, generally tend to be followed with heavier/more intense work)
- Working on your weaknesses, for instance your posture–lot of fun reading to be had there, if you’re interested…otherwise, short version–you probably need to do more external rotation work for your shoulders and develop range of motion in your hips and thoracic spine so you can stabilize your lumbar (core) more. The latter range of motion comes from practicing proper squat form (I opt for olympic style squats more often than not–the extra range of motion and getting more strength from less weight both mean fewer injuries in the long term). If you’ve been benching for years and years and your back is lacking as a result, you might consider doing pull-ups or rows to try and deal with it as supplemental work (ie, a little every day) rather than as a part of your regular workout.
- Practicing lifting technique. Seriously. If you haven’t squatted or deadlifted before, practicing the form should precede any lift, and you should start light–and even after you’ve gotten a good hand on either/both, a bit of extra work on the range of motion will only help. Similarly, if you’re looking to get into olympic lifting (check snatches and the clean & press on the crossfit exercises page), practicing the form before you get into working out proper will go a long ways towards keeping you healthy.
- This also refers to recovery work…foam rolling, yoga, whatever suits your fancy. I call it “supplemental” but really it’s pretty essential stuff to do if you’re at all serious about your performance and health. Stretch before bed.
As for overtraining…this ties in to doing recovery work. Keep in mind that “overtraining” has become something of a buzzword to be avoided in fitness these days, but that overtraining (or, rather, over-reaching) can and should be part of any good exercise plan–you have to push your body beyond what it’s used to if you want to see good results. The trick is not to over-reach for too long–that’s when the physical symptoms appear, your testosterone level drops, and you start to see symptoms like mild depression, a loss of motivation, and a decrease in training returns, all of which can take weeks or months to adequately recover from. Again, the occasional period of under-reaching–intentionally doing less than you are capable of to give your body room to recover and grow–will go a long way toward ensuring you aren’t taken down for the count by overtraining. PLAN on under-reaching and recovering. And be willing to be flexible if your body tells you to back off sooner.
Again, when I talk about over-training I really mean over-reaching, a temporary plateau. If you’re curious about physiological overtraining, which is a treatable medical condition (requiring more than just rest and recovery, though that is also a big part of it), the NYT has a nice article on it you might find interesting.
Finally, applying training more specifically to ultimate. When you condition, seek to incorporate more game-specific work–you’ve surely done drills that involve lots of running along with catching and throwing. That’s the sort of thing I mean.
Outside of conditioning, or outside of using a disc, you can incorporate visualization–seeing game situations; for instance, when you do speed work envision running down on the pull or chasing a huck; when you do plyos, see yourself covering a defender and having to keep quick feet to respond to her, or leaping to sky for the disc. When you do track workouts, consider starting your reps with a quick one-two in the direction opposite your sprint, to emulate the stop-and-go of actual cutting. Practice accelerating from the dynamic positions you will be in in-game rather than the same old starting stance you take every time on the track.
In the gym lifting, you can gear your training more towards ultimate–this flows as a consequence of your goal setting. If your goals include catching or throwing, it would probably behoove you to work some grip work in to your training (stability for your head while running will also help with catching, as I recently posted about).
Catching/Throwing Thought: Head Stability
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If you’re a baseball fan, watch the outfielders closely next time you catch a game. If you’re not a baseball fan, watch a game and pay attention to the outfielders anyways.
Undoubtedly there will be some long flyouts over the course of a game–watch the way an outfielder keeps his eye on the ball and keeps his head stable as he tracks it on the run, even while sprinting. Their heads don’t bounce every which way; think about how hard it would be to know consistently the position of the ball if it was constantly shifting in your field of view (or rather, if your field of view was constantly shifting around it).
The Pittsburgh pirates have their minor league outfield pirates run on treadmills with laser dots fixated on their foreheads so they can work on keeping their head still even while sprinting.
The same holds true in ultimate. Have you ever seen the disc, and then suddenly missed the catch at the last moment? If it’s not the wind, it’s probably a subtle shift in your head position that threw off your sense of where the disc is.
Keep relaxed on the run. Let your body flow, and let your head float. Keep your eyes fixated on a single target when you do track workouts (on the straightaways, at least) and keep your head still. Translate this to the field, and find your catching (and D’ing) consistency improved.
EDIT: CP brings up an excellent point–this applies not only to catching, but to throwing too. Check the comments.
Structuring Your Own Training Program, Part 2
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...You want to be smart about your training. Again, you can look through my previous summer workout materials for some further guidance to this end–check out my initial summer workout post for an idea of what my training schedule was once like. You can work consistently without overtraining if you’re smart about structure and know when too much is too much. A few guidelines to that end:
-Lifting: If you do body part splits (whether you choose to do this or not should depend on your goals–I always opted for more of a full-body routine), you can work on back-to-back days; otherwise give yourself a day away from lifting between heavy lifts (anything taxing on you in terms of focus–conditioning work with light weight, while taxing, does not burn you out for lifting the next day).
-Conditioning: Depending on the extent and intensity with which you condition, you can do this almost every day. I’ve often found a good conditioning workout to be the perfect panacea to DOMS the day after a taxing lift. As a matter of fact, I would heavily recommend throwing some GPP in following your lifts–it’ll get your body working in new ways as different muscle groups are still recovering from the efforts of the previous day, and in my opinion this allows you to work through some deficiencies you might not have been compensating for when at 100% strength. Ironing out the kinks will make you that much better when you do get back to full strength. Note that DOMS has not been shown to have any actual adverse effects other than being uncomfortable–work out and work through it, and force your body to improve.
-Plyos: In contrast to conditioning, Plyos should be done on a more conservative schedule. While you can always power through a conditioning session, “powering through” plyos usually means piss-poor form and an increased injury risk (the same is true for lifting heavy–don’t wait playing “how much is too much” with yourself; be proactive and protect your body instead). Do plyos when you’re fresh. This includes speed work, and really heavy lifting (we’re talking 1 rep max and stuff in the <3 range). DOMS is not a complete nonstarter here, but make sure you can focus enough to work though it--sometimes it can sap your focus, and other times the DOMS is a sign of some fatigue and it really is a nonstarter.
Do plyos/speed work either immediately before your lifting, or immediately after (if you’re not killing yourself lifting–this allows you to take advantage of the complex effect whereby the shortening of your muscles from lifting allows for generation of more explosiveness. Again, make sure you’re fresh enough to really focus on what you’re doing–the nervous system is the primary beneficiary of this sort of training, and it won’t learn if it’s too fatigued.
-Overall Structure: You can power through 4 or 5 (or potentially more) days of hard training a week for a good while, but without proper focus on recovery you’ll find yourself plateauing before too long. A couple good ways to ensure your body is getting enough recovery to deal with cumulative fatigue buildup include doing proper flexibility and recovery work (massage, yoga and the like–activities that are lower-impact and generate bloodflow) on your off days or following workouts, and every so often (once every 4 to 6 weeks–this will vary depending on how much training experience you have, and generally gets shorter as you get more experienced and can therefore work with more intensity per workout) inserting an “off” or “recovery” week, where in lieu of the usual intense workouts, you give your body a bit of a rest. I don’t mean taking the week off entirely, I mean instead of lifting super-heavy, lifting a little lighter for significantly reduced reps/sets–don’t tax your body to the limit, merely rev it up and then ease back down to normal mode. Condition, but condition for half as long or with less intense exercises. Plyos, use your discretion–if you notice your vertical falling, for instance, you might leave them be entirely and give your body a true break there. The idea, as with recovery activities, is to get the blood flowing more than to push your limits. In so doing you give your body room to adjust to the stress that’s been placed upon it, and you’re likely to find that you come back much stronger/faster/more explosive the next week.
Additionally, to avoid mental burnout taking an actual off week every couple months is not a terrible idea. Remember that it’s recovery, not work itself, that makes you stronger–so while you can and should work your ass off, if you do so consistently you should know that a bit of down time will do more good than harm.
-Finally: TRACK YOUR PROGRESS. As with goal setting, this is absolutely essential. Think of program design, in its entirety, as a big blueprint, the workouts themselves as the construction, and tracking of progress as quality control (or as a foreman). If you’re not checking to make sure the blueprint is being adhered to during construction, how can you be sure you’re going to get the intended result? Goal setting and program design give you an initial heading…keeping a workout log gives you a map of where you’ve been and where you’re going. Getting a little metaphor-heavy here, but you get my gist.
Next Saturday, look for a third and final post touching a bit on supplemental work, overtraining, and ways to apply your training more specifically to ultimate.
Structuring Your Own Training Program, Part 1
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...This is far too deep to be covered in a single post.
But perhaps you’re interested in training and have been looking through some materials. There’s an absolute shitton of resources out there. Some of it’s crap, some of it’s useful–you can learn by doing and you can also cull wisdom from that which is repeated throughout many sources (usually–sometimes bad advice gets repeated. Use your discretion).
The big question, however, is how exactly do you go about structuring your training? I’ve already touched upon the essentials of this when I wrote about goal setting. If you haven’t set your goals, stop reading right now and figure them out. Honestly, if you don’t know what you’re working towards you’re just going to waste your time more often than not, unless you have somebody like a coach or a team to make goals for you. However, even those are not guaranteed to be in line with what you want, however, so take some time and think about it for yourself, too.
Structuring your training is like building a house. Your goals are the foundation upon which your progress will eventually be built. You can try building with a shitty foundation, but it’s likely to look pretty shitty when it’s done and be nothing close to what you expected, and will fall apart as easily. Get ‘em right–you can always refine later, but do it as well as you can from the get-go. Don’t be afraid to set ambitious goals; know that they can serve to motivate you more than setting no goals will.
Once you have your goals, you’re ready to plan. Where do you start from here?
Look at your goals. Let’s take a look at mine from two summers ago and use that as a framework:
1. Eliminate Ankle/Knee woes.
If you have pressing injury concerns, this should be at the forefront of your planning. For me, my ankle and knee issues were enough to limit how hard I could train in more general terms, limiting my range on squats for instance. I added a lot of single-leg work geared toward strengthening both, and TOOK CARE OF MY BODY. Get enough rest. Ice when it swells. Take ibuprofen if necessary. Braces are a question that depends on your needs–if you really need it or really need to perform now, go for it. Otherwise, aim to wean yourself off of it–even if you still feel compared to wear a brace, say, when playing, if you can get comfortable training without it you’re that much less likely to have the brace fail you as a sole support.
Injury prevention work means doing (pre)habilitation work before every workout. Even 5 or 10 minutes will help keep you from overdoing it and setting yourself back. It also means flexibility work. More on that later.
2. Get into “Better Shape.
These are covered in more detail in the actual blog, but whatever your general fitness goals are will determine what direction your training should go in. Of course, a balanced program is best–one that doesn’t focus on strength to the point of sacrificing conditioning, etc. But keep in mind what your current needs are as well–sometimes a bit of sacrifice to shore up your weaknesses (or further augment your strengths) will ultimately lead to better results.
If your goals tend towards the explosive (ie, improving your vertical), you should focus on plyos. HOWEVER, focusing on the plyos alone won’t do it unless you’re out of shape–your absolute potential for being explosive is limited by your strength, so you should also include strength work. If you can’t squat your bodyweight, you shouldn’t be doing plyos. If you can’t squat at least 1.5 times your bodyweight, you shouldn’t be doing exclusively plyos. If you can’t squat 2x your bodyweight, you should not be doing too much of the really high-impact plyos (one-legged depth jumps and the like). Just trust me on this one, unless you want to shell out $40 for the VJDB to get the same info.
If your goals are more grounded in strength (this is often in addition to other goals), hit the weights. It’s a little beyond the scope of this entry to go into that in too much detail–but if you’ve never lifted before (and I mean on a regular basis–if you’re trying to structure your own program without knowing how and are reading this, you probably haven’t lifted in the way I mean), start with a focus on the basics–squat. Deadlift. Bench (if you’re inclined–and balance it out with some rows). Work in one-legged versions of the first two and a one-armed version of the last one. Train your core. I touch upon a bit more detail here as far as rep schemes go…if you’re in doubt, try 5×5. If you’re still learning the motions, go lighter and try for 3×8 or 3×10. Shoot for a total of between 20-30 reps (not counting warm-ups if you start light) on a given exercise in a given workout.
If you’re going for GPP (known by most as “conditioning,”) you have a lot of options. Crossfit is a great source of workouts (and workout resources–check out their exercises page!). You know what a conditioning workout is like–work hard, rest little, get better. The key is to make sure you can either time your workout or do it with a time limit for number of reps/distance covered/etc–in this way you can track your progress.
So, your goals are the foundation. The exercises are your tools. When you know generally what kind of exercises/workouts you want to do (finding them is where the research comes in–check out the exercises page of Crossfit, and give T-nation a scouring (search for squat, deadlift, bench press, and dig a little) if you need help with coaching–or better yet, find somebody who knows what’s what and learn from them. I’m talking somebody you pay, or somebody who shows the results of their own work–your roomate probably thinks he knows how to squat, but just dips his butt a few inches), how you combine your exercises into workouts and place them throughout the weeks and months provides the framework for your improvement. This is perhaps the trickiest part to master.
Anybody can go in to the gym and dick around for an hour or two every now and then. The reason why you set goals in the first place is because it is from this foundation that you can draw your motivation, and motivation is absolutely essential if you’re going to consistently work on the house that is your body and your athletic potential and make progress.
Next Saturday I’ll finish by talking more about specifics to how each component of training should be incorporated into a larger structure.
In the meantime, allow me to insert a plug for Ross Enamait. Quite frankly, my experience with program design is driven in large part by information I’ve gotten from his Infinite Intensity program. I recently purchased Never Gymless to guide my training here in Japan, and it has been equally helpful. Ross gives very broad guidelines and a number of specific exercises for you to pick and choose from (and a sample 50-day program if you’re a sheep and don’t want to bother to think for yourself–I’m not judging you, I swear), all of which are likely to do far more to enhance your training than my ramblings. The dude doesn’t pay me to give him shoutouts (Hah! Like I get enough traffic to warrant such a thing), this is just me speaking from my own experience.
More off of the regularly-scheduled track: Crossfit
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...The Crossfit Journal has been revamped. All of their materials are being made available to subscribers ($25/year–I’m subscribed, FYI), but you should also give the basics section a look–there’s some pretty good information to be had there and a lot of those articles are free regardless. Make sure you download the full article on the right if you find anything of interest.
(Dartmouth folk, if you can’t download something, shoot me an email and I’ll get it for you. Non-Dartmouth folk…well, you can ask).
On Goal Setting and Planning
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...It doesn’t take much looking to find a wealth of materials on goal setting and motivation. Anybody who has an interest in business has I’m sure heard of numerous titles on the matter.
The acronym to keep in mind when you set goals: SMART.
Specific. Measurable. Attainable. Realistic. Timely (have a Timeframe).
As for what those terms mean to me when I set goals in the context of ultimate:
- Take the time to sit down and plan. Without a plan, you might make progress, but who’s to say that that progress is in line with what you really want?
- Really think about two things when setting goals: What you need to do, and what you want to do. Your priorities might still put the “wants” above the “needs,” but you should nonetheless be tending to all of them.
- Being specific means going in to detail! You hear this all the time–but “get into better shape” is not going to drive you as much (nor give you feedback–what exactly does that mean?) as “Improve my vertical by two inches. Lose three pounds. Add 40 pounds to my deadlift PR.”
- Measurable ties right in with specific–if you can’t measure your goals by some metric, how will you know if you’ve achieved them? Granted, not everything is quantifiable in absolute terms, and we do need some of the broad goals too (I’m thinking in terms of things like “keep the team motivated during workouts–” you’re not going to have everyone quantify motivation, you just go on feel there), but to the extent that those things that can be measured are measured, you’ll find more fulfillment in your goals.
- Attainable and realistic also go hand in hand. What good is setting a goal you’ll never reach, or one that comes at the expense of other goals? Some sacrifice is necessary, but be realistic in the expectations you set for yourself. At the same time, your goals should still be challenging. This is why it’s important to be specific–if I merely wanted to “get faster,” dropping a second would be sufficient to reach my goal. Wanting to “run under 30 seconds per 200 for a set of four 200s” gives you something to strive for and something to rejoice in when you do achieve it (and is hopefully not so fast that you never do). Keep in mind you can always set new goals when you achieve your current set–take the big lofty goals in smaller steps.
- TIMELY. Perhaps the most neglected aspect of goal setting. It is essential that you give yourself some time frame within which to achieve your goals. This can range from season-long goals, to a more specific time frame (“be injury-free by sectionals”). If you’re confident in your ability to work and achieve your goals on a consistent basis, you can perhaps ease up on this requirement, but deadlines give motivation. If you’re not motivated to meet a deadline then perhaps you should re-evaluate your goal.
Another important distinction to keep in mind when you set your goals is the difference between process and outcome goals.
Process goals are directly in your control–improving your consistency throwing is only a matter of your own work. Process goals also tend to be pretty easily quantifiable (improving athletically always yields measurements to gauge yourself–how fast you run, how high you jump, how much you can lift, etc).
Outcome goals, on the other hand, are things that, while you can strive to achieve them, are ultimately out of your control. Things like “winning nationals,” while a great goal to have, is also a goal that undoubtedly dozens of teams and hundreds of players set for themselves, but only one team can achieve.
The danger in goal setting is getting too caught up in the outcome. Just because you did not win a game does not mean you have not improved, doesn’t mean you haven’t achieved. This is why setting goals that relate to the process is so important–it gives you a measuring stick. You can look at yourself and say with full confidence that you set a goal, worked towards it, and achieved it. Results will come, or they won’t. One way or another you will find there is lots of room to improve if you focus on the process, rather than the outcome.
This ties in a fair bit with some of the things Tiina Booth said about what she does with Amherst Regional High School to prepare them to play in tournaments and develop mental toughness. At some point I’ll be making a post relating the outcome vs. process distinction to team leadership, so keep an eye out for that.
If you’re looking for a model to gauge your own goal-setting by or to get some training ideas, feel free to check out my Summer Workout Plan (you can also follow the label for the same on the sidebar). I took the time to make a detailed plan of what I wanted to improve and how I wanted to improve the summer of ’06, and made some very significant gains in that time and in so doing established a fitness habit that carried me through the rest of my collegiate career.
The Mental Components of Layout Training
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...Visualize, visualize, visualize.
Simple? Depends.
Visualization is a SKILL. Former teammates or blog readers should know that I’m a big proponent of visualization as a means to success.
So, you’ve hopefully read the link above and/or are familiar with visualization, generally. How does that apply specifically with regards to layout training?
For me, there are a couple crucial points to master if you expect to lay out successfully in game situations:
- Pre-layout–anticipate, be ready
- Disc is in the air–go for it!
- Layout execution–technique
- (minor point)Get back up and play!
Now, to touch on each individually…
Pre-layout–anticipate, be ready: A huge part of defense is anticipation (more on that later this week). If you’re laying out on defense, before you ever get horizontal you need to know when you should be ready to bid and when you should be priming other actions instead(again, more on this later). You can help yourself to recognize some of these situations more quickly and effectively through visualization, but some degree of in-game experience is also necessary here. You can think up simple situations which lead to layouts (you’re on defense, right on your man’s hip, as he cuts in for the disc), but invariably there are other situations where you might want to bid that you won’t anticipate. Learn to see these opportunities when you miss them, and prepare yourself mentally to pounce on them in the future. Offensively the situations tend to be more clear-cut, but if you always expect perfect throws to your chest you’ll find yourself surprised by the rare errant ones. Try to err the other way in your expectations and you’re liable to catch a lot more that comes your way.
Disc is in the air–go for it!: So, you recognize the situation. You’re right there, ready to go. The disc is thrown…what do you do? It’s not at all uncommon to pull up or choke in this situation when you’re just learning to lay out. Why? You’re still uncomfortable with executing the layout. Maybe some situations–big game, you’re really fired up–you go for, and others you don’t. It’s normal to have a threshold for this sort of thing, but you want to make that threshold pretty low–so that you laying out or not laying out is not a matter of how revved up you are, but whether you decide to lay out or not. Again, visualization can help here. Run through situations in your mind–remember to perceive these situations in detail, focus on the disc coming your way–and get the reps you need to get over the mental block with some mental effort.
A friend of mine got over his mental block by mixing visualization with physical practice–he would have me throw a frisbee to some target–he started off with a trash can, and worked up to progressively faster-moving human targets (they started off at a walking speed, worked up to 50/70/90%, etc), running up and laying out past the target to get the disc. You might have success with the same.
Layout execution–technique: I’ve already gone into the physical components in last week’s post, so give that a look. The key is to visualize these components in slow motion–you absolutely will not be able to focus on all of these things in the heat of the moment (in fact, focusing on anything other than the disc is likely to hinder your performance), so you have to do the mental legwork well beforehand if you’re to get it right without thinking later. Again, visualize detail–see (or feel) yourself exploding into your takeoff, extending forwards, flying through the air, and absorbing the impact through your torso while keeping your head, knees and arms all out of harm’s way.
Get back up and play!: Successful bid or no, you need to get up. This is particularly important on defense, when a missed bid means your man is getting off an unmarked throw–or on offense, when a missed bid means your man could now be sprinting deep uncovered or picking up the disc to get off a throw while you’re preoccupied on the ground. This is partly a visualization exercise–recognize (anticipate) the need to get back up before you hit the ground–but this is also part fitness. Upper body strength is underrated for importance in ultimate, and it is in exactly this situation that all those pushups/bench presses/burpess (the third is my personal favorite, as it actually trains pushing up into a standing position) will come in handy. I take pride in my bids, and I also take pride in recovering from my bids.
Supplements
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...Just about everybody should supplement.
Why? Because our diets are inadequate. Quite honestly, unless you are the most diligent of connoisseurs of natural foods, getting food that is full of natural nutrients in balanced fashion (even the veggies you get from the supermarket can be dumbed-down, cheaper versions of what you’d get growing it yourself), you’re probably deficient somewhere or could at least stand to benefit from some extra nutrients.
I take three supplements with regularity. As far as I can tell, I don’t need much else–but feel free to chime in.
Fish Oil
Tons and tons of purported health benefits here.
It’s all about getting the omega-3 fatty acids to balance out your fat intake profile. To get into it a little bit without getting too technical, having a variety of fatty acids is especially beneficial for your cell membranes (which are made primarily of fats)–health membranes means healthier cells, which means a healthier body. There is some hooplah out there about the quality of various fish oils…I’ve done a fair bit of reading, and the best (and simplest) advice I’ve heard is if it isn’t rancid in the bottle, you’re probably ok in terms of getting the O-3 fatty acids. Depending on how much you’re willing to shell out you can get additional assurances of quality, but I go for some of the fairly cheap stuff in bulk and have noticed the benefits. It’s particularly apparent in my skin quality, actually–I find my skin dries and peels a lot more easily when I haven’t been getting enough fish oil in my diet.
It’s also a potent anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is that thing that happens to your body with repeated stress (like ultimate practice, or hitting the gym) or acute stress (like twisting your ankle–ibuprofen is also an anti-inflammatory!). Instead of taking ibu all the time, try fish oil to keep your swelling under control outside of practice. I’m not saying replace ibuprofen with this–if you swell up in practice or at tourneys, go for the more powerful stuff–but it’s better to get adequate fish oil as an extra aid.
DOSAGE–I take anywhere from 2-6 capsules in a day, which equates to 1200-3600 mg/day (I take more when I’m being more active). You can trend higher than that and likely see more benefits, but I’m cheap and this has worked decently well for me.
Keep in mind that, though I’m talking about O-3 Fatty acids here, getting O-3′s from, say, flaxseed oil, is actually a different (incomplete) set of fatty acids. Go for the right stuff, go for the fish oil.
Multivitamins
Your mom or your grandma might have hounded you to take your vitamins every morning when you were growing up. You may have heard it’s a good idea for expecting mothers to take a multivitamin to ensure their child gets adequate nutrition. Seems like getting your vitamins and minerals is pretty important for growth and development.
Why, then, is it so common to stop taking vitamins when we’re grown? Our body is still functioning. Just because we’re not growing in size doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for these vitamins, as our body constantly regenerates itself. Balance out your nutrition. Get a multivitamin that you can stomach (or take it with water to try and avoid tasting it) and take it every day. Make sure you get zinc here, too–if you fancy yourself an athlete, a zinc deficiency (as well as an HCl deficiency, but that’s above and beyond in my book of supplements) is fairly common and will hinder your digestion (read: absorption of nutrients). Ladies and vegetarians, make sure you get some iron here too, lest you suffer from the effects of anemia.
DOSAGE: one a day unless you get two a days, etc. Really don’t worry about getting “too much” of any particular vitamin–this is very rare, USDA recommendations are WELL below any kind of dangerously high amount, and being an athlete means you probably need more anyways.
This is actually a doubly good vitamin pictured above: more on that in the final supplement.
Probiotics
Last, but certainly not least.
The multivitamin above was doubly good because it had a probiotic included in each tablet–if you’re not familiar with the term, a probiotic is typically a bacteria (often acidophilus) that, when ingested, will act synergystically in your gut. If you didn’t know, your gut has its own ecology–things live there–some of them are good, some of them are not. This ups the good guys, helping to combat the bad and keep you healthier. If you’re the type that gets sick frequently, you might see a big difference with some probiotics in your diet (it also apparently helps with constipation, if that sounds like something you might benefit from, too).
You can get them in a supplement or (my preferred method) through yogurt. There are probably other options to get probiotics naturally, but I don’t know of them. Mind your health here.
DOSAGE: I eat (or rather, ate–harder now to get the steady supply I got in college) a lot of yogurt, probably a couple servings a day. I doubt you need that much to see benefits, a single serving a day (or maybe less frequently than that, even) will probably do you. Alternatively, get a physical supplement and take the recommended dosage of that.
I might recommend refrigerating the probiotics–I’ve heard it can help keep the bacteria count high in the tablets–but I don’t know that it’s explicitly necessary.
Keep in mind that I’m going more for general health than fitness here (though improved fitness is an obvious benefit)–while I could spring for supplements like BCAAs, and while I may occasionally indulge in protein supplementation (typically powerbars or the like) post-workout, I don’t have the kind of income nor the kind of training schedule (currently) where I feel such things are necessary. Cover your bases for general health and wellness, but for fitness’ sake, keep in mind that the supplements aren’t putting in the work for you–anybody who works and sweats will improve appreciably, with our without supplements.
