The Importance of Nutrition for Athletes
A Guest Post by Strength Coach, Joe Meglio

Let’s face it, many athletes struggle with their nutrition.

I often ask my high school athletes what they ate on that day so far and I usually get answers like pop tarts, a bowl of cereal, a wrap or sandwich and other highly processed food that comes out of a box or wrapper.

Not only are they eating crappy food, but they are barely eating! The problem with poor nutrition is that an athlete cannot expect to perform at their best if they are not feeding their body the proper nutrients it needs to achieve maximum performance. You are what you eat! If you eat like crap, you are going to feel like crap, recover slowly and have low energy levels.

Nutrition Made Simple

The biggest challenge for most athletes is being consistent and making the right food choices. In order to solve this problem, the best approach is to make nutrition as simple as possible. This means don’t complicate it by counting calories and other macronutrients. Instead, athletes should focus on eating nutrient rich foods.
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I trained with the rest of the Diesel guys, the dudes from Krank Systems, Mark from Elmira Fitness Club and Taylor Sexton a few months back.

As a finisher to the already 3-hour workout, we finished with the Diesel Man Maker.

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A few weeks back, I put up a post about the Possible Benefits of Training in the Cold.

Shortly after that, there was a request on my friend, Elliott Hulse’s YouTube Channel about how to get better workouts when training in the cold.

Now, Elliott is from Florida and camps out in the Palm Trees with crocodiles, so cold weather training isn’t something that he has to worry about too much.

So I wrote him a quick note and let him know I’d be glad to help him out. So I put together a couple of videos for his channel.

How to Prepare for Training in Cold Environments

Part 1 – What to Wear for Cold Weather Strength Training

Part 2 – How to Warm-up and Stay Warm for Cold Weather Strength Training

If you have any other tips, please leave a comment below. I don’t want anybody’s workout suffering because of these frigid temperatures.

More Videos on Cold Weather Training / Warming Up Better

Killer Conditioning Combo for Cold Weather Training

Tricky Warm-up Technique for Better Workouts

MAKE it a GREAT Day!

Jedd

P.S. Elliott is also giving out a free report this week called the Muscle Shifting Doctrine. You can sign up for it here = > Muscle Shifting Doctrine.

I have a confession to make.

For years, I thought warming up was a joke – a waste of time. DUMB.

Trainers like Guy Razy would come to train with us and show us cool warm-up drills, and I would ignore them. DUMB.

Guys like Coach Mike wrote me emails telling me I needed to improve my flexibility and mobility and I put it off. DUMB.

Smitty and Brad told me how much better they felt after incorporating more of this stuff into their training and I ignored them. DUMB.

It wasn’t until more than a year later when Smitty and Brad actually ran me through a battery of intense warming up that I realized what I was missing. Now I warm-up intensely every single workout.

In addition to warm-up and dynamic flexibility strategies to get ready to WREAK HAVOC, I’ve also found that I respond well to jumping exercises before hitting the weights.

I’ve always loved jumping, but unfortunately my ceiling is too low for me to leap up on top of jump boxes, so that’s out of the question.

But I recently found something just as good. You’ve probably heard them called Kneeling Jumps, but I call them Up Downs.

Up Downs spark the Central Nervous System BIG TIME.

After doing these, I am ready to DROP BOMBS. I feel more aware, more focused, and I have hit several PR’s since including them. I want you to try these out.

How to Perform Up Downs

You may have seen these done differently elsewhere, but this is how I do them. This way actually makes it harder to perform them, causing you to work just a bit harder, focus more deeply, and as a result, pushing you to a better warm-up finisher.

Starting Position:

Kneel down on the gym floor, placing your entire shin flat on the ground, plantar flexing the foot. This position takes your ankles out of the movement and forces you to engage everything else more intensely.

Power Transfer:

It is imperative to get the arms involved in the movement in order to generate the power to get up off the ground and to the landing position. Swing them back to engage a sretch reflex, then fire your leg and glute power to drive yourself upwards.

Recovery Position:

Once airborne, you must pull your feet out from under you to stick the landing. Try to land as quietly as possible to absorb the energy, and get into an athletic position, like a puma ready to pounce on its prey.

Here’s a quick video demo showing some of the stuff I have done to modify Up Downs even more.

If you’re like me and have hated and dreaded warm-up, you should try this out.

Go through some dynamic warm-up and mobility stuff and then finish it off with some Up Downs or something similar to really prime the CNS. I think you’ll be surprised how good you feel.

Try them and let me know what you think. I think you’ll have a KICK-ASS workout setting MONSTER PR’s.

All the best,

Jedd

We saw Silvester Stallone do it in Rocky IV – training his ass off in the bitter Moscow cold in order to prepare for the biggest challenge of his career, Ivan Drago.

We then wanted to go outside in the snow, carry a log on our back, and start cutting cords of wood like Mountain Men.

Now, you can say that subjecting yourself to situations like this can make you mentally tougher once it is done, but are there any true benefits to training in cold weather over training in a warm, comfortable gym? (more…)