Category Archives: Tim Henriques
The Simple Diet
Science can make nutrition complicated. Measure the glycemic index of this, the glycemic load of that. How much omega-6′s in this? What about omega-3′s?
While a deeper level of nutrition knowledge can certainly be useful, what we often get through the media are little bits of information that’s never paired with an overall philosophy.
It becomes especially hard when faced with nutritional science that seems to contradict itself. Eggs are a great source of protein and healthy fats. No, eggs have too much cholesterol and “bad” saturated fat. What do we do?
Enough. Here’s my philosophy: I call it the Simple Diet, because it’s simple to understand and the foods you’re eating will be in their simple, or basic, form.
This diet is particularly useful when you want to lean up a bit but still live a relatively normal lifestyle. If you hope to get unbelievably cut or prep for a bodybuilding show, this likely isn’t for you, but if you found that your holiday bingeing has extended into spring training, then this might be your answer.
This diet assumes you’re working out reasonably hard at least several days a week. If you’re not doing that, start. If you don’t plan on doing that, you’re on the wrong website.
Builders & Energy Providers
I think of food in terms of two categories: builders and energy providers. That’s how I teach the nutrition basics to my kids, who are all five and under. It’s simple, and it works. You can also add a third category: stuff that keeps you healthy.
This paradigm matches nicely with the primary functions of nutrients, which are to provide energy, build and repair tissue, and regulate metabolism.
Builders. The meathead’s favorite food group. The stuff that does this job is protein and fat. On this diet, you can eat as much natural, unprocessed protein and fat as you want.
Here are some examples:
- Red meat
- Eggs (whites or whole)
- Chicken (with/without the skin)
- Turkey (with/without the skin)
- Fish (with/without the skin)
- Butter
- Coconut oil
- Olive oil
You’ll notice that I’m pushing unprocessed foods. Slicing turkey meat from an actual turkey breast is better than opening a package of pressed mechanically separated turkey parts. You already know this, because that turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving tastes a hell of a lot better than that five-dollar foot long from Subway, it’s just less convenient. Get over it.
I’m a big fish fan. One of the rules of this diet is that you have to eat fish at least twice a week, and the more the merrier. However, fish from a can doesn’t count – it’s not off-limits, but it doesn’t count toward your twice-a-week total. Non-farmed fish is ideal, but work with what you have access to.
I’m not as excited about pork. Fish and lean red meat (and wild game if you have access to it) is number one. Pigs aren’t as good, in my opinion. Sneaking in some lean pork tenderloin is permitted, but no bacon or hot dogs. They’re processed junk.
Avoid things like mayonnaise, peanut butter, and sour cream. Mayo is too processed and peanut butter and sour cream, while natural, are better for weight gain, and this is a weight loss program. If you find yourself losing weight too fast and aren’t trying to get ultra lean, you can add those foods back in.
Energy providers. This is where carbs fall. This is not a low-carb diet – those diets can work but can be a pain to follow, not to mention they cause intense workouts to suck. This diet will have carbs, but they’ll be of the healthy sort.
Here’s what you can eat:
- Potatoes (any version in its natural state)
- Sweet potatoes (ideal)
- Rice (any version)
- Oatmeal (any version but steel cut preferred)
- Any fruit
- Any veggie
You may have unlimited amounts of any of the foods from either of the above categories. Yes, unlimited. Most people don’t crave natural foods, and there are far fewer reports of binging on chicken and rice than beer and wings. Natural foods are also enormously satisfying and contain more fiber, so they fill you up quicker.
Natural foods are also much harder to come by. You can get junk food at 2 AM just by hitting up the drive thru or vending machine. You’re much less likely to have a post-bar binge-fest if it requires grilling up chicken and digging out the rice cooker.
Finally, natural foods tend to spoil, so you usually don’t have unlimited quantities lying around, and they’re expensive – so even if your head or stomach doesn’t tell you to stop eating, your wallet will.
You still might find yourself a bit hungry or experiencing cravings while on this diet. That’s expected, but it won’t be cravings for these foods.
Rules
You will have veggies at every meal. Yes, every meal, including breakfast. You can have whatever veggies you want, but fresh or frozen is preferred over canned. Your veggies should be bright and colorful and actually have taste.
Peas, broccoli, shredded peppers, and mixed veggies are my personal favorites, but have whatever you want. This will help you feel full, give you some energy, and along with the good fats, help take care of the third category, keeping you healthy.
Avoid any processed carbs, junk food, desserts, sugar, soda, and fruit juice – all off limits. Pasta and bread are also on the avoid list.
Of course, you can eat that stuff if you must, just be aware that you’re cheating if you do. There are also no diet drinks allowed – no Diet Snapple, Pepsi One, Coke Zero, etc. They’re not natural things so they don’t qualify (hey, it’s my diet!).
Basic rule, if the food doesn’t look pretty close to what came out of the ground, you can’t have it.
Notes
Nuts. While healthy, nuts tend to slow down the weight loss process. If you’re losing weight too fast, or trying to gain a bit of muscle, then by all means include them. But for straight fat loss, go nut-free for a month and see what happens. You can then make a decision based on the results.
Coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker, but if you’re going to drink it in its relatively natural state (meaning your cup of joe doesn’t resemble a 30-ounce milkshake with caramel drizzle), then it’s likely okay. I also don’t think a person should be addicted to anything, so if you go into caffeine withdrawal without coffee, it’s time to get that under control.
Milk. I like milk and tend to include it in my diets. Start off with 16 ounces or less of whole milk (preferably organic) per day and see how you respond. If you’re losing weight too fast, start to add it back in, if not keep it out. The same holds true for most dairy products like yogurt and cottage cheese.
Alcohol. From a health and fitness point of view, wine is the best (although I don’t drink it, much to my wife’s chagrin). Try limiting wine to one or two times a week and see how you respond. I’d avoid beer or hard alcohol, although you can have them with your weekly cheat meal.
My rule of addiction holds true here, too, so if it’d be hard for you to go a month without booze, then now’s the time to stop and get it under control. One of my favorite quotes (from Epictetus) is, “No man is free who is not a master of himself.”
Supplements. While no diet ”needs” supplements, a good peri-workout protocol would be one of the first things I’d put back into a diet, especially if you’re going for that “pretty lean but still big and powerful” look. Check out the Anaconda™ Protocol – the feedback is astounding.
Cheating
What I like about this diet is that you can follow it long term. I should point out that to me, a diet doesn’t mean a plan you follow for a set time to accomplish a goal; it’s simply a word to describe one’s eating.
But denying yourself sucks, and we only have so much will power, so I want you to cheat on this plan. For one meal, once a week, every week, you can eat whatever you want, as much as you want. No limits.
Ideally, eat reasonably healthy for that meal; go out to a restaurant and order the fish and rice, but add that appetizer or dessert that you’ve been craving. In other words, it’s better to do “little cheats” instead of a big cheat.
So if you’re craving food not on the plan, eat a healthier choice like spaghetti with meat sauce instead of three Big Macs. Think of food as a continuum; just because you’re cheating doesn’t mean you have to go completely to the other side.
The leaner you are, the closer to where you want to be physique-wise, the more you can cheat. The heavier you are, the further away from your goals, the less you can cheat. You can rationalize this by saying heavier folks have already been cheating so now it’s time to pay up and be strict, while leaner people have earned a bit of freedom with their diet and can enjoy themselves accordingly.
Simple Summary
What to eat
- Unlimited natural, unprocessed meat (chicken, turkey, red meat, wild game)
- Unlimited animal skin
- Unlimited natural fat
- Fish (not from a can) twice per week minimum
- Veggies with every meal, no exceptions
- Unlimited fruit
- Unlimited potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, and oatmeal
- If you follow the above rules, one meal per week eat whatever you want, as much as you want.
Maintenance
A typical 200-pound male following this plan should lose 1-2 pounds a week of mainly fat. Use the stomach/waistline as a progress guide – over time it should get smaller and noticeably leaner.
Once you’ve reached your goal you may modify the program a bit. You might include another cheat meal, or simply try to eat another meal on top of what you’re normally consuming to prevent further weight loss. Adding in additional pre or post workout nutrients would be the best place to start. By this point you should have learned how your body responds to different foods and can make changes appropriately.
Get Simplified
What’s great about this diet – apart from its efficacy – is that you can follow it for a long time, it works pretty well with “real life,” and it still supplies enough energy to get through your T Nation approved workouts.
But it isn’t complicated – when it comes to nutrition, simpler is often better.
The Four Types of Movements
I was skimming the T Nation forums the other day when I stumbled on this question:
Well, you can probably guess what happened next. The poor bastard was derided for the question and his general lack of knowledge, and ultimately told to take his ball and go dribble somewhere else.
I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the guy. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a very insightful question, but at least he was trying.
According to his logic, dribbling is basically straightening the arm, and since a triceps extension is straightening the arm, well, you could see where he was going – although he was clearly missing a big part of the equation.
This guy needed a way of “classifying” movements, and I suspect you might need a way, too. The benefit of this isn’t merely semantics; once you can correctly classify a movement, you can then apply the proper training methodology to improve it.
Let’s begin.
I’ve divided a list of activities that many of us perform regularly into four basic types of movements. Granted, when you try generalize specific activities into broad categories there will inevitably be some overlap, but you’ll see that the majority of movements fit nicely into one of the four categories – especially those activities that we often actively strive to improve.
Once the types of movements are identified, we’ll discuss the best methodologies to improve them.
The Four Movements
1. Low Speed, Light Resistance – In this category, the participant is generating a low level of external force, which means the limb moves relatively slowly and that a low amount of force is being used to move a light resistance (or no resistance).
The prior example of a person dribbling a basketball is a low speed, light resistance activity. Other abilities include drawing, painting, typing, billiards, darts, shuffleboard, dribbling a soccer ball, shooting a basketball, juggling, putting a golf ball, and curling (not the cool kind involving the biceps, the other kind that Canadians play when they can’t get enough guys together to play hockey) also fall under this category.
2. High Speed, Light Resistance – In this category, the participant is generating a high level of external force, meaning the limb and the object both move rapidly. However, the object being moved is relatively light.
This type of activity is common to many different sports, though rarely seen in the gym. Examples of this would be pitching a baseball, swinging a baseball bat, punching something, kicking something, swinging any sort of racquet, and driving a golf ball off a tee. I’d also include sprinting in this category, particularly after the initial acceleration takes place. Sprinting involves moving your entire body – which is much heavier than some of the other resistances given – but once moving, the level of resistance provided by the body is relatively low, at least in comparison to a heavy squat or dragging a heavy sled.
3. Low Speed, Heavy Resistance – In this category, the participant is exerting effort against a heavy external resistance (heavy meaning difficult for that individual). Because the object being moved is heavy, the object’s speed is relatively slow.
This type of activity is most common in the gym. Examples of this would be lifting heavy weights, pushing a car, playing tug-of-war, wrestling someone (once you’re engaged against them), an offensive lineman attempting to drive their opponent off the line of scrimmage, arm wrestling, dragging a weighted sled, pushing the Prowler, picking up a heavy object, and resisting a heavy object’s movement (negatives).
4. High Speed, Heavy Resistance – In this category, the participant is exerting effort against a heavy external resistance, however the participant is generating enough force so that the object still moves rapidly.
The best example of this type of activity is Olympic weight lifting. Other examples would be slamming an opponent on the ground, running into and tackling someone, and putting the shot. I’m also going to include jumping and most real plyometric exercises in this category (although doing a chest press with a 4-pound medicine ball doesn’t count).
How to Improve these Activities
1. Low Speed, Light Resistance
The primary component that determines proficiency in these movements is simply one’s skill level at that activity.
I love lifting weights as much as the next meathead and resistance training does many things, but it rarely improves high-skill activities all by itself. I’m not a better painter or billiards player because I lift weights; however, that’s not to say that exercise has zero benefit to these activities.
First, you must practice, practice, and practice those activities if you wish to get better at them. If you do that AND include a basic exercise regimen, you may find that your ability in these activities is improved, although slightly (likely due to improved muscular control and increased endurance).
For example, if you play a billiards tournament but find you can’t focus or get tired by the fourth game, it’s possible that exercise may improve that ability. The more out of shape you are, the more likely exercise could have a slight positive effect.
To be clear, an exercise program alone will not develop sufficient skill for one to become proficient at low speed, light resistance activities. You don’t need to be strong or fit to draw, dribble a basketball, play billiards, or throw darts at a high level; instead, you need to devote significant time to practicing those activities. Our basketball player example simply needed to spend more time practicing dribbling and not worry about training his triceps.
2. High Speed, Light Resistance
The primary physical component that determines proficiency in these activities is speed (technically speed-strength), however, that speed must be combined with a very high level of skill as well.
Exercise will help this category of movements more than the previous category. Speed is powered by muscle, so muscles that are well trained are more likely to generate a higher rate of speed.
However, don’t make the mistake of interpreting “well trained” as just being strong. Remember, the principle of specificity holds true, so just striving to increase one’s 1RM isn’t going to cut it. InSupertraining, Mel Siff presents a fairly straightforward plan for improving speed, suggesting that an athlete training properly can increase his or her speed by up to 150%.
First, the athlete should get into shape. If the athlete is a novice weight trainer, almost any form of basic training will be appropriate and should yield results. I’ve improved many a client’s golf drive by 20 yards or more by simply having them exercise with weights, without doing any sort of “golf specific” fitness activity. The good news is that almost any program will do, the bad news is that after about three months or so those gains will likely peter out.
Here, we turn to Siff’s advice; he suggests that to improve maximal speed against light loads, one should use the following guidelines:
Unfortunately, Siff doesn’t give specific set and rep suggestions, but he does suggest that the training mimic the demands of the activity as best as possible. This would mean if you’re training for a knockout punch or to hit a homerun, you’d use few consecutive reps (1-3), but most likely would perform many sets.
If you were training to put together a flurry of punches or to sprint faster, then you’d use higher reps (roughly 5-15) and fewer total sets.
If your activity requires high speed while fatigued, then training when fatigued can be useful, otherwise generally train speed-strength when relatively fresh.
Of course, you’re trying to train the muscles involved in the activity of choice, but please don’t try to precisely mimic the sporting activity you’re attempting to improve. This will likely alter the neural pattern and may well decrease performance in that activity, even if your performance in the gym increases.
In other words, don’t be that guy who hooks his golf club up to a 40-pound kettlebell and then swings it with everything he’s got, all while standing on a Bosu ball. Not only will you look dumb, it’s actually making you a worse golfer.
A Quick Jab of Common Sense
I should point out something about strength and the power of unloaded movements, so let’s use punching as a specific example.
As a powerlifter, as much as it pains me to say, there’s generally no correlation between maximal strength as represented by one’s 1RM in the gym and unloaded power generation (punching power).
No correlation doesn’t mean a negative correlation (which would mean a high bench press indicates poor punching strength), it just means there’s no correlation; you can’t predict punching strength based on bench press strength. A 400 pound bench presser might have awesome punching power, but that person could also have poor punching power – there simply isn’t a connection between the two.
While that might be a slightly bitter pill for the weight training community to swallow, it should line up with what we see in real life. The strongest punches are delivered by boxers, MMA fighters, and classic martial arts practitioners – people who punch for a living – not bodybuilders, powerlifters, or guys that boast about using every bow on their wife’s Bowflex machine.
3. Low Speed, Heavy Resistance
In these activities strength is king, and they’re the most improved by resistance training. Of course, there’s much debate as to what exactly is the “best” type of resistance program to increase this ability, but everybody agrees it involves resistance training.
Be it a Westside program, Sheiko, Smolov, Starting Strength, HIT, a classic bodybuilding split, 5/3/1, you name it; the main goals of these programs are to increase strength that can be expressed by moving heavy objects. Powerlifting and most strongman events are tests of this ability.
The textbook answer to improve strength is to train with a heavy weight (60% of the 1RM or better, often using 85%+), use low reps (1-6 reps), take relatively long breaks in between sets (2-5 minutes to allow reasonable recovery), and to perform a reasonable volume of work (2-6 work sets per exercise).
A simple search of TNation’s archives will yield a wealth of training information on this subject, just remember that in this type of movement it’s all about getting strong and then applying that strength with good technique.
4. High Speed, Heavy Resistance
The primary physical component here is power. To express power, the activity must be performed rapidly – you can’t demonstrate power slowly.
Strength is a key part of power, particularly when using heavier loads. If you’re weak, you can only lift so much. If you can’t deadlift 315 lbs., you obviously can’t clean 315 lbs., and in general larger muscles are able to generate higher levels of force.
But it’s not all about muscle and pure strength. Strength can be expressed slowly. Watch a powerlifter perform a true 1RM on the bench press and you’ll likely see the bar slowly creep up. Chances are you could stop the movement of the bar with just one hand if you wanted to really piss a lifter off.
Now watch a heavy clean or jerk. The bar moves fast. With high-speed exercises, you must teach your body to explode into the resistance; in technical terms you’re trying to recruit all of your motor units at once to work for you (explosive strength). The difference in strength and power is often a matter of milliseconds, but those milliseconds are important.
With most power exercises, the lifter has .2 seconds or less to generate power, whereas strength exercises can last up to a second or more. If most of a lifter’s strength comes at the latter end of that curve, say .8 seconds and beyond, then a significant amount of their strength will be left untapped in power-related activities. The lifter won’t have .8 seconds to express their strength against a clean or against the ground when jumping, so that extra strength will not be of much use in those examples.
As with strength training, there is considerable debate as to how to best train to improve power. Most experts believe that the lifter should lift rapidly on the majority of exercises. Technique is very important in high speed, high resistance exercises and a large emphasis should be placed on learning and maintaining proper technique.
Generally, if you want to improve your power we should turn to the most powerful athletes, namely Olympic lifters, and see how they train. The textbook answer is to use a moderately heavy weight (70-90% 1RM, taking a little bit off to improve speed), low reps (1-5 reps per set, often just 1-3), a reasonable number of sets per exercise (3-5 work sets per exercise, sometimes up to 10 sets), and incorporate a reasonable amount of rest time in between sets to facilitate recovery (2-5 minutes).
For the most part, compound exercises that incorporate as many muscles/joints as possible should be used, and these exercises should be able to be performed rapidly. Examples include the snatch, clean, jerk, push press, high pulls, and power shrugs, with reasonable assistance work including the squat, front squat, overhead squat, deadlift, and standing press. High speed, high resistance activities require a combination of power, skill, speed, strength, and often flexibility to execute well.
Wrap It Up
I make no claim that this article is groundbreaking or even terribly original, but regardless, this information is imperative to making gains in your chosen activity – not to mention, it could save you or those you work with tremendous time and effort in the gym.
Exercise is hard, and who wants to toil away for months or even years building abilities that have negligible carryover to the activity we’re trying to improve?
Arm yourself with this knowledge and hit the gym with confidence that the results will show themselves in your chosen activity. Or, you could just climb aboard a Bosu ball and start swinging that golf club attached to a kettlebell. It’s up to you.
