Optimal Nutrition

Let's kickoff the nutrition side of this blog with the basics.  I know nutrition is extremely complicated and there never seems to be matching evidence for the best solution.  Part of that, is because there is NOT one great solution.  Everybody will be unique to their needs and how one person digests and absorbs food can be very different from the next person.  The diagram above shows the most basic outline for a healthy lifestyle.  Today, let's just learn what each bubble means and how it relates to your life.

Not every day will be a perfect eating day, (and that's totally ok!) but this is what a balanced day would look like.  There are six major components, that when balanced correctly, will have you feeling your best.  They are listed in importance, moving clockwise.  Hydration is the most important variable, followed by a balanced and varied diet.  From there, energy intake, then nutrient timing and meal frequency go together, as you try to decide when to eat and how many meals you will consume in the day.  Supplements are optional and listed as least important because you should only be supplementing what you are not receiving in your diet.  Don't take supplements, "just to take them."

Let's define the bubbles:

Hydration:  Extremely important!!!  Drink water.  Lots of it!  At least 80 ounces a day.

Balanced and Varied Diet:  This means your diet consists of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and water.  Yes, your body needs all of that.  Notice, water is listed again... HINT:  It's still really important.  If you have chosen to cut out one of these six variables (example: don't eat carbs) then you better know why you are doing that, because if done incorrectly, you could be causing serious damage to your body!

Energy Intake:  Oh, the topic that everyone loves to stress over.  Your energy intake is how many calories you consume in a day.  If you are not eating enough, it doesn't matter what you are doing for your workouts, you won't see good results.  Most people stress over eating too much, but you need to know, that eating too little doesn't fix the problem, it can make things worse.

Nutrient Timing:  This is about eating particular nutrients at specific times of the day.  For example, more carbohydrates before your workout, more protein after.  Or maybe, a higher fat content in the morning and lower in the evening.  This takes practice, worry about the first three bubbles before you get too in-depth here.

Meal Frequency:  This is how often you are eating throughout the day.  "Meal" doesn't just mean breakfast, lunch and dinner.  You should absolutely be eating those main meals of the day, but this bubble also includes the snacks you need in a day and when it's best to eat all of these meals.

Supplements:  This is an optional bubble.  Make sure you are choosing any supplements you take because you actually need them to "supplement" your diet.  THERE IS NO MAGIC SUPPLEMENT THAT WILL DO WHAT IT CLAIMS!!  Stop taking supplements because of marketing.  Ask your doctor to get the real answers you need and stop wasting your money.

Now you can see all the variables it takes to have a healthy, nutritious lifestyle.  We will work into more details later.  For now, just understand that to change nutrition takes practice and patience.  Drastically making changes never works well for anybody.  If you want to start to understand what you need, write down your food intake for 2-3 days, then go from there.

The Importance of Movement

Running is great!  It is a total body movement, it can be of varying intensity at any moment, it gets your heart pumping and makes you sweat.  There’s an emotional satisfaction and “pat on the back” feeling every time you finish a quality run.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a training day or race day, if you made it to your finish line, that’s an accomplishment!

My name is Coach Laura and I own Top-Notch Training, a sports performance company that is based on creating movement.  I’m here to open your eyes to so many other possibilities.  My intent is not to make you stop running, but rather enhance your technique, improve your endurance, and reduce pain.  I like to help people learn why they are in pain and how fixing faulty movement patterns can change your training world for the better!

The motion of running only happens in the sagittal plane, or in simple terms, straight front to back motions.  In the world we live in, there are also frontal plane movements and transverse movements.  These motions take you side to side, twisting, and rotating.  Running is not the only workout that lives in one plane of motion.  Cycling, CrossFit, and basic weightlifting are others.  Many times, active adults are doing a combination of these things for their workouts, which means they are only compounding any movement problems.  They may be in great shape and loving their workouts, but they may be wondering why they have a constant nagging pain.  As long as you catch the pain soon enough, the answer is usually very simple.

For now, let’s focus on running.  Let’s pick apart the problems, so that we may find a solution.  The biggest problem is usually lack of core strength.  Yes, runners typically have weak core muscles.  This doesn’t just mean your six pack abs, I’m talking every muscle from your ribs to your hips, both front and back; that is your core.  A casual endurance runner does not have to use many core muscles to get from start to finish, so the body says we don’t need that, we’re not going to strengthen it.  A weak core causes a whole mess of problems.  We can touch out that on during another post.

Almost everyone I train has a lack of rotation.  Many clients call this, “having no coordination,” but in my eyes, their body has no mobility to rotate, which can make you feel uncoordinated.  Running does in fact require small amounts of rotation, but the majority of runners I see and train, don’t have correct technique.  They actually have no clue how to rotate their body.  When they run, they resist the natural technique to rotate.  This will cause shoulder problems, back problems, knee problems, and ankle problems.  Your body is looking to rotate, that’s how we move.  Walking requires rotation with opposite arm and leg swinging together to take a step.  It’s small, but it’s rotation.  Running is no different, so when you don’t rotate, that energy is absorbed into joints and it starts grinding away your joint stability, or in the case of your spine, it causes disc herniations.   When you do rotate and move with correct form, that energy goes into the muscles, which are made to move and accept forces.  Joints are there to keep those muscles moving, they are not made to accept rotation forces.

Running is a repetitive motion in the sagittal plane.  If you don’t allow your body to move in other ways, that repetition will quickly wear down your body.  To prevent injury, you need to allow days off running where you move differently.  Your warm ups need to be about moving in all directions, not just a quad and hamstring stretch.  When you do this, those joints will become more stable and your muscles will become stronger.  When the body knows it is stable and strong, it works harder.  When you can run pain free, you don’t hold back, you push to beat your goals.  I encourage you strongly to step out of the sagittal plane every once in a while, there is a much bigger training world out there and your body will love you for it!

Behind the scenes...

Let me start by giving you some information that most people don't know about my history in the fitness world.  It usually comes as a surprise when I say my background and passion is teaching youth athletes.  Yes, athleticism can be taught!  My entire structure for training is based on teaching movement, for kids and adults.  I see the way the body moves and I try to make it stronger and more mobile.  I am constantly trying to learn and better myself as a coach, and in my own training.  My skills as a trainer come with years of practice closely watching how people move and learning the most efficient ways to make the body better!

My fitness journey started as an intern with a major sports performance company is Lakeland, FL.  In that time, I learned how to teach young athletes how to move better, get stronger, run faster, and overall, become more athletic.  But... before I could teach them, I had to learn all this myself.  I grew up playing competitive softball through my senior year of high school and never had I learned anything like this.  With many, many...many hours of practice and dedication, I learned how to perfect my skills as an athlete and as a coach.

Later, my career moved to St. Petersburg, FL where I became a personal trainer for an all adult population.  What a change!  I had only known how to teach kids in a sports performance gym, which is very different from a basic wellness center gym.  I accepted the challenge and my knowledge and skills as a trainer grew exponentially!!  I was also blessed with great clients who trusted me, and had patience with me, as I tried out my new training skills.

I was very active as a kid and never had any serious injuries.  Since my training career began, I have dealt with an ankle stress fracture, sports hernia and torn abdominal muscles, shoulder problems, and terrible asthma attacks.  All problems caused by improper training patterns.  I was blessed with great coaches who helped mold me into the coach I am today, but not without many consequences.  I have learned and felt the struggles of not having coaches fix movement faults.  They all helped me become more athletic, but none addressed why I couldn't do something or why I had pain with certain motions.  Tough love doesn't fix joint and muscle pain.  With years of intense workouts and nobody correcting me, I am now fixing some very tough injuries to overcome.  With that, I have learned how to really help people.  I can tell them from experience why they need to fix particular motions and why correct technique is so important.  Good trainers will tell you what "good form" is.  I try to take that a step further and tell you why you need that good form and what limitations could be causing you from getting it correct.  I am thankful for the mentors I have had in the past, but I want to do things differently and with more effort in making sure my clients don't have issues because of lazy training actions.

My hope is that this blog can help you see that the fitness world is not a scary place and when taken through it correctly, you can achieve amazing, life-changing results!  On the other hand, if you already live an active lifestyle, I hope to bring some clarity and explanation as to how you can feel even better than you do now.  Thank you for taking the journey with me!