Before the Gates of Performance open up for you ; you need to stand upon a foundation of good health. Good Health is predicated upon your ability to maintain a healthy weight. Therefore if you are beginning or feeling Plateaued in your Journey, it is time to start taking a hard look at the pieces of you life that make up the complete package of health and wellbeing. When we sleep, how well we sleep should be in balance with our Nutritional Timing and of course, quality of food we are eating. Lets talk today about how we can link those two important pieces together.
Sleep is Paramount.
Sleep habits are more important than the habits you keep while awake. Developing a good sleeping lifestyle helps in the short term with Metabolism and weight loss (more of that to come), hormone rebalancing, brain cleansing, muscle recovery, organ and tissue recovery and GUT health. The list is getting longer as more studies are pulling back the covers (pun intended) on how all things are related to getting good ZZZ’s. In the long term, there are now studies which show that good sleep habits translate into a decreased chance for Alzheimers and Dementia, Heart Disease, and Depression and Obesity..
We need anywhere from 7-10 hours of sleep daily. If you can err on the longer side. Todays technology consumption and high anxiety are making this benchmark quite tough to hit. BUT YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. The days of being a badass cause you only need 3-5 hours are over.
An important piece to ensuring your body is able to get the right amount of sleep is through lifestyle habits like Exercise, Meditation or quiet time, and turning off the damn phone. Additionally, Science has now shown us that Nutritional Timing also has a lot to do with how well we are able to shed pounds on our way to our Health goals.
Time Your Nutrition with your Sleep Cycles.
I have been coaching Nutrition for many years and two of the hardest aspects of getting on the right nutrition path are; 1. Habits and Timing, our work and home life dominate our lives and we have a hard time changing things up. 2. Learning How to Cook.
While this article is not about the ladder, I am certainly focusing on the Former. Our habits and lifestyle are engrained in how our Work and Homelife make us. To put it simply, if you look at your Routine; you are usually playing catch up with all the THINGS that happen in. your day. Unfortunately what happens is that Eating is tagged onto errands, appointments, meetings and emails.
My claim is that if you want to lose weight, and achieve your goals faster, you need to focus more on your sleep cycle and less on the stresses of the day. Essentially I am promoting more ‘ME TIME’ where your schedule is entirely devoted to your health.
If you are in a sleep habit that gets you to bed at 21:00-21:30 (9:00-9:30 PM) then your last meal should be 3.5-4 Hours before that time.
This would put your last meal at 17:00 (5:00 PM).
Working backward from this time, you have 7 Hours to consume all of your calories for the day.
This would mean that your Nutiritional day would be from 09-10 AM until 17:00 (5 PM).
Early Time Restricted Feeding (eTRF)
Early Time Restricted Feeding works off the same principles of intermittent fasting but with a focus on cycling that fasting with optimal sleep cycles. The long fast through the night will allow for metabolism to have time to switch from carbohydrate rich feeding to fat rich feeding. Carbohydrates are essential for muscle recovery, brain recovery and metabolic recovery but once those reserves are extinguished during the early morning until 0900, you will be on hormone and GUT loving FATS! This cycle helps to make you more sensitive to insulin, which is a Hormone, and adipose tissues must release their reserves of calories to keep up with synthesis.
When performed correctly, the results have been astounding and FAST!. The concept has been noticed by doctors treating chronic disease as well as health professionals like me who are helping people get in the best shape of their lives. HERE is a great research article that just came out on it.
Get after it and sleep well y’all. I love you and know you can break the chains of habit and reemerge into the life that you want. Take it slow and enjoy the struggle. We are nothing without some struggle. Love on yourself every day and then turn around and spread love throughout the world. lll be here to support you the entire time.
Love
ERIC
Programming Notes 8/26-8/30 **This week we have one of my favorite Benchmark workouts. This workout can be scaled a number of ways and certainly if you think you will go over 45 minutes, please cut a round or some reps . Back Squat testing on Wednesday will get spicy and we repeat an anaerobic conditioning piece in prep for the opens in just over a month.
8/24
Baseline:
Agility Warm Up @ 10m Each
High Knee Pull
Quad Pull
Squat 180 **stepping the leg high over hip, swing opposite leg to 180, squat
High Knees
Butt kickers
Marching High Kicks
Groiners
Straight leg shuffles
Lateral Shuffle
Carioca
Lateral Bounding
Sprint W/ Change of Direction
**ensure that the calf is supple, roll out or spend 3 minutes working mobility issues
WOD;
“Kelly”
5X
400m Run
30 Box Jump
30 Wall Ball Shots
**scale the run/reps, keep the Rounds intact
Compare to 6/3
8/25
Baseline:
500m Row
3X
10 Barbell Good Mornings
10 Banded Monster Walks
10 Banded Presses
10 Banded Bench Press
10 Trunk Circles
Clean Warm Up:
7 @ Each
-Clean Deadlift
-Clean High Pulls
-Muscle Cleans
-Drop Clean
-Thrusters
-Cleans
Clean Complex;
X On the Minute X 10 Minutes
- 2 X Clean Deadlifts
- 1 X Clusters
- 1X Split Jerk
Conditioning :
For Time
20 Clean and Jerks 95/65
10 Ring Dips
15 Clean and Jerks 115/75
10 Ring Dips
10 Clean and Jerks 135/ 95
10 Ring Dips
8/28
Baseline:
5:00 Assault Bike
3X
12 Banded Overhead Squats
10 Elbow To Instep Lunges
8 Kettlebell Windmills (Each Arm)
Squat Flow: Squat Flow: Kang Squat, Internal Rotation, Ankle Roll Out, Bootstraps, PNF Stretch, Squat W/ T Spine Stretch
BackSquat :
5 X 5 @ Load
2X3 @ Load
*goal is to establish a interim load that we will use as baseline heading into fall
Not For Time:
3 Rounds
40 Cal Assault Bike
100m D Ball Carry
20 Kettlebell Lunge (OH/Farmer Carry)
200m Backward Jog
8/29
Baseline:
:20 on :10 off X 4 Rounds @ Each
-Jump Rope
-Deadbug Hold
-Squat
-High Knee Jump Rope
-Hollow Hold
-Plank Hold
-Double Unders
Skill Development:
:30 on :30 Off X 4 Rounds
-Handstand Hold
-Strict Toes To bar
-Pistol Squat
-L Sit
Anaerobic Conditioning :
5 X 2:00 AMRAP
30 Double Unders
15 Air Squats
30 Double Unders
15 Push Ups
-Rest 2:00-
8/30
Baseline:
800m Run
3X
10 Divebomber Push Ups
8 Dumbbell Plank Rows
6 Single Leg Toe Touch (each Leg)
4 Burpee
2 Jump Squats
20 Minute EMOM:
A- 12 Dumbbell Strict Press
B- 10 Single Leg Deadlift (5 Each Leg)
C- 6 L Pull ups
D- 4 Dumbbells Turkish Get Ups (2 Each Arm)
Sprint Work:
10 Minute EMOM
-1X Burpee Pop Up Shuttle Sprint 50m
*25 M out and 25 m Back*
