🥇 The Athlete Development Journal

Developing speed, strength, power, health, and character, so athletes get the most out of their athletic career.

Listen to this episode on your way to practice. ⬇️

You can also listen on ​Spotify​ or ​Apple Podcasts​.

Mind. Your edge.

What are you willing to do that others won’t?

Showing up to practice is table stakes, almost everyone does that. But, few come 30 minutes early and stay 30 minutes after to put in extra work on their specific needs.

Speed and strength training is more ubiquitous than it’s ever been, nearly all teams lift in some capacity. But, not as many athletes design intentional, science-backed, non-bodybuilder programs. Very few actually execute those programs with elite consistency and intensity.

The work that you’re willing to put in provides you with opportunities that others won’t get.

If you want an edge, one of the things I see athletes stay least committed to is their nutrition.

Body. Nutrition, but simplified.

There are over 1 million influencers posting about nutrition and they’re all telling you something different.

One person tells you to eat a keto diet to transform your life, while the next tells you that eating any fat will immediately clog your arteries.

You watch a video that talks about how the only thing that matters is calories and macros (If it fits your macros, IIFYM), then scroll down and see another one describing how all calories are not created equal.

You’ll see one shredded “biohacker” claiming that you must practice intermittent fasting and skip breakfast to ‘unlock’ fat-burning mode and focus, while the next jacked trainer insists that skipping breakfast is the fastest way to crash your metabolism and lose muscle mass.

As with most anything, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle and dependent on contextual factors.

The noise can be overwhelming, so I wanted to provide you with a simple, actionable nutrition checklist that you can start using today.

I break it down into 6 levels, where you must demonstrate near-automatic competency before moving on to the the next level. Some of you will work all the way down to level 6 throughout your career, while others will get more than enough by just mastering the first 3 levels.

Let’s get to it.

When you start out at Level 1, you need to focus on…

• Eating 4-7 meals per day.
  • As an athlete who needs enough fuel for intense practices and games, this almost always means breakfast is a must.
  • To get your 4-7 meals in per day, you’ll need to eat every 2-4 hours. That means you’ll have to pack snacks for school, practice, and work.
• Eating a palm-sized portion of protein with every meal.
  • That works out to somewhere around 20-30 grams of protein per meal.
• Drinking 0.5-1.0 oz of water per pound of bodyweight per day, every day.
  • This number may vary, but for most athletes it will be somewhere around around 100 oz of water.

When you master that, you can then move on to Level 2 and lock in on…

• Eating 2 fist-sized portions of vegetables per day.
• Eating 2 fist-sized portions of fruits per day.
• Minimizing or eliminating liquid calories (pop, energy drinks, juice, etc.).
  • If you’re a hard-gainer trying to put on weight, though, using high-quality liquid calories (like milk and juice) can be a great way to get more fuel in.

When you master that, you can then move on to Level 3 and make sure you’re…

• Minimizing heavily processed foods.
  • The more that it looks like it came from nature, the better. A fresh peach is better than a fruit cup of peaches, which is better than fruit snacks or peach pie. Chicken breast is better than rotisserie chicken, which is better than chicken nuggets. A baked potato is better than potato chips.
  • Don’t get too far down the rabbit hole, though. You’re not going to be able to fuel yourself with wholly unprocessed foods, nor is there a reason to. Just don’t live off of highly processed ones.
• Consuming universally “proven” supplements: creatine, multivitamin, and whey protein.
  • You can start whey protein earlier than this as a way to get protein in with every meal.
• Eating specific macronutrients at specific times of day to enhance performance (like eating a carbohydrate within 30-60 minutes after a workout to replenish glycogen stores).

When you master that, you can then move on to Level 4 and start…

• Setting caloric and macronutrient targets, then tracking with AI.
  • At this level, we take your height, weight, and activity level, and we build out how many calories, grams of protein, grams of carbohydrates, and grams of fat you should eat per day. Then, you use the new AI technology to quickly analyze a picture of the food you’re eating and tell you the nutritional make up of that meal.
  • The AI method is more specific than levels 1 through 3, but less accurate than actually weighing and measuring your food.

When you master that, you can then move on to Level 5 and focus on…

• Setting caloric and macronutrient targets, then tracking with manual weighing, measuring, and logging.

Once you become an elite athlete making a ton of money off your performance, you can then move on to Level 6 and start…

• Using advanced bloodwork to make micronutrient and supplementation decisions.
• Using advanced imaging and measurements to make nutrition periodization decisions.

All of this requires being proactive, not reactive.

1. Have a plan going into the week.
   • Know what you’re going to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day.
   • Pack snacks for school, practice, games, and work.
   • Know when you’re probably going to need to eat out and identify restaurants that have high quality options available (Chipotle and Chick-fil-A are great).
2. Fill up your house with high quality food options (and eliminate the low quality ones).
   • If your pantry is loaded with Oreos, Cap’n Crunch, and Cheetos, you’re going to eventually binge on them.
   • If there is “junk food” in the house, ask for it to be put in an opaque bin or on a high shelf out of your direct line of sight.

We’re not expecting perfection from you. Focus on being better, not perfect.

Don’t let one slip-up become two. If you have to eat a low-quality meal because of a travel schedule, that’s okay.

Just don’t keep slipping down that slippery slope.

Soul. Your value.

Just a reminder, your worth is not determined by how you’re playing on the field.

Your value is not dependent on how you’re performing in the classroom.

Who you are is not a factor of whether or not you hit your macros yesterday.

You, just as you are, are more than enough.

Let’s wrap it up with a couple important things…

1. This newsletter and podcast is completely free. I spend many hours each week researching, writing, illustrating, recording, editing, and uploading. The best way you can support it and allow it to continue is to share it with people you know. You can just send them to ​gtperformance.co/newsletter​ and they can subscribe there!
2. Everything in these newsletters, podcasts, social media, and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or your athlete. Consult directly with a healthcare professional.

Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about athlete development!

Be >,

Zach

Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS