I loves me a strong man with a swagger.  Yes I do!  You know, like the Marlborough Man.  My guy has to be tough enough to come into the house, grab me by my hair and drag me down the hallway without me every questioning him!  Now after I call 911 and have a few of my friends work him over in a back alley, I will probably acknowledge that I have a partner for life in this guy.  He must know how to harness his power and that is not easy for a guy when he is young never mind as he passes his mid thirties and heads into his forties.

 

When all of us (men and women both) are young we have an abundance of hormones.  They are free flowing like the Charles River in the middle of the summer.  With those hormones comes a sense of invincibility—nothing can stop us, watch me as I play basketball 3 times a week, lift 3 times a week, drink on the weekends with my buddies, run 10 miles the next day for the sake of running and recover in time to start work on Monday.  Ah, the life.  Then one day that life is gone.  Suddenly your knees hurt too much to play more than 2 times per week, your back is bothering you a bit too, you couldn’t run 10 miles unless someone strapped you to the back of a car and dragged you that far and you are never EVER recovered for work on Monday morning.  What has changed?  Your hormone balance.  How can you fix it?   Read below.  What follows is the foundation that you need to put in place before we can even talk about your best performance on or off of the court.

 

NUTRITION FOUNDATION:

 

QUANTITY: 

 

Believe or not guys, you eat like birds.  You eat just enough to make it through the day without being hungry, but there is little forethought put into planning for the day.  You do eat a lot of the same foods everyday but I would not say you are as bad as us ladies with that because you just don’t plan as much ahead of time to be that way.  No…you guys are “starvers”.  Every so often you get on a kick about getting bigger and you eat more, but then you eat more crap.  So in essence you are still starving yourselves to death. 

 

If you want to get your swagger back or keep your swagger going, EAT:

 

6 meals per day

at least 1g of protein for every pound of your body weight

at least 1/3 of your body weight in good fat sources

2 to 3 fruits/day—the rest being vegetables

Starches will depend on your activity level but you will be having them for sure!

And that’s just the foundation.  This is not taking your activity into account.

 

QUALITY:

 

Your number one concern as you age is how much total testosterone you have in your body and how much free testosterone you have in your blood stream at any given time.  No man has a swagger without it.  Your performance is based solely on your T values.  You may not have any idea of that right now but I can tell you, if you wake up in the morning happy to be alive (and you know where I’m going with this;), then you are still on the positive side of T production.  If you couldn’t get excited about waking up next to either Halle Berry or Heidi Klum you better call your doctor after reading this article because you are either really low on T production or you are dead!  Or both. (Heck, I would be excited waking up next to Halle Berry.  Whatever…I’m focusing…sorry;)

 

Although you are feeding your body every day, are you truly feeding your needs?  If you want a healthy T level in your body—eat for it.  Foods that are high in zinc are ones that are going to put that pep in your step and give you the tools (high T level) that you need to be who you need to be. 

 

Oysters

Wheat Germ (can I marry this stuff?)

Crabmeat

Salmon

Roast beef

Liver

Peanuts

 

FUNCTION:

 

Whether you are an athlete (basketball player, soccer player, endurance athlete or whatever) or a recreational lifter (wanna be big, wanna be cut, just a wanna be) your workouts should not only mirror what you are aiming for, but they should mirror where you are in life right now.  This means your workouts should be short, sweet and to the point.  Get in and get OUT!  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.  Get in and GET OUT!  If your workout takes more than 40 min. you are doing something wrong.  You do not have the capacity to recover to go much longer than that nor should you want to.  Maximize your time in the gym by doing exercises that take care of more than one body part at a time and require an enormous amount of effort to carry out. 

 

Three days per week—maybe 4

All major muscle movers being used

No more than 4 exercises per workout

Vary the volume, vary the intensity

Add cardio in when necessary, but aim for it to come from your lifts or your sport

 

TAKE INVENTORY:

 

All of this is just a highlight of where you should be before we even discuss optimization.  If you do not meet any of these criteria, you have one week to get your act together before we move into making it work in real life.   Next week I will compare three programs for you:  basketball vs. marathon runner vs. strength athlete and we will go over the different nuances of each program to ensure that you always Perform Beautifully.