It’s been a crazy busy week here!  Been having a ton of things going on all at once but it’s Q and A Friday so I gotta let loose on some of the questions I got earlier in the week!

Enjoy!

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Travis, great blog and videos!  Thanks for all the updates!  What are your thoughts on PRE and POST workout nutrition?  Should I not eat anything before or do I need to eat?  Thanks!   -Rich

Rich

Great question man and the answer I have for you may or may not help out that much.  For me, I say YES IF you can handle it.  For other people, even if they eat a good hour before they train, still feel the food in their stomach so it doens’t do them any good.

Bottom line, you’ve got to be prepped up for battle, meaning you’ve got to have fuel in your system for workouts.  This is a MUST and is super important.  The best way to do this without having some of your meal coming back up during your session would be to go with a liquid / fast absorbing meal.  For me, I typically have a pre-workout shake consisting of the following:

  • 3-4 Scoops of Body By Vi
  • 1 cup Unsweetened Almond Milk
  • Handful of Strawberries
  • Udo’s Oil – I don’t measure, I just spill a bit in there…  It’s about 1 tbsp
  • Blend and Slam!

If I’m training super EARLY in the AM, I may have a cup of hot tea or maybe even some coffee (black and plain) for some extra kick and caffeine.

Some things to pay attention to if you’re trying to GAIN MUSCLE – You’ll want to have some complex carbs possibly before and after your workout to help replenish your muscles quickly.  Great options would be berries and other fruits and my favorites for when I’m wanting to gain some mass, sweet potatoes and pumpkin.

If you’re trying to LOSE FAT FAST, you’ll want to cut out your complex carbs as much as possible.  I would recommend rotating your carb intake by haveing a high, low, and NO carb day for best results.

As far as a POST workout nutrition goes for me, I always have a post workout shake consisting of similar stuff from above ALWAYS with complex carbs coming from berries.  I’ll also add in some BCAA’s from Prograde for added recovery help as well.   It’s best to take those before a workout but I usually take them after and then before bed.

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Do you have a particular protein you like?

I’ve tried a TON but I’ve found the one for me – Body By Vi

Why?

  • Taste
  • Quality
  • Versatility (goes with ANYTHING)
  • RESULTS – never feel bloated, sick, keeps me full, and my energy seems to be better since I’ve been taking it.

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Travis, how do U get ur arms like that?  I never see you do Iso Lation Training??  When and How if I should even?

Cheers, Jacobs

Jacobs, I’m all for isolation training with certain situations but most of the time, I prefer you train like an athlete and do FULL BODY FUNCTIONAL movements.  You can still get a TON of isolation work done with different FULL BODY movements.

But there are people out there that need to add in some isolation training to help bring different weak and small areas up to snuff.

For this, I recommend adding some ISO training sessions in either after a FULL BODY session or just by creating a weekly split to really hammer in on these areas.

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Travis,

Do you train more than twice a day?  And when would it be good to train twice in a day if at all?

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This is a great question!

YES -In the past I trained twice a day when I was prepping for the Crossfit Games.  You have to because the games are INSANE!  Go check out the first event they did for this years Games finals….  INSANE…  You must be prepared for ANYTHING.

I actually trained three times a day on some occasions but I would only do this for Crossfit and nothing else besides MMA where you would be doing a strength session + maybe two or even three more SKILLS sessions in one day.  Another situation may be with a football / rugby / soccer player where they would do their SAQ training separate from their strength training.  Typically you would want to work SPEED training first then go in to do STRENGTH second.

As to training twice a day, YEAH you could IF you have the time and IF you were getting in enough sleep, recovery, as well as eating all the right foods for nutritional support.   Those are BIG “IF’s” as most people don’t even get close to enough of any of those and in most cases, they over-train and see ZERO results.  MORE IS NEVER BETTER!

But, the truth is, most people do NOT need to train twice a day.  Training twice a day in my mind would only be for high level athletes that are prepping for a competition or for people that may be on the ELITE side of things that are already super healthy and advanced enough to do so.

Bottom line on this, two training sessions in a day isn’t needed IF you’re training H.A.M. in your first session 😉

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Those are what I got for this week!

Make sure you hit up the comments with other QUESTIONS you may have for next week!

Live Aggressive and Get Strong!