Told To Lose Weight, Gain Muscle Mass, And Compete At Same Time...ideas?

[Karl Kallio]

For those who remember, I`m a synchronized swimming coach working with somewhat competitive athletes from 13-26 years old.  The gymnastic bodies way of thinking about stength training has really helped us over the last year, but with sucess comes new chalenges.  Right now I'm in a bit of a quandary and I was wondering if anyone might have some insights.

 

Some of the girls have been called up to compete in some international meets and on Friday they completed the preliminary anthrompometric evaluation ( % body fat, muscle mass, functional tests etc).  They all came out great on the functional tests, but one athlete recieved a negative evaluation in the area of body composition.

 

She has been told she should lose 3 kg of fat and gain 4 kg of muscle, preferrably by March.  I feel uncomfortable putting 3 simultaneous, semi-conflicting goals before an athlete (lose weight/compete/gain muscle mass) but since the decision was not mine I can only help her (and her parents) form a plan and do the best possible.  If nothing better occurs to me I plan to advise her to try breaking her meals into many small portions centered around her training schedule, and to concentrate on consuming high quality food in the proportions she is accustomed to (no calorie deficit, no excess).   For example, swapping the gatorade for fruit and water, the sandwitch for sauteed veg/protein + rice.

 

Here are the details

 

Weight: 55.6 kg

Height: 170,2 cm

Age: 15

% Body Fat: 21.75 (Whitters protocol, which seems to estimate higher than most methods)

        ...should be about 16

AKS: 0.88....should be about 0.98

Currently trains 3.5 hr/day Mon-Sat

Will be training: 3.5 hr/day Tues-Thurs, + 16 hrs Fri/Sat/Sun

Competitions in: Feb, Mar, May, Aug, Sept, Nov

Limitations:    Injury to 1 gluteus, cannot run, swims with fins when everybody else runs

                      Tends to be a slow gainer of muscle mass

 

Any ideas/strategies are most welcome.  Thanks!

[Joshua Slocum]

I've read that .5kg/week is a "healthy" rate at which to lose fat. And even then you're running at a 500 calorie deficit per day. Unless she is experienced with gaining and losing weight, those might be difficult targets to hit. 

 

 

My advice would be to do the weight loss and weight gain in sequence. It's *very* hard to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Either have her cut fat and then gain muscle, or gain the muscle and then start cutting fat. My intuition is that gaining muscle first would probably be better for competition performance. 

 

 

Edit: several much more knowledgeable people have posted below. I would listen to their advice. 

[Larry Roseman]

If she is allowed to compete as is (and it sounds like she is) I would just have her eat at maintenance to support

her training.  If she can complete that brutal schedule then she is in good enough shape regardless of what the powers that be say.

 

Is bf % the key goal?  For example, if she's 22% now and 56kg that's 12 kg fat. If she lost 3kg fat and weighed 53kg she would have a fat mass of  9kg (ignoring any coincident lean mass loss)  and bf% of 17%. Realistically more like 18% but that is acceptable range for female competitive swimmers  I've seen quoted (12-20%).  I think that she is still young to expect much muscle mass to be gained. It may take years more of growth for that to occur.

 

I suppose she could get away with a small deficit caused by exercise (whatever she is comfortable with that doesn't impact her performance) and gradually lose the fat. Not necessarily all by March and I wouldn't insist upon March either.

 

I personally don't like these one size fits all recommendations from authorities that don't seem to have the athlete's best interest at heart. Putting this all on her with a March deadline is a metabolic, psychological and competitive accident waiting to happen. My suggestion is to avoid doing this at all costs.

[Coach Sommer]

First of all, congratulations!

Second, regarding their "requests":

- These are conflicting goals. The directive of having her attempt to gain 8kg of muscle in 6-8 weeks alone tells me immediately that , in terms of physical preparation, these people have absolutely no idea what they are doing. If it was that easy wouldn't everyone already be doing it?!?

- Have your athlete reduce her eating just enough to still reasonably maintain her training while simultaneously attempting to drop no more than approx 1lb per week.

- At this point in time, especially with your extremely short time frame for preparation; I would focus the vast majority of your efforts on getting her ready to compete. I would completely ignore the strength gain request, while being only moderately concerned with the weight loss request. If she can lose a little weight without compromising her performance; fine. If not, ignore it.

She can compete well, or she can focus on losing weight or she can focus on gaining muscle. She cannot attempt to do all three AND still be successful at her competition.

- Do not allow their unprofessional attitude to detract from either your athlete's nor your enjoyment of this opportunity. Regardless of how the competition turns out, very few people ever get the chance to compete for their country at an international level. Simply do the best that you can and allow yourself to savor this first international competitive experience.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Joshua Naterman]

I cannot agree more with Coach.

 

Important points that have been made so far by everyone:

 

1) The requested muscle gain is unrealistic, even for most men. For a woman, it's impossible. They don't have the hormones for that. The simultaneous change of that magnitude is absolutely ridiculous.

 

2) The body composition they are looking for would be better met by losing excess body fat, and dropping about a pound per week is easily doable and would bring her into the 16-18% body fat range in the given timeframe.

 

3) The officials are not acting in the best interest of the athlete. What they are suggesting requires illegal drugs to accomplish, and presents a very high risk of causing an eating disorder in the athlete, not to mention how she may feel about the situation and resulting mental health issues.

 

 

My personal opinion: In order to accomplish this fat loss without losing the muscle, she's going to need to do a few things.

 

1) She will need to get protein very regularly. 20g every 2 hours or so is going to be a good rule. You want her having about 156g of protein. That's the maximum safe limit of 2.8 grams per kg. You'll want that broken up into 7-8 separate 20g doses, consumed evenly throughout the day. Whenever possible, these should be a part of a meal that includes some carbohydrates and some fats. This should be done during training as well. Allow her to take a snack break and get the protein and carbs that she needs.

 

2) She will need to perform resistance training at least 3x per week for her entire body. Stressing the muscles will cause her body to preferentially retain the lean mass. I definitely recommend ACSM guidelines, which are 6-8 exercises that cover the whole body, 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise. I think she should stay in the 5-8 rep range, personally. Even 1 set of each exercise, done to failure of good form 2-3 days per week ONLY,with 2-3 other days  where she just does 2-4 reps for one set (for a total of 4-5 resistance training days per week) will probably suffice and may represent the best implementation for a competitive training cycle. The athlete's performance will dictate how this is implemented

 

3) I do not recommend a caloric deficit of more than 20%. She's going to be pretty active, so she may actually need MORE food in order to accomplish this. You will need to run some numbers through MET tables, which have your sport on them I believe, and also for the resistance training, and add them to the calories she will need to break even for her current weight on a day off. Then reduce all meal caloric intakes by 15-20%. She needs to eat the calories for weight training around the time that she weight trains. Same goes for swim practice.

 

The idea of spreading out the meals is a good one, it always produces better results in athletes. Be careful about removing carbohydrates, as that can actually cause a loss of muscle and an undesirable change in body composition even with weight being lost. Remember, your goal is to target the fat.

 

I realize that the first two sentences in my #3 statement may not be comfortable, because you'd think that just eating less will get the job done. There's a very, very large pile of research that disagrees, particularly when you are looking for specific body comp changes.

 

Focus on quality sources of calories (veggies, sweet potatoes etc are better than bread, but because she is so active you shouldn't worry about bread if it's right after a workout. I would probably steer her towards more natural, slower digesting foods during her inactive times) and remember: 20g of proteins every 2 hours, at least 7g of carbs per hour of non-exercise time (so 14g if she's eating every 2 hours) and some fats to get the calories up to 80% of what she needs for that meal.

 

You DO need the high intensity resistance exercise. High weight, low reps, just 1-2 sets. You're not trying to wear her out, but you do need her body to have a reason to hang on to all of its muscle, and swim practice isn't enough. Fast concentrics and slower eccentrics will be good for her, but always limit the speed to what she can do with reasonable form.

[Coach Sommer]

- You DO NOT need high intensity, low rep, 'concentric this' or 'eccentric that' conditioning; unless you have already been using it.  Josh's advice is well intentioned, but it will almost certainly blow up in your face.

 

DO NOT adjust her conditioning at this time.  In terms of her competitive season, the time for this adjustment is long past.  All significant changes to her conditioning program must wait until her season is over.  Over the year's I have seen more coachs screw up their athlete's competitive performance by increasing their conditioning AND the intensity level of their practices as the competition drew closer than I can count.

 

- Josh's nutritional advice may be just what you and your athletes are looking for; however I would save experimenting with it for after  the season.  The last thing that you want to do in the final phase of pre-competition preparation is to radically alter your athlete's eating patterns.  

 

- At best the most you can hope for at this stage of her preparation is to get her to reduce her sodas, sweets etc (good luck with that with a teenager!), moderately increase her vegetables and slightly decrease her portion sizes.  

 

- Keeping her mentally and physically comfortable with food choices that she is already used to will pay large dividends in the quality of her performance later.

 

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Nic Branson]

My own thoughts also. Coach has hit everything nicely. Much of what's being asked is off-season out of competition work. There is no responsible effective way to accomplish that right now.

 

You're in competition season do not change things up at this point. Minor food adjustments that do NOT impact performance are about all you should be messing with. I never made major changes in season to an athletes training plan unless it was injury related.

 

Congrats on the success, with it comes some headaches as you are now seeing. Put the requests and information down for future planning. For now focus on upcoming comps.

 

My additional two cents so you get another POV.

[Karl Kallio]

Thanks everyone

 

I'm happy to hear that I am not the only person to think that these goals are not wise.  I was staring to worry that I wasn't using a competitive mindset.  Unfortunately the powers that be are under the opinion that if they pay for a multi-disciplinary team (nutritionist, anthropometric measures, etc) then the athletes should comply with reccomendations. 

 

This week I am going to consult with the other coaches, and my team's director.  The options would be to treat the Feb/March/May competitions as minor warm-up events and concentrate on the recommendations, or put on a show of complying, but leave the real work for after September.  The decision will probably come down to whether March, May or September's competition is the most important for her scholarship.  On the bright side I might be able to convince her mother to get rid of the sugar-cereal. 

 

BTW We've sucessfully eliminated sodas for three years now.  We got a dentist to tell the girls that the sugar and acid would turn their teeth black, a plastic surgeon to tell them that it would give them celulitis, a doctor to tell them that it would stunt their growth, and I told them that the acidity would make it harder to hold their breath.  Then we had a party, I watched who drank what, and the next day rigged a apnea training session to make it much harder for those who drank soda.  The natural vanity and hypochondria of adolescents took care of the rest.

[Ian Myers]

[quote name="Joshua Naterman" post="95098" timestamp="1359341760

3) I do not recommend a caloric deficit of more than 20%. She's going to be pretty active, so she may actually need MORE food in order to accomplish this. You will need to run some numbers through MET tables, which have your sport on them I believe, and also for the resistance training, and add them to the calories she will need to break even for her current weight on a day off. Then reduce all meal caloric intakes by 15-20%. She needs to eat the calories for weight training around the time that she weight trains. Same goes for swim practice.

The idea of spreading out the meals is a good one, it always produces better results in athletes. Be careful about removing carbohydrates, as that can actually cause a loss of muscle and an undesirable change in body composition even with weight being lost. Remember, your goal is to target the fat.

I realize that the first two sentences in my #3 statement may not be comfortable, because you'd think that just eating less will get the job done. There's a very, very large pile of research that disagrees, particularly when you are looking for specific body comp changes.

Focus on quality sources of calories (veggies, sweet potatoes etc are better than bread, but because she is so active you shouldn't worry about bread if it's right after a workout. I would probably steer her towards more natural, slower digesting foods during her inactive times) and remember: 20g of proteins every 2 hours, at least 7g of carbs per hour of non-exercise time (so 14g if she's eating every 2 hours) and some fats to get the calories up to 80% of what she needs for that meal.

You DO need the high intensity resistance exercise. High weight, low reps, just 1-2 sets. You're not trying to wear her out, but you do need her body to have a reason to hang on to all of its muscle, and swim practice isn't enough. Fast concentrics and slower eccentrics will be good for her, but always limit the speed to what she can do with reasonable form.

How did you get those carbohydrate per hour numbers? I've looked but can't find a table that gives a rough estimate of macro utilization based off of MET values

[Joshua Naterman]

Ian, that's because there's no such thing. There are several steps involved, and what I gave was for the girl's resting energy expenditure.

 

Every beginning physiology textbook will give a table of energy substrate breakdown vs % of VO2Max. Knowing how to use that for resting metabolism is quite key, because that gives you your metabolic baseline for inactive sedentary time.

 

From there you need to be familiar with calories per gram of food, and using a MET table to approximate the energy burn. For example, when you are studying, you are at 1.5 METs. You are not at a significantly different effort level than 1 MET, but you are burning 50% more energy. If you were burning 100 calories at rest, you're burning 150 per hour when studying. This kind of fine-tuning is the difference between  ok results and truly great results.

 

This is how a real health professional, in my opinion, will work with an individual client who has challenging goals, especially when they are a high level athlete. Both elements are present in the OP's situation.

[Joshua Naterman]

Coach, if they don't take the time to adjust food accordingly, you are absolutely right. I am not even confident in saying that our OTC would necessarily do this correctly. I think if Dr. Benardot was there supervising that it would be fine, but without that level of expertise I think it would be a bad idea.

 

 The most important thing is making sure that the athlete isn't being over-worked, and because the nature of synchronized swimming is not maximal strength there should be no serious issues with proper resistance exercise, but the volume will have to be low since there's such a high volume of practice time. If there is already a good bit of resistance training going on, I would leave things alone.

 

If there was not significant resistance training during the competitive cycle, I would probably still insist that the athlete never work to failure at all if she was my athlete, because I do think that could be an issue. I would also probably use machines, because my goal is not to teach new skills but simply to make the muscles work a little bit. I would probably never go above 7-8 reps, and I would probably never do more than one set per exercise.

 

Now, if they were going to cut her from the team if she didn't meet goal, I think I would have to re-prioritize if I could not convince the powers that be to take a more intelligent approach. I think that the goal can be met, but it would be difficult because I doubt that the team in place would approach things in the correct manner. This is not the right thing to do, I think we all know that, but sometimes you don't get given any good options. If that was the case, I would try to hire a good RD that was used to working with competitive athletes, and I would have all sessions with the coach and parents present. If the recommendations aren't based off of matching energy expenditure throughout the day, I would honestly do exactly what Coach says and just blow the whole thing off and protect your athlete from stupidity by not changing a single thing. I would think that the Coach has the final say on who stays, but I don't know.

 

It takes a well-oiled team to put the changes in place that will guarantee a successful marriage of body recomposition and competitive improvement, and that does not appear to be in place. If this is the case, I would follow Coach's advice and wait until after the competitive season is over, and then recompose.

 

OP: The simple switch to more frequent meals, with the same total food calories, is going to make a positive change for this girl. Beyond that, if you are not 100% confident that you can do what needs to be done to meet these goals, I would just focus on your team's performance until competition is over for the year. Please, don't mess with her calories if you don't know exactly what you are doing. It is somewhat complex.

 

Some of the recommendations you have made may have reduced calories, and that is not a good idea. Chances are good that she could be under-eatiing as it is.

 

A final note: 22% body fat for a girl is pretty decent. Not even remotely unattractive, so I am not sure there would be any aesthetic demerits to her current composition.

 

The numbers I put up earlier clearly do not reflect her entire dietary needs. They are there as a baseline to build things off of, and if you don't know what to do with them just leave it alone for now and if you want to implement something in the off-season let me know.

 

Edit: "The goal" in this case meaning getting to 16-18% body fat without losing competitive performance, not the actual nonsense that the panel asked for.

[Keilani Gutierrez]

I'm not digressing on anything here, i'm learning a lot observing what's going on here. 

 

question, wouldn't implementing CLA and Soy Lecithin help this athlete help her reach her goal? fat emulsifiers are very effective especially in a 3 month span, would this be beneficial?

[Larry Roseman]

I'm not digressing on anything here, i'm learning a lot observing what's going on here. 

 

question, wouldn't implementing CLA and Soy Lecithin help this athlete help her reach her goal? fat emulsifiers are very effective especially in a 3 month span, would this be beneficial?

Where did you read that my friend?   No evidence they improve fat loss that I've seen... Caffeine is a possibility, possibly.

[Joshua Naterman]

I'm not digressing on anything here, i'm learning a lot observing what's going on here. 

 

question, wouldn't implementing CLA and Soy Lecithin help this athlete help her reach her goal? fat emulsifiers are very effective especially in a 3 month span, would this be beneficial?

Probably not. There's been no valid (key word) research to show any actual effect of these supplements on body composition.

 

The best thing that athletes can do to lose fat is to spread their meals out and get 20-30g of protein every 2-3 hours. If using whey, 20g every 2 hours feels better than 30g every 3 hours to me. I just eat 2/3 cup of rice, a cup of cooked veggies, have 20g protein, and eat a bite of creamed coconut and I'm good to go (for non-exercise time).

[Keilani Gutierrez]

that's...interesting. I know there are numerous genomes that dictate how we metabolize substances and how our body behaves to food intake, so I was only curious if anyone had considered that. that valid research statement is true, I had only mentioned it because my body has had a positive response to implementing CLA/Soy Lecithin and also implementing a steady amount of Vitamin C has helped with my recovery so much that I recovered from a freak bout of bronchitis(even though i do have very clear that I was not under laboratory parameters of observation) in a few weeks. remember how I recovered from my inexperience in programming? I read your nutrition forum and used my glucosamine sulfate more intelligently. so, I'll take this time to thank you for giving me those pieces of knowledge that have served me very well in my recovery, so I am grateful for your reitoration of that knowledge

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

After 2 months, I am interested to know what you eventually did and how it turned out for your athlete SynchroGENized

[Karl Kallio]

We did the zen thing, not much at all.  The "secret" frequent french fries and chocolate were stopped.  The frequent small meals were re-started.  The lesson that even if I don't know that she skips training over the holidays that the results will show was learned.  Today the athlete returns to training so this evening I will be able to tell you how she's doing.

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

Very good, thank you for the update.

Sounds very reasonable