Nutrition Periodization | Kettlebell Fat Blast

Welcome into the platform podcast kettlebell fat blast edition. I am your host Jordan Kunde-Wright founder and head coach of the Twin Cities kettlebell club. On these special episodes, I'm going to tell you about my own personal journey to get into the best shape of my life and it's about to get real. I'm going to take you on this journey with me and tell you about the good, the bad, and the ugly and share all of the successes and struggles along the way. I'm going to talk to you about the frameworks and methods that I'm applying to accomplish this goal and the why behind them without the BS and fluff that you see on social media every day. So follow me at Twin Cities kettlebell club on Instagram and Facebook, go to our website, Twin Cities kettlebell club.com or reach out to me via email, Twin Cities kettlebell club at gmail.com. And if you enjoy the content, please leave me a five star rating and review and share on social media to help me grow my impact. And as always, please support the podcast by supporting the affiliates listed in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. I am glad you're here. All right, welcome into the platform podcast kettlebell fat blast edition. I am your host, Jordan, couldn't you write and today is another solo episode of me talking to you about nutrition, periodization and I'm hoping to make this just 30 minutes of fire. I'm going to try and really be synced and get to the point and really give you guys some high level information because this is super important to me and this is something that I am very passionate about. So if you're familiar with periodization in general, let's just start there. What is periodization. So periodization is the approach that we take in training or in any discipline, honestly, where you intentionally have seasons or periods of varying levels of intensity and varying levels of intention behind each period. So within each period, you are trying to achieve a specific outcome. So when we think of it from a personal training standpoint, periodization is the principle of program design, where you have different training intentions for different periods of time. And it is making sure that you are varying the intensity and duration or that you're manipulating variables within a specific period of time in order to achieve a specific outcome. So for example, if you are trying to work on building your overall strength, so your max, your one reps, one rep maximum output on a particular lift, you may first go through what we would call a stabilization phase. And within that phase, you would work on joint integrity, you would work on building the ability to achieve the positions with a good range of motion. So just we'll say squat, for example, you would, you would start with light load or no load and work on ingraining the movement pattern and making sure you can get to the depth of the squat and that you have the necessarily necessary mobility and that you have the necessary. You have the necessarily necessary stability and strength in the end ranges of motion. So that if you can move through those if you can move through those planes of motion without load and do and do so appropriately, then you should be safe to then start loading. So then, so then once you're done with the stabilization phase, you might move into a hypertrophy phase and hypertrophy phase is intentionally designed around creating larger muscles, that's what hypertrophy stands for. So you start loading the muscles and you start doing a set you would start doing a set and a set and rep scheme associated with hypertrophy. And then you might move and then you might move into a into a strength phase where you're trying to then get to then get stronger with with heavier weights and then you might move and then you might move into a power phase where you're trying to generate bar speed because that equates to your your one rep maximum output. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right. So periodization in the in the context of personal training or in strength is the application of different sets and rep schemes recovery protocols and different variables manipulating different variables and stimuli within a particular training protocol in order to achieve a specific outcome. Most of us are familiar with that right and there's the there's what they call the said principle, which is, which is an acronym that stands for specific adaptation to imposed demands and what that basically says is your body is going to adjust to the and it's going to just specifically to the demands that are imposed upon it. Again, in the in the framework of in the application of strength training, that would mean if you are trying to get better at squats, you are going to need to do squats because your body will adapt specifically, it will adapt specifically to the imposed demands of squats. So you need to train your body for the specific result that you're going for now. There is also the general adaptation to impose demands and that is essentially to say that a rising tide lifts all boats so and this is especially important when you're just getting started right if you are just getting started in in strength training and you've never done any type of strength training. You will get better at squatting even if you're doing deadlift and vice versa and you will get better at overhead pressing even if you're doing bench press because just generally you are increasing your overall strength, your musculature, your neurological connection to the muscles. The central nervous system and peripheral nervous system getting more adapted to doing physical labor, right. So you will get general adaptation to the imposed demands of just greater levels of activity, but specificity will also give you specific adaptation. It's and that specific adaptation to impose demands is one of the reasons why you can go from from doing something like kettlebells and have that translate fairly well to a general act to other general activities. But if you go do something that is very, very different like I don't know say instead of doing kettlebells, you decide that you're going to go row crew. Well, that is going to be a very different requirement for your body. So you would probably be sore in all sorts of places that you are sore from kettlebell training because there is a specific a specific adaptation necessary to be good at rowing a boat on water. Right. So specific adaptation to impose demands, right. That is the said principle. And so what that means when you're looking at at strength or any type of any type of you know physiological performance is that you have to understand what the goal is and build a program out from that now most people are fairly comfortable with that with that understanding. And yet when I talk about when I talk about periodization when it comes to nutrition, a lot of people are like, wait, what are you talking about I have never heard of nutrition periodization before right. And so it is simply applying the concept of periodization to nutrition and that is to say you should not be at an eating at a deficit all the time. You should not be eating to gain mass all the time. You should not be eating at maintenance all the time. Right. You should be alternating different periods different stimuli depending on what goal you are trying to achieve in a specific period. Right. So you should there should always be seasons that you are trying where you are trying to achieve different outcomes within those season. Right. So what that means is we need to have an understanding of what the goal is. And for this we use a framework. I use a framework that I learned from the nutrition coaching institute called the triangle of awareness. And it is basically as as the name implies a triangle said, you know, at one peak is performance. And that is think of think of optimal performance as the highest potential output that you could achieve. So in the context of kettlebell sport that might be achieving master of sport. You are you are pursuing the goal of achieving master sport. And you are going to train and eat accordingly. Right. So performance is the is the peak that you are that you are trying to optimize for you're trying to get the most physically out of your body that you can on another peak of the triangle is health or longevity. Right. You are trying to feel the best you can you're trying to optimize the optimize your function in the world right you're trying to live as long as possible maximize how your brain feels maximize how your body feels. Right, et cetera. Now that that does not always correlate with your highest level of performance because high performance is is not sustainable and it's very nature high performance usually taxes the body. It's really requires some sacrifice of health numbers right so if you're perfect if you're performing at your peak you're putting yourself under incredibly high volumes of stress right for that for that in pursuit of that performance. You are not going to be at your optimized level of health right and the other side of the other the other peak on the on the triangle is aesthetics now that would be obviously looking as good as possible right so if we think of you know whatever whatever the peak of aesthetics is for you that might be looking like Brad Pitt. on you know on the cover of fight club or it might be looking like you know Jay Cutler on the Mister Mister Olympia stage or whatever you think of it you know what is aesthetically if if we're pursuing a super lean or super muscular physique that is going to be a different pursuit than optimal health so if you look at somebody like you know a Mister Olympia when they are on stage and they look their best they are actually likely very depleted and their health numbers. Health numbers likely don't look great they might have they might have low sex drive they might have low low hormone levels you know there's certainly not going to be optimized for health and then similarly if you asked them to go lift heavy weights they would not be able to perform with their at their peak now obviously there's an there's an element of performance that goes into you know bodybuilding because you're you need to be able to contract the muscles to do the posing routines that they're doing on stage. But you know they any competition bodybuilder would tell you that they may look their best but they feel terrible and they they're really struggling to get through because looking that lean is not is not there where they're going to perform their best they're not going to be their strongest when they when they're at their leanest right so. The understanding that there are peaks to the pyramid helps us then understand where do we want to focus right and you can't you can't optimize for all of those things simultaneously right but you can move directionally towards any one of them or multiple of them at the same time and again just like I just talked about. The newbie gains phase the generalized adaptation so when especially if you're you're starting out your fitness journey you're starting out a journey towards trying to to lose fat the newbie gains phase is where you're probably going to improve all of these things simultaneously you're going to start working out and your performance is going to get better because it's the first time if you haven't been work if haven't worked out in a long time or you've never worked out before your performance will prove simply because your body is adjusting to it your health will also improve by losing losing body fat right so so your health. Markers might improve and then most of us generally think that aesthetically we look better when we have muscles and have less fat right so you can move directionally all three of those at the same time but my point is you can't optimize for all of them at the same time right and so and the further and the further down your journey you get the harder it gets to the harder it gets to make improvement in any one area so you have to focus more right so we can we can have it all you just can't have it all all at once and so that's where nutrition periodization. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the platform podcast we'll get back to the episode shortly but first I wanted to share a few exciting updates about the Twin Cities catabell open happening here October 23rd in Little Canada Minnesota please go to our website Twin Cities catabell club dot com to register. Our list of sponsors so far include two belts from bellevator six pairs of ursa barefoot athletic shoes as well as two caddy rock custom built. Maces from Cambrian customs other sponsors include pro catabell inspired nutrition and 27 degrees apparel so we have some awesome prizes and I am very very excited to welcome you here. The athlete lab for our first annual competition please take the time and go register and I look forward to seeing you there. And the way that I think about periodization so the way that I think of periodization is is because I come from an athletic background and because I work with athletes I treat everyone as an athlete because I honestly think we are all athletes. I think I think human beings are athletes we're designed to move and that this so the way that I think of periodization is preseason in season post season and off season right this this framework makes so much sense to me because of my background as an athlete so let's start with in season what does it mean to be in season. Well that is when we are in the most aggressive pursuit of our goal with the understanding that it will have physiological impact elsewhere there will be ramifications for pursuing that goal aggressively so if we're looking at it from a health perspective or from a from a fat loss perspective excuse me right in season might be when you're doing a cut. Cut it might mean that you're putting yourself in a fat loss phase you're in a deficit right you're moving your body and you're trying to drop a body fat you are putting a stress on your body by putting it into a deficit we know that right and if you do that for extended periods of time. We know that we're going to see consequences to that will see metabolic down regulation will see decrease in hormone levels right you will see a decrease in performance as well right so again thinking about that triangle for optimizing for aesthetics by by pursuing a fat loss goal we know that performance is going to suffer and we know that and we know that longevity or health health markers are going to suffer. And it might be in the short it might be in the short term but the longer that deficit goes on the more those effects will be felt that's why athletes who have a particularly long season so think of like baseball players or hockey players the longer the season goes on the harder it gets for them to recover and be ready for the next season right But what does every athlete have after their in season grind is finished right they have a post season and what are they doing the post season well most athletes depending on how much of a grind in season was for them the post season is the time to recover from that grind that's what a post season period is it's a time to reestablish homeostasis it's a time to feel better and to try and restore and repair from the impact of the in season phase right so that can be a reverse diet that could be a de-load in your in your training that could be a refeed that can be anything that's going to help you restore homeostasis it could be it could be completely taking a break from lifting weights for a month right I know Matt Frazier is really really big on he he would take one month off post the the CrossFit games he would take one month off from training that was his post season he needed that in order to allow his body to restore homeostasis right and then from there we transition into the off season now what's the difference between the post season and the off season we're no longer trying to recover from the grind we've already reestablished homeostasis now in the off season that's when you get better right that's when you that's when you start focusing on improvement you address deficiencies or build on strengths right so if you're if you're trying to you're trying to be a high level power lifter your off season period is going to be when you work on hypertrophy it might be when you work on mobility or stabilization right there's going to be a number of things that that will apply there in the off season now when it comes to nutrition it might be time to to work on your relationship with food and not making food a trigger for you it might be learning how to track your macros it might be learning how to cook it might be rebuilding your metabolism or building your metabolism right it might be building new muscle tissue right there there could be any number of things but the off season is the time to focus on where are the areas that you're that you're deficient or where are you strong and what do you want to focus on in that off season right and then we get into the pre season and what is the pre season well it's not quite your in season where we're full on aggressive pursuit of our goals but it's where we start building habits and skills and we start testing approaches for the best possible season right so when it comes to when it comes to your your diet this this is the time to really start habit stacking establishing baselines making sure that making sure that you have solid routines that might be you know building on a morning routine it might be building out a bedtime routine it might be working on on meal prep you know getting back into the practice of that after maybe you've taken a break from that right because there should be periods of breaks you shouldn't need to you know it might not be desirable for you to track your macros for forever right you might need periods of time off from that right so so those are those are the kind of the four seasons that I think about when I talk about talk about periodization right and you can think of those in in in different durations of time right I like to really pull pull the aperture back and think about macro level plans that last years right because I like to define set success in in years and decades and not just in days weeks or months right so you can look at it from the macro perspective where you might it might have taken you years to fix your relationship with food I'm still working on that right I have a much much better relationship with food than I used to have but I'm still working on that right so that could be that could be something that that is part of it but when you start drilling down on this how do you make progress on your goals and how do you get how do you get where where you want to go well if I tell people that it's going to take him years and years and years most people are going to be like well fuck that no thank you I don't want to I don't want to do it I don't want it to take years I want results now right well the good news is it doesn't take years to make progress you can start making progress right now and you can learn a lot of the things that you need to do in in what I would call a mezzo cycle one mezzo cycle which which might be 12 months might be six months right but you can start you can start thinking about a mezzo cycle is a is a long enough period of time to go through a full a season preseason season and post season but it's not such a such a long period of time that that you're not going to be able to to focus on it and it's not such a short period of time that you're not going to see any meaningful results so so when you think about a mezzo season there's there's a lot that can be accomplished in that you know you you might take you might take two weeks to do a build up where you're where you're doing metabolic priming is what Mike Milner would call it right and that that might just be establishing establishing baseline nutrition right where you can eat you calorically you can eat enough food that your that your body is neither gaining nor losing weight and for a lot of people that's that's a caloric increase right so you know especially if that you've been a chronic dire and you've been a deficit for a long time right so you could do that could be part of your preseason phase and then we could do an in season phase where maybe we do three weeks in a deficit and one week and one weekend maintenance for a period of three months right and that could be an aggressive in season you know and in those in a 12 week period you know if you've got if you've got a 10 of those 12 weeks or nine of those 12 weeks at an aggressive deficit I mean you could lose 25 pounds in in in three months and still be in a position where you haven't done a ton of metabolic damage right you won't have a ton of metabolic down regulation if you throw in those if you throw in those those weeks where you're eating at maintenance and so that's where you start looking at mezzo phases with with micro phases within them right so you might have you might have a deficit phase and then a quick and then a quick recovery right so you might have it you might have a quick in season phase and then a quick postseason phase right so you can start getting these micro and mezzo cycles working in phase together where you lose 25 pounds in three months and then you go into a one month where you're a one month postseason phase where you're eating at maintenance and that's just to establish that's just to establish homeostasis again and recalibrate because if you've lost 25 pounds that might be a significant portion of your body weight and so your body needs a chance to reset that that that calibration it needs to to recalibrate your metabolism to that lower set point because you're now a smaller mechanism you're now a smaller organism right so needs to recalibrate your metabolism so that the next time you go back to to try and lose fat again that you you have that you have that capability so you you go through a little postseason phase right and then maybe you go and then maybe you go back into a preseason phase because you're ready to go on to another cut again and so you and so you alternate back to to tracking your macros or going into a deficit or you know so there there are a number of ways that this can there's a number of ways that this can be approached and the context always matters it always depends on what's going to work for you always depends on what your diet history is how far how far you've gone from how long you've gone in deficit how deep you've gone in deficit what your goals are right now right but by cycling through these periods you can ensure that you can move the direction you want from an aesthetic perspective without sacrificing your health and without sacrificing your performance right so you you have these periods and you rotate through them and ideally having a periodized nutrition plan should also align with the periodization of your nutrition or of your training plan excuse me so your training and your nutrition should line up because if you're if you're entering a season where you want to lose body fat but it's also the time where you're expected to perform those two goals don't go hand in hand you can't you have to choose one or the other either we have to accept that you're going to be eating in a deficit because you want to lose body fat you're not going to perform as well or you're going to optimize your performance matters more and we're not going to eat at a deficit at that time because you can't perform your best when you're eating at a deficit and so this is where aligning your nutrition with your training plan makes a lot of sense and it's super important and even if you're not a competitor right you can't you can't expect that you're going to be able to eat at a surplus and lose body fat at the same time those two things don't don't don't go together even if you're training you can't go together even if you're training style is supposed to be for you you're doing fat loss style workouts right you can't eat at a you can't eat at a deficit and expect to build muscle right if you're in a hypertrophy phase trying to build lean tissue and you're eating at a significant caloric deficit it's not going to it's not going to work you're not going to gain the muscle mass that you want right so nutrition and training have to go hand in hand and that's where my approach is that this is why I call it integrated coaching because it's an integrated periodization plan right and I do this I do this with my athletes with my kettlebell athletes and we talk about integrating their training goals with their nutrition plan and then also we have to look at lifestyle factors as well because our metabolism is actually a stress thermometer basically like an adaptive thermostat within our body that responds to the stimulus around it that'll be another episode we can talk more about the factors of the adaptive thermostat that is that is the metabolism but for this for this episode I really wanted to to just dive in and give a high level summary of what periodization is and particularly nutrition periodization because I think most of us are aware of periodization within the training context but nutrition periodization is a little bit different. So let me know if you have questions hopefully you like this episode if you do please share it on social media, tag a friend put it in your stories any of those things and if you're in the if you're in the Facebook live group and you saw the live stream awesome give it a like give it a share tell friends about it invite people to join the group so it is the kettlebell fat blast is the group this is where I'm going to be doing my live streams hopefully every week I'm going to start bringing guests putting up content there continuing to grow that audience and then I'll obviously keep putting this out on the platform podcast as well so let me know what you guys think share the episode if you like it give me feedback I know this was quick and dirty I'm trying to keep these these episodes a little bit a little bit shorter so give me your feedback let me know any questions that you have and of course if you want help with with you know nutrition periodization or you want help with your with your kettlebell periodization or any type of training you know reach out to me and you know I love doing integrated integrated plans this is this is really what I do is making sure we align nutrition and training and lifestyle so that you can have a sustainable plan that works for you and as customized for what you're trying to do so hit me up let me know if you have any questions and until next time I bid you all a do thanks for listening to this episode of the platform podcast I'm Jordan going to be right we'll be back with a new episode for you next week please don't forget to register for the twin cities kettlebell open on our website twin cities kettlebell club dot com and if you have a question or suggestion please email me at twin cities kettlebell club at gmail dot com and don't forget to follow us on social media at twin cities kettlebell club and if you want to step under the platform and competing kettlebell sport please reach out to me until next time