Food for hard training

I don't have shit to do at school at the moment, so I find myself spending 25-30 hours a week at the gym, and at least a day over the weekend outdoors. I've got my eyes on a few projects so I've been training much harder than usual. I've got most of my endurance back but I'm really struggling to gain muscle. My best guess is diet, but it could very well be something else. Has anyone else seen this problem or experienced something similar? What suggestions do you have?

I mean if you're working out 30+ hours a week You're not going to gain muscle because you aren't recovering. Step one rest more

What's a normal 25-30 hour week at the gym look like? Are you getting at least three complete rest days a week for the muscle groups you're working?

If your approach to nutrition is anywhere near as gung-ho as your approach to training, you might need to hear this: Your body can only process around 25 grams of protein every two hours.

;-)

F r i t z wrote:

If your approach to nutrition is anywhere near as gung-ho as your approach to training, you might need to hear this: Your body can only process around 25 grams of protein every two hours.

That's a myth that has been disproven, especially in the context of "real food".

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5828430/

JCM wrote:

That's a myth that has been disproven, especially in the context of "real food".

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5828430/

Lol, did you check this for sources, sample size, controls, funding, control group size, etc? (I’ll save you some scrolling and tell you most of those were N/A’d in the article linked). If you hit the main source you will see the article is based on a sample size of 24, which statistically speaking is anecdotal at best.

I would try upping your intake of protein and carbs. Make sure you are eating carbs before during and after your workout. Try to get ~a gram of protein per pound of body weight every day.

As others have said make sure you are recovering adequately between sessions.

Sleep, hydration and protein intake are the big factors to help you recover the most you can per unit of time, but you still gotta give your body enough time even if you got that other stuff dialed in.

That’s a pretty individual thing so you gotta kind of pay attention to your body to figure it out. Or use one of those new fangled fitness trackers. I’ve never used one but people say they are pretty good at giving you an idea of your recovery/central nervous system fatigue. 

Chicken, rice, broccoli, bread, oatmeal, pancakes, beans. Basically lots of carbs and protein. If your trying to stack on the muscle you should at least consume 1g-1.5grams of protein per pound of body weight. Carbs are like the bust of energy to work out and protein stacks on the muscle. Good fats help too like milf, cheese, beef. I’m not a professional by any means with this. My physique does speak for itself though.

F r i t z wrote:

What's a normal 25-30 hour week at the gym look like? Are you getting at least three complete rest days a week for the muscle groups you're working?

Assuming that’s in addition to climbing days, either this is a schedule for a professional climber or a bit obsessive compulsive   

F r i t z wrote:

What's a normal 25-30 hour week at the gym look like? Are you getting at least three complete rest days a week for the muscle groups you're working?

If your approach to nutrition is anywhere near as gung-ho as your approach to training, you might need to hear this: Your body can only process around 25 grams of protein every two hours.

;-)

Typically a four to five hour session six days out of the week, so no. The only time I take in more than 25 grams of protein would be through a fast food quarter pounder. 

Li Hu wrote:

Assuming that’s in addition to climbing days, either this is a schedule for a professional climber or a bit obsessive compulsive   

By gym, I meant climbing gym. Could be a little obsessive.

John Clark wrote:

Lol, did you check this for sources, sample size, controls, funding, control group size, etc? (I’ll save you some scrolling and tell you most of those were N/A’d in the article linked). If you hit the main source you will see the article is based on a sample size of 24, which statistically speaking is anecdotal at best.

That's exactly the point I'm getting at, fool. Really missed the point there. All of those studies (i.e. including the ones where the "25 grams per two hours" idea came from) have limitations, the results vary, and the study structure doesn't always match the real world.  Sports science is an aspirational term at best, at this time.  Also, not sure what you mean by "the main source". It's a review paper citing many studies, discussing their limitations, and seeing where any consensus might exist.

In any case, planning your life and eating habits around a max of 25 grams per meal (as some might if they take the 25 grams idea as truth) isn't necessary. There isn't sufficient evidence to support it. If you want to eat a big steak with 50 grams of protein, just do it. It'll be fine. 

Eat more protein, eat more in general, avoid junk. OP is 17. It doesn't have to be complicated. 

Nick Bogan wrote:

. Good fats help too like milf, cheese, beef.

Does a body good

That is a lot of volume.

For optimal muscle building I would say it’s probably too much, and it may be too much period, you could find yourself in a recovery hole, treading water, getting less fit, or worst case, getting injured. Pay a lot of attention to your body and be smart- an injury can cost you a lot of time and fitness.

With sessions that long you should absolutely be fueling mid session-bananas are a good cheap easily digestable option, but whatever floats your boat, gummy worms, energy bars, an actual meal. And I would really hammer the protein as well. Aim more towards 1.5 grams per pound, probably easiest to hit with some whey (or whatever you like but whey is best if you tolerate it) protein powder shakes in addition to food. Aim to get 40 grams at a shot a few times a day if you can.

Hank Hudley wrote:

...The only time I take in more than 25 grams of protein would be through a fast food quarter pounder. 

My kind of guy.

I'm glad I'm not the only 1 eating like shit. My partners have commented that I could probably climb better/harder if I consume quality food in instead of the usual garbage that I eat. My send fuel is usually kettle brand jalapeño potato chips. Will be following this thread

take TAKE wrote:

I mean if you're working out 30+ hours a week You're not going to gain muscle because you aren't recovering. Step one rest more

OP, you'll have to specify what you mean by 30+ hours a week. That's approximately 4.5 hours a day, which is certainly too much. I think a good number is right around 20 a week, and has worked for me for many years, but that includes warming up, sitting around, mobility work, strength work and generalized prehab work. Professional athletes can tolerate training loads of 5/6 hours a day but I'm assuming you aren't one of those and have other things in your life filling your time and raising your allostatic load.

In terms of diet, climbers of all types are STRENGTH athletes, even endurance-based sport routes only require a handful of minutes to send, akin to maybe running a mile with moments of sprinting in between moments of jogging. As such, you need to consume protein like a strength athlete, about 0.8 grams of COMPLETE and BIOAVAILABLE protein per pound of body weight a day. I weigh 180 pounds and this works out to about 144g a day. It's very easy to hit this number on an animal-based diet, where almost every gram is complete and between 90-95% bioavailable. People in this thread are recommending 1-1.5g a pound which seems excessively high, maybe they're using the kilogram conversion on accident.

A small piece of steak the size of your palm has 40g of complete/bioavailable protein. Rice and beans, as somebody suggested above, is technically a complete protein, but the ratio of essential amino acids is all wrong and very hard to absorb. An inordinate amount of climbers are undernourished on plant-based diets and report great results simply getting 15 grams of physivantage collagen(copeagen) a day. Up your animal product consumption and start training harder than ever. Also supplement vitamin D no matter what diet you eat.

Edit: oh wait you're 17, you can definitely recover from 30+ hours a week and probably don't have too many life things going on. Consequently, you probably don't have money for high-quality steaks every day lol

Yo Hank, 

25 - 30 hours a week in the climbing gym sounds like over-training to me. Climbing hard rock routes is not an "endurance" activity. You might consider focusing more on developing raw power. Try some campus board workouts, hard bouldering and hard routes in the gym. Stuff you can't do on your first few tries. Get a few routes like this wired and that gives you a way to gauge your fitness. 

Spending half a day projecting a hard sport route should leave you so trashed you will need 2- or 3-days rest to recover fully. If you're still feeling sore from your last session, you're not recovered, yet. You can't really climb at your highest level more than once or twice per week. Look into the strategy of periodization training. Basically, to achieve maximum results athletes vary their training through the course of a season. In swimming, we could achieve huge gains by "tapering" at the end of the season where the workouts become much more speed oriented, and much less mileage. The big gains only last for a few weeks, and you must have put-in several months of hard training before the tapering period.

Try increasing the intensity of your workouts and decreasing the duration. Try to get fully pumped out in 2 or 3 hours. If you can last 5 hours in the gym, you're just not pushing yourself hard enough. Start climbing harder routes and taking more rest days. 

In addition to campus boarding, don't be afraid to pump some iron. Heavy weights (4 - 8 reps max, after a good warm-up). This will also allow you to train those opposing muscle groups as well as your "climbing" muscles.

As far as diet goes, stop eating junk food, choose the good quality organic stuff - you're worth it . . .

We don't know your entire situation, but consider this:

- Drop your training load from 25-30 to a focused, efficient 10 with the same results.

- Use the extra free time to work a physical labor job. Get blue-collar strong. Invest all your earnings in a trip fund.

- Take a gap year after graduating high school and climb some of the best rock the US has to offer.

Good memories last a lot longer than gainz.

Re: food, don't overthink it. Follow the recommendations of your health class textbook, reduce processed junk and soda, increase vegetables, drink water.

nowhere wrote:

Aim more towards 1.5 grams per pound

Even bodybuilders/powerlifter generally agree that 1gram per pound bodyweight is high limit for protein intake. Your body will to better increasing carbs after that as you need both for muscle building. 

Eric Marx wrote:

An inordinate amount of climbers are undernourished on plant-based diets

While this may be true, Soy protein's PDCAAS score is at or above beef . Soy's other protein scores(there's at least 10 ways to rate protein) are right around the same level as beef. If you were truly concerned with protein scores your only protein would be Whey, Eggs, maybe Milk. Beef's bioavailability (BV) score is "only" 80. Soy is 74. Egg is 100. Whey is 104. 

My point is only that anxiety over "bioavailibility" is likely getting into the weeds. I say this as someone who eats meat. Sure rice and beans leaves something to be desired. Perhaps it is simpler to just eat meat. But plant based diets are not inherently inferior and ALL athletes should pay attention to macros first and foremost. Eating meat/plant is less of a concern than overall macros is my guess. And my guess is that most people's macros are way out whack - more than the quality of their protein. Is there a study truly showing plant based protein diets to be inferior for athletes? 

Hank Hudley wrote:

By gym, I meant climbing gym. Could be a little obsessive.

Obsession is what some people call it.  Sounds like stoke to me!

edit: try to listen to your body and rest when you need to. Maybe try out “active recovery”.  Things like stretching and prehab for joints that take a lot of damage when climbing could be good to substitute in to your 5 hour crank sesh. Things like this:

Shoulders - rotator cuff, lower trap (hanging inverse shrugs)

Hips - external rotators (banded side steps)

Elbows / forearms - reverse writs curls, hold your hand open against a rubber band

Ankles - balance on one leg, anterior tib raises, write the alphabet.

These things will have a high bang for your Buck in terms of climbing gains vs how much you will need to recover / fuel.  They are small muscle groups as opposed to doing hard bouldering or something else.  Then, the diet tips elsewhere in this thread will help. 

I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but you can't have a bioavailability score greater than 100%. You can't digest 104% of something. The other numbers you've provided are simply wrong, the numbers I've provided, most animal-products fall between 90-95% bioavailable are correct. (Meat, yogurt, chicken, fish, cheese. eggs) You don't need to consider any bioavailability if you're simply basing your protein totals off of animal-products ;) anxiety all gone.

Eating meats vs plant is huge, which is why I specified COMPLETE and bioavailable. Sure, soy is an exception, in that it is complete, with high bioavailabilty, but the ratios of amino acids are all wrong, in that they don't mimic the ratios of animal products, which is what we evolved eating. This is why people can thrive eating only steaks(intense carnivores) but people surviving on only Tofu simply don't exist. Pea protein is also very high in bioavailabiltiy. It's still not a health food product. The idea that a 6 ounce piece of soy is anywhere near as nutritious as a 6 oz piece of steak is laughable, and in this case, very important when talking about fueling intense athletics. 

There's about 10,000 studies demonstrating this to be true. Plant-based eating is a modern phenomena, as such, there are highly-influenced modern studies(last 5-10 years) which chop up data in favorable ways to somehow pretend that humans are better off without animal products, but this will never be true and the studies don't hold up to scrutiny. I bought into that for about 6 years. I'm now 32, train harder and more frequently than ever, I'm less injured and consistently stronger than ever, year over year. Once I stopped counting any form of plant-protein against my daily totals was when the effects really started to take shape.

Eric Marx wrote:

I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but you can't have a bioavailability score greater than 100%. You can't digest 104% of something. 

It depends what index you are looking at, but the most prevalent index is normalized with the egg at a 100 score. Whey is higher on the index than an egg, hence above 100. The score does not mean "you absorb this % of the protein."