KC Craichy talks with elite trainer Dave Herman about the importance of nutrition for athletes.

Audio Transcript

KC: Welcome to Living Fuel TV. I’m KC Craichy. Today we ask, is nutrition helping or hurting your workouts? Is it even important at all? Today we talk with elite trainer, Dave Herman. God bless you, Dave. Great to have you back.

Dave: Thanks, KC.

KC: So how important is nutrition? And with these world class athletes you’re working with? And anybody else you’re working with?

Dave: Well, if they aren’t eating right, then they’re not training right. So it is very important that they start their day, getting that breakfast in. They’re getting their breakfast, their lunch, their dinner, their in-between snacks. Especially in a competitive period when they’re out there competing and on the road, they’ve got to eat right. I primarily work with golfers, and those guys, they’ll walk five to seven miles a day on the golf course, five to seven times a week. So they’re burning a lot of calories, so we have to make sure that they are eating properly.

KC: It’s very interesting. In repetitive sports like golf, and tennis like you do, even baseball, recovery is huge. Huge. If you’re not recovering right, then day two and three is not going to be as good as day one.

Dave: Absolutely.

KC: And particularly when you play week after week after week. It is very interesting that people can actually do these kinds of activities again and again and again. So in nutrition, we talk about, there are, at least, three factors which you need to deal with. You’ve got to stave off the cortisol rise. You’ve got to refuel glycogen stores. And you’ve got to get enough protein in the right windows in order to properly refuel the athlete and build muscle and so on. And then there are so many other things that all the other nutrients do. Are you seeing that athletes are getting more in tune to this? Are they getting it?

Dave: Well, mine are, especially my kids. That’s where I see it. The real need is with the young kids that are becoming athletes. They get up in the morning, they go to school. Sometimes, they even skip breakfast. So just by having… All my kids, they all start their day with a Living Fuel shake. I get them, every single one of them, that are in my program, have a Living Fuel shake every day on their way to school, and I think that with the kids it’s massive.

KC: Probably that’s your breakfast, also?

Dave: Yeah, on the way here I drank one.

KC: How did you get started on Living Fuel? Because you contacted us. How?

Dave: Well, what was amazing was watching Dara Torres, because I have a passion for kids, but also I like increasing athletes’ careers’ longevity. And watching Dara Torres competing at that level. I took a look at her program. I started doing a lot of research on her. I was like, “What is this girl doing, that is allowing her to compete at this age at this high level?” And then I came across Living Fuel. I started looking into Living Fuel. She’s like, “I have this Living Fuel shake every morning.” I don’t think she eats until 12. So she has a Living Fuel shake and then a snack, and then her first meal of the day is after lunch. So I began looking into it, and my friends at Golf Fitness Magazine, I think, you began a relationship with them.

KC: That’s how we got connected.

Dave: And I contacted you. What I was looking for was superfoods. That supplies the vegetables, and the fruits, and the oils, and the protein, something extremely healthy.

KC: Well, terrific. You know, Dara has some genetics working her way also, but she is definitely very serious about her nutrition while training and so on. And so, you actually work with a lot of very well known people who have experienced the power of super food nutrition over what they had before. I mean, when you do fuel the body properly, you get a different result than if you don’t.

Dave: Absolutely, especially in terms of getting that pre-workout meal in, and then getting that post-workout recovery. You’ve got to cross every T, and dot every I out there.

KC: You know, a lot of the top guys in research in sports nutrition will tell you now that, it’s 30 minutes before. Highly digestible though, you can’t eat a steak 30 minutes before workout and expect to have a good workout or game, and so on. So it’s 30 minutes before, every 10 or 15 minutes during, and then within 15 minutes after. The 30-W-15 is what they call it. This is really a powerful concept because, what people don’t realize is, we used to talk about a 90 minute window after a workout to give yourself a post-workout recovery of fuel.

Dave: Not any more.

KC: It has tightened. The window has tightened, because we now know that if you have that recovery fuel within 45 minutes of finishing the workout, that the cheapest protein out there, let’s just say corn protein, is 80% better absorbable than the best protein two hours later. So if an athlete is not hitting that window, Living Fuel is ideal for that window, but even we have seen chocolate milk have power in that window. If you miss that window, you are missing the recover, and it’s going to hurt your recovery and your development.

Dave: And you neutralized your workout. So you’re not going to get the benefit of all of the sweat and labor you just put in there. It’s almost, not self-defeating in a way, but you got the mental benefit of getting in there, but you might not have gotten the physical benefit from it.

KC: Precisely. And it takes longer to recover, you’re more sore the next workout. And so. it’s very powerful what people can accomplish by adding this to the exercise, like you said. There is literature that says that nutrition is more important than exercise, but the reality of it is the stimulus of exercise in that, say, one hour, combined with the 23 hours following, with the right fuel at the right increments, can make a dramatic difference in the success of an athlete. Particularly growing athletes.

Dave: Particularly growing, and getting that late night protein shake in right before bed, too, so you’re not going into a catabolic sort of state where you’re burning muscle at night. It’s almost like a 24 hour sort of plan, isn’t it?

KC: It has to be. Has to be.

Dave: Yeah. One day of mistake can really cost you three days.

KC: It can. It can. But when you get that exercise and the nutrition plan together, it’s so much more powerful than either one by itself.

Dave: You’ve always heard like, “1 is 1, 2 is 3.” By integrating those two together, you are going to get much better results and it’s showing.

KC: Terrific. Dave, thank you so much.

Dave: Thanks KC.

KC: God bless you, and have a great day.