8 Weeks Out: Focus on Building Muscle, not Losing Fat
60 days before the first workout, you still have time to dial in your nutrition, if you start NOW.
If you’ve never paid much attention to your nutrition before, let’s start by figuring out how much you’re eating over the next 7 days.
Download one of the free macro tracking apps (MyFitnessPal), invest in a cheap food scale (~$15), and track how much you eat across the week. If you need a little help learning how to track, check out the link in our bio for the 4-part series we posted on our website. Next week, we'll post again to help you improve upon what you learn.
If you are used to tracking, now is the time to focus on a performance-based set of macros. There’s a time to focus on decreasing body fat, but this isn’t it. Instead, try to eat to calorie maintenance over the next 8 weeks, building some lean muscle mass and generally improving your fitness as the primary goals.
Why? The Open is a stressful experience as it is, there’s no need to START the Open after spending 8 weeks in a caloric deficit. We’ve seen people try it, and historically it doesn't go well for them
7 Weeks Out: Listen to Biofeedback
For those of you that used our post last week to learn how to track, now we want to dial in your macros for your goals. You have a couple of options here to make this happen.
First off, if you are an M2 Client, you know that we offer several programs to handcraft out a full nutrition plan for you. If you haven't worked with M2PN before, we recommend researching Alan Aragon’s TDEE macro calculator. This simple formula uses your body weight and activity level to provide a target calorie range. While simplistic, it can get the job done.
For everyone else that already knows how to track, and used last week to start eating towards a “maintenance level” of macros, let’s use this week to analyze how we felt.
How did workouts go?
Did you have plenty of energy?
How was your recovery across the week?
How did you sleep? Wake up any more or less than usual?
If you answered positively to those questions, keep up the good work. However, if you felt a bit lethargic, woke up in the middle of the night frequently, or had a poor recovery, you might think about adding ~20-40 grams of carbs for a few days and seeing if your biofeedback improves.
6 weeks out: Building a Routine
First, let’s check in on your biofeedback from the last week:
How did workouts go?
Did you have plenty of energy?
How was your recovery across the week?
How did you sleep? Wake up any more or less than usual?
If you answered positively to those questions, keep up the good work.
If something felt off with any of those topics, you might need to adjust your calorie intake.
Looking forward now is the right time to start thinking about building a really strong routine.
Do you wake up at the same time?
Do you go to bed at the same time?
Do you eat at the same time?
Do you work out at the same time?
Do you normally eat before working out?
What about supplements or coffee?
If you have a solid routine already, nice work!
If you’re lacking one, now is a good time to change that. Waking up, eating, training, and sleeping at the same time consistently can produce better sleep, reduce stress, improve nutritional consistency, etc.
Specific to the CrossFit Open, find out how your gym will be running the workouts. Can you do it anytime or will there be a special event once a week?
Why do we care? If you’re used to working out in the morning but now will be doing the workouts at night, you’d be surprised at how different that can feel, and what variables you now need to adjust. The good news is you have plenty of time to adjust and adapt.
So, answer the questions above and then think about whether you’ll need to adjust anything for the 3 weeks of the CrossFit Open. Start making a few changes now and see how you feel!
5 weeks out: Check on your Hydration
Did you know that 50-60% of our total body mass is water and that being just 1-2% dehydrated can have a significant impact on performance? Water also appears to be impactful for body-composition goals as well. A few years back, a study found that if you drank 500 mL (16 oz) of water, your body would use 24% more calories for 60 minutes after drinking water.
Check out the link in our bio to read the FULL blog post on this important topic.
Here’s a little preview of what we cover:
One of the major questions that we get is whether you can trust your thirst level to judge when to drink more fluids. As is common in the nutrition world, the answer is "it depends."
Most of the time, your body doesn't generate a "thirst" response until about 1.5% of water is lost. Now if you're inactive, that’s not a huge deal, but from an athletic performance point of view, it's huge. Add on top of that the individual response to exercise ("sweater" vs. "non-sweater") and making generalized statements about this topic is extremely difficult.
The Institute for Medicine determined that an adequate intake for men is ~3 liters and ~2.2 liters for women. Of course, there are a bunch of variables that could cause you to want to drink more (and sometimes less) than these amounts. Another approach is to use your urine color as an indicator of hydration. Aiming for a goal of "slightly yellow" with ~5-6 urinations through a day seems to be a helpful goal for most people.
Save this post to refer back to and don’t forget to check out our blog post that dives into drinking that high-quality H2O.
4 Weeks Out: Supplement Check
With just about a month to go, it’s time to make sure that any supplements you plan to use are something you are well familiar with. In other words, NEVER try anything new this close to game day.
To drive this point home, here’s a quick story from M2 Founder, Mike Molloy, about this hard-learned lesson:
“In 2010, there was a step in the qualification for the CrossFit Games called Sectionals (anyone remember those?). The 2-day event had 5 high-intensity events spread out over 2 days. Going into the 2nd day, yours truly was sitting in the top 10, but I was about to make a rookie mistake. Feeling a little worn down from the stress of the competition, I drank my 2nd large iced coffee of the day. Sounds innocent but I NEVER drank coffee back then. I did about 10 box jumps in my warm-up and my heart rate went to about 200. NOT GOOD. The following workout was a bit of a disaster to say the least. That day I learned first-hand to stick to your normal routine and never try something new on game day.”
- - - -
The good news is that with ~4 weeks to go you have plenty of time to get used to the very few supplements that have been scientifically proven to work.
Here’s the list:
Caffeine (0.8-2.5mg/bodyweight)
Creatine (5-10 grams/day for 1 month)
Sodium Bicarbonate/Calcium carbonate (5 grams/day divided through the day to prevent gut issues)
Nitrates/Nitrate rich beet juice (300-500 ml)
Beta-alanine (4-6 g/day for 1 month)
To be clear, you don’t need to take ALL of these for the Open. This is just the shortlist that could benefit an athlete in the sport of CrossFit.
3 Weeks Out: Food Quality & Micronutrients
Let’s talk about food quality!
While macronutrients are important when it comes to maximizing your performance, we cannot forget about micronutrients either. In general, micronutrients are required to run an efficient metabolism, however, there are several noted key importance.
Magnesium:
This critical element is one that we do a terrible job of maintaining within our bodies. In fact, it's estimated that at least 50% of Americans are deficient in magnesium. Low levels of magnesium are associated with fatigue and weakness, numbness, tingling, muscle contractions and cramps. Depletion of magnesium results in increased overall energy needs and can adversely affect cardiovascular function.
Zinc:
Low zinc levels have also been associated with poor aerobic function during exercise as well. Estimates suggest that 20% of men and up to 40% of women are deficient in zinc.
B vitamins: One critical study showed that low levels of B vitamins, notably thiamin and riboflavin caused reduced performance in a group of men. What is scarier is that a relatively common western diet was able to induce B vitamin deficiency in only 8 weeks!
So, how can we improve our intake of each of these key micronutrients??
Diet appears to be a more effective route than multivitamin supplements. The absorption of the micronutrients appears more effective from natural sources than it does from a pill.
Magnesium can be found in high levels of avocados, nuts, legumes, seeds, whole grains, fatty fish, leafy greens and bananas.
Zinc and B vitamins can be found in meat, shellfish, beans, seeds, nuts, dairy, eggs and several whole grains.
In general, simply choosing to “eat the rainbow” from your foods (and not from skittles) will get the job done.
2 weeks out: Game Plan for Game Time
This week let’s focus on 24 hours prior to the actual workout each week.
THE NIGHT BEFORE:
It can take up to 24 hours to replenish glycogen stores, which means that if you want to be "topped off" for the workout, you need to eat adequately at least 24 hours before the event starts. For most people, their normal macro intake will be sufficient for a single workout, but if you feel even slightly burned out, then it’s a good idea to add an extra 50 grams of carbs. This shouldn’t be an issue in week 1, but by week 3, it might be necessary especially if you attempt the Open workout multiple times each week.
As for carb type, veggies are great but focus on dense starchy carbs like sweet potatoes, rice, quinoa, oatmeal, etc. They are easy to break down and will help to top off our muscle glycogen levels.
Stay relatively hydrated and make sure you're not thirsty before you go to bed. You can't fix dehydration in one hour, so get your stuff together the day(s) before.
THE DAY OF:
Don’t eat solid foods ~2 hours prior to the workout. We don’t want anything heavy sitting in your gut during these ultra-high-intensity workouts.
An hour before the Open workout, eat something easily digestible like a @fuelforfire, baby food squeeze pouch, or a banana. These can provide a little extra glucose for the workout. Follow your normal pre-workout supplement routine and then go crush the workout.
WHAT IF THERE ARE TWO BACK-TO-BACK WORKOUTS?
If there is a workout with two components to it, such as 2018’s dumbbell front squats and burpees followed by a max squat clean, have something sweet to sip on between the events, and between lifts. Gatorade, coconut water, or even fruit juice all work here.
Why? Studies have consistently shown that tasting sweet flavors while fatigued can increase athletic performance. The cool thing about this is that you don’t technically even have to swallow the drink! All that matters is your brain SENSES that more fuel is coming and you’ll get the benefit!
1 week out: Game Time
At this point, your nutrition should be pretty much set! Last week we covered how to approach eating the day before and the day of for each workout. But… what happens if your nerves get the best of you and your appetite disappears? What can we do to get it back?
Let’s just quickly review the science behind this phenomenon.
You never have to think, “Beat my heart, digest my food, make sweat.” These functions are controlled the AUTONOMIC nervous system which can be subdivided into the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system (SNS & PSNS)
The SNS is considered the “fight or flight” system, preparing your body for intense action. People assume this system is only activated by a true adrenaline response, which is WRONG. Any intense physical exercise (like your workout), but also emotional stress, activate this system as well
The PSNS is called the “rest and digest” or the “feed and breed” system. In many ways, it’s the opposite of the SNS. It is activated by calming thoughts and deep breathing
Activation of the SNS can dramatically slow digestion. This is because under intense stress the body prioritizes actions IMMEDIATELY required for survival. Digestion of the meal you ate 2 hours ago is NOT the priority.
In our experience, many people experience this phenomenon before major competitions, including the CrossFit Open. Suddenly all of the good plans they made around nutrition go out the window because they simply have lost their appetite.
The good news is that science has taught us a few simple breathing tricks to calm the brain down and bring back your appetite.
One way is to perform a technique called “Box Breathing” a few times throughout the day.
Another technique known as a “physiological sigh” is something you already do subconsciously throughout each day, however, we are also able to use this breathing tool through conscious action as well.