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We sat down with Chris Barakat, MS, ATC, CISSN (IG @christopher.barakat) to talk about all things related to athlete nutrition. He is a wealth of knowledge and was a blast to speak with.
Isaiah Rivera, pro dunker, and John Evans discuss anything related to maximizing athletic performance, and in particular, jump training. Strength and conditioning, jumping technique, weight room practices, and general fitness and health tips and advice are shared on this podcast.
What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of THP Strength. In this week's podcast or today's podcast, we will be speaking with Chris Bearcat. A little bit about Chris. He has a bunch of degrees and certificates.
John:Firstly, and maybe most importantly, he has a master's of science in exercise Nutrition, graduated from the University of Tampa in 2016. He is an adjunct professor there. We'll go over that bio in a second. He also got his Bachelor of Science in athletic training from Stony Brook University in 2015 and has his athletic trainer certification and is a certified sports nutritionist. Chris is also a graduate of the exercise and nutritional science math or I guess, firstly, he is a graduate of the exercise and nutritional science master's program at the University of Tampa, an adjunct professor teaching various courses on nutrition, exercise fundamentals, and supplementation.
John:He is also a published scientist who continues to study how to optimize body composition through training and nutritional interventions under doctor D'Souza in the Human Performance Lab. Chris is also a competitor himself with three contest prep seasons under his belt. He started competing as a teenager in 2011 and was successful out of the gate winning his novice bantamweight class as well as the teen division in the INBF Long Island experience. He then competed in 2013 and won the open lightweight and juniors division at the INBF Northeast America. In 2017, Chris competed at the twenty seventeen NPC Tampa Bay Classic where he won his classic physique class and open middleweight class.
John:He then competed in his home turf at the twenty seventeen INBF Hercules Championships where he finished second in the open lightweight class. He then flew across the country to California to compete at the INBF Muscle Mayhem and also finished second place in the in the open lightweight class there. Sorry. That was a handful. Anyways, Chris, we're pumped to have you on.
John:Thanks for taking the time to do that. And did we miss anything?
Chris Barakat:No. That was more than enough. I really appreciate it. And saying INBF like six times can can be a tongue twister.
John:Yeah. I was like, man, this is a lot. So we have a bunch of questions for Chris. He is a specialist obviously when it comes to a lot of areas, particularly nutrition and because he has his master's degree in exercise science and then also has an athletic training certification, you have all of your bases covered. What do agree that?
Chris Barakat:Really grateful for the foundation I have, I guess I would say. Originally I thought I was going go into physical therapy and I actually worked in PT clinics for six years. I worked since I was literally 18 as an assistant, as an intern, and then as an aide, and then as an athletic trainer. I worked at PT clinics before I had any educational background and then as an ATC. So I was in that realm for a while, something I'm super passionate about, but I just didn't want to do that day in and day out and really fell in love with bodybuilding.
Chris Barakat:So, shifted gears and went everything exercise and nutritional science based thereafter. Yeah, man. I'm super grateful for the the foundation I have and I'm someone who just is continuously trying to learn. I feel like you get to a certain point especially at the beginning, you feel like you actually know everything. And then yeah, a thousand percent and there comes this point where your ass gets humbled really quick and you're like, wow, there's so many more questions that we have that I I wanna explore and and that's what I'm really grateful to do in the research realm.
John:Yeah. That's awesome. I ironically and myself or coincidentally maybe, Isaiah and I both initially went in for I think Isaiah was mechanical engineering and then switched to exercise science also for PT. And I think so many people go into PT being told like, oh, this is the best option because it gives you the most job security and you've also have the benefit of working with athletes and you get to be around sport and all stuff. And then it's reality.
John:You're like teaching 60 year old women how to stand up and sit down that are maybe overweight or like dealing with 70 year olds with knee and hip replacements or whatever. So it's just very different I think than what people assume it is. And I think that pushes a lot of people when they start to get into it and you start to get those hours and stuff like that even. And you're like, you know what? This isn't what I wanna do.
John:When I was coaching, was the same way. Was like Groundhog's Day. You're like, in, out, same thing every day. It's like teaching a lesson in history about Abraham Lincoln like 15 times a day every day for three hundred and sixty five days, like, is just way overboard. Ironically as well, my cousin was an AT for the Ravens.
John:Oh, wow. Getting his experience from that as well and hearing what it's like at that level and the time commitments and stuff like that are crazy. And then obviously like in exercise science, you have a lot of people like that too. We'll cover the advertisements at the end because I don't I wanna get right into it here. But we have a bunch of questions here.
John:Hunter, you are our go to guy for nutrition and I'm sure you're gonna have better questions maybe than what I will. I'm sure I will have questions as we go through here. But Hunter, if you wanna lead it off with kind of your first question for Chris. Yeah. Chris, so
Hunter:something, little bit of background about me is I played, division one baseball at Tulane University down in New Orleans, which is where I am now. And I was always obsessed with nutrition and maximizing performance at Tulane. My strength and conditioning coach there was a former Olympian. And so I was always picking his brain, like how do you eat? How do you train?
Hunter:How do you do all this? And it was always just like, Hunter, do what I tell you to do.
Chris Barakat:Yeah.
Hunter:And so I was always hurt. And when I stopped playing, it just started plowing through the research. And I remember Mike Matthews was the first one that kind of kicked off like the, oh, there's like real science behind this. And from there, like it's just been devouring like podcasts and papers and textbooks about metabolism and exercise science. So something that I am currently fascinated with is the state of research on maximizing performance for athletic events.
Hunter:And I know that's like a catch all term, athletic events. You have everything from a 100 meter dash to a marathon and everything in between. I know that you mainly focus or at least I assume that you mainly focus with bodybuilders and physique competitors. Is that correct?
Chris Barakat:Yeah. That's definitely my primary focus, but I actually have a huge interest in in different sports, even things like MMA performance. Even though I don't make a ton of content on that, my brother was a pro MMA fighter and he coaches in that realm. So I I dabble in other things, but I don't put that stuff on social media. It's just not my it's not my niche, but I I I love that stuff.
Chris Barakat:So yeah, performance overall, it's way more than just resistance training.
Hunter:Okay.
John:Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, Chris. You're in Tampa, I'm in Tampa,
Chris Barakat:right now. Yeah. I'm from Long Island, New York.
John:Okay. So do are you familiar with Steve Mowry?
Chris Barakat:Do you
John:know who Steve Mowry is? No. He's a MMA guy from around my hometown, but I thought he trained out in Tampa and I was like,
Chris Barakat:maybe He might. So I know the MMA scene in the Northeast. So New York, Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, that whole scene, I'm way more familiar with than the MMA scene down here. Okay. Yeah.
John:Oh, got it. Okay. Yeah. He's from, well, Butler, PA, is like just north of Gotcha. Pittsburgh.
John:But, yeah, maybe check him out after the episode. Steve, if you're listening to this, what's up? Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. Anyways, Hunter, I guess you never really directed your question.
John:Did you have a question specifically related to that? I'm starting to list a bunch of stuff.
Hunter:Yeah. MMA. I'd recently just started Brazilian jujitsu and Muay Thai. So we'll touch on that in a second. I'm sure cause I'm fascinated with that realm because
John:I'm not happy about it.
Hunter:Yeah. John is
John:it's interrupting with his regular training volume and my plans, So
Hunter:I would love to start off with a little bit about how you approach maximizing an athletic performance. So from nutritional standpoint. So if you have an athlete come to you and let's just start off, most of our athletes are track and field and basketball. So if you were to have a, let's just start off with a basketball athlete who comes to you and says, I've heard that oat meal before games, the go to, you gotta have fast acting carbs. So like how many packets of oatmeal should I eat before a game?
Hunter:Cause that's a lot of the questions that I feel. How do you take that and start to build out some sort of nutritional blueprint or guideline for an athlete knowing that their knowledge point or their starting point is just, I need carbs.
Chris Barakat:Sure. So there's a lot I can talk about and I I'm just gonna rant off. Oh, please. It's gonna be valuable.
John:Yep. Oh, that's what I always don't worry.
Hunter:I'm super excited
John:with this podcast.
Chris Barakat:Oh, man. So obviously context is super important. A lot of sports are weight dependent. Let's say you take wrestling or gymnastics or even cheerleading, MMA, whatever it may be. Depending on what phase they're in, the level of importance their peri workout nutrition is going to serve for their performance recovery is gonna make a big difference.
Chris Barakat:So if you have somebody who is in a weight loss kind of realm and they're in a caloric deficit, their pre workout nutrition is gonna be way more important compared to somebody who's been maintaining their body weights or even gaining a little body weight and they're constantly in this full glycogen state where they have plenty of energy reserves. Alright. So if you have full glycogen levels and you're not extremely level of leanness, you should be able to do like a thirty to forty five minute bout and perform really well without getting too caught up in what is my pre workout nutrition looking like. Okay. But on the other end of the spectrum, if you're trying to maximize your performance, that's when all of these variables start coming into play.
Chris Barakat:It can be hard to contextualize how much should somebody eat because it's also gonna depend on like how much you're eating throughout the twenty four hour window. But a really good recommendation for pre workout nutrition is about one gram of carbs per kilogram of total body weight. So let's just say you have a seventy kilograms athlete, having around 70 grams of carbs in that pre workout meal is probably going to be a sweet spot. For more endurance based athletes, it can go as high as three grams per kilogram. So if you have a cross country athlete or something like that, you want to make sure that you're fueling them with a lot more glucose and carbohydrate depending on what they're doing.
Chris Barakat:But then it also comes down to what food sources are you eating and how long before the training session are you consuming that food. So for example, if I eat something like 70 grams of carbs from something like sweet potato, that's going to sit in my stomach for quite a while and it's a much slower digesting carb compared to something like cream of rice that is going to be digested way faster or even something like rice crisp cereal or some sort of cereal based carbohydrate that can be broken down really quick. So you got to take these things into consideration. When it comes to pre workout nutrition, even though you can have a faster digesting carb, I still recommend utilizing lower glycemic sources. So you're not getting a massive influx in blood glucose levels too quickly.
Chris Barakat:And therefore, when that does happen, you have a much quicker crash of blood glucose levels and a lot of people can go hypoglycemic while they're exercising and they crash and they fatigue in the middle of their bout and that's the last thing you want. So utilizing a lower glycemic carbohydrate can be really beneficial as well as potentially adding some sorts of fat and maybe a little bit of fiber, to slow down that digestion and give you more stable blood glucose levels just so you have a a stable source of energy throughout your session rather than having that that rapid spike in blood glucose and a rapid drop while you're in the middle of exercise.
John:Yeah. Much of what you said was like flashback from my master's degree class when I was in nutrition. I was like, oh, that's right. You take the fat, you take the protein with it, it slows digestion. My mentor always used to say this when I would ask him about nutrition and protein intake, just talking about the how fast you can digest it and have whatever macronutrients broken down and used in the blood.
John:He's very different if you've taken a protein shake versus if there's a protein shake that was just put inside your stomach versus a chunk of steak. That's very different in terms of how fast your body's gonna be able to break that down and get in the bloodstream, whatever locally, take it to wherever area systemically that it needs and to be then utilized. Like it's very different. One of the questions I actually had about protein intake was this question of timing and when it should be taken in. I think previously we had thought, oh, you have to get this post workout window.
John:You know what I mean? This like hour or two where you're
Hunter:optimally yeah,
John:the anabolic window where you're optimally gonna be muscle protein synthesis is gonna occur to a higher degree over the course of whatever hours of time after you do that. So it's really important that you do that and you need take it in with a little bit of sugar so that you co transport protein in better and all this different stuff. And now it's yeah. Actually, that shit was wrong. Like, just get the protein you What in a is your lens on that?
John:Has that changed? Is that What's the correct way to view it? Does the time better? Yeah. Is that does that
Chris Barakat:Yeah. I would say the window actually does exist. And I'll explain the level of importance and who really needs to take these things into consideration. Going back to what you said, like the difference between a whey protein shake and a piece of steak, totally different. So if you have thirty grams of whey isolate, your amino acid levels in your blood plasma should actually peak at around sixty minutes post consumption.
Chris Barakat:Where if you're having a piece of steak, that's going to take three to five hours to fully digest and that's just massively different. And then even taking 30 grams from something like fish compared to steak is different. And then even looking at like ground beef compared to an actual sirloin steak is totally different too because you have so much more surface area. So you're gonna break that down way quicker.
John:Mhmm.
Chris Barakat:So all these things do matter. Another thing that impacts digestion rates is again, depending on those athletes, like if you're looking at like athletes that do perform in weight classes and they are cutting, you will hear athletes say, when I'm in a cut, I'm hungry way more frequently and I feel like I digest my food faster and and you actually do to a certain extent. Your body prioritizes digestion because you need those nutrients coming in because you've been in an energy deficit for so long. So, those nutrients are way more important at that time compared to when your energy reserves are full, glycogen levels are full, body fat percentage is higher. Your body doesn't care about digesting all this food as quickly because it just doesn't need it as important.
Chris Barakat:So that's another thing to consider. Going to the anabolic window, it really does exist. I know a lot of people in the evidence based realm just say, hey, as long as you get in a sufficient amount of protein per day, you're fine. Again, if you're just looking for like average results, yeah, you are gonna be fine and it is more important to consume an adequate amount of protein than it is to get in 30 grams of protein post workout. Right?
Chris Barakat:So let's just say you have someone that's under eating their protein for the entire day but they are hitting the anabolic window, they would be better off actually getting a sufficient amount of protein on a daily basis. Now, on the other end of spectrum, if you have someone consuming a sufficient amount of protein per day, but they're not paying any attention at all to their post workout nutrition and they're getting in that protein feeding two hours post workout instead of thirty minutes post workout, they're actually leaving some room on the table for maximizing their recovery process because your ability to spike protein synthesis to the greatest degree is highest post workout and you are more sensitive to drive in more carbohydrate into the cells that you actually need it. Again, if someone's like tripping over the post workout window but they're not even tracking their total protein intake, they're doing something wrong and then same thing it could be vice versa. There's no like black and white yes and no, but there's this huge gray spectrum that people need to really pay attention to.
Hunter:And this brings me to something that I try to hammer home with a lot of our athletes. It's that I feel like the the community has gone backwards from being so focused on these small minutiae into we're swinging the pendulum back and they'll just generally hit this and generally do that and you should generally be fine. But a lot of our athletes are working out two times per day. So they'll do a weight training session and then they'll have a basketball practice or a game. And something I try to drive home is, yeah, so you might hear that you're gonna replenish your glycogen stores over the twenty four hour period and you'll be fine.
Hunter:But for you in particular, post your first exercise bout, you really need to focus on re uptake of pretty sizable amount of carbs is what I tell them. But not so much to where you can't move cause you're stuffed, but you should be consuming protein and a good amount of carbs within a one hour window post exercise to make sure that you have re upped those stores so that you're ready for your second bout of training later on in the afternoon. How important do you think that truly is for an 18 year old athlete who may have that weight training session in the morning and then be expected to go a 100% for a basketball practice in the afternoon?
Chris Barakat:Yeah. No, I I totally agree. Especially what you said with just the space as a whole kind of ten years ago being so focused on the minutiae and the details and now everyone's, oh, none of it matters. And and it's not true. Like, it does matter just
John:That's refreshing to hear. That's very refreshing to hear because you hear
Chris Barakat:both very annoying man. It absolutely does matter. But the percentage points that you want to assign to the minutiae shouldn't outweigh the percentage points that you're giving to the entire context. And there are people like you can go to a regular commercial gym and you'll hear someone talk about minutiae when they don't have their foundation in place. But once you They don't even Once you do have your foundation in place, if you want to improve that's when you start focusing on the details.
Chris Barakat:Just the details don't matter for those that aren't paying attention to the foundation, but the details do matter to people who are trying to optimize performance. Going back to your question about the basketball athletes, it's very important for them to have a high carbohydrate meal post resistance training if they are doing two a days and they have a basketball session later. In that situation you can use a reference range of 1.5 to two grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight. So again, you have a sixty kilo basketball player, they should consume around 120 grams post workout. So they're ready to go for their basketball session later on.
Chris Barakat:And their ability to resynthesize glycogen is enhanced post training. So if they're not doing that, again, they're just missing out on an opportunity where their body is in this hypersensitized state.
Speaker 4:Okay.
John:Yeah. What's actually funny is like you talking about all this takes me back specifically to grad school where I was training. I was a, I guess, a professor at the time, a GA, and teaching, whatever, three or four courses, taking two or three courses as well, and then also training a lot. And I was at a spot where there was an Olympic training site for weightlifting, like Clean Air Jerk and Snatch. And those guys and there was actually wrestlers as well, like Greco Roman training for the Olympics.
John:And you're talking about the best junior athletes in those respective sports in the country coming to BF middle of nowhere, basically Canada, like cold as hell to just train. Kinda gives you rocky vibes. But the during that time, I would always make sure to do everything that you just said. So it was, okay, an hour before my session, I'm making sure I'm taking in a substantial amount of carbohydrates so that I have fuel throughout that session. And then basically sandwiching the workout with those two nutrition periods.
John:You know what I mean? Taking in some protein and carbohydrates beforehand. If I can stomach taking in some protein during the session, what's going be more readily available after the session. So maybe I'll take in some protein during the session because there is that digestive window. And then maybe after the session or through whatever, I'd take my protein shake, then I would take in a lot of carbohydrates because I would actually eat my biggest meal after that session, that two hour session because I knew that I had just depleted it and I knew that I was more sensitive to reuptake.
John:And I would take in a lot of protein with it and everything else, maybe usually a shake with spinach, peanut butter, protein powder, kale. I would put in milk, just literally caloric macronutrient
Chris Barakat:slush.
John:It was disgusting. I would just chug it down. And we had to track, like, how many calories we were taking in. And I think that meal typically would like that meal afterwards, just with everything that I would put in it was excessive. It was like a thousand Yeah.
John:1,500 calories just in that slush because there was so much fat and protein, like carbs thrown in it. But yeah, it's just interesting to hear you say now. And then I got away from that because life stressors, everything else came in the way and I was like, don't have the luxury of just training full time as much anymore. Now I I do have that luxury again, but I'm not as much in the habit of doing that because one, I fast and two, I've heard all over the the board what you should and shouldn't be doing. And I was like, I'm just gonna make sure I get my protein intake in.
John:I'm gonna make
Chris Barakat:sure I eat my vegetables.
John:Make I'm gonna sure I get my carbohydrate intake in and take my vitamins and make sure I take my whatever else supplements I'm taking and just make sure I'm doing that. So it's interesting to hear. In terms of how important it actually is, if you could give it a percentage point and say, if you've got your big rocks covered, but you're taking in the right amount of carbohydrates a day, you're taking your micronutrients in the form of vitamins and minerals and then vegetables as well, and you're taking enough calories. How important is it to start getting the timing in in terms of if you could give it a percentage point? What sort of increase are you gonna see, and where are you gonna see that change?
John:Is it hypertrophy? Is it energy levels? Is it neural function? Where are
Chris Barakat:gonna see those changes? It's it's a little bit of everything. It's hard for me to put a percentage point, but I'll relay something to you that you might find interesting in regards to the research and why people say it's not that important. Okay? You might look at studies comparing, let's just say nutrient timing because that's what we're talking about.
Chris Barakat:Right? The importance of a post workout And let's just say people in the space are saying, oh, it doesn't really matter. They're saying that because there was no statistical significance in these studies. Okay? Now this study might have been six weeks long or eight weeks long or ten weeks long.
Chris Barakat:Sometimes even though that these studies are reporting no statistical significance between groups, so somebody focused on post workout nutrition versus those that are just consuming the same macronutrients and getting an adequate amount of total nutrition per day, there might be a small trend and there might be an effect size that is favoring the nutrient timing group. Okay? So if you extend that study that was eight weeks long to sixteen weeks long, it may have been statistically significant if it was just a longer study. Okay? So Mhmm.
Chris Barakat:When you're taking athletes that you're working with for three months, six months, one year, two years, those small details can up can add up over time. So again, it just you need to ask yourself or the clients you're working with and just understand the demographic that you're dealing with and say how important is it to them to either maximize the results or get 90% of the results with less effort so it's more sustainable. Right? If you have a competitive athlete that the most important thing to them is winning, then they should do every single thing that they can do because that's really what they care about, that is their priority. Now if you have someone else that has three kids, works fifty hours a week, has a commute to work, and you're telling them to do all this nonsense, they'll just be like, dude, I have a life that I need to focus on and I can't be a full time nutrition exercise nut.
Chris Barakat:So you have to understand what makes sense for each individual and then prioritize what's gonna move the needle the most for that person.
Hunter:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And
John:then Yeah. Yeah.
Hunter:Something that I like to relate to them is I have some athletes that come to me and they're doing absolutely nothing and they wanna go to a 100 overnight. And I'm like, look, like go read Atomic Habits by James Clear and get an understanding that to change something, you start with what you can actually accomplish and build up to it. Because like you said, if I throw the kitchen sink at you and now on top of all the other life stressors you have, you now have to monitor every carb, every fat, every protein, the timing that you intake those macronutrients, what's your supplementation regimen like, how much sleep are you getting? It's I've just added so much stress to your life that now we're going backwards. Even if you get these things right now, you're gonna be so stressed, so chronically stressed that you're not doing everything perfect that we may have just actually hurt you.
Chris Barakat:Gotcha. Yeah. Totally.
Hunter:Anyway, just think it's I think it's like such a fascinating space with athletes because you're like walking the fine line between how much can they take, how like much are you giving them and then like how much can they actually monitor and progress with.
Chris Barakat:So Yeah.
Hunter:I don't know.
John:That's one of my one of the things that I frequently say is what can you handle? I'm like, yeah, I try to push the needle as far as I can. Like, realistically, how much can you handle? I will give you the same training that if you can handle it, I'll give you the same training that I would give to someone that is training to run the 100 meter dash in under ten seconds. But can you handle that volume?
John:Is that volume appropriate for you? Are you gonna Realistically, get outside of all that stuff though, assuming that stuff is they can do it, mentally, how much can you take?
Chris Barakat:I see.
John:What is your resiliency for and your compliance for this? What is your threshold for the the bullshit quote unquote? How long can you handle it? Because it's gonna pay off. It might take like you said, sixteen, thirty two, whatever, a full year of time, but it's gonna be better than you not having done that in the first place.
John:But it just it's like a war of attrition. Like you just have to Yeah. Stay the course and handle it and then you're gonna get better. And Isaiah has seen that happen, Hunter I has seen it told my athletes, like, in our field, and I'm sure it's the same as you, you have these instant immediate claims. Train with me for eight weeks and you'll jump eight inches higher or do this program and you'll jump higher than you will on anything else.
John:Like people just it's what's fast, it's what's easy, it's instant gratification and it's not You know what I mean? Get better, it's delayed You've to put the time in, you've do everything right, and that's how you get better. So that's kind of what we're dealing with. And obviously, like you said, you gotta maximize and control what you can with people. And and you have to ask yourself, like, what's realistic?
John:I can't ask this guy, in my case, to do 10 by 10 squats.
Chris Barakat:Yeah.
John:Yeah. It's not realistic. It's just not gonna happen. And definitely controlling that. One thing I did want to jump into kind of to change topics here in switch gears is this question that Hunter you asked because this is something I'm very interested in, which is the reverse dieting.
John:My roommate right now is actually trying to lose weight and Hunter was like guiding him through that process. So I guess, Chris, can you do you have experience with reverse dieting? What's your opinion on it? And what's the interplay between eating more and your metabolism increasing and then how you manipulate that to long term lose
Chris Barakat:weight?
Hunter:Can I just add one thing, Chris? And it's the ability to so I've worked with the nutritionist and their spin on it is let's actually start at the lowest caloric intake possible and let's slowly work it so that the end of your diet is when you're maximizing caloric intake. And then let's see how much we can push the calories above your previous maintenance while remaining weight stable. And so like their analogy is too many people try to figure out or back themselves into a corner of running on as little calories as possible instead of trying to figure out how many calories can we eat and still be the weight that you wanna be.
Chris Barakat:Gotcha. Yeah. It depends how you approach it. Hunter, the way you mentioned it, are you saying like you start a fat loss phase really aggressively and then immediately start reverse dieting and see
Hunter:like Yes. It would be a very slow process of starting at the lowest caloric intake you think that you would wanna get to and then week by week, you may add 50 calories, 50 calories and then you're monitoring your weight the whole time and you're seeing like are we still losing weight? Are we still losing weight?
Chris Barakat:Yeah.
Hunter:And so something that I've actually had success with where I had a previous maintenance of 3,100 calories roughly and now I'm up to almost 3,600 but I'm also almost 10 pounds less than where I was prior. And so it's been like a very eye opening experience. Before I would start with as many calories as possible, still lose weight and then you slowly reduce but now I see the benefit in maybe starting really low and working yourself back up.
John:How do you not just tug the other direction and fuck up your metabolism by doing that though? Like, if I just drop down to 2,000 calories, my body's gonna be like, yep, here's a baseball bat, I'm just gonna knock your head off like you're fucked for months. How is that realistic to do and how do you know where do you
Chris Barakat:start When from that I typically use the term reverse dieting, I typically utilize it after someone has already gone through their fat loss phase. They're in a very lean position and they now want to transition into a lean bulk or some sort of metabolic rebuild and get their calories higher and reestablish a new body fat set point. But what Hunter mentioned is what I do when I do aggressive mini cuts. So if I want to cut someone down in four to six to eight weeks, I usually start off aggressive and then each week add in a couple, it might depends on the person, but I add in calories weekly or bi weekly depending on how they're responding and essentially have them lose weight for six to eight weeks as an example, but they were in the largest deficit right off the bat. And the reason I do that is because they're in the beginning when their body fat percent is higher, they have the lowest risk to lose any sort of lean body mass.
Chris Barakat:So I maximize fat loss at first, losing lean mass isn't really at a high risk and then just reverse them from there. But when I reverse clients after fat loss phases, I do see them have the ability to reestablish a higher caloric intake than they previously were at when they were like at their previous maintenance, at their previous set point, and then oftentimes, their new set point is a leaner physique than their previous set point was. So it
John:So it's basically that your the set point being the percentage of fat that they have and the amount of calories they need to take in to maintain that percentage of fat. So if I'm 8% and let's say I take in 3,000 calories at 8%, you do this reverse dieting, now I can say 8% at 3,500 calories or whatever else.
Chris Barakat:Exactly. Exactly.
John:Correct. So I would come so I'm from my roommate scenario, I'd be like, alright, you're 25, let's bring you down to I don't know what's realistic, but let's bring you down to 15 or whatever else or and then from there, we'll reverse diet you back up so that if let's say you're at 15% and you're consuming 2,500 calories or whatever else at 15% and we'll bring you back up. So now you're at 15%, but you're taking in 3,000 or Yeah. Whatever else. Do you just keep doing that process up down up down?
John:Would you bring them back
Chris Barakat:down at Depends that on their goal and like how they're looking if they still have more fat to lose and whatever it may be. I have a client right now that I'm working with. I took him down from one ninety to now he's one fifty six. But he was maintaining his body weight at 3,500 calories at one ninety. Now, he's actually eating like thirty seven fifty at one fifty six and it's just that's one of the most extreme scenarios I've ever seen.
Hunter:See, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is why it's my goal with the athletes to do this because if you're an athlete like like we have and they're training very intensely, if you can get away
Chris Barakat:Yeah.
Hunter:With maintaining a lower body fat set point while also providing your body with more substrate for recovery, it's a double win because in athletic events, if you're a lower weight and higher relative strength, you're gonna perform better. And then on top of that, if you now get more calories to recover, it seems like you're just doubling up on a good thing there.
Chris Barakat:A thousand percent. Not only do you just have more fuel to perform, a lot of people don't realize if your total calories are higher, your micronutrient intake is actually going up as well. Like your overall metabolic health can be in a healthier place if you are staying lean. So yeah, it's it can be super So
John:with how far would you bring someone down? Because sometimes the issue we run into is, hey, look, you wanna jump higher, but you're And you can't jump high if you're fat. You gotta be lean. So how far would you bring someone down? Let's say we get a guy who comes in, he's two ten.
John:Are you just gonna do a very my lens on this is the best type of weight loss is the slow like, the slower you can do it with the deficit, the more mass you're gonna the more lean muscle mass you're gonna maintain, the more realistic it is probably to sustain it because when you do those big drastic cuts, could potentially, you know, fuck up your
Speaker 4:metabolism Especially because little bit the training they're gonna be doing is so intense. If we get an athlete that has a high body fat, how would you juggle both like having because that's the priority should be to get them as lean as possible but while juggling this very intense training.
Chris Barakat:Yeah. A 100%. So in regards to how fast I would go, I don't like losing much more than 1% of their total body weight per week. So if you have someone that's two hundred pounds, I wanna aim for around two pounds of actual true weight loss per week. And that should be primarily coming from fat.
Chris Barakat:The first one to two weeks, you can see a large drop in total body weight. A lot of that's just gonna be water because you're entering that deficit and that's okay. You don't have to you don't have to say, oh crap, the deficit's way too extreme. Let me like start reversing them right away or anything like that. That initial drop in weight is going to definitely slow down and just settle.
Chris Barakat:But thereafter, you wanna see like their weekly average go down at about 1% of their total body weight and no no slower than 0.5%. So it would be one to two pounds per week for that two hundred pound male. And then in regards to how aggressive I get from a caloric standpoint, I basically never go lower than the athletes weight times 10 for their calorie intake. So if you have a 200 To be clear,
Hunter:weight in pounds. Correct?
Chris Barakat:Pounds. Yeah. So if you have a two hundred and ten pound athlete, I'm never putting them below 2,100 calories. And if they're actually practicing twice a day or something, they're gonna be way higher than that. I even I never put my clients below their body weight times 10 even if they live relatively sedentary lives.
Chris Barakat:So if you guys are dealing with athletes, they should be able to get away with a higher calorie diet. Yeah.
John:Okay. Yeah. And that's because this is another question too is look, if you're using MyFitnessPal or whatever, that's just probably the most common one you hear and you're one of the biggest mistakes people don't even track their calories and that's what I keep It's like just track it. You can't, as Hunter says, you can't manage it if you measure it. And I think when you start tracking it and you start getting all those metrics in and things like that and you start pulling people down, obviously that's where you're going see changes.
John:But when you're using those apps, sometimes you can input the exercise. And when you add that exercise, our training, you could burn, I would suspect with our two to three hour sessions, I don't know, 500 plus calories. Yeah, for sure. It's substantial. So you're taking that into consideration, yeah, you have this two hundred pound male, you're not gonna take him below two thousand, you're also adding in the fact that, yeah, you train for two or three hours.
John:Are you gonna how would you just replenish that 500 and put them at 2,500 at that point and that would be your new lowest point or I guess how would you view that? Because the deficit is much higher.
Chris Barakat:Yeah. Yeah. Bare minimum too because you also need to take into consideration not just the calories you're burning during the session, but what kind of energy is required to recover from the training that you did and what kind of metabolic processes are up regulated due to the training that you had. So, you might be familiar with post resistance training. Actually burning more calories throughout the day because now you need to drive more nutrients into the muscle cell and those cells are requiring more energy.
Chris Barakat:After a really high intensity interval training, you know that your oxygen consumption level can be higher throughout the day so that your epochs gone. Exactly. You can take that into consideration too. I don't think you need to get overly caught up with all these different formulas and trying to figure out like how many calories are they burning here, how many calories are they burning there. But just paying attention to their seven day averages and what is their actual rate of loss is going to tell you if Mhmm.
Chris Barakat:You're being too aggressive or not aggressive enough or if you're in that sweet spot. Yeah.
John:Yeah. How far is and this the last question and we'll I'll let Hunter take over. He has a good question after this. How far would you take someone down on that cut before you would start reverse dieting? Would you do it in this like cyclic manner where you'd go, okay, we're gonna go down three percentage points and then we're gonna reverse diet, and then we're gonna get on another three reverse and then we're gonna reverse diet.
John:Or would you just bring someone down 20% Yeah. Points and then reverse diet? Or would you go into the point where they're not losing weight anymore? Now it's time
Chris Barakat:to Yeah. That's a great question, man. So a lot of it with me is never there's always some sort of like potential plan that's outlined in my mind of where after doing it for five years, you get pretty good at predicting what might happen. So I have some sort of plan put in place, but the majority of it is based on biofeedback. So how are they responding?
Chris Barakat:Are their hunger levels through the roof? How's their energy? How's their recovery? How's their performance? How's their motivation to stay on the diet?
Chris Barakat:Once they start losing motivation to stay in this deficit, once hunger really starts to increase, if performance starts to drop, that's when I might diet break them. So that can be one to three weeks of eating at theoretical maintenance. The goal is no longer weight loss. You can consider to reverse diet or not. It's not like I'm slowly adding calories in, I might add in 300 or 500 calories in right away, have them maintain that for one to three weeks and then boom let's get back into the deficit because you still have more fat to lose.
John:You would only reverse diet after they get down
Chris Barakat:Yes.
John:To that set point where you're like, look, you're 7%. Like for our guys, honestly, we want as low as you possibly can stomach. Like, I probably walk around at 99%. Isaiah is probably pretty similar, eight or nine. That would be via DEXA, Bod Pod,
Chris Barakat:I've had
John:it done. Calipers, I don't really believe in. But everyone's like, there's no way, like, you're 8% or 9%. Like, I have multiple measures like across like several it's because my arms I carry I carry most of my adipose tissue in my Yeah. My midsection.
John:So my low back, my sides, and my belly. And I think because I'm not like shredded there, people are like, oh, you must not. But my arms are one or 2%. Like literally Yeah. Via DEXA.
John:They're super vascular. That's irrelevant. But the point being, we wanna bring us, guys like me and Isaiah, lighter the better. That's mass So specific the lighter we are, the higher we're gonna jump, the faster we're gonna run, assuming that our force output goes up. And we're always we're good at measuring the force output.
John:Yeah. That's easy. Like, that's not hard for us. But realistically, how would you approach that kind of conundrum of, okay, we can take a hit on performance a little bit. When do I do that?
John:How far should I take someone down? Or is it really just again you go back to Yeah.
Chris Barakat:It's typically going back to the feedback and just knowing, yeah, temporary detriment and performance is okay because you know it's not long term. So if that weight loss goal is a little bit more important at this very point in time than like their current performance goal, then that's fine. Let's let's take a couple steps back from the performance perspective because we know it's actually gonna be like a launch pad to move forward because you said the leaner the better and they're gonna be able to essentially be lighter and quicker and more agile whatever it may be. Cool.
John:Yeah. The only other downside is pulled muscles. That's the biggest thing I see. As soon as guys start cutting down calories and they try to jump, that's the first place issues arise. Because you can jump high if you just give yourself a shit ton of stimulants.
John:You can get
Chris Barakat:away with it.
John:Like, you take in a good carbohydrate meal the day before, you take in a bunch of caffeine and you have some adrenaline, you don't train for a couple days, like the deload itself and those variables, you're pretty much foolproof you're gonna jump high, you're gonna perform well. But I think like where the issue would arise would be in the injury prevention type of things. More tendinopathies, you're gonna see more issue. I mean, again, I really it's muscle pulls is the biggest one I've seen being the biggest issue. I don't know how you would it's too late if you're using that as
Chris Barakat:some feedback. No. It's definitely too late.
John:It's too late. You you need
Chris Barakat:I to think I
John:Or maybe you just don't do high risk
Hunter:Yeah.
Chris Barakat:I think a part of that too is aside from like the deficit and being lean, I think part of that is not taking the best like warm up protocols and doing Yeah. This would
John:be like full. This would be like hour long dynamic flexibility, sprint drills, like ice metrics for
Chris Barakat:the Gotcha. Everything And it still
John:happens. Literally firing
Chris Barakat:Gotcha. Yeah.
John:Everything. Yeah. And they would still happen just because jumping especially off one leg or sprinting and I don't know how familiar you are with the kinematics and kinetics like sprinting, you're looking at six times body weight on a single leg and eighty milliseconds at upright sprinting. Jumping, you're seeing single leg take offs, high jump, you're seeing 13 times body weight in terms of newtons. So if you're a seventy kilogram athlete, you're seeing what what is that?
John:Like, 7,000 newtons or something like that in at peak forces or plus that, you might see 8,000 newtons at peak forces. Forces. Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy high
Chris Barakat:on a
John:single a. When you have that type of kinetics internally, you look at the muscle, you're seeing insane intramuscular forces, higher intramuscular forces if you had a tensiometer or something in there. And I think it's just no matter how much you warm up, like it could still happen if you're not really at that adequate level. So my kind of view on it is look, let's pull out. You're not gonna hurt yourself lifting You're not gonna pull a muscle lifting.
John:Like odds are I've never had guys pull hamstrings hamstrings lifting unless they do Sure. Where they go to
Chris Barakat:the very bottom and
John:they're not ready for it or something like that or super hard So eccentric maybe it's, hey, pull away the stuff that you know is high risk during this period of time where you're trying to be in a deficit. Because you'll hear like athletes will lose weight in season, but you should be doing that
Chris Barakat:A 100%.
John:Prior in season.
Chris Barakat:A 100%. Yeah. Too many athletes lose a ton What of do
John:you do? Too many
Chris Barakat:athletes lose a ton of weight in their preseason because they're coming into the sport out of shape rather than coming in in shape. Mhmm. And then they're losing it so aggressively that once the season starts, they're actually in a pretty I don't wanna say underfed, but they're not in a healthy spot to perform at their absolute best. They're overworked and under recovered because they didn't do their prep work going into it. Quick random stories because he spoke about like body fat percentages.
Chris Barakat:We had a college basketball player participate in one of our resistance training studies at UT and he came into the lab at 8.8% via DEXA at the start of the study. This is our the greatest responder to hypertrophy we've ever seen in our lab. He gained 18 pounds of lean mass in ten weeks and went from 8.9% body fat to six point two. It was abs
John:How the hell did you cheat?
Chris Barakat:No. We we actually had him Dexa the following day because we didn't believe the results. We thought something was wrong. But yeah, he just Yeah. Totally transformed his body.
Chris Barakat:Like, essentially what happened while he's a college basketball player, he obviously has like years of weight training experience. So he was able to squat twice his body weight, which was like required to be a part of the study. And you need a certain amount of lifting experience, but he's never done like hypertrophy bodybuilding work. So he came into the lab. The study was lower body only, but outside of the lab he was running one of my hypertrophy, like, one of my hypertrophy programs for his upper.
Chris Barakat:So this guy just like essentially went from doing strength and conditioning exercises, always being under fed to like eating properly and training like a bodybuilder and just blew the f up. It was pretty epic.
Hunter:Yeah. Eric He's pretty excellent. I'm sure Eric.
John:Yeah.
Hunter:And Greg Nuggles, they were talking about Eric train
John:Quick story. They went to grad school with my brother. Nice. Twin brother. I'm actually good friends with Greg.
John:Trex is good friends
Hunter:with Yeah. They were training some NFL athletes and one of the NFL athletes was told, hey, you're gonna do an upper body. And the guy was like, no, I can't. And they were like, what do mean you can't do an upper body? He's like, my biceps get too big, I can't hold the football.
Hunter:Yeah. They're like, shut up. Like just do four weeks and we'll reassess.
Chris Barakat:Yeah. And I think
Hunter:he went from a like a two seventy five close grip for like a three by five till four thirty five at the end of the four weeks and did his first set and yelled at the trainer, see, I fucking told you and grabbed the football and couldn't hold it. Was I fucking I told you. It's like some people are just different. Like they're just different.
Chris Barakat:A thousand percent. We had someone come in and we were doing testing and he was he was in the army. I think he played football at some point. Everyone's doing testing, AMRAP testing. I think we're trying to find 10 RM.
Chris Barakat:So a lot of people are doing like some people are like one eighty five, some people are two twenty five, some really strong people are doing two seventy five. There's one guy puts on three fifteen and does 10 pretty easily and then like puts on three sixty five and like cranks out another 10. We're like what? Like, the guy's body weight was a hundred ninety pounds. I'm like, what?
Chris Barakat:Yeah. No way.
John:Was this bench like No.
Chris Barakat:No. It just there's just some freaks out there too. And like when I was at Stony Brook for at my athletic training in my undergrad, some of those d one college football players are just fucking freaks, man. Like complete freaks of nature. And I can see like someone's best going from whatever you said two seventy five to four thirty in four weeks.
Chris Barakat:Yeah. I've just seen some real freaks of nature. Makes it makes no sense to some people, but they're just like the best outliers in the world.
Speaker 4:There's a guy on YouTube. If you guys search him, is UF Powerlifter. I don't know if you guys ever seen him.
John:Is it t? Is his name t Isaiah?
Speaker 4:But his name is UF Powerlifter. This Asian guy. He's a hundred fifty pounds and he'll bench like three fifty five for reps. And he looks like a twig. Like, he doesn't look like he could bench anything and but yeah, UF Powerlifter you guys There was is insane.
John:That was a that was a kid at Northern named Ronnie. I think his name I remember his last name, but his name was Ronnie. And he would literally do the same thing. Like literally, probably a 135 pounds and had the I think he had the floor like power lifting's huge in Florida.
Chris Barakat:Yeah. It's pretty big now.
John:Like weight lifting and power lifting. There's like a weird sport where it's like power lifting and weight lifting mixed together. It's like clean with bench press or something.
Speaker 4:Actually did that in high school. They do clean and jerk and bench press. They they take the snatch out
Chris Barakat:of it.
John:It's like the weirdest thing ever. We'd have so many athletes from Florida come to Northern and stuff and this one kid Ronnie had the record for his like weight class or whatever. His bench was like three it was like three something. It was absurd. And he was Yeah.
John:Super small. Like literally a hundred and twenty pounds, like in a super lightweight lifting class and just super powerful, super strong guy. Yeah. Dude are built different. I'm not one of them.
John:Isaiah might be. But Hunter, I know we're getting close to that 12:00 mark, but you have a couple other questions I'm sure. I got a lot of the answers I needed. I really just sucked all the
Speaker 4:knowledge from One thing that I wanna cover, would you are there any I think you said earlier you need like the foundation set. What would you what would you say the foundations are? Like if there was something if you had somebody that completely didn't do anything like with nutrition, what would you say is things that they have to get done day to day?
Chris Barakat:For athletes?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Something
Chris Barakat:like that?
Speaker 4:Yeah. For someone like You're trying to get your vertical as high as possible.
Hunter:Isaiah is actually going. Isaiah is trying to hit that big five o. So get it. Isaiah is trying to take care of all the big rocks.
John:He's close. We need two inches. Yeah, man. That's what she said. In regards to
Chris Barakat:like the sound some foundational stuff that you should definitely pay attention to, Absolutely making sure that you're having adequate amount of protein on a daily basis. I like using higher protein intakes than generally recommended since you guys are really lean that one gram per pound is actually pretty darn good for you athletes because that's giving you more than a gram per pound of lean body mass. That's pretty darn good for you guys. Making sure your calories are in a good spot. And then, yeah, pre and post workout nutrition, the stuff that we spoke about earlier in this on this call that kind of all comes into play.
Chris Barakat:And then depending on what you're doing from a training perspective, just actually monitoring it and giving yourself an objective way to progress over time. So many people just go into the gym and they do good workouts like they have good sessions from session to session, but they don't actually have a plan in place to ensure that what they're doing this time is somewhat better than what they did last time and that they're progressing week to week, month to month, mezzo to mezzo. You know what I'm saying? So Yeah.
John:We're all smiling That's literally what we do.
Hunter:Cracks me up. I remember in college after I stopped playing baseball, I got into this. Alright. I'm gonna do everything they wouldn't let me do in baseball. Yeah.
Hunter:Mainly heavy bench press. I remember going into the gym and I couldn't get two twenty five and by the end of like year two, I had gotten to three twenty five for four reps. But seeing everyone else around me who I'd initially gone to the gym, God, how is this kid doing two fifty five on bench? But at the end of year two or three
John:Are you familiar with prepressors?
Hunter:55 on bench. And they'd be like, how did you, what, how'd you get there? I'm like, do you write down your workouts? Do you track your workouts? Do you have any idea what you did last week?
Hunter:So yeah, one thing I wanted to add though, Chris, is sleep. I think like sleep is often under talked about, especially with athletes. But I think for a lot of our athletes, maximizing the sleep quality is very important as well for recovery. I always tell big rocks or that peri workout nutrition, sleep, overall nutrition. And if you have those three, then we can start diving into like maybe some supplements.
Chris Barakat:Yeah. A 100%.
John:You know what I like to do to maximize my sleep with food? Just eat a shit ton of super high glycemic food, like maybe like cinnamon toast crunch, maybe like 2,000 calories before bad.
Chris Barakat:You know
John:what I mean? And then get that big insulin spike and just crash when
Chris Barakat:you go. That's it hurts you. That can be a strategy.
John:Can be
Chris Barakat:a strategy. Pass pass you out. It's something. Yeah.
John:But a gallon of warm milk.
Hunter:Anyway, Chris, I know that we're running up on, I hate to dive into a whole new topic. We'd love to have you back. I'd love to talk more about the supplementation side for athletes. Cause I know that's an area of a high interest for a lot of our athletes in terms of not only the big ones like creatine, multivitamin, fish oil, but also how you would strategically use caffeine, which in the research on collagen usage. I know that's a lot of things that our athletes really care about.
Hunter:And so I know that's a whole another conversation. We'd love to have you back on if you want dive into that some more.
Chris Barakat:Yeah. That would be cool. And Yeah. Hopefully Also, you guys one of my buddies, one of my colleagues, Jacob Rausch, he might be a great person for you guys to reach out to. He's worked with the Yankees.
Chris Barakat:He currently works for P three. We've done plenty of research together University of Tampa. We we both went there. So yeah. He's with P three right now in Cali and then he was just at their Atlanta facility this past week.
Chris Barakat:He's just a wealth of knowledge and you guys are familiar with Tim Gabbitt. Right? Right? Yeah. He's a I'm familiar with him.
Chris Barakat:I
John:to dive into the details
Chris Barakat:right now. I feel like Rausch is one of my one of my buddies. I feel like he's gonna be like the next big sports scientists. We'd love to have him on. He's doing some really cool research.
John:Yes. He so he's he working with he's working with p three. I love p three. Yes. I love what they do.
John:It's crazy. Three d motion analysis, synchronized with data. That's the goal. That's the gold standard. Yeah.
Chris Barakat:We just published a pretty recent paper towards the end of twenty twenty twenty. It was pretty phenomenal. If you guys wanna geek out on it, I'm gonna pull it up super quick, so you can Oh, absolutely. Read the title to you. But it's actually an NBA players and different jump mechanics.
Chris Barakat:So it sounds like it's right up your alley.
John:Oh. Oh. Let's please send me this. Yeah. I'm just diving
Chris Barakat:geek out on this. So the title of the study is different movement strategies and counter movement jump amongst a large cohort of NBA players. He basically categorized these players into different clusters from like a statistical point. So he had people called stiff flexors, hyper flexors or hip flexors. So he was looking at their jump mechanics, looking at the ankle, knee and hip and looking at he basically split up these different cohorts based on their jump mechanics and characteristics.
Chris Barakat:So yeah, I'll send you that link right now. You guys will really geek out over it.
John:Yeah. That's awesome. That's literally I don't know how familiar you are with our podcast at all, but it is, probably my biggest interest is the biomechanics of jumping. That's why I love p three and what they do. I'll definitely wanna connect with him and just, yeah, try to get as many pieces of gems from him as I can.
John:But that is what I do is looking at tendon stiffness, why people move the way they do. Yeah. Because you can know that, but do you know why they move
Chris Barakat:the way they do?
Speaker 4:Super fast.
John:Can you break it down? And I'm sure that dives into this guy has this RFD capacity and he has this type of movement strategy and it's probably because of this reason. So I'm super excited to
Hunter:That'll be a great thank you so much, Chris. I appreciate it. And then before we sign off, you wanna tell everyone how they can find you?
Chris Barakat:If they wanna get
Hunter:in touch?
Chris Barakat:For sure, man. In regards to getting in touch with me, Instagram is a really easy way. My handle is just my full name. So it's at christopher dot barracat. And then the website where you'll find the most amount of educational content and stuff I'm working on is www.schoolofgains.com and gains is spelled with a z.
John:I was gonna ask you.
Chris Barakat:GAINS is with a z baby. And yeah, you'll find like nutritional content, training content mainly on obviously bodybuilding, focus stuff, physique enhancement stuff. But the nutrition stuff can absolutely be applied to just maximizing performance and recovery for everybody.
Hunter:And I'll vouch for Chris training. It's so fun. Your hypertrophy training is so fun.
Chris Barakat:Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
John:Yeah. That's awesome. Thanks for coming on, We we really appreciate you taking time to do that. As always, guys, make sure that you like, comment, subscribe on the YouTube, on Apple, on Spotify. If you're looking for Chris, you can go to his Instagram, like you said, shoot him a DM, whatever else.
John:And, we will catch you guys on tomorrow's episode. Peace out.
Hunter:Alright. And so the
John:And we'll wait.