Q&A: Carbs, Sodium, and Experimenting with Your Training

In today’s episode, Greg and Eric field listener questions about carbohydrate intake, sodium intake, training to improve speed or strength-endurance, experimenting with training styles and variables to find out what works for you, the minimum necessary volume per session, and more. To finish off the episode, Greg and Eric discuss Bayesian statistics, and how to start a fitness career without a formal academic background in exercise or nutrition.

If you want your questions answered on a future episode, you can submit them using the following link: tiny.cc/sbsqa

TIME STAMPS

0:01:55 What is the best approach for increasing strength endurance (that is, increasing maximum reps for a given exercise)?

0:16:36 Two questions combined:

1. Is it ever beneficial to lift weights in a fasted state?
2. I train very early in the morning and drink a protein shake prior to training. Anything else you recommend to do or eat before working out in a fasted state?

0:29:00 What is the relationship between training frequency and recoverable volume? Spreading work across more sessions seems as if it would allow more to be done, but is a minimum volume per session necessary to get sufficient stimulus?

0:37:32 What effects does sugar intake have on performance and composition?

0:49:44 What are the best ways to improve speed using resistance training?

0:52:29 Does the relative split of daily dietary intake of carbs and fat really matter for hypertrophy, strength, and body composition?

1:08:46 How important is delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)? I've been powerlifting for a little over 18 months and have never experienced any significant amount of soreness, but my program contains reasonably high training volume and frequency.

1:13:46 What are your thoughts on sodium intake for lifters, whether in absolute terms or relative to potassium intake?

1:29:23 How important is it for trainees to experiment with different training styles to see what methods may work best for them? How would you recommend organizing an experimental period of training to see if for example you respond better to speed or power training and what should be measured/benchmarked against?

1:41:10 Do you think that Bayesian Statistics will be used in future studies for analysis?

1:53:41 As someone who went the standard business route after college and is getting minimal satisfaction from their current career, how possible is it to get proper certifications for nutrition and personal training to make a career out of something I am more passionate about?

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