Background: My Training Progression & Evolution: Athlete ~ Model ~ Holistic Health
As I age into my 40s I’ve witnessed my training & nutrition goals become more ‘holistic’ in nature and evolve through various phases, sometimes back & forth, from basically bodybuilding, to body-sculpting as a professional fitness-model, to training for athletic performance, to now training for holistic health and ‘longevity’. I’d like to say that I’m getting wiser as I get older, but also I’m trying to stick around a long time too, being the father & coach of two daughters. Ideally speaking, a truly complete training & nutrition plan should simultaneously and equally improve athletic performance, sculpt an aesthetically appealing physique, and, combat aging and age-related diseases. If nothing else, to be sure, some kind of exercise every day, ideally outdoors, will go a long way towards accomplishing all of the above. But if you’re a fitness aficionado there’s way more to this story, depending on what your primary fitness goals are.
For me personally, athletic performance and optimal function used to always trump all else fitness. However, to be completely candid, there was a period during the peak of my fitness-modeling career when I was booking jobs weekly to include magazine cover-tries, that aesthetics actually trumped all my other training goals. This amounted to me basically always striving to improve lean-body mass & body composition. Being that I am a professional model and not a professional athlete, I have no regrets about focusing on aesthetics so much. Now I’ve become more focused on total holistic-health, maintaining range of motion, and exploring longevity, AKA, anti-aging techniques. I feel like this is a natural progression and evolution that most athletes will arrive at as they age and begin families.
Longevity & The Athlete's Dietary Conundrum...
Natural human Growth Hormone, abbreviated as hGH and
medically known as Somatotropin, is a truly amazing and essential hormone, but
sadly it is not a fountain-of-youth
hormone. In this article I’m only going to discuss hGH’s role in fully mature adults. hGH is also produced synthetically, since
1985, and is available only by (very expensive) prescription via low-dose
injections. The synthetic form of hGH is
known generically as Somatropin but is sold through prescription under many
different brand names, usually ending in ‘-trope’ or ‘-tropin’. There
is absolutely no oral tablet or capsule form of hGH that is legitimate because
it is destroyed in the stomach during digestion. There is absolutely no supplement that will
boost your own hGH production. Those are
all false claims and marketing ploys, unregulated by the FDA. The
only synthetic form of hGH that is real, is available by prescription injection
only. You are an idiot if you were
to ever try to buy black market hGH and administer it to yourself and that is
as far as I am going to discuss black market hGH because I refuse to waste your
time.
In adults, hGH is secreted by the
pituitary gland in sporadic short bursts throughout the day, peaking at night
about an hour after we first fall asleep and enter our first deep-sleep phase -
which is why if you take nothing else away from reading this article, simply by ensuring you go to be at the same
time each night and don’t miss that critical first cycle of sleep, you will be
accomplishing one of the best things you can do to maximize your natural hGH
production. Other natural occurring
times when hGH is secreted is in direct response to intense exercise, physical trauma, and during periods of fasting/hunger. More on this later, as we can deduce simple strategies
to maximize our hGH based on this information.
