Shed the blubber and increase your performance
I work with a lot of athletes, ranging from soccer players to track and field athletes, MMA fighters, bodybuilders and swimmers, just to mention a few. These athletes all have one thing in common; they all want to improve their performance, whether it is strength, power, stamina, speed, agility or any other athletic attribute you can think of.
So, if a basket ball player comes to me and wants to improve his vertical jump, what is the first thing I do? Do I design a workout routine built around exercises with a high degree of dynamic characteristics and similar movement patterns of the vertical jump (like squats), and send him on his way? No, that is the last step of many.
Actually, the first thing I look at is his body fat percentage and after that I do the classic static, passive and dynamic evaluations to discover imbalances and limiting factors (for example tight flexors and weak extensors).
The reason for checking his body fat is simply that fat is a nonfunctional tissue – that is, it doesn’t contribute to any of the athletic attributes mentioned above. Body fat is simply an excess baggage that your muscles must carry around, which in turn will hamper your performance in any event or situation. So, if our basket ball player has a body fat percentage above 8% I will provide him with a nutritional program. I prefer to have all athletes below 10% body fat (at least). About 5-6% is ideal. When your body fat decreases your strength to body weight ratio increases (aka relative strength), and so does your performance.
Once the diet is in order and eventual imbalances or other limiting factors have been corrected; then we move on to the exercise program. However, by losing some flab from the start, he will improve his performance and increase his vertical jump – and that even before he has begun any specific training.
And yes, big boy! This holds true for bodybuilders as well. Bulking up and looking like a pig during the off-season is not the way. Getting fat will impede your endurance and as a result making your workouts less productive, and it will make your pre-contest diet unnecessary long and hard and probably result in some muscle loss. But worst of all, it will wreck havoc upon your health in the long run.
