 Ladies and gentlemen so I'm like back with another video answer in your questions So leave your comments below what you want to cover in the next video coming up new videos Monday and Thursday like This video. Let's see if we can get a thousand likes my friends today I'm taking a question from my guy ghost on the he's a homie from twitch He hangs out on twitch we're live streaming on twitch every single day if you want to check it out But basically ask me what's optimal or what's the best way for a powerlifter to eat nutrition wise And to be honest nutrition Is a complicated subject because it does depend slightly on you and your personal goals your lifestyle And then it also depends on obviously your long-term goals for your activity itself power lifters in general Old-school power lifters are always telling people to eat up eat up eat up Snickers cheez-its checks mix coca-cola beers get as big as you can and you will get stronger and although Gaining some weight body fat or muscle does help I don't necessarily think that's optimal as powerlifting specifically if we're talking about what fuels a powerlifter the best nutrition for a Powerlifter a competitive powerlifter because it is a weight class sport for those that are new to powerlifting or don't understand It's very similar to wrestling or other sports of that nature where they're set weight classes In the biggest you can be per weight class is probably going to give you a slight advantage Right if I'm competing in the 181 pound Class and I weigh 170 I'm gonna have be at a disadvantage to someone who ones weighs 182 and cuts down to 181 for that meat So what we want to obviously put on because it's a strength sport is as much muscle as we can and as little fat fat obviously isn't As productive as a tissue. It's not as strong and it doesn't move mass like Muscle does but there is some advantage to having a little cushion sometimes depending on your build your age your experience Because it can change leverages in how you lift weights often if you're a little bit thicker Muscle obviously is doing the movement, but a little bit thicker can help with a bench press even a squat Sometimes you get some cushion around you and it helps. There's multiple ways that we can get strong There's pathways to get strong One is kind of the efficiency of the movement So no matter what you do the more efficient out of movement you become the better the better, right? So as a squatter if you're brand new and your movement pattern isn't very good Learning the skill of the squat and refining the skill of the squat and ingraining that habit over time over weeks years months Tons of repetition makes you a better squatter, right the skill itself The same thing was shooting a free throws a basketball player the more free throws you shoot the more more lined in and that's built into your Your habit your discipline the more repetition the more skill the better you are at the movement The other one with power lifting or strength is muscle itself the bigger the muscle the more potential it has the more output It has the last one is kind of neural efficiency Throwing pushing explosive movements and lifting itself your connection from your brain to tell your muscles to fire And how hard they fire with your ligaments and tendons is also something that is trained through strength training And that's obviously what carries over The muscle building the muscle and then the neural Efficiency is what carries over to other sports. That's why football players runners jumpers etc Lift weights because they want that neural efficiency so they can put more power more impact into the ground or into their sport themselves Now again, there's three of those are kind of the main things that help us get strong But to build more muscle To recover better from training session to training session to handle more volume which is sets times reps times weight Which is the most important factor in gaining strength? Because it hits all of those more volume builds more muscle more volume means more repetition So we're getting better at the movement the skill itself and more volume Itself allows us to get more repetitions. What's also again builds that neural efficiency To recover from those things and to build more muscle. We need to be eating And hopefully by now you guys understand kind of what calorie maintenance means It means I'm eating a certain amount of calories a day a week a year That allows me to stay the same body weight I am right now a calorie deficit means that I'm eating below what my body needs and then thus I will lose weight and then a calorie surplus means that I'm eating slightly above What I need or I guess a bunch above what I need and I then will gain weight So I think the most efficient Nutritional strategy for a powerlifter is obviously a calorie surplus depending on your weight class and depending on your experience When you're a beginner powerlifter, you can gain a lot of strength and be very efficient making tons of mistakes in your programming Your sleep your food. It doesn't matter. You're gonna get stronger but at some point you're gonna start to plateau in the easiest ways to break plateaus are better programming and Obviously getting better at the list being come more efficient with your technique, but having a calorie surplus So the optimal for talking optimal. I think we're trying to get at least one gram per pound of lean body mass a day of protein So I weigh about 205 pounds. I don't know exactly what my body fat Percentages, but let's say it's 15. You do a little math. We'll do bap bap being carry the one mc equals squared or something like that and then I'm gonna eat about a hundred ninety to two hundred grams of protein I'm personally going to error slightly on too much rather than too little A lot of people say oh if you're trying to lose fat or gain weight or whatever the carbs and fat ratio don't matter I wouldn't necessarily say that I think for powerlifting in that type of high-intensity sports Carbohydrates are the most efficient way and most efficient energy for our bodies So I think a slightly higher carbohydrate diet does help a lot of powerlifters sprinters And people that play those type of sports and then you kind of fill in the rest of your calories with fat So again if my maintenance is 2,000 calories We can do some of this math sometime if you guys are really interested But it is basic math and there are calculators all over the internet You can type it into Google or check out my fitness pal or do it yourself I have other videos going more into detail But if we're 2,000 calories for maintenance, we want to eat maybe 2,250 2,500 calories a day then for a slight surplus We're gonna get a certain amount again our body weight and protein And then we're gonna we can distribute kind of distribute the rest how we'd like per our lifestyle and our palate For the carbs and the fat, but I do think a higher carbohydrate diet is going to help in the long term Now things do change when you get a little bit more competitive And you want to hit a certain weight class whether going up a weight class or going down a weight class and dieting and things of that nature I do think for the majority of people that are trying to go down in a weight class one Don't cut as much water weight as you think try to get closer to your game day weight as you can Cutting water can be unhealthy. It can take away from the performance and it's a lot There's a lot more variables than just walking around at what weight you want to compete at another tip that if you want to get down in a weight class is diet in your off season and Diet a little bit more strict and not as long term as you think so if you want to drop ten pounds a Normal person might tell you and this is for competitive power lifters My drop a pound a week and take a ten-week cut I actually suggest kind of doing it quick in a five week So then you can get right back into maintenance or another slight per surplus if you go below your weight class and get back to your strength training The training while you're cutting or bulking should be very similar The stimulus you're trying to give your body as a power lifter a competitive power lifter should be very similar You may have to handle slightly less loads and slightly less volume as you're cutting because you obviously just have less energy for the gym and less Recoverability because lack of calories in your days off or the other hours when you're bulking you may be able to handle a little bit More load you may be able to progress a little bit faster because again Not only do you have more calories for energy more calories for recovery? But you are gaining slightly more muscle and you're getting a little bit of fat which can help in the long term So hopefully that answers guys question on what's optimal for nutrition for power lifting The specifics will depend on the individual and that's where the kind of uniqueness snowflake stuff Does come in if brown rice tastes better to you and sits in your stomach better than white rice Go ahead and do it if you want to eat a Snickers before your deadlift session because it feels good mentally and physically Go ahead and do it if candy gives you acne and makes you poop all day long Don't eat a Snickers before you deadlift and that's where the individuality is but the macro nutrients long term The calorie surplus long term is what's gonna allow you to get stronger. I appreciate you guys We'll catch you the next one Monday and Thursday. So I might come out