I just finished running Phase 2 of Mark Rippetoe’s Texas Method for four months. For those unfamiliar, it’s a barbell lifting program geared towards strength and centered around the squat, deadlift, press, bench press and power clean.
In the last week of this latest cycle, I squatted 435 lbs. for 5 sets of 5 as well as 480 for 5 easy singles. And I deadlifted 500 lbs for a double and cranked it off the floor. These were working sets, not even max efforts. I was really pleased with my progress. My previous all out max deadlift was 485 lbs for one, and this recent 500 for two was honestly pretty easy.
The Texas Method is a grind, and most people consider it a younger man’s program. I’m certainly not “old”, but I just turned 41. My goal for this last big push was to deadlift 500 at least once before taking a week or two to back off and let my joints repair themselves. So I was extremely happy with hitting 500 for an easy double.
And despite being in my fifth decade of life now, and feeling the cumulative effects of four months of heavy lifting in certain parts of my body, I found I was able to tolerate the brutal workload quite well. I wanted to share some of what I discovered from a nutritional standpoint as I believe it played a big part in ability to recover from the hard work.
Food – The Foundation
First and foremost, my diet was impeccable. It generally is anyways. But eating well was paramount in pushing through four months of the Texas Method.
Some will say that it’s best to eat anything and everything when lifting extremely hard. That may be true in many cases, but I was able to put on ten pounds of lean muscle in four months while still eating clean. I didn’t gain any body fat whatsoever. In fact, I believe I’m a bit leaner now than I was at the beginning of this lifting phase.
Let’s address carbs and get that out of the way. Over the past couple of years, I alternated days with carbs and days without. But my goal here was to get strong, so I ate carbs every day. After lifting I always ate a big pile of organic white basmati rice. Every other night I ate quinoa. And I ate a handful of blue corn chips or a couple of corn tortillas as well most days. I can survive without grains most days, but the reality for me is that near limit physical efforts are best served by eating carbohydrates regularly. And no, I didn’t get soft around the middle.
Other things I ate every day were 2-3 pasture raised eggs, meat twice a day, and probably 8-10 cups of various steamed vegetables, a bit of unpasteurized cheese, pasture raised butter, a spoonful or two of coconut oil, and often some almonds or almond butter.
With regards to meat, I always get natural and/or organic, grass fed meat. I eat a lot of ground beef patties and chicken thighs, and a few steaks and some lamb on occasion. I like chicken breasts too, but thighs have more calories and fat and just feel generally more satiating.
And for vegetables, typical choices in my rotation are broccoli, cauliflower, red cabbage, carrots, turnips, chard, spinach, and kale. There are many days where I’d eat all of these. I have a pressure cooker that steams vegetables really quickly, and I’ll just chop up a bunch of stuff and throw it in. No rhyme or reason to it necessarily, I just know that it’s extremely beneficial to get all the nutrition vegetables provide. And I go organic whenever possible here as well. It’s a bit expensive of course, but the depth of nutrition is greater and the body requires a lot of nutrition to constantly rebuild and repair itself after intense training. For extra calories and flavor, quality butter goes well with all vegetables. So does sea salt, and it provides a lot of trace minerals.
With that covered as the most important part of any “supplement” regimen, I’ll share the other items I employed to go above and beyond in my muscle building and recovery.
Nature Provides Many Fantastic Lifting Supplements
Let me start by saying I never stepped foot in a GNC. The only thing I took that wasn’t completely nature-derived was creatine monohydrate. I took 5 grams of the Optimum Nutrition brand every day. Optimum Nutrition sources their creatine from a company called CreaPure. Others brands sell CreaPure as well, and I recommend it for it’s high standards of purity. Creatine is a naturally occurring substance, but a supplement helps provide a much more concentrated dose. In addition to helping the muscles, it has mental benefits because it helps recycle adenosine diphosphate back into adenosine triphosphate which is the fuel our bodies ultimately burn for energy. Good for both the body and mind.
I also used grass fed, cold processed whey protein concentrate. 50 grams on days when I didn’t lift, 75 grams on days when I did. There are a huge amount of health benefits in good quality whey, from immune boosting properties to providing precursors to antioxidants like glutathione. The big reason I used it though was to get the extra protein necessary to recover from hard training sessions. The Naked Whey brand isn’t certified organic, but it’s grass fed and non-GMO, so it’s basically organic. But by not incurring the costs of organic certification they can offer their whey for a better price. Still a bit steep since it’s good stuff, but better.
With regards to pre-workout supplements, one of them was always whey since it has lots of branched chain amino acids. But I’d throw a tablespoon of raw cacao powder in it before lifting for a little boost. It provides a little energy and a good mood I’ve found.
I also took a few herbs. One of them was shilajit capsules. Shilajit is an ayurvedic herb, and a bizarre one at that. It’s basically ancient plant matter that has been concentrated underground and comes oozing out of the rocks in the Himalaya mountains as a black, tar-like substance. It’s known as nature’s Viagra, so it seems to have a positive effect on the male androgenic hormones. It tastes like burnt rubber, so I recommend capsules.
I also used a bit of cistanche, which is considered a libido booster as well. Neither cistanche or shilajit is a true stimulant but I could feel a bit of a boost in strength.
And I took alcohol-free pine pollen tincture made with vegetable glycerin. Pine pollen has bioidentical testosterone and DHEA in it, so it’s sort of a natural steroid in a sense. Taken sublingually, the tincture’s androgenic hormones go straight into the blood stream. I took it at least three times a day, and I believe it helped with muscle recovery time significantly.
I drank a cup of stinging nettle tea every day as well to help prevent aromatase and optimize the androgenic state of my body.
It’s also worth mentioning that I took some basic mineral and nutritional supplements every day. This was mostly for health, but I have no doubt it helped with recovery from training heavy as well. I certainly didn’t hurt. I took a Calcium/Magnesium supplement, around 100 mg of zinc chelate, 1000 mg of trimethylglycine, six capsules of Nature’s Way kelp, 5000 IU of Vitamin D3, a B-Complex with B12 in methylcobalamin form, Ubiquinol, and a digestive enzyme supplement.
That’s a lot of additional supplementation. I know. But when grinding through the Texas Method it can be rather beneficial to have the extra nutrition, protein, and calories. And as noted previously, everything I took was more or less natural. No weird lab-made concoctions you’d see in the pages of a bodybuilding magazine.
The Things I Avoided
While there were specific foods and supplements I consumed, I also avoided a few things.
My alcohol consumption was very limited. Maybe once a month. Alcohol has been show to lower testosterone which doesn’t help with building strength. It’s fun, but not terribly useful, and limiting my intake a for a few months seemed to be helpful.
I also ate no sugar whatsoever. I didn’t even eat fruit, with the exception of a few blueberries here and there. Vegetables provide plenty of fiber, antioxidants, and minerals and vitamins, without the high levels of fructose in modern day fruit. Sugar can also have negative effects on testosterone, so I choose to avoid it in my day to day. And lower sugar consumption is a great way to maintain healthy metabolic health in a society plagued by diabetes and such. I did eat grains which provides some glucose, but they digest more slowly and don’t spike blood sugar and insulin levels significantly.
Wrap Up
I’m not a doctor or scientist, and my experiences are purely anecdotal. But I don’t hesitate to share the nutrients and supplements I had success with given they’re natural and have no dangerous side effects. If anyone tries these out, I’d love to hear if they benefit others like they did me.