Legendary bodybuilding trainer Vince, "The Iron Guru" Gironda was
famous for saying, "Bodybuilding is 80% nutrition!" But is this really
true or is it just another fitness and bodybuilding myth passed down
like gospel without ever being questioned? Which is really more
important, nutrition or training? This IS an interesting question and I
believe there is a definite answer:

The first thing I would say is that you cannot separate nutrition
and training. The two work together synergistically. Regardless of your
goals - gaining muscle, losing fat, athletic conditioning, whatever
-you will get less than-optimal or even non-existent results without
paying attention paid to both.

In fact, I like to look at gaining muscle or losing fat in three
parts - weight training, cardio training and nutrition - with each part
like a leg of a three legged stool. pull ANY one of the legs off the
stool, and guess what happens?

In reality, it's impossible to put a specific percentage on which is
more important - how could we possibly know such a number to the digit?

Nutrition and training are both important, but at certain stages of
your training progress, I do believe placing more attention on one
component over the other can create larger improvements. Let me explain:

If you're a beginner and you don't posses nutritional knowledge,
then mastering nutrition is far more important than training and should
become your number one priority. I say this because improving a poor
diet can create rapid, quantum leaps in fat loss and muscle building
progress.

For example, if you've been skipping meals and only eating 2 times
per day, jumping your meal frequency up to 5 or 6 smaller meals a day
will transform your physique very rapidly.

If you're still eating lots of processed fats and refined sugars,
cutting them out and replacing them with good fats like the omega
threes found in fish and unrefined foods like fruits, vegetables and
whole grains will make an enormous and noticeable difference in your
physique very quickly.

If your diet is low in protein, simply adding a complete protein
food like chicken breast, fish or egg whites at each meal will muscle
you up fast.

No matter how hard you train or what type of training routine you're
on, it's all in vain if you don't provide yourself with the right
nutritional support.

In beginners (or in advanced trainees who are still eating poorly),
these changes in diet are more likely to result in great improvements
than a change in training.

The muscular and nervous systems of a beginner are unaccustomed to
exercise. Therefore, just about any training program can cause muscle
growth and strength development to occur because it's all a "shock" to
the untrained body.

You can almost always find ways to tweak your nutrition to higher
and higher levels, but once you’ve mastered all the nutritional basics,
then further improvements in your diet don't have as great of an impact
as those initial important changes...

Eating more than six meals will have minimal effect. Eating more
protein ad infinitum won't help. Once you're eating low fat, going to
zero fat won't help more - it will probably hurt. If you're eating a
wide variety of foods and taking a good multi vitamin/mineral, then
more supplements probably wont help much either. If you're already
eating natural complex carbs and lean proteins every three hours,
there's not too much more you can do other than continue to be
consistent day after day...

At this point, as an intermediate or advanced trainee who has the
nutrition in place, changes in your training become much more
important, relatively speaking. Your training must become downright
scientific.

Except for the changes that need to be made between an "off season"
muscle growth diet and a "precontest" cutting diet, the diet won't and
can't change much - it will remain fairly constant.

But you can continue to pump up the intensity of your training and
improve the efficiency of your workouts almost without limit. In fact,
the more advanced you become, the more crucial training progression and
variation becomes because the well-trained body adapts so quickly.

According to powerlifter Dave Tate, an advanced lifter may adapt to
a routine within 1-2 weeks. That's why elite lifters rotate exercises
constantly and use as many as 300 different variations on exercises.

Strength coach Ian King says that unless you're a beginner, you'll
adapt to any training routine within 3-4 weeks. Coach Charles Poliquin
says that you'll adapt within 5-6 workouts.

So, to answer the question, while nutrition is ALWAYS critically
important, it's more important to emphasize for the beginner (or the
person whose diet is still a "mess"), while training is more important
for the advanced person... (in my opinion).

It's not that nutrition ever ceases to be important, the point is,
further improvements in nutrition won't have as much impact once you
already have all the fundamentals in place.

Once you've mastered nutrition, then it's all about keeping that
nutrition consistent and progressively increasing the efficiency and
intensity of your workouts, and mastering the art of planned workout
variation, which is also known as "periodization."

The bottom line: There's a saying among strength coaches and personal trainers...

"You can't out-train a lousy diet!"

If your nutrition program is your weakest area, either because
you're just starting out or you simply don't have the nutritional
knowledge you know you need to get results, then be sure to take a look
at the Burn The Fat program at: www.BurnTheFat.com

Your friend and coach,

Tom Venuto

www.BurnTheFat.com

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified
personal trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning
specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle"
Tom has written more than 200 articles and has been featured in print
magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding,
Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise, as well as
on hundreds of websites worldwide.

For information on Tom's Fat Loss
program, visit: www.BurnTheFat.com