“But How Do I Know I’m Actually Getting Better?”

“He never would listen to me, but you got him to listen and now he takes his nutrition seriously! He actually prepares his own meals and protein shakes!” – PSTS Parent

How do you know if an athlete is actually improving towards their goals?

There are a number of ways for performance:

-lift more weight

-more reps with same weight

-move a weight more quickly (dynamic)

-run a faster time

-jump higher

-more work done in less time (conditioning)

All pretty basic, right?

What about physically? The ratio of fat to muscle?

A common phrase we hear a lot from male athletes is that they, “want to gain weight but they don’t want to gain bad weight.”

This essentially means that they want to build lean muscle that can actually help them, not gain fat that will weigh them down.

Male or female, we know that muscle: is needed, is tough to build, improves body composition, and helps us to be stronger, faster, and more explosive.

Now, after working with plenty of athletes over the last decade, it’s fairly easy to tell if an athlete is improving. But we like accuracy, and wanted to ensure our athletes have every advantage. The more information and details we have as coaches, the better we can guide them.

The InBody Body Composition Analysis machine does this for us now. It is also the main tool that helps us track an athlete’s nutrition.

The Inbody is a top-tier, professional body composition analyzer which goes beyond traditional body composition analysis. It analyzes how much body fat and lean muscle mass you have. It also measures hydration levels, can show muscle imbalances between limbs, and visceral fat (fat around your organs) levels. Through segmental fat and muscle analysis, we can tell precisely where you are storing or losing fat or muscle on the body. This test also gives us Total Body Water so we can get an insight on hydration and inflammation. There are a few other features that we don’t place as much value on as well but it’s nice knowing as much information as possible.  This is keeping it simple so feel free to research further if you’re interested.

Given the expense and accuracy of this machine, some gyms or clinics actually charge $35-55+ for this 45-second test…

We now have one Inbody570 at each PSTS location and we include it in the majority of our athlete memberships.

The next time you talk to a strength coach, a gym, or are looking to train with someone – ask if they include nutrition information and/or offer nutrition coaching. If they say yes, ask how they track it and how often?

“We just weigh them” – not good enough. The scale lies.

“We do skinfolds” – does the same person do them every time? Are they proficient at this? Does the athlete like being grabbed? What happens when it’s a female athlete and male trainer or vice-versa- is the athlete comfortable?

“We take circumference measurements” – see above. You also can’t tell if the area is smaller or larger because of muscle or fat.

“We take before and after pictures.” – everyone does, still very broad. And again, see above.

Now, there are other body composition analyzers out there but we chose the one that we feel provides the accuracy and detail our athletes deserve. We also provided nutrition info for years without an InBody. We also know that complacency kills and we’re always on the lookout to improve our process.

This level of detail, information, and accountability is one of the main reasons why we can now track nutrition with our athletes. We know if they’re following-through with our nutrition system and recovering properly. They love it because it’s tangible and helps make what they consume more top of mind because they want to improve their InBody results. We coach them how to do this in a mentally and physically healthy manner.

*Now, the best, indirected feature the InBody provides is that we as coaches MUST do everything we can to deliver results! We love it for that reason because it forces us to stand behind our system, and we confidently do so!

Another feature we’re proud to deliver to our PowerStrength athletes!