The Power of Nutrition for Athletic Performance with Sebastian Zarka
Clance: Sebastian Zarka, my man.
Sebastian: Here we are.
Clance: I love having you at LPS. Thank you for being here. Thanks for that. Thank you for all the work you’ve done thus far and many more years to go and lots of great things down the pipe. But I want to tell people who you are and what you do.
Sebastian: So yeah, my name’s Sebastian, I’m a nutritional coach at LPS. I’ve been here going about a year now. My background is usually in precision nutrition. I take in functional medicine courses in the states to kind of get an understanding of the nutritional requirements that we need to be healthy. You know, and that’s scrapping all the ideologies, not getting into one subset of thinking on nutrition. It’s like, what do we need to be healthy and what are the requirements depending on the person is cause you know, everybody’s different. So that became a passion of mine. Because I had a lot of my own health problems growing up, still have some like anxiety, it’s a big thing for me. I really became invested in understanding this information so I can have more control over say my life because it’s been one of those things that affected me growing up.
Clance: You know, you say passion. So I met you because you want me to train you for powerlifting. So, you know, you became one of my clients and we started working and I started hearing you talk about nutrition and you know, my background with Poliquin and me understanding bio-signature and so on and so forth. I started listening to you and I’ve been taking care of the nutrition for years on my own. So I’ve been dealing my athletes and I’ve been comfortable with, but it’s not my number one thing to do.
Sebastian: Right.
Clance: And the passion that I hear coming from you when you’re talking about it, that’s, you know, perk me up. Okay. Passion is one thing, but you’re a smart dude, you know your stuff. And a lot of the information, a lot of people you’ve learned from was based on, I learned from them as well. So that really sparked me. So that really got me really interested into what you have to say. One of the things that I know you’re passionate about is people taking responsibility. We had a big discussion about that and taking responsibility in terms of, ‘Hey, cook your food.’ You know, tell me a bit about that.
Sebastian: As you know, we have a lot of people that we deal with, that are very addicted to convenience. Right? It’s and it’s not just, I don’t want to say they’re all like that, you have people that just have extremely busy lifestyles.
They don’t have time to invest into cooking or to preparing their food, so they order out. But the biggest thing with ordering out is the restaurants that prepare food. They don’t use good quality ingredients, especially when they cook the food, like using vegetable oils.
One of the biggest problems I see with most people is they overconsume vegetable oils. And that’s one of the predictors for heart disease, dysregulated cholesterol, or your issues with your gut. And then doing that for long periods of time, you just almost become in many ways, used to feeling like that until we show them like, here it is.
Clance: I don’t mean to interrupt, but it’s powerful what you’re saying. Because cooking my food, like I barely eat out. I don’t eat out anymore, like hardly. Even if I go to a restaurant and have a good steak, I could tell the difference of me making the steak. I can feel it.
It’s crazy when I started cooking more, you know, based on your recommendation and I got into with you know, really digging in and my wife is all happy now. Due to the COVID, I’m cooking all our, you know, ethnic meals and so on and so forth. I feel better.
So it’s not just like having my protein, having my vegetables, but the key thing is like you understanding what ingredients you are putting in the food, how you’re cooking the food. I think a lot of times that gets missed, ’cause I’m telling you from firsthand experience, I feel amazing.
Sebastian: And I see your pictures on the wall. When I come in here, the way you look on those pictures to now, you’re completely different person. Like just the way you look, it’s really inspiring that you are legit when somebody says, Okay, I want to work with somebody who a coach that takes responsibility and they’re pretty much they’re drinking their own Kool-Aid.
You’re that guy. I hear the passion that you have when you talk about training. So that’s why I can vibe with you really well ’cause I have the same thing. We identify with the information that we provide because we invest so much of our time and effort into understanding and being open to criticism and just being open to learning.
Clance: And your reason why I want to hammer home that point because we talk, you know, and we’re talking about macro you know, we talk about every day about different athletes, their nutrition, compliance and time, and the biggest thing, cause I’ve eaten—I know how to eat well, right?
I know how to lose body fat and maintain muscle and so forth. But a lot of times I’ll go buy something I’m on run. I’ll go buy the right foods, but cooking your own food for me has made and putting my own ingredients and spending that time has made a dramatic difference.
Sebastian: Yeah. You’re taking control of your health. You’re not allowing somebody else to feed you with ingredients you’re not really sure about like, that’s the number one thing I told the athletes that I start coach is, because they look at right away, they flip it and they see how many calories, how many fats carbs proteins are in the back of the label. I’m like stop looking at that. That’s irrelevant in your case if you’re unhealthy, you want to see the ingredients there on that label. I want you to recognize every ingredient that’s on that label.
When you can recognize the ingredients, that’s the base that we want to start, that’s the foundation. Then later when we understand the food that you’re eating, then you can start to say, Okay, well, let’s look at the caloric intake of our food. Let’s see what I’m taking in, what I’m burning so on and so forth.
But it’s never the first approach I want to take because most people that I see have some kind of issue. Sometimes they’re unaware, sometimes they’re very aware. So taking that control of your own food is really important. This is the way we’ve done it for hundreds of years.
Cooking is a very social dynamic with humans. You feel good when you cook something for somebody else and it’s good and they love it. It just brings happiness to everybody. It’s a very social thing for me. I also think that’s what brings people closer together. Same with families. It’s something that we’ve really lost, we’ve got out of touch of, and I really want to start to-
Nobody’s got to be a master chef, but I mean, I really want to encourage people to cook a little bit more at home or to at least understand how to make some basic things. Because it’s not always a good idea to eat out. You know, I would like people to tap back into that, that almost that primal kind of feeling of in satisfaction of cooking your own food.
Clance: And the reason why I’m, you know, I’m really harping on that. And you know, really trying to draw that out from you is because it made such a huge difference to me personally. I’m a firm believer in, you know, in applying what you believe. Right? To yourself. So that’s made a huge difference to me. When I see people or we talk about training, for instance, you know, it’s the foundational stuff, the hard stuff, the boring stuff, that’s the stuff that works.
Sebastian: That’s right.
Clance: And so I flipped that with cooking. I’m like, you know, food, okay. Yeah. I can eat like a nice, go get a burger, no bun. And we’ll get a burger, no bun, and grab lettuce and you know, I’m good, but it’s not this, you don’t know what’s in that bird. You don’t, you don’t know what oil they cooked that burger in and so on and so forth.
And I understand, you know, we work with a lot of people everybody’s busy, everybody’s, you know, running from here to there, but the importance of actually taking time to take care of yourself, feed yourself proper nutrients. If you can’t cook, you know, or try to help find some type of family dynamic.
I buy the athletes so they can’t cook, but their parents get involved. Ultimately you want them to take responsibility and figure that out.
Sebastian: That’s the biggest thing. Take responsibility. The thing is we have so many resources at our disposal right now you have technology like the Instant Pot or, you know, you have all these other tools that you can simplify your cooking and also expedite it.
You have access to YouTube, which has hundreds and thousands of videos on basic stuff you can take or cook. I mean, these are resources that weren’t available to people before, and yet we are spending less time cooking now than we were in 1960s. Something like along the lines of 1960s or so we spent an average of 60 minutes cooking.
Today it’s like 26 minutes average and those are the good families, right? The only thing is really when it comes to cooking, I’m not saying that’s you know, you have to start to get crazy about it, but just introduce it into your weekly routine something, little bit.
Even to people like, my girlfriend is one of the best examples. She never cooked. She always ordered out. So I wanted to learn how to cook more and understand my ingredients. So I was trying to see how I can get her interested in the whole process.
The first thing I told her, let’s cook something that’s fun. Something that tastes good might not be good for us, but let’s just do something fun. So when you start to do something fun, your brain goes, Oh, this is cool. Then when you start to do it over a couple of times, and you’re like, Okay, you know what, maybe I can try something a little bit healthier now.
But just enjoy it and just find some pleasure in doing it and then after you can go into the segue into, Okay, I got to make sure I maybe try to get some more nutritious food into me. But first step is just to try and just to do, and that’s going to open up this window of other opportunities for that person.
Clance: Okay. Let’s change gears a little bit now. What are the top three things that you encounter? I know a funny one with this kid at McDonald’s, you know, you can talk about that. What are the top three things that you encounter with athletes that’s a mental to their progress or performance?
Sebastian: This is actually kind of ironic because a lot of them are really disciplined when it comes to the gym. But the thing is that becomes a comfort lifestyle for them because once they build out that momentum and they’ve been coming to the gym 3, 4, 5, 6, 12 months, it’s easy. Right? And then I go, Okay, I want you to cook. Here’s a list of ingredients I want you to start to cook from, just introduce this.
It’s the hardest thing they can do. They don’t want to cause it’s a new thing. It’s a new thing, they got to learn something. It deviates from the routine they have. Maybe it cuts into their time in the day. So the biggest one is to get somebody to start something new because it’s very inconvenient and it revolves a learning curve. So that’s the first thing I would say is just the inconvenience of doing something that they normally don’t do.
Clance: How do you deal with that?
Sebastian: Oh, well, like for-
Clance: It’s hard.
Sebastian: It’s really hard, but I try to connect on their level. So I asked him, what kind of foods do you like? What’s something that makes you happy or gives you pleasure?
And when I can kind of find that out, I will try to introduce recipes, they’ll come up with for them to try that would appeal to their palette. And when they start to, you know, try these things out and they’re like, Oh, this is cool. Like, you know, this is actually, this tastes good, and I deal with it.
So I try to, I try to compromise a little bit. I try to see what I can show them or do with them that helps them get into that mindset of, Okay, I gotta prepare more for myself.
It can’t be like, you just got to do it because they don’t, there’s a lot of people, especially the younger athletes to just check out, they don’t want that. They don’t want to be like, so I have to connect with them and I have to give them a little bit of an excitement, give them a spark. Once they get that spark, you just nurture that into a flame.
Clance: Gotcha. What’s number two?
Sebastian: Number two. Challenging is besides starting it, is consistency. They don’t, they’re not consistent with the program or they don’t give it as much effort as I like to see.
So they’ll be good for a week, maybe, maybe two weeks, but then the effort they’re putting in is very low. So they’re just, they’re eating very basic things without trying to make it taste as good as I, you know, using spices and trying things. They don’t do that. So they hate it.
Clance: So you’re saying the compliance is how long normally?
Sebastian: Compliance when we start varies per person, but I would say you might have a week, two weeks and then they start to kind of drop off. Right.
Clance: Getting back into old ways.
Sebastian: Old ways.
Clance: What they say it takes like 30 days to get into it. 30 to 45 days-
Sebastian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don’t do it because it’s too time-consuming. Right? I mean, when I started, that’s what it was with me. It took me like 45 minutes to an hour to make one meal. It was very time-consuming. But now that I’ve done it for so long, I kind of know my way around, like the burners and all that.
I can get two meals ready in 20 minutes, I can get an appetizer and then maybe a lunch or something. But that’s all it requires is sticking to it. Just like training. You stick to it. You become more proficient. You become more efficient with your time. You get more work done and then you can take on more and that’s the way anything.
Clance: That’s the point they miss is like, people don’t realize that when you need that fuel for production, you need that fuel to get that work done, mental work, physical work, whatever needs to be. And then you need the right proper fuel, right?
You can’t run a Ferrari on, you know, shitty gas, right? Same thing. You want to be a monster. But you know, telling that story about this kid about the McDonald’s story.
Sebastian: Good. This kid but-
Clance: This literally blows my mind.
Sebastian: This shows us how much we idolize certain kinds of celebrities. So one celebrity, not to name names, but this celebrity says he eats McDonald’s all the time for, you know, this he performs, right? It’s he performs and this is what he does. And then this kid is athlete wants to follow in his footsteps.
The guys is famous. He’s a good athlete. I don’t know too much about his background, but I know he’s famous. So this kid wants to follow and he’s like, Well, I’m following what this guy is doing cause he says eats McDonald’s.
And I was like, Hold on, man. Well, why? Well, because he’s doing it. Well, how do you feel doing it? I don’t know. Do you sleep good? Not really. Do you have like digestive issues? Yeah. So why would you do that? Well, cause he’s doing it.
So this is what drives me crazy. It’s not the kid’s fault because the information is available and you know, it’s a guy who idolized as an athlete, but it makes me nuts because proper nutrition is a foundation that will elevate your game to the elite levels.
If you don’t have it, you’re always going to be a little bit more disadvantaged than the guy or the girl that is doing it. So, you know, I had to talk to him and then I tried to show him a different way and this different way, when he started to get off to McDonald’s, he was getting withdrawals, but he was feeling terrible and I was-
Clance: And that’s real?
Sebastian: That’s real. I was like, That’s a die-off. That’s like you have, you know like his digestion has an issue with this, and you know, you have bacteria that conform to the foods that we eat. And then when you stop eating this food that your body’s used to, almost like a drug, you start to feel terrible.
You know you get this die-off this bad bacteria, big sorts of normalizing again. He was telling me, he felt awful when he was getting off of it, but he was craving it. And I was like, so knowing that, isn’t that make you a little suspicious that what you’re eating is actually not as good as you think it is? What kind of food makes you feel terrible when you get off of it?
That sounds like drugs to me, it sounds like something that you’re addicted to. So you know, probably not the craziest story we’ll ever get, and try get another phrase you want down the road.
Clance: So let’s go into one of my big problems is athletes not feeding themselves properly with proper nutrition to support the training because the problem with inflammation is huge in terms of injuries. Right?
So can you talk a little bit about the negative effect inflammation has on potential injuries and also a little bit about if you reduce information, how you can negate?
Sebastian: Inflammation is, is usually, it’s created from, you know, you have acute and chronic inflammation.
Chronic inflammation, it’s one that always happens. And you know, if you have like a gut issue, you have a GI distress, then you more susceptible to maybe like chronic inflammation. This can disrupt hormones, which can affect performance. Then eventually it could lead to some kind of an injury. You’re just going to try to push yourself beyond your capacity of recovery and then something could happen.
Inflammation, it will disrupt your ability to absorb nutrients. It will disrupt many biological processes in the body, which will, you know, ultimately either give you subpar performance or yes, lead to something, an injury, depending on what the activity is.
So I say, it’s like, I don’t want to say inflammation is bad because chronic is. Acute, like when we train, we have acute inflammation say like, if we train, we squat, our legs are sore. Glutes are sore, that’s-
Clance: You need that inflammation.
Sebastian: You need that because that’ll send a signal to your brain saying you need to grow and get stronger in those areas. You don’t want to lessen that inflammation, but the one from chronic, from poor lifestyle choices, not sleeping, not eating correctly. That is what you want to eliminate. That’s what you want to get under control.
Clance: And just to go back to that, it’s just funny. The biggest thing was recovery, right? You know, get a jump into a cold tub and a sauna, find the fastest way to recover. And actually, an old coach told me no, that’s the worst thing you do. Let the body adapt because you actually slowing down adaptation.
I took that and I even tested it out. All right, I use that some athletes after they train hard and so on forth, they would go get some type of acute recovery immediately after and their progress was actually slower. So that was interesting.
Sebastian: So that’s funny you say that because they do have two different recovery methods, right? You have to hold the cold and the hot, right. The cold recovery methods, called thermogenesis, I believe, or cold plunges, they actually are detrimental to strength training because they’re anti-inflammatory. So they numb the signal from your body to your brain for you to grow.
Clance: A hundred percent.
Sebastian: So it’s not a good thing to do when you’re a strength athlete, but they do have an application for mental health. It helps mental health, it helps other things, but not the best way to recover.
Heat is on the other hand, shows that it’s been supportive because when we train, we get hot, right? Our body heats up. Heat improves blood flow improves nutrient delivery to the tissues.
If I was ever going to say, if there’s one thing that somebody can do, heat saunas are better as long as you’re hydrating, but definitely not exactly. Like you said, stay away from the cold.
Clance: Yeah. That was huge. I was going to get a cold tub and so on and so forth. Colder-wise could produce a lot of metals told me, no, that’s not a good thing and then he broke down while I was like, wow. Yeah.
Give me a couple of tips that you would give an athlete who’s looking to, you know, clean up their diet and just generally eat healthy so they can help their performance or even just be a healthier person individually.
Sebastian: I would say in context of what I see mostly, okay. Eat more red meat. That’s a very controversial thing, but the red meat, the kind of red meat you eat and what you eat it with makes all the difference. Okay. So a lot of studies that I see on red meat are people who already unhealthy and they’re eating fast food burgers. That’s their red meat. That’s not the right way to do it.
You know, if you eating a grass-fed steak or you’re eating wild game, or you’re eating, you know, ethically raised animal, then that’s going to be more nutrient-dense. They even say grass-fed, fully grass-finished beef has higher omega 3s than the non-gassfed. Right? So if you’re eating more of the red meat in your diet, as in context of training, you’re going to be better.
I would say also making sure you’re taking care of your digestion. That’s very important. That’s your processing center. So including fermented food into your diet. So having a little bit of kimchi or sauerkraut, and I mean, small amounts. Take like a fork, get in there, a couple of forks with your protein and maybe your veg or whatever you want to have your potatoes, and then do a little bit of sauerkraut.
That’s kind of like, it just improves diversity of bacteria in your gut, which helps you assimilate, breaks down, and absorb nutrients. They also create nutrients. So keep your gut healthy by including a little bit of fermented foods, includes more red meat, quality, red meat, and be mindful of how you make it. Don’t make your red meat with vegetable oils.
Don’t eat your red meat with refined carbohydrates. This is what creates your problems, not the actual meat itself. What we want to do is we want to take an investigative approach. So if you’re trying all these different diets, but not actually trying to understand where your challenges are in your health, you’re going to keep chasing your tail.
Very popular right now is vegetarian or vegan diet. Very popular. They have tons of documentaries on it. You know, I say to that is it could be a good antidote to people who have been living a very poor lifestyle, meaning they eat a lot of fast food. They don’t cook for themselves, they don’t get a lot of vegetables into their diet. And all of a sudden you’re switching over and you’re getting some vegetables into your diet that are nutrient-dense. You start to feel better. And you’re like, Oh, this is it. This is the one.
And it’s like, you just have to find a balance of what you’re doing. And you have to understand where you’re at and you have more success. So all this information without context confuses people and it creates divisions. It creates teams, you know, and I think that’s not the right way to do it.
You just have to keep an open mind when it comes to nutrition and see what you need to be healthier. When you can identify that, then you can become a lot more successful with what you’re eating and you’re being smarter for it too. People are gonna probably learn from you.
Clance: Like for me, sorry, like I tried like, y’all, don’t eat red meat. That’s telling me to try, stop eating red meat for a while and eat more chicken. I didn’t feel as good, didn’t feel as strong wasn’t as alert. The proof is in the pudding. And for me, when I eat a steak, I don’t need to eat it or anything. I just need a steak. I may have some vegetables with it, but I’m fine with just eating it by itself. That’s it. And I’m actually satisfied.
Sebastian: The studies show people that are active and that are consuming meat the way you are, are going to be healthier. Okay. People that are very inactive, they don’t do a lot of exercise, no resistance training, and then they’re eating burgers and they’re drinking, you know, a Coke or some kind of a pop and they’re eating their fries and they’re gonna go, Oh, it’s the red meat.
You just cooked your fries in vegetable oil. You’re eating it with a bun, with a refined bread, and you’re drinking a pop, and you’re gonna tell me, it’s the red meat. Are the studies that are being done are done in this way. Right?
They don’t actually show you the individuals who are healthier are pursuing, you know, a healthy lifestyle and introducing red meat into their diet. So yes, red meat is important. Getting fermented foods into your diet is important and managing your stress is very important.
And one of the ways to do that is ensuring you have good sleep patterns because it’s one of the other things I have commonly with people is they don’t sleep very well because they have so much convenience at night.
I’m gonna watch Netflix. I’m gonna binge my favorite show. So I’m going to be on my phone, my iPad, my computer, and what happens is you’re actually creating inflammation by staying up late in and you’re not taking responsibility for one of the most important processes in the body. And that’s sleep. You have to sleep to recover.
Clance: Amen to that. I think that that is huge. How would you recommend someone prepare for sleep and how much sleep do you recommend for the average individual?
Sebastian: So when it comes to sleep, one of the biggest limiting factors is exposure to blue light, but I’m also seeing light in general, a lot of light exposure will limit your-
Clance: So dark room, like a bat cave?
Sebastian: Right. Keep it darker, light some candles. The idea is if you’re looking into a screen, the blue light disrupts melatonin production, and when it disrupts your melatonin production, your cortisol, which is your stress hormone will naturally stay elevated, which means you’ll be alert.
Clance: So what are you saying with blue lights so they stay or keep your cell phone out of the room?
Sebastian: Keep your cell phone out of the room. There’s actually blue light filters on your phone now. You can get a blue light filtering glasses to wear at night to limit blue light exposure to your eyeballs. This will disrupt because it’s our circadian rhythm.
It’s how the human hormones are influenced it, there were very influenced by our day and night cycles. So, if you have constant light, your body thinks it’s still daytime and you won’t be getting good quality sleep if that’s the case. So limiting your blue light exposure; not working right before bed.
Usually I have a 10-3-2-1 rule. Okay. At 10 hours, you should have a space from your caffeine consumption to bedtime. It should be ten-hour window that you shouldn’t have any caffeine 10 hours before bed. Three hours you should eat before bed. Usually, carbohydrates is one of the better ones, but try not to eat-
Clance: You can eat protein or no?
Sebastian: Protein is okay. As long as it’s within a three-hour window is fine, but eating too much before bed can disrupt your sleep pattern. So three hours, preferably no food before bed. Two hours is no work.
So if you are working, try not to work two hours before you go to bed, that can actually stimulate you, can keep you up, stress or adrenals elevate. And then one hour of blue light elimination before bed. So don’t have one hour of blue light before bed.
What I do with my girlfriend. Like as one example is we’ll light some candles when we play a board game, we’ll have talk, we’ll do some stuff to keep us still, you know, engaged in some way, but not just bombard our faces with Netflix or something. It will become detrimental long-term and then that’ll create insulin resistance. It will create gut issues.
Clance: Also when you’re talking about blue light, you’re not just talking about your cell phone, you’re talking about TV?
Sebastian: Yeah, TV.
Clance: Okay. Alright.
Sebastian: They all emit blue lights. Even fluorescent light bulbs in it emit blue light. It’s just limiting blue light and overall. Actually, one of the best things to do is to reset your whole circadian rhythm is go camping for like a week. Your lights from the sky.
Clance: You’re talking to a city boy here!
Sebastian: It’ll reset everything, and you won’t have any more blue light exposure. But that’s one of the biggest ones I see. People that don’t sleep well are also insulin resistant, they don’t handle sugars very well, so they get fat pretty easily. That’s one of those variables that has to be in place for your body to be recovering optimally and performing well.
Clance: So I liked where you said that because I don’t think that a lot of people made that connection because me working with a lot of clients with. The hardest people to actually lose body fat is shift workers who work late at night and they actually, and they sleep during the day.
And so, cause that whole circadian rhythm and not managing carbs and all that is all disrupted. So you really emphasize the importance of sleep because a lot of times people put the cart before the horse where they’re not, they’re eating great, but their sleep is horrible.
If you sleep better, right, everything is easier, you’re more insulin sensitive. So meaning you burn calories, you burn fat faster.
Sebastian: Right. You respond to sugar better. Your sugar cravings are gone because if you don’t sleep very well, what happens is let’s say if you only get a couple of hours of sleep, you’ll notice also your face will swell even for the ladies, if they want to keep their faces nice and slender.
If you got poor quality sleep, take a picture of your face the next day. And then when you have really good sleep, take a picture. You’ll notice your face is slimmer. Your cravings for sugar go up if you don’t sleep very well. Why? Because when you sleep, your body actually shuttles sugar to the brain for recovery. But if you’re not sleeping, that process doesn’t happen.
So you’re creating sugar throughout the day, and then guess what? You’re already sugar intolerant, so all that’s just going to pack the weight off, body fat will increase inflammation increases, and it just becomes a cyclical cycle, just one after the other, after the other thing just gets worse and worse and worse and worse.
And then you just get into this sleep-deprived brain fog, you know, insulin resistant, gut inflammation, hormone imbalance—it just goes into this crazy thing. Sometimes it’s so much for people just to get out of that. Sleep emphasizing and proper nutrition helps your sleep.
If you have a healthy gut, you’ll sleep better. If your gut is unhealthy, you will not sleep better. So it all comes together. It all ties together in one way or another. And as long as we can take a holistic approach to your health, then you’re going to be better athletes. And you’re also going to be much healthier and happier.
Clance: I agree. Thank you for that. Just to, you know, really emphasize that I did a seminar with Charles Paloquin years ago—rest in peace—that seminar regarding sleep and I’ve taken it to this day. Like when I sleep, I’m pretty much in a bat cave.
Obviously, I do watch some blue light before I go to bed, but I try to read, just stay away, I’ve always remembered that. The fact is when I sleep better, I perform better. I get like if I really pay attention to my sleep, everything, the next day is, I don’t even need an alarm clock to get up. I’m just up.
Like this morning, I’m supposed to be up at 4:30, I was up at 4 AM, trying to just get a little bit more, but I just popped up. Because take care of your sleep, everything else normally follows, right? Which is very hard. For a lot of people, I know it is for me, but once I get that on track the next days are better.
Clance: Sebastian, thank you very much, man. It was great. Love you keep doing what you’re doing. Just keep telling people the truth, man. It’s not easy. Nutrition is hard work. If you do the hard work, just like training. Do the hard work; you reap the results.
Keep taking cutting corners, taking the easy way out, not seeing the ingredients in your food—hey, you want to perform at your optimal level, those are the things that you have to do.
Sebastian: A hundred percent.
Clance: And if you can afford it, hey, hire someone. And if you have a team, get the family involved. That’s the thing. Nutrition is key.
Sebastian: Yes, yes. And just stay curious. It’s another thing. Ask questions, stay curious. Don’t take everything for face value. Make it an alerting process.
Clance: For strength coaches out there, I took nutrition—I still take nutrition series. I’ve always taken nutrition series. I’ve always, it’s not just training, you gotta pay attention to nutrition because that is a direct correlation to better performance—ultimate performance. And we’re in a field that things are, you know, it’s a kilo after kilos just split second.
Sebastian: Yes, everything counts.
Clance: Everything counts. Thank you, my man.
Sebastian: No problem.
Leave A Comment