What is more important: Nutrition Or Training?

By Tom Venuto


You’ve probably heard all kinds of numerical estimates quoted about
the importance of training versus diet. For example, the “Iron
Guru” Vince Gironda was famous for saying “bodybuilding is 80%
nutrition!” But which is really more important, diet or training?

The first thing I would say is that you cannot separate nutrition
and training. the two work together and regardless of your goals -
bodybuilding, fat loss, athletic conditioning, whatever - you will
get sub-optimal or even poor results without attention paid to
both.

In fact, I like to look at this 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?

Having said that however, this IS an interesting question and I
believe there is a definite answer:

Many people give different opinions of what percentage they believe
each component is responsible for, and often these numbers get
passed down as if gospel.

In truth, 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 always important, but at certain
stages of your training progress, I do believe placing more
attention on improving one component will create larger
improvements than the other. 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 top 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 and unrefined
foods will make an enormous and noticeable difference in your
physique very quickly.

If your diet is low in protein, simply adding a complete protein at
each meal will muscle you up fast.

But 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 eating poorly), these
changes in diet are more likely to result in great improvements
than a change in training. Basically, if nutrition is not in place,
then nutrition is more important!

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 youve mastered all the nutritional
basics, then further improvements in your diet don’t have as great
of an impact as those initial major 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
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. If you’re eating a wide variety of
foods and taking a good multi vitamin/mineral then more supplements
probably wont help much, and so on…

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 your question, while nutrition is ALWAYS critically
important, it’s more important to emphasize for the beginner (or
the person whose diet is 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 have the fundamentals consistently in place.

Once you’ve mastered nutrition and the proper diet is in place,
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: Burn The Fat
 

About the author:

Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, personal trainer, gym owner, freelance writer and author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of the World's Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models. Tom has written over 140 articles and has been featured in IRONMAN magazine, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Muscle-Zine, Exercise for Men and Men's Exercise. Tom is the Fat Loss Expert for Global-Fitness.com and the nutrition editor for Femalemuscle and his articles are featured regularly on literally dozens of other websites.
 

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