Why Your Teen Athlete Can’t Gain Weight - Where the Mental Game Meets the Dinner Plate with Nutrition Coach Jeremy Fouts

Matt Cundill  00:00

This is the mental approach, where we discuss mindfulness, mental performance, and the tools available for coping in a high-performance world. Here's Todd Arkell.

 

Todd Arkell  00:11

Welcome to The Mental Approach. I'm your host, Todd Arkell. Here's something nobody tells you about youth sports: that kid losing focus in the fourth quarter, a lot of the time he's not soft, he's under fueled. We obsess over reps, swing mechanics, then we send these kids out to compete on a granola bar and a blue Gatorade, maybe an apple if we're lucky. My guest today says the mental game and the dinner plate are the same conversation. That discipline doesn't start in the weight room, it starts in the kitchen. Jeremy Fouts grew up on a row crop farm in Oklahoma, spent years learning how to grow things from the ground up. Then he took that same obsession and pointed it at people. He's the founder of Corvive, a sports nutrition company, and a dad of two competitive athletes himself. And the whole message comes down to one thing: most parents don't lack effort, they lack clarity. So, let's give them some. Jeremy, welcome to the show.

 

Jacob Fowler  01:01

Thank you, Todd. I'll tell you, I'm excited. This is always one of the things I love to do, is to help educate parents the way that nutrition can definitely transform their son or their daughter's game. And you know, really, when you think about it, Todd, it's not just making them better at the game, it's making them better, make them better in life, you know. What's going to fuel them and be able to reach their full potential linear height and have good healthy hormones, you know, to be able to have good bone density, to be able to be a healthy individual. So I'm excited to be on here, you know. I cannot stress the amount of nutrition, how it makes a difference in people's bodies. So, thank you for having me. On

 

Todd Arkell  01:44

my pleasure. I mean, our goal is always to educate, and there's more to it. And you know what, I say the same thing: team sports, nutrition, all of these things are all building blocks for a long-term healthy life in a bunch of different ways. So, you went from a degree in soil science to coaching elite athletes on nutrition, what's the through line there? What do growing things teach you about building an athlete?

 

Jacob Fowler  02:08

What I went got my degree at Oklahoma State University. What I would do a lot in the labs is, you know, breeding crops to help produce more abundance of crops. How can you, you know, breed this corn plant with this corn plant to be able to produce more bushels per acre, and what really got my attention, though, there was no lab work of how to produce a plant to be more productive from a nutrition standpoint. It was all just about how can we produce more volume to make more money, because your input costs everything is going increasing every day. We're running out of land because a lot of the land is being turned into malls or sidewalks or anything else. And so I just really started falling in love more with nutrition. My dad always knew that if we had steers on wheat pasture, we had to have the right magnesium blocks. We had to have all these things. So I guess in my mind at 20 year old I'm thinking, how come we don't pay that much importance on what we put in our body from the macronutrients, your micronutrients, those type things. And so just learning that, how many minerals there is in the soil, what produces a healthy plant, it just really got my attention of why don't we put this much focus on what goes in our body and pay attention to how much vitamin K we're getting in our meals, how much calcium we're getting in our diet, how much vitamin D we're getting, all those different things that I just fell in love with it at early age and said this is what I'm going to choose. I'm going to choose to number one, take care of my body the correct way, but number two, educate others in the power of nutrition.

 

Todd Arkell  03:48

Absolutely, I mean, it's, it's amazing to me. My wife's a holistic nutritionist, so there's, there's definitely, you know, we talk about ingredients all the time, and how things are changed, and everybody's talking about, oh, you know, people are more.. there's more obesity, there's more disease, and it all seems to stem.. I call it, you know, Franken Foods. I think a lot of people call that, you know, people eating stuff that's so processed, or so many changes that are on there, right? And not necessarily fueling with the right stuff. I think it's a big epidemic, and I don't know, I don't know how we change it. I think we try to educate, and this is maybe even part of the show, educate people. If you get a few people at a time, and they keep sharing the message.

 

Jacob Fowler  04:32

I was telling a friend of this 15 years ago, I said good nutrition makes sense, it just don't make a lot of money, you know? Correct, you know it's just the way it is. I mean, you know, they're not making Doritos in the lab based on how much good nutrition we can get out of them. They're trying to figure out what chemicals to add that way they can sell more bags that you cannot quit eating those chips.

 

Todd Arkell  04:57

No, and if you just walk down the cereal aisle and. Your local grocery store, you just.. it's a.. it's a head shaker, no, no question. And I mean, I grew up eating cereal, but there wasn't.. it was like puffed wheat, not, you know, occasionally there.. you know, there was some Frosted Flakes, I think, started coming.. stuff like that, right? To get you hooked on it.. I mean, I think I was definitely hooked as a kid as a big bowl of Captain Crunch, and watch some Saturday morning cartoons, but yeah, they certainly started that, started that early for, for a lot of people, and they've refined it.

 

Jacob Fowler  05:27

Absolutely,

 

Todd Arkell  05:28

you got two athletes at home. What's a nutrition belief that maybe you held confidently before you were a dad that your own kids kind of blew apart? It maybe wasn't, they changed your belief that ever happened, or did you help kind of maybe mold them?

 

Jacob Fowler  05:45

I definitely made a big influence on my son's life. My oldest son, he's going to be playing like your son, d1 J J Co in Texas, pretty good athlete. My youngest is a lacrosse player and football player. For me, I think the biggest mistake that I made early is, and one of the things I'm very conscious of now, talking to parents, is I probably didn't emphasize the need for carbs as much as, as I did, or should have been doing. You know, we are so get so much information about the power of protein, right? It's one of the most important pieces to the puzzle. Protein builds muscle, helps muscle recover. But what a lot of people don't know is if you don't have enough carbs to fill the glycogen tank and your body is going into a lift or a heavy strenuous practice and you don't have enough carbs, your body will pull protein out of the muscle and use it as an energy source, and that's called gluconeogenesis. So, when my boys was around 12 or 13, that's something that I really made a quick adjustment, and I could watch it by their face, Todd, in a lacrosse game, or a baseball game, or lift, or speed streak training, I could watch them kind of fade out. I knew their blood sugars getting low. I knew that they was running out of carbs. So that's probably one of the biggest things, because us as adults, you and I can control those feelings, you know. But when you're 13 year old and you just got through burning 340 calories and you're, you've got a smaller base than you and I, that would probably be the one thing that I've made an adjustment with, of growing up. My boys is 1213, recognizing that they need a lot more carbs than what I do, and sometimes at their age now, they'll probably need 125 grams of carbs just for brain function a day.

 

Todd Arkell  07:39

Talking about that a little bit later, too, about just, you know, I think people underestimate the amount of calories they're putting in, but we'll dive into that soon. But before we talk food, I want to get a sense from you, like, what do you, what do you define as a mental approach? Where does, where does the head game actually start in an athlete's day?

 

Jacob Fowler  07:59

I'm big on talking to my athletes about a routine, and I'll tell them, Todd, I'll say, "Hey, this plan is going to change you physically. Every 15 pounds you gain, it can add up to five to seven mile per hour to your baseball swing, which means the baseball can travel 25 to 30 feet further. I said, "But in my 27 years experience of doing this, one thing I will tell you is the key of getting into the routine. It unlocks the full potential mentally, and the way I kind of explain it to him, Todd, as I say, okay, if you get up every morning and your first promise was to use the bathroom and weigh, then your next one was to drink your supplements to get ready for your lift, and then you're going to do your pre-lift, then you're going straight to the gym, then you're coming back and eating your breakfast, and then you're doing your snack a couple hours later, then you're doing your lunch, then you're doing your next snack, maybe it's the next baseball practice or hitting lesson, or whatever, then you're doing your dinner, then you're drinking your nighttime smoothie. The way that this works is your brain, when you make a promise to yourself daily, and you honor that word, your brain is a muscle as well. You strengthen that brain, and literally you are looking at anything you want to accomplish, and the mind says, I can do that. The reason I know I can do that is you're promising me every day you're doing these little things, and you're honoring that word. So, if you want to go beat that senior out, and I'm a freshman coming into high school baseball, I can do that. If you want to go compete at a d1 JUCO, like your son's about to be, and be the superstar in that conference, I can do that. So, I think the I don't think I know the power of a routine is unlocks the full potential in that confidence increases like crazy and you don't look at anything as as something that you cannot accomplish,

 

Todd Arkell  09:55

yeah, I mean it really comes down to having having some discipline, so discipline. Around food, I think it certainly can help with your mental toughness. I agree with you on that. So, which comes first, the discipline, you know, the discipline around the food, or do you have that more mental acuity to kind of create the discipline around the food?

 

Jacob Fowler  10:15

I think number one, it's learning how to choose food for purpose. If you and I are about to take the mound, and we're about to be a pitching, did we choose food for a purpose with a plan? Did we eat some good carbs and pro lean proteins about three and a half hours before to fuel up? Did we avoid the fats because fats take five to six hours to digest, we don't want our body trying to digest food right before we go on to the mound. Did we also make a good choice, maybe about 30 minutes before topping off our glycogen tank with a couple of oranges and maybe a rice crispy or rice cake or something like that, did we stay hydrated starting that morning with good water and good electrolytes, right before we took the mound? And I think that's the biggest thing is when I step on that mound now, because I chose these foods with a purpose. I didn't swing by a Whataburger and grab a Whataburger and just eat it and down it, and then grab a Snickers. When I got to the game, I chose food with a purpose. Then I'm standing on that mountain, Todd, and I feel sharp, man. I'm seeing everything, just like I mean, I can see the expression on that batter's face. He's he's tweaking his eyes, thinking I'm trying to strain to see if he's going to throw me a curve ball or fastball, I mean, you just, you're dialed in because you chose food with purpose.

 

Todd Arkell  11:47

Yep. No, I love it. I love it. And good shout out, Whataburger. Love the Whataburger. For those of you who never been to Texas, I like Whataburger. I, if I stood up, you'd see that I actually have eaten a few Whataburgers in my day. There's no question about it. So, I mean, that's the thing, is I think you know, like I even just think of the journey with my own son, where he was like, ah, I'm eating, I'm eating so much, I'm eating so much, I can't gain weight, and I mean, he's gaining weight, but he wasn't gaining a lot. I think his biggest, his biggest challenge was not counting stuff coming in, that was number one, but he was also not only playing baseball, and he's got baseball activities like four times a week, he was playing hockey, and he was also on the ice five times a week, so there, there was probably no capability he could have eaten enough to actually even, you know what I mean, because he was just burning it off so much energy, so because he was so busy, he was sort of mostly maintaining and not seeing big gains, and so he, he actually got sick last fall and lost like 15 pounds, he couldn't eat, and over a period of two weeks, and he was, he was down like really, really low, like under 160 pounds, right, so because he had been like about 185 188 and then you know the season takes a little toll on you, you lose some, whatever, so he's all down and he kind of finished through the fall, you know, at a lighter weight, and then he made the commitment to, we said, okay, you know, you're going to count what you're putting in, and here it is, and kind of put together a chart. Here's how you can. This is 2000 calorie breakfast. I mean, I just watched them this morning with four eggs, four sausages. I don't know what else was going in there, but he's like he's fueling right, like, and he went from 156 pounds to 189 pounds in about four months in the gym four days a week, and actually eating 4000 you know, 30 504,000 calories a day, right? So you know it can happen. So it's like, how do you flip that internal story with athletes to really get them to focus on fueling as part of their identity, and it's not a punishment, you know. There are some people, I can't eat that much, but it's true you can if you just plan it out. So, how do you kind of work through that with your, with your athletes?

 

Jacob Fowler  14:09

Well, I mean, I just number one, I start with how bad do we want this, and what, what purpose are we trying to gain this weight? You know, I mean, like my son last year taught as a junior, we played a big six A school in Texas, and he hit 400 and hit really good, but didn't hit any home runs, and as a lefty power hitter, he knew that he didn't hit home runs, so this year we went in, went to 205 and hit a lot of home runs, and that was our purpose, so I tried to figure out, you know, from the athlete I'm working with, I work with a lot of hockey players in Canada, and I say, what are we trying to do here? Well, I want to play, you know, college baseball. Okay, what is the average weight of a college outfielder, you know, in college playing 200 pounds? Okay, that's our go. Okay, what are we right now? One six. 50, okay. Now, let's let me look at all of your schedule. Everyone says what you just said a few minutes ago. I just eat all the time, but I can't gain weight. Well, let's, let's just play a simple bath game. Tell me, how many days a week you're working out, how many practices, or you're playing hockey as well. Okay, now you gave me all that information. Let me do the math. You're burning 3500 calories a day, okay. You're burning 3500 calories a day. How long have you been the weight that you are? Well, I weigh 160 right now. I've been hovering between 162 and 158 for last several months. Well, if you're burning 3500 calories a day and you are staying at the same weight. Guess how many calories a day you're eating?

 

Todd Arkell  15:44

3500

 

Jacob Fowler  15:45

3500 I know you say you're eating all the time, but you're eating 3500 calories. The way I know that is your weight is not getting less and it's not getting more. So, in order for me to help you gain one pound a week, I need to have you eat 500 calories more a day than what you're burning, so at least 4000 calories a day. If I want you to gain two pounds a week, then I need to have you eat 1000 calories more a day, 4500 calories a day. So that's where I would start. Him, two pounds a week times 10 weeks, and 10 weeks we can gain 20 pounds, and then I go in to help them figure out exactly what does macros need to breathe. I usually start my proteins at 1.25 gram per body weight, then I go straight to my fats, depending on the age of the athlete. Older age, I'll do 25% of the calories coming from fats. Younger athlete I do 30% because I want to have good healthy hormones, and then the rest of my calories that I need to complete that 4500 is going to be with carbs, so I've got to figure out how. Why are we doing this? And I love talking to them about the stats of physics, you know, like I told you a few minutes ago, every five to seven mile per hour means the ball is going to travel 25 to 30 feet further, so I like asking that athlete, I'm like, How many baseballs did you hit up against the wall this year? You know, how many doubles did you hit? There they'll tell me, and I'll say, Okay, that's eight, okay, that would have been eight home runs, and they're like, Oh, and then, of course, I thought to them about a champion's mindset, when we get up the next morning, we're not looking at that breakfast and say, oh gosh, I gotta eat this breakfast. We're looking at this breakfast and say, thank you, God, and get an opportunity to eat this breakfast to get bigger, faster, and stronger. So, it's.. it's everything is this is why I'm doing this. I'm not.. I'm not punishing myself and having to eat 1200 calories for breakfast because I don't like myself, you know. I'm not eating again two hours later, because I don't. I have a purpose, and I understand. I've got to train the appetite, just like I have to train any muscle. I train the appetite. First four or five days is difficult. Next week's not that bad. Third week, it's piece of cake.

 

Matt Cundill  18:00

Now, more the mental approach with Todd Arkell.

 

Todd Arkell  18:04

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if anybody's ever looked at TJ Watts and his brother and talk about what they ate, and I've listened to them talk about it, and it is mind blowing, like double breakfast, double dinners, like it was their parents were like, okay, dinner one, dinner two, you know, and they just kind of pack that in there, and they're obviously big, big strong boys, as far as they did it, and I, you're right, at the training, that is, is definitely something, you know, and you mentioned protein too, and it's, it's really funny, because I noticed the craze, not so much here in Canada, but definitely in America, when I'm in a Target or a Walmart, and every end cap says, "Oh, soda now with protein, and this everything is protein chips, and even I love the ones where it's like there's protein already in it, and they're saying now, you know, with extra protein, it's like

 

Jacob Fowler  19:04

extra protein, yeah, you know,

 

Todd Arkell  19:05

and everybody's pushing it, right, and it almost becomes like almost like a supplement thing, right, like, oh, well, I, if I'm eating all this protein, this is really great, but I feel like it's a shortcut, right, like it's always everybody wants the shortcut, so beyond the science, you know what. What does reaching for a shortcut kind of do to an athlete's belief in the work they're putting in?

 

Jacob Fowler  19:28

Reaching for shortcuts is probably the worst thing you can do from a young athlete's perspective. And I'll give you an example, Todd. I've got - I spoke to about 200 baseball players the other night, and I own a sports nutrition company. I produce supplements. Right, one of the parents asked me, should her son start supplements, and he was 14 years old. My question to her was, does he have his nutrition dialed in? She goes, no. And I said, does he drink around 60 to 80 ounces of water at least every day? She goes, no. I was like, does he have a summer plan workout and a schedule to work out and lift weights and hit and strength and conditioning train during the summer? She said no. I said, then no, I wouldn't spend $1 on supplements. And she said I said, because he's got to learn that, that nothing is better than Whole Foods. Number one, number two, he's got to learn, he's got to go into the summer with a plan to work to get better, and if all I did was sell him $100 worth of supplements, he's going to automatically think these supplements are going to make me better, and all I got to do the rest of my life is look for the next best thing. Thus, much as I love to sell people my supplements, I'm not going to do anything other than tell them the truth. And the brain, if you start at 1415, of thinking all I got to do is buy this supplement, I don't have to eat right. I don't have to sleep right. I don't have to work out hard. Then you're going to be most of the time going through your whole life looking for that easy way to cheat your way to play at the level you want to play, and it's not going to happen.

 

Todd Arkell  21:14

I've heard you say, you know, as I do in research, different things, you know, most parents lack clarity, not motivation. So,

 

Jacob Fowler  21:21

absolutely,

 

Todd Arkell  21:22

what? What's what's a common way a well-meaning parent accidentally hands their kids a bad relationship with food?

 

Jacob Fowler  21:30

Since a kid has been little, he's been told, 'Eat one more bite for Mommy. You know, they've done the airplane mode, they've done all these different things, and food is from an athlete standpoint, from five to six to 10. It just.. there's no understanding of why. Do I want to eat this food? You know, it's kind of like I was telling you before, of I start with why are we doing this to get bigger, faster, and stronger. Okay? Why? Because I want to play college baseball or college basketball. Okay, what weight do we need to get to? You know, what do we need to get to? And then, from a parenting perspective, trying to teach them all the things that you think you're trying to do at home to help your athlete gain weight, you're hurting, because all you're doing is telling them, at 14, I told you to eat all of your food. Yeah, but you didn't explain to him why he needs to eat all this food,

 

Todd Arkell  22:25

right?

 

Jacob Fowler  22:26

You know, number two, you bought protein pasta. You should have bought regular pasta. You bought protein pasta because you're trying to lean up, and you just told by Instagram influencer that's what you should do, but you're as a mom, have not done the research yourself, and recognize he's getting 128 grams of carbs a day, and you're just yelling at him because he needs to eat more food, but you're not giving the right food. He needs 550 grams of carbs a day, and he don't need protein pasta, you know. He needs, he needs some biscuits, he needs some good white rice, you know, so from a mom's perspective, we've got to educate ourselves and say, okay, I'm buying groceries based on what they tell me I need to do for leaning out, and then I'm asking little Johnny just to eat more, but I'm not explaining to him why, and I'm not giving him the right foods.

 

Speaker 1  23:17

Yeah,

 

Jacob Fowler  23:17

so just having that clarity,

 

Todd Arkell  23:19

I mean, it goes with just about everything. Are it is talk about our athletes, our kids are watching how we live, not even just how we eat, but how we live, how we treat others, all kinds of other things. I mean, that's obviously it. We're mirroring a lot of that, and I think you know a lot of the kids' mental relationship with food is really mirroring what they see at the dinner table, right? So, yeah, it's like, let's try to put it together, to you know, together. And you're right, like, I mean, we had a joke in my house with my son, as he's bulking up, and I was trying to bulk down, and I was like, let's see who can get to 201st He goes, ah, it's easier to lose weight than it is, and I'm like, he's like, we're both 10 pounds from 200 I'm above and he's below, and you know, but again, you talk about calories in, calories out, you know, people like, well, how did you do it, and I said, well, my wife did my macros for me, and I annoyingly downloaded an app, and I weighed my food, and I, you know, I saw this much, this, and I started to actually realize, and this goes the other way for those trying to put on weight, like I'd grab, like, I don't know, a bowl of almonds, right? Okay, a good snack almonds, they're great, whatever, and I, you know, maybe have those in the afternoon or something, so I weighed them, and I said that's almost my entire daily allowance of fat.

 

Jacob Fowler  24:43

Yeah,

 

Todd Arkell  24:44

that's not enough food for me to do that, right? Like, I mean, as far as where I was trying to do, that's too much fat, and I'm not getting enough volume there, and that's not going to satiate me. So, forget that. I'm not doing that. I'll have something else, maybe I have a whole bunch of celery and care. Or whatever, with a little bit of peanut butter, and you know, I'm way further ahead, but that's all I did. I went from, hey, it's 2500 calories to stay the weight you are, and 1800 calories to lose, and I, you know, lost 40 pounds since last August. You know, it's slow and steady wins the race, right? And I think it's the converse, right, going the other way is like, add in, as you said, the math, add in a little bit, and here you go. So, I mean, but the one thing, the one thing with all this, we talk about it too, it's like I think, I think in some cases youth sports might have a quiet body image problem in kids trying to chase this frame or trying to cut weight or depending on what their sport is, or comparing themselves to somebody else, and you know, how do you coach gains and goals without feeding into insecurities?

 

Jacob Fowler  25:54

Todd, it's.. I didn't know you was going to ask me this question, but that's one of the biggest things that I deal with every day with well, my male athletes, believe it or not, my female athletes. I had one from New Mexico soccer player about two or three months ago that gave me some pushback when I had to explain some things. I had one softball player that gave me a little bit of pushback on the weight thing and what we needed to be at, but my male athletes, that's the biggest struggle. I just got off the phone with a kid from Michigan, that's 215 pounds, and he wants to get down to 190 He's a catcher going into college. I'm like, why do you want to be 190 And he's like, well, I just want to feel better without my shirt on. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We can rip the shirt off every catcher in the MLB, and I don't think we're going to see a six pack. I said, you got other, so for me it's trying to teach them what's healthy. Okay, and a teenage athlete, they need to have at least 13, 14% body fat. If they have a 6% I have this same conversation with the parents daily, they'll call me up and say, "My son can't gain weight, he eats all the time, but he is solid muscle. You ought to see him without his shirt on, he is solid muscle. And they'll say that about three times, and I'm like, "Well, but your son is 130 pounds, he has no body fat to cover up that muscle, and that is not a reward that I want to give you, a man a medal for having a son with solid muscle. We got to get his hormones healthy, and I know your wife can explain this as well. For he has good, healthy hormones to grow to his full potential that God had planned for his life. So that is the number one. So, with my male athletes, I struggle with that a lot, and to me, I just try to spend time educating them and asking them what's more important. Like, I've got a 14 year old I had this discussion with yesterday, I said he's 210 and he's six three, and he wanted to come down a little bit, and I said, what's more important, you being the best baseball player at 14 or being the best baseball player at 17 or 18. He said 17 or 18. I said great, we make the decision based on what's best for your longevity of your health, but I get that all the time with my male athletes. They think they'll look at an Instagram 20-four year old that has 6% body fat, that no one wants to even be around him, because his hormones are shot, and he's like a crazed up cat, and they'll want to look like that instead of be we be okay with their own body and understand the puberty process and how to have good health and longevity.

 

Todd Arkell  28:38

Yeah, I think there's, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of, a lot of stuff that pushes that, you know, I hear a lot of things like the kids, like, oh, should I be taking this peptide or that peptide, and it's going to get me jacked, and all these things, and it's like, I go there again, this goes back to the shortcuts, so what do you do when you know one of your athletes' relationships with food starts looking a little bit less like discipline and more like disordered, right? Like, what are some of the early signs you can watch for, and how do you, how do you help them kind of redirect and point the family and the athlete to get some help around that?

 

Jacob Fowler  29:15

You know, fortunately enough, I've never had a problem with, with any of my athletes in all these years of like eating disorder, anything like that. I've, I have a few athletes from time to time that I notice they're not following the plan as much as they need to, and they're tending to grab more soda pops, fast food, those type things, that's about the only thing that I have, you know, to deal with. I've got a mom and dad that the boy, his body fat got up a little bit, and they was concerned about it again, the same topic that we just got through discussing, and I was scratching my head, like why is he still gaining when I've got him here only at a. 200 calorie surplus, and and he's working out, and he's, we should be more in a body recomp, and then finally I got to digging and asking a lot of questions, and we have a tendency to go to fast food two or three times a day, and we have a tendency to drink a lot of sodas and blue and red drinks, and that's that's probably the only thing that I do, and I just have to sit down with him. He, him, and his mom and dad, we did a Zoom, and I just said, 'Hey, if you want me to tell you the truth as a nutritionist, what's going to help you play college baseball? This is what we got to control, and this is what we got to address. But fortunately, I've not ever had any disorders, eating disorders, or anything like that that we've had to work through, and I think a lot of that taught is we, we try to work with the person and the time that we're trying to accomplish something. It's a practical goal. We're not going to try to, you know, I don't start off with the 14 year old on a two pound gain a week if I don't think that they can do it. We'll start with the 500 calorie surplus, work our way up to 100 to 200 and understand again what is the purpose of this food. How is it going to make me better, and how is it going to make me feel better?

 

Todd Arkell  31:12

So, if a 14 year old freshman in high school could build one nutrition habit this season, what's the key student, what's the keystone habit that pulls the rest along? What would be the starting point?

 

Jacob Fowler  31:24

I would say protein, that 1.25 grams, but then if I say that as a 14 year old, you're going to focus only on protein, and you're going to go into your lifts, and you're not going to get enough fuel, and if you don't have enough carbs before your lift, you're not going to push enough weight, that's a tough one. And then I would say probably the number one thing that I tell my youth athletes is nine hours of sleep a night is probably my most powerful thing. And then I would say I can't give you one, I can say never go into a lift or practice without fuel, which is carbs, and number two, don't forget your protein, and I'm a big person on hitting your smoothie every night to help with your staying in your calorie surplus.

 

Todd Arkell  32:14

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that was kind of funny when think where my son was like, I can't gain weight, and we were talking to a kid who played at University of Michigan, and he said, "Have a milkshake every night before you go to.. like, he was like, just throw some protein powder and scoop a vanilla ice cream, some berries, whatever. He goes, "Put about 1000 calories in that shake, and he goes, "Watch what happens over a short period of time, and it doesn't have to be 1000 but that was kind of just his comment. How he said that, right? Is just

 

Jacob Fowler  32:45

my boys drink about 800 calories shake every night with protein, carbs, and fats. Yep,

 

Todd Arkell  32:50

little bit extra to top, yep. While you're having a nap,

 

Jacob Fowler  32:53

yes, absolutely.

 

Todd Arkell  32:55

What's the.. what's the role of failure here? Like, how do you stop it from being a landslide and becomes an identity, you know. I'm just not disciplined, I can't keep up with this, whatever. Like, how do you kind of coach that into somebody to sort of right that ship?

 

Jacob Fowler  33:09

Number one, we have everybody weigh every morning, so.. and when I see a kid slipping, you know, we usually have a conversation, you know, is he slipping? Is he slipping because he's like, I've got an example of an athlete that was doing really good, been with me about 12 weeks, and then I started looking at his weights. We collaborate on notes, and his weights have just fallen off a little bit. So I reached out to him, and I said, What's going on? And he said, I can't hardly explain it to you over text. Can I call you? And he was really close to his grandpa, and his grandpa was really sick, and was in the hospital. And so, for me, a lot of.. he thought, Todd, I was going to be upset at him. And what I told him is, I said, no, sir, your job is your family right now, and that's the number one thing. And just watching that relief come off of him when I told him I'm not worried about gaining weight, I'm not worried about you, you spend your time with your grandpa, okay? And that weight was just lifted off of him. I've got another athlete, he wasn't hitting his goals, and he had another similar personal matter, and for me to step in and just give him that permission, that like, we'll get back to this, we need to take a couple weeks off, so, so for me it's, I try to do a good job of understanding each athlete, where they are, I tell every one of them, some of them it's going to be harder than what you think. You know, I've got some athletes that they'll gain a half a pound a week for a while, and then a pound, and then a pound and a half, and they keep going. But I'm just like, hey, you're, you're, you're strong enough to go through this, and I'm gonna coach you through every process. I just talked to them about analogies, little analogies. He's like, I'm like, if you can, you do 225 pounds on the bench press right now, and they're like, no, and I'm like, does that mean you can't do it forever or just not today? And they're like, oh, just not today, I'm not perfect, so if we start with 180 then we master that, get it with 185 So I try to be practical with them and say, okay, if this plan is too hard right now, it's going to get easier, and we're just going to add a little bit to it, but we don't fail when we start. We might have bad days, but did we win five out of the seven? Did we win? Did we win three out of the four weeks? And and I don't put pressure on them and make them feel like they failed if they didn't win today. We're going to win tomorrow.

 

Todd Arkell  35:44

If a parent or athlete is listening right now, which I know they are, if they only change one thing at dinner tonight, what's the move?

 

Jacob Fowler  35:54

Double your portions.

 

Todd Arkell  35:55

There you go. Eat up, folks. I tell you, I mean, I do appreciate the discussion, because it is, I think it's such an important thing, at least, you know, not even just for, again, you know, we, we talk about, you know, elite performers and different things like that, and people seeking scholarships and everything else, and I agree with you, it's about kind of a lifelong lifestyle, I've got four kids, the other three usually get upset when I said there's really only one athlete of the four of them. Well, I played sports, right? And I'm like, yeah, you did, but I mean, as far as pursuit of.. and that's that, and that's truly all of them were made, probably strong word, but yeah, they were like, you're gonna play a sport in the summer, in the winter, you're gonna do something that's active, right? Like one of my kids didn't like hockey, but he liked skiing, and he liked curling. Was like, okay, cool, you're gonna do the.. you have to do something to be active, right, to kind of set you down the path in your life that you're not just going to sit around the couch watching Netflix and eating Doritos,

 

Jacob Fowler  36:57

exactly

 

Todd Arkell  36:59

right. So that you've got to kind of build, build that in there, so I think it's, I think it's super important, and it's, you know, I know we talk always on the level of more on the on the athlete perspective, but it definitely makes, makes for some good habits going, going to the, to the long form of it, that's that's for sure.

 

Jacob Fowler  37:16

Absolutely,

 

Todd Arkell  37:17

love the conversation, Jeremy. I appreciate your time, and appreciate you, you taking the time. Hopefully, we'll see each other in Texas sometime next year. Todd,

 

Speaker 1  37:26

I bet, I bet we, I bet we end up seeing that children

 

Jacob Fowler  37:29

on the baseball field next fall. Yeah,

 

Todd Arkell  37:31

I would, I would imagine so. Thank you, and for those listening, all of the information to contact Jeremy over over socials and all that other stuff will be in the show notes. Thanks, appreciate your time.

 

Matt Cundill  37:46

Thanks for listening. For more including resources and more about the show, go to The Mental approach.com

 

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  37:54

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