A vegan strength coach speaks:
From
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1587252
A Dose of Remedios
An Interview with NSCA Coach of the Year,
Robert Dos Remedios
by Alwyn CosgroveRobert Dos Remedios is the current NSCA Strength Coach of the Year. When the biggest strength and conditioning organization in the world says that someone is the best they’ve got, we should listen.
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T-Nation: What are your thoughts on nutrition? Also, as a vegan yourself, any thoughts on vegan athletes?
Dos: I’m about as old-school as they come when it comes to nutritional recommendations. For mass gain, eat! You have to have a calorie surplus if you want to gain mass. Also, you need to train your behind off! From my experience, most folks just don’t understand what training hard really means.
For fat loss, I’m a big proponent of interval-style training. Whether it’s running on a treadmill or spinning in a cycle class, you really need to get out of your traditional aerobic state when training. It just makes so much more sense to train this way as it’s much more calorically challenging.
As for vegan athletes, I only had a couple in my career and both were female. I have some solid insight into this though since I’ve been a vegan for over 18 years. For me, it’s all about getting enough calories from varied food sources. Like any athlete, a vegan athlete should be eating all day long: snacking on fruits and vegetables, Clif bars, trail mix, etc. Soy or other vegetable protein shakes should become a part of your performance life.
I’ve had no problem maintaining muscle mass and strength and power on a vegan diet. While I’m no longer an athlete, I do like to think that I train pretty hard every day. A typical day for me looks something like this: bowl of oatmeal and a banana for breakfast, post-workout soy protein shake, Clif bar, two soy meat sandwiches and one-fourth cup of nuts for lunch, couple of pieces of fruit, huge salad with at least two to three types of beans, couple of cups of pasta with marinara sauce, fruit, pea-rice protein shake for dessert.
Guess what, guys? You can get jacked and strong as hell without ever eating a single animal product,
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Don’t believe the hype, boys. It’s always funny as hell when some 140 pound “bodybuilder” is concerned with eating anything that might have traces of soy in it because he doesn’t want it to negatively affect his Testosterone levels. Uh, sorry pal, but you got many other problems to worry about.
I’ve carried around 245 pounds with approximately 11-12% body fat for many, many years now with no ill effects. If you guys saw how much soy I eat, well, let’s just say that I should be Roberta by now.
