CU Nutrition Specialist Helps Buffs Get Most From Their Fuel
April 25, 2017 | Football, General, Neill Woelk, Performance Nutrition
BOULDER — Remember when your mom told you to eat your vegetables?
Your mom was right on the money. Those vegetables are a very necessary building block in the development of healthy bodies. You should have listened.
Colorado athletic department lead dietitian Laura Anderson has a similar message for Buffs student-athletes — although Anderson's message is quite likely a little less subtle than your mom's.
"You can't out-train a crappy diet."
In other words, all the time in the world in the weight room isn't going to fix a body fueled by candy, soda pop and frozen pizza.
It's Anderson's job to make sure the Buffs understand this message — and her means of motivation involve far more than your mom limiting your Playstation time.
Anderson can actually have an influence on an athlete's playing time.
When athletes follow her suggestions and guidelines, they have a much better chance of seeing their efforts in the weight room pay off in terms of becoming bigger, faster and stronger. When those kinds of gains are realized, the next step is logical: more playing time and better performance.
It's a simple equation — and as Anderson continues to reap results working closely with the CU strength and conditioning staff, more and more Buffs are paying closer attention.
"Nutrition and the weight room go hand in hand," Anderson said recently. "You could have a kid working his tail off out there (she points to the weight room just outside her office), but if his nutrition isn't so good, he's not going to make the gains he needs to make. You can't out-train a crappy diet."
Anderson just finished her end-of-season composition assessment of 97 football players currently on CU's team roster. In simple terms, she takes measurements of adipose (fatty) tissue at seven key points on the body. By adding those results, she is able to calculate a score — the "sum of seven" — and can then see if an athlete is within his or her specific high-performance range.
That number, of course, varies dramatically depending upon the sport, and can also vary significantly within the sport.
For example, a cross country runner's or a sprinter's high-performance range is 30 to 45. The range for wide receivers and defensive backs is 40 to 65. For offensive or defensive linemen, it's 100 to 135. (For the "normal" male individual age 16 to 29, the health range is 35 to 100.)
"Wide receivers are obviously on the very lean side of the house in football," Anderson said. "Forty is a very lean individual. Sixty-five is still lean, but could he perform a little better if he was carrying a little bit less dead weight? Those are the things we work on."
But the bottom line is the same for every athlete: Anderson's aim is to improve their performance by ensuring the fuel they take in provides the best possible results.
Anderson performs compositional testing on football players three times a year: once in July before the season begins, then a postseason assessment, then an offseason assessment (late April/early May). That offseason test is also now aligned with the end-of-spring strength and conditioning testing, which offers the perfect opportunity to show players how their improved nutrition helps improve their weight room numbers.
This year, Anderson said, the numbers for the football team were the best she's seen in three years of conducting the tests.
Of course, telling the players she can make a difference in their performance is one thing. But when they are able to see the difference — and their teammates see it as well — it goes a long way in spreading the message.
Her latest example? Buffs quarterback Steven Montez, who has made tremendous strides both in his body composition and his weight room performance over the last six months. The redshirt sophomore has gone from being "fat and out of shape" (his words) when he made his starting debut last fall against Oregon to now being in the best shape of his life. He has lost weight, dropped his "sum of seven" number dramatically and has become significantly stronger and faster.
"We ganged up on him," Anderson said with a laugh. "It was me and (strength coaches) Drew (Wilson) and Justin (Geyer). He was defensive at first, but then he realized what he had to do."
What he had to do was adjust his fuel intake. No more soft drinks and frozen pizza. Instead, fresh, healthy foods that would help him realize gains in the weight room — not hinder that work.
Montez and Anderson got together and wrote out a grocery list. A CU staffer even accompanied Montez on a trip to the grocery store and they talked about what he would do with the food he bought. They incorporated healthy snacks into his diet, and Montez even began sending Anderson pictures of his grocery cart from the store.
"He really took ownership," Anderson said. "And then he started seeing results."
Now, Anderson said, Montez is "compositionally a completely different athlete. He wasn't even close to being in that high performance range, even in the preseason, and now he's well within the high performance range. He's had a significant fat loss and tremendous amount of muscle gain over the course of two years."
But the best part, Anderson said, may be yet to come in Montez's case.
"What's fun is that he's at a point that he's so much more fit he can work even harder," she said. "He's going to have even more muscle tissue gain and it will be interesting to see where he can continue to go from here."
Anderson has produced similar results for a number of CU athletes in a variety of sports. She works closely with coaches, particularly in instances when they tell her they want a certain player at a certain weight — and sometimes, it means adding weight, as is often the case with a young offensive or defensive lineman.
In the latter cases, she has to make sure the weight gain is the right kind — not just dead weight that does little more than slow a player down.
"Let's say a kid comes in at 260 and they want him at 300 at the start of the season — something that's not completely realistic with regards to keeping that individual really healthy," Anderson said. "The athlete hears, 'I need to gain, gain gain. They want me at this weight.'
"I want them there, too — but at the same time, I want that weight to be as much muscle tissue as we can possibly produce. That's going to be determined by genetics, how hard they're able to work out and how much they're willing to commit to their nutrition at minimizing that amount of adipose tissue that they accumulate in the process of gaining that mass."
In other words, it's a combination of factors, and a process that can't necessarily be put on fast forward.
"If they come in and they're in the high performance range and they need to start gaining, they might be at a good point to do so but we have to be careful," Andersons said. "If they start gaining too fast, they'll go outside of that range. That's a good time to pump the brakes and allow that person to optimize that composition at 280 pounds rather than pushing to 300. If they all of a sudden put on 20 pounds of fat, is that going to be beneficial for performance? It's just dead weight they have to move. It sometimes depends on what that person's role is within football."
Another of her success stories has been offensive lineman Aaron Haigler, who has added 30 pounds to his frame since arriving as a freshman — with the majority of that being muscle tissue. Haigler actually has a leaner upper body, but has gained weight and become significantly stronger in the process.
"He's come ridiculously far," Anderson said. "He's gained a tremendous amount of muscle tissue."
With other sports, such as cross country and track, Anderson can find herself working the opposite end of the spectrum. She sees some cross country athletes as often as every six to eight weeks.
"With some of them, we want to make sure that we're not too lean for too long," she said. "If we're too lean for too long, we end up with injuries or it really impacts their immune systems. Their range is much tighter and it's much more impactful for performance. You could have a 32 body comp but it doesn't matter if you can't compete because you are sick all the time or have stress fractures."
Anderson came to CU from the U.S. Army's 10th Group Special Forces in Colorado Springs, where she was the performance dietitian for the Tactical Human Optimization, Rapid Rehabilitation & Recovery Program for just under four years (November 2010-August 2014). Among her many responsibilities was to provide individual and group performance nutrition counseling to enhance the health and performance of active Special Forces tactical athletes. That included assisting with menu development and educational material for both food service staff and customers, and directing nutritional care activities for active duty soldiers, including those with complex medical and nutritional needs. In 2012, she received the Commander's Award For Civilian Service 10th Special Forces.
Prior to that, she worked for approximately three years as a sport dietitian with the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Now, she's helping the Buffs be the best they can be. Her job, she said, is like that of any other coach: do everything in her power to help athletes improve, then hope they heed her advice.
"I'm a food coach," she said. "But like any other coach, whether that individual actually applies what you are teaching is up to that athlete."
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
