Biohacking For Bodybuilders

Before biohacking there was a group of people who looked for faster ways to maximize the results they hoped for. Much like biohackers, bodybuilders set out on a quest for getting more out of their efforts. Bodybuilders asked the question: How can we build more muscle and burn fat faster?

Prioritizing Recovery

The original biohacking bodybuilder set out to find the best workout methods for building muscle. They learned all they could about nutritional strategies to increase the metabolism in order to lose weight. We have bodybuilders to thank for many of the now confirmed facts about resistance training and weight loss.

Unfortunately, aside from an understanding of how macronutrients play a role in recovery, bodybuilders didn’t go as far as they could have in helping to speed up the recovery process. Being able to train a muscle more frequently is perhaps the greatest advantage one can have if they hope to maximize their bodybuilding efforts.

The Emergence of Biohacking

Built off the backs of bodybuilders came a group of people interested in maximizing learning and performance. While there was certainly a wellness aspect to the emerging research and real-world data, the focus was on being better in the moment. Later, came the experimentation on how to increase longevity and decrease one’s biological age.

There was an interesting side benefit to the understanding biohackers were gaining in human performance. A lot of what they were experimenting with was leading to muscle growth and fat loss. This article will discuss some of what we have learned in biohacking that can have a direct impact on a bodybuilder’s muscle building and fat loss program.

Controlling the Fight or Flight System

The high demanding and fast paced world we live in is a disturbance to our natural heart rate variability. Prehistorically, we were in a calm and peaceful state unless we were actively pursuing our need to eat or to prevent from being killed.

Now, we can activate our fight-or-flight system with a glance at our phone, foot on the pedal, or disagreement with another. This constantly heightened state makes us sympathetic (fight of flight) when we don’t need it. Leaving us sympathetically drained when it comes time to train.

Heart Rate Variability

Heart rate variability can tell us If we are in a recovery promoting or endorphin activating state. If we are in an endorphin activating state, we are creating a hormone release that can prevent muscle tissue recovery and potential growth.

Thanks to recent technology, we now have tools available to us that can accurately monitor our heart rate variability. If we take the time to track how our heart rate fluctuates, we can identify times where we are adding unnecessary stress to our system. Once we have that information we can adjust our lifestyle accordingly.

Who’s in charge?

During Training: The sympathetic nervous system is appropriately used to help us lift heavy weights, sustain energy, and keep us focused on the task at hand.

Non-Training: parasympathetic nervous system helps us maintain control of our mind and body while minimizing unnecessary energy expenditure.

The bodybuilder should do everything possible to maintain a parasympathetic state when not exercising. This does not mean you should be lazy in an effort to recover. It means performing tasks that do not cause an emotional override of our system. Avoiding tasks that cause our heart rate and blood pressure to increase unnecessarily.

Taking Time for Breathwork

We have all heard of the benefits associated with meditation. While this term works for some, others respond better to the term breathwork. Specifically associated with heart rate variability, breathwork teaches us to control our heart rate by controlling our breath.

There are many tools for breathwork. The Polar SmartWatch, for example, has a specific function called Serene which helps you control your breath by providing a vibration during one portion of the breath. It then provides a breakdown of the zones your heart rate was in at different points of the breathwork practice.

Improving Sleep Quality

Sleep is one of the most popular topics for biohackers. For the bodybuilder, sleep is perhaps the most important factor aside from the workout and nutrition program. For years magazines hav suggested that you need more sleep. Biohackers figured out that more sleep wasn’t going to be the solution. It is the quality of sleep that is the most important.

There are many strategies that biohackers use to improve their sleep quality. Here are five that you can put into place right away.

Optimizing Digestion and Absorption

Increasing the amino acids and providing the glycogen needed to replenish a muscle does not mean these nutrients efficiently reach the cells. Biohacking your nutrient uptake is a way to get the most out of your nutrition. Rather than consuming more, it is better to get more out of the calories you already consume.

Improving Gut Flora

By now it is understood that we need good bacteria and yes, a probiotic can be a good biohacking supplement. However, consuming a probiotic supplement is just one way to increase good bacteria in our body.

Bodybuilders are known for the chicken, brown rice, and broccoli meal. Three items that are fully cooked for easy consumption. Often these foods are meal prepped and reheated a second time before being eaten.

The problem with fully cooked meals is that it reduces the potential good bacteria that lives in the foods we eat. The good news is that we still get the prebiotic benefits when we eat cooked foods. Prebiotics are plant fibers that promote our own body’s development of good bacteria.

If your goal is to maximize muscle growth, aim for eating approximately 50% of your foods in raw form. Also, consider including probiotic rich but lower sugar foods into your meal plan. Fermented foods and carefully chosen yogurts contain natural probiotics that will help provide the right environment for optimal digestion.

Increase Protein Synthesis With Digestive Enzymes

If you have used a protein supplement, you have probably seen the ingredients protease and bromelain on the “other ingredients” portion of the label. Supplement companies add these digestive enzymes to protein supplements in order to increase protein synthesis.

While there are natural enzymes in both cooked and raw foods, it may be beneficial to supplement whole food meals with digestive enzymes. Since the bodybuilding diet requires more protein than the average plan, supplementing may help break down and use nutrients more efficiently.

Increasing Protein Synthesis With Fasting

A common gym phrase is that you need to eat to grow. This is certainly true but the continual feeding can take a toll on our digestive system. Many have a fear that if they stop eating consistently every three hours, they will lose their hard earned size. This thought, however, may cause one to miss out on potential gains. There may be a benefit to letting the digestive system take a break. 

By allowing your digestive system to rest you can increase protein synthesis and restore digestive function. Bodybuilders have experienced this with the anabolic rebound that occurs post contest. The deprivation of calories followed by an influx of protein, carbohydrates, and fats leads to significant size and strength increases.

Going too far with fasting may lead to muscle loss, so to see the benefits stick with a 12-24 hour period of intermittent fasting. This is enough time for the system to rest without causing atrophy to the muscle and a decrease in protein synthesis.

Increasing Vasodilation

Where the blood flows, the muscle grows. Consuming the right amount of macronutrients and increasing digestibility is a sound foundation for improving muscle recovery. However, to maximize muscle growth we need to ensure that blood is regularly flowing throughout the muscular system.

As you learned when we talked about heart rate variability, we are sympathetically dominant. Being in a constant state of fight or flight can lead to vasoconstriction. In order to combat this there are things we can do to promote vasodilation. Here are a few:

• Regular movement of the body and limbs with low-intensity
• Breathwork sessions for oxygenation (more info to come)
• Eat foods or supplements that promote blood flow

If you wear a smartwatch you most likely have a setting that says it is “time to move.” Blood flow is the primary reason for this notification. The bodybuilder should move regularly to bring nutrients into the muscles that stimulate recovery.

Hydrating Muscle Cells

For a muscle to function properly, it needs to be continuously hydrated. Systemic (whole body) dehydration begins by not consuming enough direct water sources. Cellular dehydration can occur when the water we consume does not efficiently reach our cells, including the muscles.

Switching to Alkaline Water

You will find grocery store shelves lined with different options for alkaline water. Often these bottled options are 4x what a traditional bottle of water costs.

Besides the wild claims associated with alkaline water, there is perhaps a more assured benefit in its ability to increase cellular hydration. Getting water to the cells is how we hydrate our muscles and mitochondria.

If you want to spend 4x on your water, then go for it. But you don’t have to spend your paycheck on bottled water to improve cellular hydration. Here are a few other options.

1. Visit your local water store and buy 5-gallons of alkaline water at a time.

2. Purchase high quality mineral rich spring water.

3. Purchase an alkaline water filter for your home

4. Add Himalayan salt or another broad mineral rich source to your water.

Water Rich Foods

There is a second benefit to consuming half of our food choices from raw sources. In its raw form, there is more water kept in a food. These water rich foods can help deliver the readily available micronutrients into needed areas of the body.

It may not be a good idea to give up completely on cooked foods. There is a benefit to cooking foods for making particular phytonutrients more readily available. This is where balance is best.

Make sure you include water rich foods such as celery, grapefruit, and cucumbers into your diet. Certain vegetables such as cucumber contain EZ water which have cellular mitochondrial benefits.

Strengthening the Mitochondria

Strong mitochondria are better able to increase mitochondrial protein synthesis. Increased mitochondrial synthesis may lead to greater muscle hypertrophy (growth).

The good news is that you are already building up your mitochondria by strength training. However, if our goal is maximum gains and low body fat levels, then we need to further care for our mitochondria.

There are many low-cost and expensive ways to help improve mitochondrial function. We cannot cover all of them here but will discuss the ones that are easy to execute and accessible by many.

Cold Plunge or Cold Showers

Cold temperature exposure is a quick way to wake yourself up. It is also a way to improve mitochondrial health. But if you want the full benefits of cold exposure, we should do it along with an exercise program. Good thing us bodybuilders already have that part covered!

Vibration Plates and Rebounders

Go to an upscale health club and you will find a strange-looking piece of equipment with dust settled into every nook and cranny. Even though often neglected, the vibration plate machine can have powerful effects on the mitochondria, especially for those suffering from mitochondrial disease. Important for bodybuilders, it can also help stimulate white adipose (fat) tissue metabolism. Vibration plate exercising is an effortless way to stimulate your mitochondria and burn a little bit more fat.

How to Biohack Your Bodybuilding Program

Trying to incorporate these biohacks into your program will most likely lead to a failure to execute. A better strategy is to include one or two biohacks at a time until you have concretely created the habit. Once the hack flows with your routine, add the next strategy.

It is OK if some of these biohacks do not work out for you. There are plenty to choose from and perhaps more than we can realistically fit into our lives. Just like our training, the joy is in the process more so than the destination.