Seasonal Training & Nutrition
Applying ancestral lifestyle principles to diet & training
Check the video out below for a more in depth dive into this topic. Pretty basic overview about how to integrate natural biological rhythmns for your training and nutrition to influence body composition.
Our biology has been wired through thousands of years to eat a certain way based on our geography, but also by season. Fresh fruit was not abundant every day until only recently when grocery stores became commercially available.
It would only make sense that our genetics are at least some what linked to the foods we eat and to the point in the season we eat them. The science on ancestral diets and how we can apply them to humans is pretty primitive. Only recently have scientists more widely accepted the idea that evolution isn’t a slow process. Michael Rose (and others) argue against the Darwinian idea of slow evolution. Evolution doesn’t take tens of thousands, thousands, or maybe even hundreds of years. It can act more rapidly than we previously assumed.
Michael Rose was able to quantify the rate of evolution with some fruit flies from the back of a barn in Massachusetts and some math. Another interesting tid bit is that younger populations are also more adaptable to evolution than older ones. This can be attributed to the principle of Hamilton's Force of Natural Selection (HFNS). HFNS can be described as the force of natural selection is strong early in life (before reproduction) and weakens with age.
“If you change the timing of the force of natural selection, if you change when reproduction starts you can make aging evolve… If natural selection pays attention to the problem it can do anything it wants with aging including producing immortal non aging organisms. Which it does, frequently.“
Michael Rose
In the I posted I discussed eating a diet that resembles your culture. If you’re eastern European this means eating more foods from this region. This seems logical but one thing Michael Rose adds to this idea is the fact that dietary recommendations need to consider more than just geography and genetics but also age. An “organic agricultural diet” can be good for younger populations, but a more “Paleo diet” could be more beneficial for older populations.
Applying Seasonality To Training
The simple way to apply these principles would be to focus on adding muscle mass in colder months and leaning out in winter months. Staying lean year round seems cool, but let’s be real, it’s unrealistic for most people. It also isn’t necessarily healthy. Humans for thousands of years would get heavier in colder months and drop weight in warmer months as they ramped their activity back up.
It only makes sense to ride the wave of your seasonal rhythmn. Here’s a rough outline of what I follow throughout the year.
January - April: Hypertrophy / Strength
April - May: GPP
May - September: Conditioning, Endurance
September - December: Strength / Hypertrophy
Keep in my, my training is conjugate at times so I’ll train all qualities simultaneously. However, I’ll emphasize one quality when doing this. So although I lift heavy and do cardio all year round, there are periods in the year where a larger percentage of my training is heavier. Other parts of the year there is more cardio. I recommend doing cardio and strength at all times, but rotate how you emphasize each quality.
This is just how I organize things. There are many ways to set a similar system up for yourself and it largely depends on your goals. Just keep in mind the main principles: gain strength and size in colder months, get conditioned and lean in warmer months. Your body will thank you for the variety and reward you with greater gains in the future if you do it correctly.
Below I linked the video by Michael Rose which is really fascinating.
Experimental Evolution by Michael Rose