PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. --
The Marine Corps is known for being a progressive culture of physical fitness.
However, there is often more to becoming physically fit than simply exercising often.
With the help of proper diet and a deeper understanding of how their muscles work, Marines and sailors can more easily attain their fitness goals.
“It’s amazing how much diet affects physical ability,” said Lenora Steele, a Parris Island Semper Fit fitness trainer. “It’s clichéd, but you really are what you eat.”
Some of the food basics – eating fruits and vegetables, limiting fatty foods and controlling portion size – are always good ideas when adjusting diet to meet fitness goals, Steele said.
“It doesn’t matter what your goals are, you have to eat right,” she added.
Along with the conventional wisdom of staying away from junk food, Steele stressed that staying consistent with diet choices is the only way to see perm-
anent results.
“The trick to good nutrition is with every meal, there needs to be a good carbohydrate, a good fat and protein,” she said. “Good carbs, like those from whole grains or fruits, help regulate blood sugar, which helps keep your energy steady throughout the day. Bad carbs create sugar spikes, which only make you tired.”
The bad types are known as simple carbohydrates, named so because their chemical makeup is broken down into glucose very quickly, creating a sudden spike in energy that quickly fades.
Complex carbohydrates are broken down much slower, and create a steadier, easier-to-process stream of glucose to the blood. That type of slow-burning energy is ideal for any type of workout – especially when dealing with mus-
cular conditioning.
“You can come to the gym tired, and it’s added stress on the body,” Steele said. “Exhaustion and fatigue have a tremendous effect on the body.”
Steele said that both the diet and workout regimen of a person looking to increase upper body strength needs to be consistent.
“Just like you can’t work out one day a week and expect results, you can’t just eat the right foods on some days,” she said. “It takes a lifestyle change to effect real results.”
Luckily, the Marine Corps provides an opportunity for a lifestyle change.
The longer you’re in the Marine Corps, the stronger you have to get, said Gunnery Sgt. Wayne Hairston, the Support Battalion company gunnery sergeant.
“If you’re weak in something, the Marine Corps will make you strong in it,” he said. “As long as you stick with it and stay dedicated, you can get better.”
The reason consistency is so important in improving physical fitness is because of what happens to the muscles during and
after exercise.
Charles Keith is the biology department chair and professor of biology at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. According to him, the processes involved in something as simple as pull-ups are both varied
and complex.
There are three types of muscle fibers, white muscle or slow twitch fibers, red muscle or fast twitch fibers and fast fatigable resistance fibers, which are more of the intermediate type, he said.
The type of muscle targeted most when doing pull-ups are the fast fatigable.
“Those are the muscles you can most increase with exercise,” Keith said. “If you’re training to do more reps, you’re increasing the bulk of the fast fatigable.”
According to Keith, there are two types of theories on how the muscles actually increase. The muscle damage theory, which states that worked-out muscles tear down and rebuild, is widely known, but is currently less in favor with the scientific community than the substrate accum-
ulation theory.
This theory hypothesizes that when muscles are fatigued, they create anabolic hormones that set off a biological cascade that causes new proteins to be made.
“That’s what makes the bulk,” Keith said. “That’s where the increase in strength comes from.”
However, without the proper fuel, there is nothing for those proteins to be made from and that’s why diet is so important.
“Getting enough to eat can be a problem,” Steele said. “You can’t eat poorly, or try to starve yourself, and expect anything positive.”
But even with diet and exercise, there is one last component everybody needs to really improve, physically or otherwise.
“I’ve seen people increase by a huge amount in as little as eight weeks, and some took six months,” she added. “That’s where your personal dedication and motivation comes in. Nobody is going to do it for you.”