Young Jedi of Nutrition
Ironman, June 2006

Let's get started with some background information. Justin, how did you get into bodybuilding? What were you early motivations and influences, and when did you know you wanted to be a competitor?

I remember watching a bodybuilding show on TV when I was about 7 or 8, and from then on I was hooked. I always knew I wanted to be a bodybuilder. My parents bought me a weight set when I was 9, and my dad even welded me a squat rack, and bought a pull down machine. I joined a gym when I was 15, and that's really when it all started.

Initially, my training was all geared towards sports. I was a two sport captain in high school (baseball and football), and a two time Division III all-american in football in college. So, my training was all geared towards that.
After my senior year of football in college was when I really decided that I wanted to be a competitive bodybuilder.


Have you always known exactly how to get yourself into great condition, or did you screw up in the early days?

I dieted down into good condition a few times before I ever competed. I didn't know any competitors, and wanted to make sure I had it right before I actually did a show. Looking back, I think that helped me, as it gave me an opportunity to put what I learned in school to the test a few times, without the pressure of a competition.


What type of educational background do you have?

I have a bachelor's degree in Exercise Science, from Alma College in Michigan. I was lucky enough to attend a very good school by happenstance. I didn't care that they had a good reputation, I was just glad they were going to let me play football.
I currently work as an Echocardiographer, and learned that at Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.
I'm also certified in Advanced Cardiac Life Support, along with a few other certifications.

When did you first start helping other bodybuilders with their contest diets? How did that evolve into making it a business?

I had actually helped other people before I ever did a contest, ironically. I would go on various bodybuilding websites online, and offer advice when someone would ask. Apparently, people liked my advice, as more and more people would ask me to help them.
Eventually, I was getting myself ready for the 2004 Mr. Michigan, and didn't have the time to help anyone. One person said, 'Well, I'll pay you." That seemed like a good idea, so I did that for a few more people.
I told my wife that I should start a website, not really knowing anything about it. One night, my wife got the idea to look online for information on how to start a website. When I woke up the next morning, she had one started, and it's grown from there.
We still do our own website work, and still don't really know what we're doing....

My first two national clients were a couple that competed at the 2004 Jr. Nationals. Darin Dudash took 8th in the light heavies, and Anne Sheehan took 4th in the Heavies of women's bodybuilding. She then took 5th at that years USA's, weighing in 24lbs heavier than the year before, and with better conditioning. Word started to spread then, I guess.


Where did you come up with the name, 'Troponin Nutrition?"

Troponin was the 'handle" I was using on the 'message boards" at the time. You can see the definition on my website, but Troponin is a complex of proteins that is integral to muscular contraction. I had remembered it from school, and thought it would be a good name.

Here's the definition from my website:
Troponin (tro-po'-nin) is a complex of proteins that is integral to muscle contraction. Troponin is attached to tropomyosin (another type of protein) and lies within the groove between actin (muscle)filaments. In a relaxed muscle, tropomyosin blocks the attachment of cross bridges to actin, thus preventing contraction. When the muscle cell is stimulated to contract, mechanisms cause the concentration of calcium in the sarcoplasm to rise. Some of this calcium attaches to troponin, causing a conformational change that moves troponin and tropomyosin out of the way so that the cross bridges can attach to actin and produce muscle contraction. Without troponin, there can be no muscular contraction.
Have you ever prepared two clients for the same contest in the same class, or go up against each other for the overall?

This has actually happened a number of times. At the 2005 Jr. Nationals, I had two clients take 2nd and 5th in the heavyweight class, behind Phil Heath. It happens at local shows quite often as well. I do try to set a limit for people I'll work with for a given show. I pretty much decided that limit after the Jr. Nationals in 2005. I had 7 competitors there.


Have you ever had to compete against someone you prepped for a show? What's that like?

I actually competed against a client at the Jr. Nationals last year. He placed better than me....
It was very difficult to get ready for a show at the same time as working with other clients, difficult enough to make me decide to never do that again. At that point, something has to give, and in the end, it will end up being my prep.


Do you find that being a National-level Superheavyweight bodybuilding competitor gives you more credibility as a nutritionist? Do you think it should?

I hope it holds credibility, as that would work in my favor.
I don't think it has a whole lot to do with your knowledge and ability to get someone in shape. But, it definitely helps you understand what your clients are going through. There's no way to understand what happens to your body when you get in true competition shape without actually going through that yourself.

Do you aspire to be a professional bodybuilder yourself? What events are you getting ready for now?

I would love to be a professional bodybuilder, it's something that I will continue to work towards, but it's not my over-riding goal in life. I've realized that I get more satisfaction from working with other competitors, and there's more potential for me as a nutritionist than as a competitor. That doesn't mean I'm not going to try though, as I love competing too much to stop. If it's not in the cards, I still have outlets to work in the industry.

I'm currently getting ready for the 2006 Jr. USA's in South Carolina. I try to keep progress threads up at my forum on Muscle Mayhem, to help potential competitors see the progression from offseason to contest condition.


Are you friendly with any other ‘gurus' in the industry? Are there any that you share information with?

I like to think I'm friendly with all the other nutritionists I've come in contact with. I speak with Dante (DC) through email often, and he's actually helping me with the ins and outs of starting a supplement line. I also email 'skip" from http://www.intensemuscle.com/ quite often as well. And surprisingly enough, we share a lot of information. I don't see how sharing information can hurt any of us. The more we all learn, the better our clients do, which only looks good on us.


What gives you more satisfaction, helping someone win a contest, or helping someone get into the best shape of their life, even if they don't necessarily place very well?

Helping someone get in the best shape of their life is probably the most satisfying. That's all you can do really, as you never know what's going to happen with the judging. But, some of my most rewarding clients are those who aren't yet on the national level. It's a very good feeling to help someone who's long held the belief that they can't be a bodybuilder get into true competition shape.


We all know that genetics play a huge role when it comes to building a physique, in terms of structure, size, and shape. But do you feel that anybody can get down to what we consider ‘contest condition' by today's standards, with striated glutes? Or are there some unlucky guys and girls that just can't do it no matter what?

I honestly feel that anyone can get to that level. We're all made up of the same materials. Our bodies all do the same processes. Insulin is secreted in response to carbohydrate intake, the GLUT 4 transporter shuttles that glucose to the muscles, etc., etc.
We all have the same physiologic responses to exercise and nutrition. Not everyone is as efficient at building muscle, and burning fat as others. You just have to learn each person. Some will have to work harder than others, but I believe anyone is capable of getting into true contest condition.


Do you ever wrestle with the idea that maybe it's not healthy for human beings to be as low in bodyfat and water as competitive bodybuilders are supposed to be on the day of a contest?

I don't think any competitor would really believe that the last few weeks of a contest diet are healthy, but that's such a small portion of the year. But, you'd be hard pressed to find a sport that is truly healthy at it's peak. You risk injury, dehydration, and other problems with just about every major sporting event.
The health benefits of weight training, proper nutrition, and cardiovascular training the rest of the year are worth those last weeks to me.
As a life long athlete and competitor, I've set aside health more than a few times to 'compete." Making weight for a wrestling match, breaking up a wedge on the football field, getting hit by a pitch in baseball, are all things I've done that wouldn't be considered 'healthy."
I work in the medical field, and I see what lack of exercise and poor nutrition can do to the body, so I try to focus on the positives of the bodybuilding lifestyle.

The standards for size have steadily advanced, as well as condition. Just how much thicker and more ripped do you think bodybuilders can get, or should get?

I really think we'll see more advances in size than people think. I think conditioning is pretty much tapped out. You can't get your bodyfat much lower than what you're seeing now.
I do like the slow swing towards more emphasis being placed on conditioning and ‘asthetics.' (A word I don't particularly like). I think the potential for more size is there, but I think we'll soon reach the point where the look that size brings isn't as appealing.

I'm a fan of the full spectrum. I can appreciate the size of Art Atwood just as much as I can appreciate the look of Mark Dugdale. I think there's room for all the ranges of competitors.


Do you ever have people come to you with very unrealistic expectations in terms of going from obese to shredded in a few weeks? How do you make them understand how long it actually takes to lose that much fat?

I get that all the time. You just have to be honest with them, and tell them how long it would take to get into contest shape. A lot of them don't want to believe it, but I think that deep down, everyone understands that miracles don't happen over night.


How do you determine how long a client needs to diet for a contest?

Most of my clients aren't getting ready for their first contest, and I usually know who they are before we work together anyway. In that scenario, I just ask them what kind of condition they're currently in, and together we both kind of know how long it will take.

I will say that I'm a fan of longer diets compared to shorter diets. I like to work with clients for 16-20 weeks before a show. And most of my clients are year round clients now. As I tell a lot of my clients, 'You can be ready early, but you can't be ready late."


When working with athletes in their off-season, how lean do you like them to stay while in that mode?

I like to keep my clients pretty lean. No one should ever call themselves a competitive bodybuilder, and get to the point where you can't see any ab definition in the offseason. But, it's different for everyone. If someone is going to take a year off, and try to move up a weight class, you have the option of giving them a little more leeway for ‘girth.'

But, all things being equal, the leaner you are when you start a diet, the better off you are.


Is it more of a challenge working with athletes competing in drug-tested events, where they won't have the advantages of drugs that maintain muscle and burn fat as they diet down?

It is more challenging, but not as much as you think. As long as the client doesn't use their status as a crutch to allow themselves to slack off, it shouldn't really be a factor.
You do have to plan on being more prepared. The drug-tested competitors will need to say leaner in the offseason, and usually plan on dieting longer. But, other than that, being drug-tested doesn't mean you aren't allowed to eat right and work hard.


How do you make sure your clients maintain their muscle mass while getting down to extremely low bodyfat levels?

I believe very strongly in rotating carbohydrate and calorie levels during a diet. In fact, my diets are actually different each day. I usually use 3-4 different carb and calorie amounts or 'days." So, essentially, they have high, medium, and low carb/calorie days.
The trick is knowing when to back off, and use the higher carb days to prevent muscle loss.
It's not just about working hard. If all it took was hard work and suffering, there would be many more people in shredded condition. Most competitors aren't afraid of hard work, and low calories. And in fact, this is often their downfall. Too many clients are afraid to back off, and re-charge their metabolisms.


How do you monitor the progress of your clients when they are hundreds or thousands of miles away?

I use pictures. When working with a client for a contest, all I can really do is get the fat off them, as they're born with their structure, and there's not much you can do for muscle size at that point. That can easily be seen through pictures. You can tell how someone's bodyfat level is progressing, and how their muscle mass is being maintained by pictures. One thing I do tell people to do is to avoid overhead 'gym" lighting, and using no flash photography. I want the photos to be taken in bright light, with a nice big camera flash used. Anyone can look good in gym lighting, but that won't cut it on stage. If you can look shredded in a brightly lit, white room, with a flash camera, then you're ready for the stage. And that happens long after you've begun looking 'peeled" at the gym.


How much ‘babysitting' do you end up doing? Do you get frantic late-night calls from clients threatening to eat a chocolate cake?

It's not really that bad. The only time it gets bad is usually the last few days before a contest, but that's kind of to be expected. I'll often log on to my email to see a few short messages, where the body only says 'I hate you" or something similar.


Speaking of cake, what are your thoughts on using cheat meals to ‘trick' the metabolism into getting back into a fat-burning mode?

I'm not afraid to use cheat meals. You just have to know how to use them. If someone is 8 weeks out, and looks 12 weeks out, that's not the time to try to ‘trick' the body.

But, if someone is ahead of schedule, adding a very high calorie meal, or ‘cheat' meal, is a good way of quickly filling back out, and recharging the metabolism. But, you really have to be ahead of schedule for this to work properly.

Do you allow your clients to eat sugar-free candy or cookies, things like that?

If the product is truly sugar-free and calorie free, then I allow, and encourage their use. I will even keep these in the diet longer than people will typically feel you should. Things like crystal light, sugar free tang, etc.
I don't allow sugar-free foods that aren't calorie free. My food list is very basic, and boring.

What supplements do you feel are helpful for getting ripped? Has anything since the ECA products been as effective as they were?

I don't think anything is really as effective as ECA was. But, there are a lot of products out there that are extremely beneficial to a competitor.
I almost always include green tea extract, caffeine, yohimbine, and chocamine in my diets. Chocamine is actually something I haven't used for that long, but I'm finding that it can be quite beneficial on many levels for a dieter.

I understand you are starting up your own supplement line. Could you tell us a little bit about that, and what will set your product line apart?

I'm starting a supplement line this spring that will initially specialize in select products for precontest individuals. We're beginning with an anti-cramping formula, and a diuretic. It will incorporate the specific nutrients I use the final week before a contest to dry out, without cramping up.

I'm also planning on introducing a fat loss supplement later this year that I hope people will find to be the most effective fat loss product on the market. It won't contain products because they have a fancy name, it will be composed entirely of products that have the most pronounced effect on fat loss. I'm very excited about it's development, as I personally am tired of trying to mix and match various fat loss products to get the nutrients I want.

Without getting too specific about diet, do you feel that some individuals respond differently to carbohydrates? Just from my observation, you have some people that can eat carbs with practically every meal and get leaner, while others need to go down to zero carbs to shed fat.

Yeah, there is a wide variance. I've even found variances where someone can't handle a lot of carbohydrates, but can handle a proportionately large amount at certain times. Of course, there's individuals that can tolerate high amounts all the time too. I think that most people can tolerate a lot more carbs than they think they can. I typically prefer a higher than average carb intake for precontest dieting. That doesn't mean that I won't drop the carbs very low at points, but I'm also not afraid to take them very high at points too.
Many clients of mine have expressed initial concern with both the volume of food they're given, and specifically the volume of carbs they're given. But, after they see the results, they realized they could handle more food than they had previously though.


How much protein do you feel bodybuilders need to consume, both in the off-season, and pre-contest?

That's kind of a tricky question. Bodybuilders don't really 'need" to consume as much protein as they do. But, there's a lot more to the equation than that. No one really needs to eat 500g of protein. But, when you have a 250lb superheavyweight trying to get to sub 5% bodyfat, you're going to have to find a way to keep calories high enough to maintain that 250lbs of muscle, while keeping carbohydrates and fats low enough to burn fat. That typically means that protein levels will be higher than that person will necessarily need.

Protein needs really vary inversely with carbohydrate consumption. The more carbs you eat, the less protein you need. And the less carbs you eat, the more protein you need.

You also have to consider how those nutrients are affecting the body. Protein is more 'thermogenic" than carbohydrates. But, carbs are a better energy source. There's also the 'fullness" factor to consider. Proportionally, a relatively small percentage of the cross sectional area of a given muscle is actual contractile tissue. You have to consider the space that glycogen will occupy, along with the space that the water attatched to that glycogen will occupy, as well as blood vessels, areteries, capillary density, etc. that will occupy space in the muscle. While protein may be the only macronutrient that can specifically change the size of the contractile tissue in a muscle, other nutrients, and specifically carbs, can dramatically alter muscle size and appearance.


How about cardio? How do you determine how much cardio a person should do, in terms of frequency, duration, and intensity?

Cardio is usually set at a lower level to begin with. We set this level based on what the client has used in the past, their current condition, and how long they have to get into shape. From there, we monitor their progress to manipulate the cardio level from there.

I'm probably a moderate to high cardio volume advocate. I'll use as little as needed to get into shape, but I'll take cardio levels very high if needed. As long as a person isn't losing leg size, I would rather keep cardio higher, and add more calories, as opposed to drop calories, and drop cardio. And an important thing to remember is that losing leg size is totally different from losing leg fullness.


In a nutshell, what would you say are the most common mistakes bodybuilders make when preparing for contests?

Bodybuilders usually make mistakes in one of two directions. The first, and most common, is they judge their appearance by the leanest part of their body, and how it looks in gym lighting after a workout. Having a nice six pack after sweating out 3lbs in a chest and bicep workout, in overhead gym lighting is light years away from having shredded glutes, and peeled hamstrings.

The other direction, and a direction a lot of seasoned competitors go, is over dieting and over obsessing. I've seen many competitors in great condition think that if they just restrict calories a little more, and add a little more cardio, they'll look even better.
When in reality, they're almost ready, and the smart thing to do would be back off occasionally to stay full, and keep their metabolism high. This will actually allow them to continue to lose fat, without losing muscle. Whenever I hear people complain about being cold all the time on a diet, I know that they're dropping calories too low. It's not about losing weight, it's about losing fat.

As the demand grows for your services, it must be impossible to take on all the clients that wish to work with you. Is that why you started http://www.protegenutrition.com/? What exactly is it? (note: Protege Nutrition is now merged with Troponin Nutrition, all Protege Nutritionists can be found on this site

At the Jr. Nationals last year, I had a 2nd place light heavyweight, 2nd and 5th place heavyweight, 13th place superheavyweight who was only 23 years old, the light heavy women's 1st place winner, and a 3rd place figure competitor all in the same show. After the word spread that all those competitors were working with me, my email requests really took off. It quickly got to the point where I couldn't handle all the clients. After Elena Seiple took a controversial 2nd place at the USA's, my name came up pretty frequently just based on all the talk about that weight class. At that point, I really couldn't keep up with the requests, and I did not like turning away clients.

So, I asked some of my competitors who I knew had helped competitors through the years if they would be interested in working with me on a new website. From that I created http://www.protegenutrition.com/. Protégé Nutrition is a website with some clients of mine who are also great nutritionists in their own right. They're all clients of mine, and know how I structure contest prep plans, as they've been through them with me. So, essentially, the diets they give are the same baseline approach as what I would give. The only difference is, the consultation throughout the prep, and the changes made are between you and the nutritionist you're working with.
It's really grown over the last year, and the nutritionists there are developing their own name as contest prep nutritionists. Check out the photo gallery on the site to see some of the changes they're making with clients.


You have been building up an excellent reputation and have a solid core or clients now. What are your ultimate goals in the industry?

I have a lot of things I'd like to accomplish in this industry that means so much to me. I'm a competitor, and know what they go through. I'm very excited to be developing a supplement line that will focus on products that will improve people, instead of the products that have the highest profit margin. There are so many great products out there that you have to search high and low through bulk nutritional providers for because supplement companies won't touch them, the cost to profit margin is too low. I want products that work, and those are the products I'm going to develop.

I'd like to continue to develop Protégé Nutrition into the nutritional guidance home base that I know it can be. I know there are so many bodybuilders out there who are confused as to how to take the next step, and get into real contest conditioning. I want the ability to work with a seasoned contest prep nutritionist to be available to all of them.

I'm excited to watch my clients continue to grow from local amateurs, to national stars, and eventually professional athletes. I had a client turn professional at the Team Universe in 2005, and have many more who I expect to do the same over the next few years. It's very exciting for me. You know how the saying goes, 'those who can't do, teach."

I'm working on writing some books that explain the precontest dieting approach from start to finish. They will include all the final week subtleties that are so tricky, from water manipulation, to sodium depletion and reintroduction, carb loading, etc. Not everyone has the luxury of affording to work one on one with a nutritionist. So, I'm hoping to give them a book that will contain all the knowledge they need to develop their own strategies to get into contest shape.
There are a million ways to getting into shape, but following a million ways at once never works