Dr. Robert Santana, PhD, RD, SSC | Weight Gain & Lean Body Mass Increases for Strength Athletes - Does gaining weight make you stronger?
Caloric intake is important for building strength and muscle mass, but just how much you need depends on your goals and your current body composition. In this episode, PRS Clinical Coaches Dr. Rori Alter and Dr. Alyssa Haveson sat down with Dr. Robert Santana to discuss the concepts of dietary intake and muscle mass development in barbell strength and powerlifting athletes.
Robert has an extensive background in all things health and fitness. Earning his Ph.D. as a Registered Dietician while excelling in various settings, from the hospital to high-performance athletes, Dr. Santana is also a Renaissance Periodization coach, Starting Strength Coach, owner of Weights & Plates in AZ, and the host of the Weights & Plates Podcast.
In this episode we dive deep with Robert into all things nutrition and training, covering important topics every strength athlete can benefit from including:
Mechanisms for lean body mass increase from a nutritional perspective
Various phases of dieting for strength athletes including “bulk phases” and “cut phases”
The correlation of weight gain to strength increases and the risks associated with it
Tips on how to manage body weight close to your ideal physique without it compromising training or requiring low calories
How to achieve goals for both strength development and fat loss
The truths of building muscle as a natural athlete and how much muscle mass you can actually put on in various timeframes
The time it takes to lose muscle after cessation of training and how to combat it through diet if you cannot train for a period of time
Supplementation recommendations
This episode could have gone on for hours, and it contains so much information you might want to listen twice! Progressive Rehab & Strength will definitely have Dr. Robert Santana, RD, back in the future.
Resources:
Website: https://weightsandplates.com/
The Weights & Plates Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/weights-and-plates-podcast/id1557830248
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:00:10] I'm your host, Dr. Rori Alter, head clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength with my lovely co-host, Dr. Alyssa Haveson, also a clinical coach here. Progressive Rehab & Strength. And today we are joined by doctor. So you're a doctor, right?
Dr. Robert Santana, RD: [00:00:36] Yeah, yeah. I guess it will be officially on paper in a week or so.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:00:40] Oh, wow. Almost. Dr. Robert Santana.
Dr. Robert Santana, RD: [00:00:42] Everything is graded.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:00:46] So by the time you listen to this, he will be a doctor. He is a registered dietitian, starting strength coach, a coach with Renaissance periodization, and podcast host of his podcast, Weights and Plates. So we are excited to chat with you, Almost Dr. Santana.
Dr. Robert Santana, RD: [00:01:09] Thank you, actual Doctor Rori.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:01:12] So we want to discuss mechanisms for lean body mass increases from a nutritional perspective and what that looks like for strength athletes across the continuum of novice through advanced lifters. But before we dive into the meat and potatoes of today's episode, why don't you just tell us a little bit about your background as a registered dietitian and strength coach and how you integrate the two?
Dr. Robert Santana, RD: [00:01:40] Sure, sure. So, I've been lifting for about 24 years and lifting correctly for about ten. And I've watched people lift for the last 20. So, I've been doing it full time for the last ten, and I kind of got into this because I was a, you know, male child of the nineties and began watching WWE and bad action movies, you know.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:02:08] Sounds like John Petrizzo, a child of the nineties.
Dr. Robert Santana, RD: [00:02:13] So you know, that's how I got into it. There was this obvious association between lifting big and getting big. And you know, there's truth to that. So I started university training 20 years ago and switched majors several times. I spent more time on this content than the stuff I was trying to learn in my first two majors and finished out with a nutrition degree in 2008. I went back and got a master's in kinesiology, finished that in 2011, and did my dietetic internship just as I was finishing. So in 2010, I started my internship while finishing my master's and became a dietitian. Worked at a Globo gym right out of that. And learned that Globo Gym work teaches you how to sell personal training. Not necessarily how to produce it. So, you know, I concluded that, okay, if I'm going to do all this prospecting and work for no money, I might as well do it on my own. So I kind of broke away from that. I worked in clinical nutrition for a few years, so from 2011 to 2015, I worked in clinical nutrition.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:03:22] For those who are listening, who don't know what clinical nutrition means. What does that mean? Is that like a hospital? Is that a doctor's office?
Dr. Robert Santana, RD: [00:03:32] Yeah. So typically means that you're working in some sort of a healthcare setting. So in my case, I worked at a hospital the first year just to sort of check off the box. After that, I worked every Saturday at a long-term acute. And there's significance to that because most dietitian jobs are in short-term acute, which is your quote unquote hospital or what people think of the hospital, you're going where somebody just had a heart attack, or something bad just happened in and out in a couple of days. In the hospital where I worked, people tended to stay there for a week or longer, some months. And I liked it better because you get more data on the people you're following versus at your traditional acute hospital. I might see the person today, and then they're gone tomorrow. So I never felt like I was doing anything in terms of moving the needle unless I was working in the ICU and dealing with two feedings, TPN, and those things. So all of my experience in health care was with a longer-term population. So I worked primarily in dialysis centers and worked there half the week. And for those who are listening that don't know what that is, that kidney replacement therapy, when people's kidneys fail, they get hooked up to a machine that cleans their blood out and does the job that the kidneys would normally do.
Dr. Robert Santana, RD: [00:04:42] And that's done for a few hours, three times a week or more, depending on your prescription. So I did that about 50% of the week. Then I was in a nursing home for the other half of the week. So skilled nursing facilities, some were more rehab oriented, and some had more long-term care. And again, I was able to do that because I wasn't a big fan of working in a clinical setting, because I got more data and saw more human behavior around food.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:05:09] Mm hmm.
Dr. Robert Santana, RD: [00:05:09] So after that, I moved to Phoenix, pursued a Ph.D., and thought I would go into academia because I was interested in the research side of it. And that's just a whole nother story for a whole nother episode. But long story short, it took about seven years to break up. I did three and a half.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:05:27] Oh, gosh, I remember. Yes, we've had yes. That is a very long story.
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