Kevin Kuhn Talks About Athlete Developement, Nutritional Biochemistery and Classified Nutrition on Episode 59

September 08, 2021

In this Episode We Discuss:

Athlete Assessment and Development
Common Mistakes That Athletes and Coaches Make
What to Eat: Pre, During and Post Workout
The Role of Nutrition for Athletic Performance and Recovery
Classified Nutrition’s Start
and more

kevin kuhn classified nutrition 39:53

Kevin Kuhn, M.S.Ed., CSCS, MFS

In addition to serving as Vice President of Research and Development for Classified Nutrition, Kevin Kuhn is also a Kinesiologist, Strength and Conditioning Coach, Speed Development Coach, Master Fitness Specialist, and Sports Nutritionist. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, and a Master Fitness Specialist through the Cooper Institute. He earned his undergraduate degree in Exercise Science from Cedarville University, and then earned his Master’s degree in Exercise Physiology with a sub-emphasis in strength and conditioning and nutritional biochemistry from Baylor University. After grad school, Kevin worked as Head Strength and Conditioning Coach and Nutrition Coach for professional middle-distance and long-sprint athletes from the Indiana Invaders professional running club. Kevin is passionate about developing resilient, strong, and well-rounded youth athletes, and serves as Assistant Head Coach at Modern Fitness (located in Farmersville, TX), where he is responsible for overseeing and coaching the youth athletic development program and nutrition program. In his Kinesiology practice in Dallas, Kevin’s main clientele includes endurance runners, cyclist, triathletes, and high school athletes playing just about every sport. Kevin wasn’t always a biochemistry and physiology nerd, though. He used to run, a lot! Kevin was a Junior Olympic All-American in high school, finishing second place at the National Meet in the 2k Steeplechase. In college, Kevin was All-American on the track, finishing fourth place in the 3k Steeplechase his sophomore year. Kevin also competed in cross-country in high school and college, finishing All-State his senior year of high school, and running on multiple National qualifying teams in college.

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Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Kevin Kuhn

Kevin Kuhn talking about Athlete Development, Nutritional Biochemistry and Classified Nutrition

Corey Beasley [00:00:01]: Hey guys, this is Corey Beasley with Fight Camp Conditioning. I’m on the phone here with Kevin Kuhn. Kevin, how are you?

Kevin Kuhn [00:00:06]:I’m doing very well. Thank you.

Corey Beasley [00:00:09]: Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us this morning. I know you’re a busy guy out there in Dallas, Texas. You got a lot of stuff going on, so I appreciate your time. Just so you guys realize Kevin is a kinesiologist. He’s a sports nutrition expert strength and conditioning specialist, a speed coach as well as the VP of R and B for a company called classified nutrition out there in Dallas, Texas. So I’m excited to be talking to Kevin about not only strength and conditioning, but also picking his brain about nutrition and some of the things that they’re doing out there. Some pretty interesting. So Kevin, for everybody that’s listening, a lot of these guys are athletes and coaches and a lot of personal trainers and strength coaches and stuff like that as well. So give everybody a little two sense of who you are and what you’re doing?

Kevin Kuhn [00:01:01]:So my job as a kinesiologist and strength conditioning specialist and speed coaches is really working with athletes and mostly youth athletes. So I run a youth athletic development program, so I get to work with kids as young as six all the way through high school. And then some of those athletes who ended up going and playing at the next level at the collegiate level during their winter break, summer break, they come back and you don’t get to coach them up a little bit more. So my short history if you will, is how’s the cross country and track athlete in high school and college. I focus mostly in the middle distances. The 400 was kind of on the short end, but then I did the half mile a mile and the threeK steeple chase, wanted to stick mostly with running and actually coach elite level, middle and long distance runners and ended up hurting my back. And so I kind of had to shift my focus to, I guess more of a holistic approach to coaching. And I didn’t want to have to be able to outsource the strength and conditioning or the sport performance or the injury prevention or the nutrition aspect to anyone else. I kind of wanted to be able to do all that. So after undergrad I went to grad school, and I studied exercise physiology with an emphasis in strength and conditioning in nutritional biochemistry so that I could have as much of a well-rounded approach to training and recovery and rehab and nutrition and things like that. So now I get to try to combine all those aspects and really remove all those gaps or communication gaps you will between all those different entities and really try to combine it into one solid program for my athletes.

Corey Beasley [00:03:07]: So Kevin, a new guy walks in your place, you have all these different tools in your toolbox, so to speak. A new guy walks in, says, Kevin, I want to get started I want to start training with you. And stuff like that. Where do you start with them?

Kevin Kuhn [00:03:23]:So typically what I do and whether it’s a kid or it’s somebody who’s a little bit older, maybe middle or whatever. The first thing I always do is an assessment. And so I’ll start them out on like on massage table or an assessment table just so I can take a look at how their body moves when they physically aren’t in control. So I’m taking their body through ranges of motion. I’m checking out making sure though the limbs are the same length and range of motion is normal. And after that all do more of an active assessment where I’m watching them do things like squatting, lunging basic gross motor movements, the big ones in the compound movements. And then it slowly transitions to where I’m watching them do single leg movements. I just want to see how their body moves. When it comes to especially new motor movements, like a single squat most people have never done it before. It’s really hard for their body to cheat without me seeing it. So it’s one of those things I like to be able to see their body move when I’m doing it. And then I also want to see their body move when just they themselves doing it. So from there I can figure out, okay, these are their strengths, these are their weaknesses. And typically when I focus on addressing the weaknesses first the strengths typically come up as well. So from that same point, it’s a lot of, what movements are lacking? Stability, train those up, which areas need more mobility work specifically on that and all within the realm of, if we can improve strength more than just like not just numbers on the bar or things like that. But can I make them stronger at accelerating can I make them stronger at decelerating? Can I make them stronger at the compound lifts? If I can make them strong at everything, then I think I’m doing my job pretty well.

Corey Beasley [00:05:46]: Yeah, absolutely. And I know Mike Boyle talks about different buckets and seven different buckets as far as athletic qualities and stuff like that. Other people categorize things in different ways. I know a lot of people get stuck on youth athletes a lot as well, just because bodybuilding seems to dominate the marketplace. Power lifting and Olympic lifting and CrossFits gone so quickly have become more popular. But there’s a lot of different ways to get people strong. There’s a lot of different athletic qualities that they need to develop. Do you have like a handful of pillars or buckets so to speak, that you guys are focusing on?

Kevin Kuhn [00:06:28]:Yes, for sure. So I think a lot of times strength it’s viewed I guess with too much focus strength is great, but just making kids stronger isn’t an all-encompassing way to improve athleticism and improve performance. So I do like to focus on strengths for sure. But for most of my athletes, mobility is a huge issue. I work with quite a few endurance runners and their hip flexors are really tight, their low back is really tight. So instead of just putting them underneath the bar and moving the bar up and say, Hey, we’ll improve your performance. If we can just get you stronger for them it’s going to have a more impactful. It’ll have more impact on their training and racing performance. If we figure out why their calves are tight, we figure out what’s going on with their hip flexes and whether their low back is it tight because of their running form or is it tight because there’s issues elsewhere. Or it could be maybe they’re just not strong enough. So there’s quite a few of my clients where they’re mobile everywhere and they don’t have strength anyway. So it’s just finding out the balance. But definitely those pillars. Mobility, strength, power we work a lot on speed mechanics just because regardless of your sport the faster you are, the more success you’re going to have. So that’s linear speed, straight ahead change your direction is really huge. We work a lot on that. So those, I guess, I’d call my pillars

Corey Beasley [00:08:30]: Now you have guys coming in, you do the assessment, you’re assessing them and a lot of different characteristics. Then you’re going to start with these guys. What’s a typical workout look like? Guys’ walking in the door. They’re doing what?

Kevin Kuhn [00:08:44]:So after the assessment I’m going to spend about 10, 15 minutes warming them up, doing a lot of big movement preparation, I guess is what I call it. So I’m going to start, I’m going to open up their hip flexors, this with some stretches and partner that, or pair that with glute activation. So they’re not just stretching the front, they’re stretching the front by activating the back sort of thing. So a lot of opposites work the front side, then turn on the back side, work the left side, turn on the right side, that sort of thing. So I’ll spend about 10, 15 minutes just getting their heart rate up, getting the body temperature up, but then really addressing where their specific issues are. So I may have three or four clients all at the same time. They’re all going to have different issues, so their warm-ups going to be different. Some aspects may look the same if they’re all the same type of athlete, either a power athlete or the same sport. But then I definitely want to hone in on their specific issues and their specific movement restrictions. And then I’ll kind of finish it up with where they’re doing some deep mobility goblet price or they’re doing like I call it a Spiderman airplane where you’re really opening up the hips for my athletes that’s kind of I really want to focus on that. If their hips are working well, typically the rest of them or the rest of their body will respond better to the training. So it’s really hitting hip focused Torso stability engagement is huge. I don’t like to do a lot of crunches or anything like that. It’s a lot more resisting movement through their torso just so that I’m training the torso to transfer force from the ground up or from the upper body down.

Corey Beasley [00:10:58]: Alright. So you get them to the gym to the warm-up. And are you going into power development, strength or conditioning?

Kevin Kuhn [00:11:13]:So from there depending on the client or what their program is more geared toward. I usually follow up the warm-up with what I call the athletic activity. So before I go into strength and conditioning, I really want to focus on whatever their sports specific needs are. And that’s if it needs to be more sports specific than it’s going to be cutting deceleration work sprint mechanics work power development that’s specific to their sport dragging tires stuff like that, so that it’s specific to whatever we’re training them for. And I want to get them, that’s kind of more along the lines of neurological training as far as a reaction time and true power output force development. And really get as much out of out of their nervous system that way before I tap into using that just for strengths or just for conditioning. So I found that spending a majority of the time with my athletes on weights and on conditioning makes them more generally fit, but less effective at their sport. So I really want to get as much time spent within doing sports specific or just general athletics specific stuff that’s going to be beneficial for them regardless of what they’re doing. And then after that, if we’re working out for an hour, 10 to 15 minutes warm up, 20 to 25 minutes on athleticism, and then whatever time we have left, whether it’s 15, 20 minutes, something like that that I’m going to focus on true strength and conditioning, I guess. So lots of deadlifts, lots of squat patterns lots of weighted carries. And then some sort of conditioning aspect as well.

Corey Beasley [00:13:34]: Now as you’re going through a week, these kids have skill development, they have the regular practices, stuff like that. They’re seeing you probably two or three times a week? So you have all the regular practices. They have strength and conditioning and they have their regular lives they got to school and everything else that’s going on. What are you doing to help these kids balance their schedule, recover from their workouts and I mean, how are you helping them outside the gym?

Kevin Kuhn [00:14:06]:So that’s honestly in my opinion, that’s the game changer is if you can, it’s not too difficult to get kids especially and if their parents are involved they want their kids doing as much as they physically can in order to get better for their sport. So like we’ve got kids who are showing up they just finished school, they come over, they do their work out with us, and then they will immediately go right next door to a work with a batting or a catcher coach. Like if they’re playing soccer. So like once they finish that then they can go home. Well, they’ve been out of the house since the time school starts till about six or 7:00 PM sometimes later. And I’m like, when are these kids eating? How are they doing injury prevention? Like, when does that all happen? So that’s the really tough part. I’ve found that if can make recovery important and develop or explain to these kids, explain, tell all your clients like, Hey, recovery doesn’t work. What you’re doing in here doesn’t mean anything if your body can’t recover from it. So it’s kind of like a budget, right? If you go into debt, you can’t invest necessarily. So you’ve got to apply the stress of training. You have to remove that stress and recover from it. Otherwise, there’s no adaptation or improvement in your fitness level. So once you instill in that athlete the importance of recovery as a whole lot easier to discuss nutrition with him, to discuss other modalities with them, like foam rolling or my facial work or things like that. So if you just tell them to do it, but they don’t really understand why it’s like pulling teeth. I mean, that’s just not going to happen. So one of the things that we do with our athletes, if they are in season and they can’t come to us, for their normal training or normal recovery, then typically we’ll set up like either a Saturday or a Sunday, depending on their game schedule or a competition schedule where they come in. And it might be group of three to five athletes and they kind of have a homework sheet and all they’re doing is going through their like prehab or injury prevention recipe. So I know for certain athletes that might be roll hip flexors, stretches flexors, roll calves, stretched calves roll quads, stretched squads and so on and so forth. So that’s one way, we get the athletes and they’re still involved. They’re still part of the community that we’re building. And after doing that a couple of weeks when the rest of their teammates are like, how come you’re playing so well? Still aren’t you sore right now? They’re typically feeling pretty good. They don’t have that does nagging injuries that typically start popping up a couple months into the season. So those athletes typically do really well if they transitioned into another sport immediately after that as well. So once they kind of see that and they see their friends doing well it becomes easier to get other people onboard. But we do focus a lot on giving our kids homework, Hey, you did this really well today in the session. I want to make sure that we keep developing that skill. So on your own or with your parents or with a friend, I want you to do this and this. And make sure you’re getting your recovering in immediately after this and Hey, by the way, tell me, what are you going to eat for lunch tomorrow? What do you eat for breakfast tomorrow? So we try to engage with them as much as possible. Keep them on their toes, keep it fresh in their mind that the way they eat is important and the movements that they do outside of training are important. And the activities that they do outside of training are important as well. So building up, I guess a certain level of responsibility for these athletes given stuff to do outside, they don’t want to show up and lie to you. Typically so most of them will do it.

Corey Beasley [00:19:09]: Now as you’re doing that, you’re giving these kids these homework how are you following up or monitoring their efforts outside the gym? Are you keeping track tabs on that stuff? Are you just having them do it as individuals?

Kevin Kuhn [00:19:23]:So most of the time we’ll just ask you know, Hey, did you do your homework or Hey, how did that go? Did you get all your sets in? Did you have all your reps in? And things like that. And most of the time, like we only want to give the kid enough that like on a scale of one to 10, if you ask them, Hey, how sure are you that you’re going to be able to do this? If they don’t say at nine or 10, then I assume that it’s too much for them. So I’ll back it off like I want it so that there’s, they literally have no excuse to not be able to do it. And like sometimes you got to explain to them, Hey, it’s going to feel like you’re not doing a whole lot, but at the same time, maybe this should only take 10 minutes a day and you only have to do it two or three times before I see you again. So if you don’t do it, there might be some push-ups involved or there might be some sort of, you may have to do extra at this next workout. So typically that’s like, okay, perfect. They don’t want to do that. So they don’t want to have to do extra in front of their friends. And I hate giving exercise as a punishment. So I want kids to want to move to want to train. So most of them are really good. The few that we have trouble with, we say you’re just not ready for homework yet. And hopefully, they’ll catch on to what their peers are doing as far as improvement and then they’re like, okay, well if everybody else is doing it, everybody else is getting better and I’m not getting better what’s the limiting factor maybe I should do my homework.

Corey Beasley [00:21:10]: I have a question for you. Your background with nutrition a lot of times, at least from my experience a lot of people are very emotionally attached to eating and sometimes I have resistance or peer influence or the family life, whatever it is that is that they’ll use it as an excuse for not eating the way that they should. When you’re starting out and you’re kind of teaching these kids about nutrition, where do you start? How do you find tune things along the way? That type of stuff.

Kevin Kuhn [00:21:49]:So for the younger kids, when I’m trying to teach them you know, about the basic components of nutrition I forgot who it was that kind of came up with it, but it’s this concept where everybody’s like if you put your hand up, you’re looking at your hand that’s like uniquely proportionate to you personally. So somebody who weighs 300 pounds and 6.5 they’re probably going to have a pretty big hand versus somebody who weighs a 100 pounds and 4.8. So proportionally hand size is unique to you as an individual. So for kids I basically have them memorize, this little spiel where at every meal they need to do one to two palm size servings of protein, whether that’s you know, hamburger or chicken or Turkey or whatever type of meat or even if it’s plant based protein, rice protein, beans, whatever it is, one to two palm sized servings is that, that’s pretty easy for them to remember. Then if you make a fist out of that hand, I want one to two fist five servings of vegetables, fruits and vegetables, but I try to go heave on the veggies. And then one to two, some sites are rings up fat and was that I’ll explain to them, do you know that can be nuts. That can be oil for either that you’re cooking with or oil that is going into a salad dressing or something like that. And then I have a make a cupped like if you turn your hand into a scoop sort of thing, like one to two scoop sizes of carbohydrates, whether that’s rice or potatoes or something like that. But I try to ingrain that in into them initially. Especially the younger that they are, although I use that with adults as well who don’t necessarily understand portion sizes. I find that that’s a really good way just to help people like, Hey, well don’t worry about what everyone else does a portion sizes just for you. Here’s what it is, one to two palm sized servings of protein, one to two fist size servings of veggies, one to two palm size servings of fat, one to two scoop handfuls of carbohydrates. And then from there it’s easy to scale it like, I ate that way but I was still hungry. Okay, well then let’s adjust it here. And then it’s a whole lot easier for them to figure out what’s going to work for them personally doing it that way versus I mean there’s definitely other ways to do it. I teach a lot of my clients how to count their macros and how to track that. But especially for the kids, just keeping it as simple as possible. And a lot of times I’ll just have them focus on one macronutrient at a time I’ll just have them focus on protein until I know that they’re in general getting enough protein at each meal and then from there on work on the next macro and doing it really slow that way can sometimes feel like, are we making any progress at all? But over time, just by focusing on that, it’s getting ingrained in their brains.

Corey Beasley [00:25:50]: Right. Changing habits over time. Not all at once. Now, I know there’s a lot of talk as well with pre-workout, post workout, supplementation, all these different things that they sell up the nutrition stores and stuff like that and to advertise. And a lot of people would tend to focus more on the supplement side than they do even on the food. What’s your opinion on that?

Kevin Kuhn [00:26:18]:So that one’s a tough one sometimes for people who I guess don’t always understand my background and where I come from, but they’re like, why would you say that? Don’t you own a supplement company? Why would you tell people to not take supplements? It’s not that, it’s not that, right? So supplements, like if you kind of look up that word, like what does Webster say about supplement? In general, the idea of a supplement is to fill in a gap. So when it comes to supplementation, whether it’s pre-workout, post-workout, you can get benefit from taking that and having a bad diet. You can, however you will get the most benefit from addressing your caloric needs first through your diet. And then under there hitting your macronutrient needs, making sure you’re getting enough protein, making sure you’re getting enough carbohydrates and the right types, making sure you’re getting enough fat and the right types. And then once you’ve addressed that, then if you’re still looking for more benefit if you still need help recovering or if you still need help with your training performance, things like that, then you can start looking into supplements. And as someone who makes to sell supplements hopefully people will find that refreshing. Because that’s typically not what most people here, but most people are being marketed to. And these supplement companies are saying this is what you need in order to achieve your goals. This is the missing step, right? So especially like fat loss products, like people are like, Oh my goodness, I can’t lose any fat because I’m not taking a fat burner. Really because if you look at your macronutrients in your caloric needs versus your workout, put it in how many calories you’re burning. You can do it that way very well. And then you can address the fat burner and then you may have even better results, but people typically want that an easy way or the magic bullet or things like that. And unfortunately if you want the best outcome, you’re going to have to put in some work. So I think you’re going to have better results if you’re addressing your diet first, filling in the gaps with your diet, with your macronutrients, addressing what you really need. And then from there working the supplements.

Corey Beasley [00:29:01]: Let’s talk about, I mean you mentioned it quick, but your company classified nutrition and they’ve been training for quite a while. How’d you start that company?

Kevin Kuhn [00:29:11]:So I was working here in Dallas as a kinesiologist. A guy that I run the youth athletic development program with outside of town, refer to clients to me. And so I was working with him and he had just purchased a supplement company from a friend of his and who was a supplement manufacturer. So, long story short the guy that I working with referred his manufacturer to me because he had plantar fasciitis. And so I started working with him and got him back to being able to run and train. And one day he was like, Hey, Kevin I’m a supplement manufacturer. Right. And I was like, you told me that you mentioned that. And he was like, okay, well if you had access to every supplement ingredient, what would you take before he train or what will you take after you trained? And I was like, well that’s it won’t take me long to write it down. The main things, like that’s the kind of stuff that I was studying in grad school. So I kind of wrote some things down for him and handed it to him and he was like, all right, cool. Well I’m going to go home, I’m going to batch these up and I’m going to test it out. And a week later he’s like, all right Kevin, when are we starting this company? So it was pretty cool little story. We’ve been going strong ever since.

Corey Beasley [00:30:49]: So how long ago was that?

Kevin Kuhn [00:30:52]:That was about three years ago.

Corey Beasley [00:30:55]: Now the company that you guys have classified nutrition as the main thing that you guys are providing is what?

Kevin Kuhn [00:31:09]: I guess our foundational supplements that we offer in that we think that every athlete you should take is what we call the BSA system or before fuel and after. So those are our three primary products before, because we don’t want people to be confused when they should take it they take it before they train a fuel is our carbohydrate. And depending on the type of activity you’re doing and the length of time will determine when you’re taking that, whether you take that with you before or during or so on and so forth. And then our recovery product after, when do you take it? You take it after. So once you finished, so we think every athlete should at least start there. The reason is the before is really its three ingredients. It’s just branched chain amino acids, creatine monohydrate and L carnitine, L tartrate. And it’s really designed to prepare your body for the stress of training. So training is muscle damage, right? It is damaging to the body. So these are the nutrients that will prepare your body for that level and intensity of damage so that you can begin repairing and adapting in real time. The fuel is three unique carbohydrates that are metabolized at different rates but none of them spike your blood glucose or elicit a large insulin response so your body doesn’t recognize it as food. So it doesn’t fire up the whole digestion processes. And, and pull blood away from working tissue. So that’s really, really awesome while you’re training or while you’re competing to be able to get fuel delivered directly to working tissue without having it to go through this whole crazy digestive process. So it’s much more efficient, much more practical for athletics. And then the after is 10 grams of the highest quality whey protein isolate available on the market. And we include that in there not so much because we wanted protein in there. Really I included that in because of the glutosiome content and basically helps your immune function. So the longer and more intensely you train, the further you stress your immune system. So if you’re doing a lot of training, you can actually have what’s called exercise induced immuno suppression. So the more glutosiome and the more you can boost your immune system immediately after training, the more willing your body is to adapt to that training because it’s not having to fight off cold or flu or whatever the case may be. So we put that way in there for that. We also include another five grams of creatine monohydrate, three grams of instant leucine, which stimulates muscle protein synthesis. And then we also include another three grams of time-released, which doesn’t become active in your bloodstream until two hours later. So it’s basically like you’re getting two recovery products and one cause you’re initiating recovery and repair immediately and then again, two hours later. So that’s kind of the foundational system if everybody’s taking that a lot of their potential injuries are going to be reduced because they’re prepping their body for stress and then they’re delivering them on to the body the nutrients for repair and recovery.

Corey Beasley [00:35:10]: Now, for guys, started training twice a day would they take that product twice a day or would you choose one or the other? They’re taking that with?

Kevin Kuhn [00:35:20]:They could, depending on the intensity and depending on where they’re at in their training cycle, if they’re getting closer to competition, it would definitely be beneficial for them to take the after twice a day. The before maybe it wouldn’t be quite as necessary. Just kind of depends on how you feel. But the more you train, the more these ingredients are going to be beneficial. So we’re really not including anything in any of these products that’s trending right now or that’s going to be a huge seller as far as marketing goes. Like all of our ingredients just have a large body of peer review published evidence to support their efficacy and their dose. They’re all safe a lot of the ingredients were originally tested on children, like creatine monohydrate was already originally studied on low birth weight children to try to get them up to a better more healthy birth weight. So you can’t overdo it I guess is what I’m trying to say. It all depends on how hard you’re working, how much will be beneficial. So if you’re training twice a day, by all means at least get one serving of the BFA in. But if you’re getting close to some sort of competition, why not? Why wouldn’t you want to be as recovered as possible?

Corey Beasley [00:36:54]: Yeah, absolutely. I know a lot of guys are getting toward the end of a camp or training really hard into the season, whatever it may be. They’ve been grind and put pretty good, allow me to get sick and they’ll either get colds and flus or even have digestional issues maybe from stomach things coming on from the stress or whatever it is. But that’s common with a lot of different sports that we’re dealing with.

Kevin Kuhn [00:37:19]:So there were guys on my cross country and track team in in college who had cold to year-round because their diets were so poor, their body never had the time to fully recover their immune system was just always in a stress state. So the more you train in that stress state, the harder it is to adapt to your training, to absorb your training. So you really want to avoid that as much as possible. And if you can do that with supplementation, like for me, it seems like a no brainer.

Corey Beasley [00:37:59]: Well, good stuff Kevin will for anybody that’s listening that they wanted to give more information about what you’re doing out there, what’s the best way for them to reach out and find you?

Kevin Kuhn [00:38:12]:So you can check us out on our website. It’s classifiednutrition.com. And we’re actually if you guys want to test it out, want to try it you can get on the website, we do a single serve. We’ll ship you three of the single-serve, so we’ll ship you it before and then after that y’all can try that. All you have to do is pay the shipping, which is like two or three bucks. So we don’t want to just hand out stuff to everybody. We want people to understand exactly what they’re taking and why. So if you put a little skin in the game and cover shipping, then we’ll send you the whole BFA as a single serves. So that’s right on our website. I’ll send you the code for that so you can post that up. And you can also check us out on Facebook. We’re on Facebook classified nutrition. We’re also on Instagram and follow us their official classified nutrition. And I think we’re setting up a Twitter right now. We’ll have that up and running pretty soon.

Corey Beasley [00:39:25]: Well, Kevin, thanks again for sharing your information. I really appreciate it. I’ll put all those links and stuff like that down below so you guys can click over and get some of them samples and stuff like that. And Kevin, thanks again. Awesome info. And we look forward to hearing more from you soon.

Kevin Kuhn [00:39:47]:Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

Episode Transcript

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Kevin Kuhn
Kevin Kuhn talking about Athlete Development, Nutritional Biochemistry and Classified Nutrition

Corey Beasley [00:00:01]: Hey guys, this is Corey Beasley with Fight Camp Conditioning. I’m on the phone here with Kevin Kuhn. Kevin, how are you?

Kevin Kuhn [00:00:06]:I’m doing very well. Thank you.

Kevin Kuhn [00:03:23]:So typically what I do and whether it’s a kid or it’s somebody who’s a little bit older, maybe middle or whatever. The first thing I always do is an assessment. And so I’ll start them out on like on massage table or an assessment table just so I can take a look at how their body moves when they physically aren’t in control. So I’m taking their body through ranges of motion. I’m checking out making sure though the limbs are the same length and range of motion is normal. And after that all do more of an active assessment where I’m watching them do things like squatting, lunging basic gross motor movements, the big ones in the compound movements. And then it slowly transitions to where I’m watching them do single leg movements. I just want to see how their body moves. When it comes to especially new motor movements, like a single squat most people have never done it before. It’s really hard for their body to cheat without me seeing it. So it’s one of those things I like to be able to see their body move when I’m doing it. And then I also want to see their body move when just they themselves doing it. So from there I can figure out, okay, these are their strengths, these are their weaknesses. And typically when I focus on addressing the weaknesses first the strengths typically come up as well. So from that same point, it’s a lot of, what movements are lacking? Stability, train those up, which areas need more mobility work specifically on that and all within the realm of, if we can improve strength more than just like not just numbers on the bar or things like that. But can I make them stronger at accelerating can I make them stronger at decelerating? Can I make them stronger at the compound lifts? If I can make them strong at everything, then I think I’m doing my job pretty well.

Kevin Kuhn [00:06:28]:Yes, for sure. So I think a lot of times strength it’s viewed I guess with too much focus strength is great, but just making kids stronger isn’t an all-encompassing way to improve athleticism and improve performance. So I do like to focus on strengths for sure. But for most of my athletes, mobility is a huge issue. I work with quite a few endurance runners and their hip flexors are really tight, their low back is really tight. So instead of just putting them underneath the bar and moving the bar up and say, Hey, we’ll improve your performance. If we can just get you stronger for them it’s going to have a more impactful. It’ll have more impact on their training and racing performance. If we figure out why their calves are tight, we figure out what’s going on with their hip flexes and whether their low back is it tight because of their running form or is it tight because there’s issues elsewhere. Or it could be maybe they’re just not strong enough. So there’s quite a few of my clients where they’re mobile everywhere and they don’t have strength anyway. So it’s just finding out the balance. But definitely those pillars. Mobility, strength, power we work a lot on speed mechanics just because regardless of your sport the faster you are, the more success you’re going to have. So that’s linear speed, straight ahead change your direction is really huge. We work a lot on that. So those, I guess, I’d call my pillars

Kevin Kuhn [00:08:44]:So after the assessment I’m going to spend about 10, 15 minutes warming them up, doing a lot of big movement preparation, I guess is what I call it. So I’m going to start, I’m going to open up their hip flexors, this with some stretches and partner that, or pair that with glute activation. So they’re not just stretching the front, they’re stretching the front by activating the back sort of thing. So a lot of opposites work the front side, then turn on the back side, work the left side, turn on the right side, that sort of thing. So I’ll spend about 10, 15 minutes just getting their heart rate up, getting the body temperature up, but then really addressing where their specific issues are. So I may have three or four clients all at the same time. They’re all going to have different issues, so their warm-ups going to be different. Some aspects may look the same if they’re all the same type of athlete, either a power athlete or the same sport. But then I definitely want to hone in on their specific issues and their specific movement restrictions. And then I’ll kind of finish it up with where they’re doing some deep mobility goblet price or they’re doing like I call it a Spiderman airplane where you’re really opening up the hips for my athletes that’s kind of I really want to focus on that. If their hips are working well, typically the rest of them or the rest of their body will respond better to the training. So it’s really hitting hip focused Torso stability engagement is huge. I don’t like to do a lot of crunches or anything like that. It’s a lot more resisting movement through their torso just so that I’m training the torso to transfer force from the ground up or from the upper body down.

Corey Beasley [00:10:58]: Alright. So you get them to the gym to the warm-up. And are you going into power development, strength or conditioning?

Kevin Kuhn [00:11:13]:So from there depending on the client or what their program is more geared toward. I usually follow up the warm-up with what I call the athletic activity. So before I go into strength and conditioning, I really want to focus on whatever their sports specific needs are. And that’s if it needs to be more sports specific than it’s going to be cutting deceleration work sprint mechanics work power development that’s specific to their sport dragging tires stuff like that, so that it’s specific to whatever we’re training them for. And I want to get them, that’s kind of more along the lines of neurological training as far as a reaction time and true power output force development. And really get as much out of out of their nervous system that way before I tap into using that just for strengths or just for conditioning. So I found that spending a majority of the time with my athletes on weights and on conditioning makes them more generally fit, but less effective at their sport. So I really want to get as much time spent within doing sports specific or just general athletics specific stuff that’s going to be beneficial for them regardless of what they’re doing. And then after that, if we’re working out for an hour, 10 to 15 minutes warm up, 20 to 25 minutes on athleticism, and then whatever time we have left, whether it’s 15, 20 minutes, something like that that I’m going to focus on true strength and conditioning, I guess. So lots of deadlifts, lots of squat patterns lots of weighted carries. And then some sort of conditioning aspect as well.

Kevin Kuhn [00:14:06]:So that’s honestly in my opinion, that’s the game changer is if you can, it’s not too difficult to get kids especially and if their parents are involved they want their kids doing as much as they physically can in order to get better for their sport. So like we’ve got kids who are showing up they just finished school, they come over, they do their work out with us, and then they will immediately go right next door to a work with a batting or a catcher coach. Like if they’re playing soccer. So like once they finish that then they can go home. Well, they’ve been out of the house since the time school starts till about six or 7:00 PM sometimes later. And I’m like, when are these kids eating? How are they doing injury prevention? Like, when does that all happen? So that’s the really tough part. I’ve found that if can make recovery important and develop or explain to these kids, explain, tell all your clients like, Hey, recovery doesn’t work. What you’re doing in here doesn’t mean anything if your body can’t recover from it. So it’s kind of like a budget, right? If you go into debt, you can’t invest necessarily. So you’ve got to apply the stress of training. You have to remove that stress and recover from it. Otherwise, there’s no adaptation or improvement in your fitness level. So once you instill in that athlete the importance of recovery as a whole lot easier to discuss nutrition with him, to discuss other modalities with them, like foam rolling or my facial work or things like that. So if you just tell them to do it, but they don’t really understand why it’s like pulling teeth. I mean, that’s just not going to happen. So one of the things that we do with our athletes, if they are in season and they can’t come to us, for their normal training or normal recovery, then typically we’ll set up like either a Saturday or a Sunday, depending on their game schedule or a competition schedule where they come in. And it might be group of three to five athletes and they kind of have a homework sheet and all they’re doing is going through their like prehab or injury prevention recipe. So I know for certain athletes that might be roll hip flexors, stretches flexors, roll calves, stretched calves roll quads, stretched squads and so on and so forth. So that’s one way, we get the athletes and they’re still involved. They’re still part of the community that we’re building. And after doing that a couple of weeks when the rest of their teammates are like, how come you’re playing so well? Still aren’t you sore right now? They’re typically feeling pretty good. They don’t have that does nagging injuries that typically start popping up a couple months into the season. So those athletes typically do really well if they transitioned into another sport immediately after that as well. So once they kind of see that and they see their friends doing well it becomes easier to get other people onboard. But we do focus a lot on giving our kids homework, Hey, you did this really well today in the session. I want to make sure that we keep developing that skill. So on your own or with your parents or with a friend, I want you to do this and this. And make sure you’re getting your recovering in immediately after this and Hey, by the way, tell me, what are you going to eat for lunch tomorrow? What do you eat for breakfast tomorrow? So we try to engage with them as much as possible. Keep them on their toes, keep it fresh in their mind that the way they eat is important and the movements that they do outside of training are important. And the activities that they do outside of training are important as well. So building up, I guess a certain level of responsibility for these athletes given stuff to do outside, they don’t want to show up and lie to you. Typically so most of them will do it.

Kevin Kuhn [00:19:23]:So most of the time we’ll just ask you know, Hey, did you do your homework or Hey, how did that go? Did you get all your sets in? Did you have all your reps in? And things like that. And most of the time, like we only want to give the kid enough that like on a scale of one to 10, if you ask them, Hey, how sure are you that you’re going to be able to do this? If they don’t say at nine or 10, then I assume that it’s too much for them. So I’ll back it off like I want it so that there’s, they literally have no excuse to not be able to do it. And like sometimes you got to explain to them, Hey, it’s going to feel like you’re not doing a whole lot, but at the same time, maybe this should only take 10 minutes a day and you only have to do it two or three times before I see you again. So if you don’t do it, there might be some push-ups involved or there might be some sort of, you may have to do extra at this next workout. So typically that’s like, okay, perfect. They don’t want to do that. So they don’t want to have to do extra in front of their friends. And I hate giving exercise as a punishment. So I want kids to want to move to want to train. So most of them are really good. The few that we have trouble with, we say you’re just not ready for homework yet. And hopefully, they’ll catch on to what their peers are doing as far as improvement and then they’re like, okay, well if everybody else is doing it, everybody else is getting better and I’m not getting better what’s the limiting factor maybe I should do my homework.

Kevin Kuhn [00:21:49]:So for the younger kids, when I’m trying to teach them you know, about the basic components of nutrition I forgot who it was that kind of came up with it, but it’s this concept where everybody’s like if you put your hand up, you’re looking at your hand that’s like uniquely proportionate to you personally. So somebody who weighs 300 pounds and 6.5 they’re probably going to have a pretty big hand versus somebody who weighs a 100 pounds and 4.8. So proportionally hand size is unique to you as an individual. So for kids I basically have them memorize, this little spiel where at every meal they need to do one to two palm size servings of protein, whether that’s you know, hamburger or chicken or Turkey or whatever type of meat or even if it’s plant based protein, rice protein, beans, whatever it is, one to two palm sized servings is that, that’s pretty easy for them to remember. Then if you make a fist out of that hand, I want one to two fist five servings of vegetables, fruits and vegetables, but I try to go heave on the veggies. And then one to two, some sites are rings up fat and was that I’ll explain to them, do you know that can be nuts. That can be oil for either that you’re cooking with or oil that is going into a salad dressing or something like that. And then I have a make a cupped like if you turn your hand into a scoop sort of thing, like one to two scoop sizes of carbohydrates, whether that’s rice or potatoes or something like that. But I try to ingrain that in into them initially. Especially the younger that they are, although I use that with adults as well who don’t necessarily understand portion sizes. I find that that’s a really good way just to help people like, Hey, well don’t worry about what everyone else does a portion sizes just for you. Here’s what it is, one to two palm sized servings of protein, one to two fist size servings of veggies, one to two palm size servings of fat, one to two scoop handfuls of carbohydrates. And then from there it’s easy to scale it like, I ate that way but I was still hungry. Okay, well then let’s adjust it here. And then it’s a whole lot easier for them to figure out what’s going to work for them personally doing it that way versus I mean there’s definitely other ways to do it. I teach a lot of my clients how to count their macros and how to track that. But especially for the kids, just keeping it as simple as possible. And a lot of times I’ll just have them focus on one macronutrient at a time I’ll just have them focus on protein until I know that they’re in general getting enough protein at each meal and then from there on work on the next macro and doing it really slow that way can sometimes feel like, are we making any progress at all? But over time, just by focusing on that, it’s getting ingrained in their brains.

Kevin Kuhn [00:26:18]:So that one’s a tough one sometimes for people who I guess don’t always understand my background and where I come from, but they’re like, why would you say that? Don’t you own a supplement company? Why would you tell people to not take supplements? It’s not that, it’s not that, right? So supplements, like if you kind of look up that word, like what does Webster say about supplement? In general, the idea of a supplement is to fill in a gap. So when it comes to supplementation, whether it’s pre-workout, post-workout, you can get benefit from taking that and having a bad diet. You can, however you will get the most benefit from addressing your caloric needs first through your diet. And then under there hitting your macronutrient needs, making sure you’re getting enough protein, making sure you’re getting enough carbohydrates and the right types, making sure you’re getting enough fat and the right types. And then once you’ve addressed that, then if you’re still looking for more benefit if you still need help recovering or if you still need help with your training performance, things like that, then you can start looking into supplements. And as someone who makes to sell supplements hopefully people will find that refreshing. Because that’s typically not what most people here, but most people are being marketed to. And these supplement companies are saying this is what you need in order to achieve your goals. This is the missing step, right? So especially like fat loss products, like people are like, Oh my goodness, I can’t lose any fat because I’m not taking a fat burner. Really because if you look at your macronutrients in your caloric needs versus your workout, put it in how many calories you’re burning. You can do it that way very well. And then you can address the fat burner and then you may have even better results, but people typically want that an easy way or the magic bullet or things like that. And unfortunately if you want the best outcome, you’re going to have to put in some work. So I think you’re going to have better results if you’re addressing your diet first, filling in the gaps with your diet, with your macronutrients, addressing what you really need. And then from there working the supplements.

Corey Beasley [00:29:01]: Let’s talk about, I mean you mentioned it quick, but your company classified nutrition and they’ve been training for quite a while. How’d you start that company?

Kevin Kuhn [00:29:11]:So I was working here in Dallas as a kinesiologist. A guy that I run the youth athletic development program with outside of town, refer to clients to me. And so I was working with him and he had just purchased a supplement company from a friend of his and who was a supplement manufacturer. So, long story short the guy that I working with referred his manufacturer to me because he had plantar fasciitis. And so I started working with him and got him back to being able to run and train. And one day he was like, Hey, Kevin I’m a supplement manufacturer. Right. And I was like, you told me that you mentioned that. And he was like, okay, well if you had access to every supplement ingredient, what would you take before he train or what will you take after you trained? And I was like, well that’s it won’t take me long to write it down. The main things, like that’s the kind of stuff that I was studying in grad school. So I kind of wrote some things down for him and handed it to him and he was like, all right, cool. Well I’m going to go home, I’m going to batch these up and I’m going to test it out. And a week later he’s like, all right Kevin, when are we starting this company? So it was pretty cool little story. We’ve been going strong ever since.

Corey Beasley [00:30:49]: So how long ago was that?

Kevin Kuhn [00:30:52]:That was about three years ago.

Corey Beasley [00:30:55]: Now the company that you guys have classified nutrition as the main thing that you guys are providing is what?

Kevin Kuhn [00:31:09]: I guess our foundational supplements that we offer in that we think that every athlete you should take is what we call the BSA system or before fuel and after. So those are our three primary products before, because we don’t want people to be confused when they should take it they take it before they train a fuel is our carbohydrate. And depending on the type of activity you’re doing and the length of time will determine when you’re taking that, whether you take that with you before or during or so on and so forth. And then our recovery product after, when do you take it? You take it after. So once you finished, so we think every athlete should at least start there. The reason is the before is really its three ingredients. It’s just branched chain amino acids, creatine monohydrate and L carnitine, L tartrate. And it’s really designed to prepare your body for the stress of training. So training is muscle damage, right? It is damaging to the body. So these are the nutrients that will prepare your body for that level and intensity of damage so that you can begin repairing and adapting in real time. The fuel is three unique carbohydrates that are metabolized at different rates but none of them spike your blood glucose or elicit a large insulin response so your body doesn’t recognize it as food. So it doesn’t fire up the whole digestion processes. And, and pull blood away from working tissue. So that’s really, really awesome while you’re training or while you’re competing to be able to get fuel delivered directly to working tissue without having it to go through this whole crazy digestive process. So it’s much more efficient, much more practical for athletics. And then the after is 10 grams of the highest quality whey protein isolate available on the market. And we include that in there not so much because we wanted protein in there. Really I included that in because of the glutosiome content and basically helps your immune function. So the longer and more intensely you train, the further you stress your immune system. So if you’re doing a lot of training, you can actually have what’s called exercise induced immuno suppression. So the more glutosiome and the more you can boost your immune system immediately after training, the more willing your body is to adapt to that training because it’s not having to fight off cold or flu or whatever the case may be. So we put that way in there for that. We also include another five grams of creatine monohydrate, three grams of instant leucine, which stimulates muscle protein synthesis. And then we also include another three grams of time-released, which doesn’t become active in your bloodstream until two hours later. So it’s basically like you’re getting two recovery products and one cause you’re initiating recovery and repair immediately and then again, two hours later. So that’s kind of the foundational system if everybody’s taking that a lot of their potential injuries are going to be reduced because they’re prepping their body for stress and then they’re delivering them on to the body the nutrients for repair and recovery.

Corey Beasley [00:35:10]: Now, for guys, started training twice a day would they take that product twice a day or would you choose one or the other? They’re taking that with?

Kevin Kuhn [00:35:20]:They could, depending on the intensity and depending on where they’re at in their training cycle, if they’re getting closer to competition, it would definitely be beneficial for them to take the after twice a day. The before maybe it wouldn’t be quite as necessary. Just kind of depends on how you feel. But the more you train, the more these ingredients are going to be beneficial. So we’re really not including anything in any of these products that’s trending right now or that’s going to be a huge seller as far as marketing goes. Like all of our ingredients just have a large body of peer review published evidence to support their efficacy and their dose. They’re all safe a lot of the ingredients were originally tested on children, like creatine monohydrate was already originally studied on low birth weight children to try to get them up to a better more healthy birth weight. So you can’t overdo it I guess is what I’m trying to say. It all depends on how hard you’re working, how much will be beneficial. So if you’re training twice a day, by all means at least get one serving of the BFA in. But if you’re getting close to some sort of competition, why not? Why wouldn’t you want to be as recovered as possible?

Kevin Kuhn [00:37:19]:So there were guys on my cross country and track team in in college who had cold to year-round because their diets were so poor, their body never had the time to fully recover their immune system was just always in a stress state. So the more you train in that stress state, the harder it is to adapt to your training, to absorb your training. So you really want to avoid that as much as possible. And if you can do that with supplementation, like for me, it seems like a no brainer.

Kevin Kuhn [00:38:12]:So you can check us out on our website. It’s classifiednutrition.com. And we’re actually if you guys want to test it out, want to try it you can get on the website, we do a single serve. We’ll ship you three of the single-serve, so we’ll ship you it before and then after that y’all can try that. All you have to do is pay the shipping, which is like two or three bucks. So we don’t want to just hand out stuff to everybody. We want people to understand exactly what they’re taking and why. So if you put a little skin in the game and cover shipping, then we’ll send you the whole BFA as a single serves. So that’s right on our website. I’ll send you the code for that so you can post that up. And you can also check us out on Facebook. We’re on Facebook classified nutrition. We’re also on Instagram and follow us their official classified nutrition. And I think we’re setting up a Twitter right now. We’ll have that up and running pretty soon.

Kevin Kuhn [00:39:47]:Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

Kevin Kuhn Talks About Athlete Developement, Nutritional Biochemistery and Classified Nutrition on Episode 59

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Kevin Kuhn

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