Grappling Tips Newsletter

I have this thing against Mc Donalds' Restaurants. It's partially the taste, partially the poor nutritional quality of the food, and partially because the multinational logo of "billions and billions served" drives me nuts.

And I've felt like this a long time. In fact, when I was 12 years old I made up my mind not to eat at Mc Donald's ever again.

I was a stubborn little tyke, and grew up to be a stubborn man. So I actually went for 23 years without eating any food from the golden arches. Not fries, not an ice cream, not a Big Mac.

I've only fallen off the wagon once since I made that decision as a pre-teen. And that happened six years ago when I was part of the emergency response to a flooded town zone. We were evacuating the citizens, setting up pumps, and wading around in cold, hip deep water for hours.

Eventually the fire chief showed up with food and - you guessed it - it was from Mc Donald's.

I was cold. I was starving. I ate the food.

My system survived the assault of the yellow arches, but now I've had to start my crusade from the beginning again. As a result I've been Mc Donald's free for six years now.

Now I'm not a saint when it comes to nutrition. I indulge in junk food occasionally. And anyone who knows me also knows that I couldn't resist dark chocolate if my life depended on it.

But in the final analysis, I think I'm fairly nutrition conscious. I do a pretty good job of eating healthy food, even a lot of organic food, at least most of the time.

In fact, I think that nutrition is one of the most neglected aspects of grappling training. This is ironic, because it's actually one of the training areas in which you have the most control. And the results are relatively immediate and altogether remarkable.

When it comes to performance you can't do much about your genetics. You got what you got from your parents, and now you're stuck with it (at least until gene-splicing technology takes a big jump forward).

You also may not have control over how often you train. Maybe hitting the mats twice a week is all you can get away with and not end up divorced.

And depending on your circumstances, you may not even have control over where you train and who you train with. if you live in a small town, for example, then your school may be the only show in town.

But nobody is forcing you to eat junk food, or to guzzle a giant soda, or to swing through the Mc Donald's drive through on a daily basis (except if you're in a flood zone).

Now there are a million miracle diets and eating plans out there. Each one of them claims to be the sole answer, and most of them contradict each other. But almost all experts agree on a few things, like:

• sugar is bad for you,
• excessive refined starches (flour, rice, etc) are bad for you,
• deep-fried food is bad for you,
• non-deep fried vegetables are good for you (and you should eat twice as many as you do now),
• you should have a balanced diet with protein, carbohydrates and healthy fats,
• you should drink lots of water,
• you should have a source of Omega 3 fatty acids (like in fish oils),
• you should eat (or drink) a mixture of carbohydrates and protein soon after you finish a workout,
• etc.
  

I wouldn't be going on and on about this, if I didn't think that nutrition wasn't so damn important to athletic performance. In a sense, nutrition is the very cornerstone of athletic performance.

• train harder
• recover faster
• feel better
• get injured less often
• get sick less often
• live longer
  

It amazes me how many people eat like crap and then spend hundreds of dollars on supplements. There are only a very few supplements that work, and even then good nutrition wins out over good supplements every single time.

If you're not getting the nutrients you need, and if you're not staying away from the bad stuff, then you'll never reach your true potential in this sport!

P.S. One cool (and free) resource on the subject of nutrition is Billy Hofacker's Ultimate Quick-Start Recipe Guide. Billy operates trainingformmafitness.com, and sends out a very informative training newsletter, so he understands the nutritional needs of grapplers.

Just click on the link below to download his recipe guide:

http://www.trainingformmafitness.com/support-files/ultimate-quick-start-recipe-guide.pdf

Then if you like what you get then go and sign up for his newsletter too!

Labels: fitness, nutrition

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How many people do you know who gained 10 lbs or more over a relatively short trip to an all-inclusive resort, or a week of Christmas celebration? I bet it's a fair number.

Well I've just come back from 7 days in the sunny Caribbean and had to put this to the test. I thought I'd share some ideas about staying ready for returning to training, even while you're away from your regular training routine.

Here are my candidates for the four top factors creating the fitness implosions (and decrease in grappling skills) that often happen to both regular people and athletic types while they're away on holidays:

1. Lack of general exercise
2. Over-eating
3. Over-drinking
4. Lack of sports-specific training
   

1. LACK OF GENERAL EXERCISE

On a holiday it's often a struggle to get your exercise gear on and get sweaty. There are a lot of factors conspiring to keep you on the couch or on the poolside deck chair.

That's why you have to make getting some sort of exercise a priority. It doesn't need to be long or super intense - it just needs to be something.

Personally my goal when I'm on holidays is to get some sort of cardiovascular, muscular endurance or strength-based exercise every second day. Sometimes this gets stretched out a bit, and three days go by without an exercise session, but any more than that and I start to go off the deep end.

Exercising while you're traveling or visiting new locations ISN'T about improving your fitness level. You just don't want your body to forget what you're expecting it to do when you get back to your regular life and training routine.

It's great if you can find a gym, but that's not always possible. That's why I always bring my running shoes. You can almost always go for a quick run, and then find a place to do some pushups and pullups.

On this last seven day beach vacation I only got in three exercise sessions:

1. a six kilometer jog. Foolishly I did this at the hottest part of a of a scorchingly hot day on the open asphalt road, so this was no time to push myself. After the run I spent a few minutes doing bodyweight calisthenics (pushups, pullups, etc.)
2. a seven kilometer run. This was after I had acclimatized to the heat a bit, and I also didn't go during the hottest part of the day, so I could push myself a little bit harder.
3. a short-and-easy bodyweight-only workout.
   

I know, it's not very impressive. Like I said earlier though - the goal at during this sessions wasn't to improve my fitness level. I just want to guard against being totally out of the fitness loop when I get back to my regular world.

2. OVER-EATING

Most people's day-to-day lives are busy, and that means that they don't have hours and hours to stuff their faces. Transplant these same people onto a cruise ship with an all-you-can-eat buffet and you'll often see some truly gluttonous behavior!

This is one of many reasons that I don't like staying at all-inclusive resorts, but it's also a problem if you're visiting people who think that hospitality means never having an empty bowl of chip dip.

So if you want to be ready to get back to the mats and not feel truly gross after the holiday is over, then you somehow have to keep the recreational eating and general gluttony under control.

Find something to amuse you on your holiday other than eating...

3. OVER-DRINKING

Let's be honest - for a lot of people being on holiday means drinking. And drinking. And drinking...

Obviously bingeing on alcohol can have pretty serious health consequences. But even if you don't come down with cirrhosis of the liver then keep in mind that most alcoholic drinks have a LOT of calories.

For example, a 12 oz beer has around 150 quick-to-absorb calories. Given that most of our caloric requirements are somewhere in the 2000 to 3000 calorie per day range, it's easy to see how a few beers a day can significantly bump your total caloric intake.

The amount of calories in mixed drinks and cocktails are even worse.

When it comes to advice in this area, you've really got to find your own way. I don't drink (at all), so I'm not the best person to offer advice in this area other than preaching moderation or abstinence.

Just remember that increased calories from alcohol, combined with overeating and lack of exercise means crappy performance on the mats.

4. LACK OF SPORTS-SPECIFIC TRAINING

The first three points are applicable to just about everyone who wants to avoid the holiday bulge.

However anyone doing BJJ or submission grappling knows that grappling skills also have a shelf life. If you stop training for a week or two then your timing, sensitivity and coordination also start heading south.

Part of the solution is to keep working your skills, even though you're away from your regular training environment. For some ideas you can check out what to do when schools and training partners are hard to find.

On my last trip my plan was to watch a few BJJ instructional DVDs that I own but haven't had the time to watch yet.

I know that watching competition or instructional footage keeps my brain thinking about grappling. This in turn helps keep me sharp even when I can't physically train, and has even led to some technical breakthroughs for me.

(As a side note I should mention that your body has neurons that fire both when your DO something and when you WATCH something. These are called mirror neurons and some people think that they're very, very important for the learning process. In any case, this suggests that watching BJJ might be a heck of lot better than not doing any BJJ at all.)

Unfortunately my plan to use mirror neuron stimulation to achieve world grappling domination failed when my portable DVD player broke, but it was still a good idea...

There's an old joke that goes "take my advice - I'm not using it..."

Well in this case I actually followed my most of my own advice (other than the DVD watching)! Hopefully sharing my advice helps someone avoid the post-holiday grappling blues!

Labels: conditioning, fitness, nutrition

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