Thursday, August 16, 2012

Fruits, Veggies, Beans and Water


A lot of us forget to drink enough water, stay hydrated, especially during hot summer months.

Probably nowhere is this more important than with athletes who perform in weight-making sports.

Rehydrating after long, strenuous workouts is vital. It's also necessary for good health.  Deydration affects many vital organs from the brain to the kidneys to the muscles, not to mention the all-important circulating blood volume.

Relying on thirst to keep you chugging away those pints of water won't do it. The thirst mechhanism in your body is a notorious unreliable indicator. It actually turns off well before one is completely rehydrated. Besides, forcing down much of that water gets boring.

So here's a tip.  Ramp up your intake of "solid water" sources, fruits and vegtables and beans. That's right, fruits and veggies contain lots of water. Yes, beans! They have a surpringly high water content.

These sources of water also have high fiber content which aids in losing weight and giving you that full feeling.




Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Choice Versus Chance


Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out that life is about choice not chance.

Most people mistakenly believe that they eat with their mouths. True, that's where the food goes into, that big round opening on the front of their faces.

But they really eat with their minds. The decision what to eat is made there, in the mind, long before any food passes their lips. It's called choices, hotdogs and soda versus vegetables and fresh fruits; steamed versus deep fried; natural versus processed.

So the next time you feel hungry, take a chance and make a better choice. Twenty years from now your body might thank you.
rle

Monday, July 16, 2012

Having Trouble


If you're having trouble getting your athletes (fighters) to eat correctly, take a gander at their background. Where did they grow up, inner city or what?

Now days it doesn't much matter, but it could help. Most have been raised on fast food; it's just a fact of life. If you have an inkling of what good,wholesome,healthy food is, try a week long fast-food binge and get back to me.

If words like ugg!, awful, nasty come to mind, you know what I'm talking about. Forget streamed brown rice,egg whites or oatmeal with coconut milk and walnuts. That's your concept as a coach or trainer of healthy eating, not theirs.

Forget all that babble about water-retaining electrolytes. Most of these kids come from S&S Land, sodium and sugar.

Concepts are often like political parties: never the two shall meet. That fast food is big-time tasty and normal to them, probably makes you want to gag. Ever notice those big paper plates you see at parties and picnics,how they're separated into three sections,one large and two smaller ones?

Well, that's how you should have your charges view their daily nutrition plan--25% protein, 25% fruits and veggies and 50% carbohydrates. For the purists out there who are saying: "What about fats?" What about them?

It's a simple plan to help begin closing the gap between two comcepts about healthy nutrition--yours and theirs.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are you wating for? Next time you want to make a point or share some ballpark breakdown about macro-nutrient proportions, grab yourself one of those paper plates.

rle

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Aging


What's your definition of aging? Here's ours: loss of flexibility, physical and mental.

Flexibilty has to do with mobility. Yes, there is such a thing as mental mobility, think problem-solving.

What's one of the first things they do after you have surgery? Get you up and make you move around. It's been repeated that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. There are, to be sure, other certainties in life and here's one: We get less flexible with time.

Yea, we know it's a bummer.........especially if you're an athelete. Loss of flexibility leads to stiffness, decreased mobility and injuries, a vicious circle if there ever was one.

So here's our prescription whether you're a fighter or whatever. Too many go into the gym and just pound away. Flexibility for the most part is ignored or at best a distant orphan. So take some time to think and work ankles, hips, knees, shoulder and thoracic spine areas with specific exercises. Think range of motion here, not power.

Muscles are not alone when it comes to the use-it-or-lose-it adage. And neither is conditioning. So why would joints be any different?
rle

Thursday, July 5, 2012

SIS

The modern world is awash in acronyms.

Scratch any card-carrying bureaucrat and you'll find an acronym. Scratch a psychologist or psychiarist and you'll get a whole pasel of them. In fact, if you go to acronyms.com you'll discover there are 862,000-plus acronyms, initialisms, alphabetisms and other abbreviations. You'll also find 249 for SIS alone, from Snickering in Silence to Springtime in Sweden.

In our case SIS stands for short, intense and sweet, as in the results you'll get from following short, intense training, the kind that pretty much sums up our philosophy: Don't waste time; put in the work and get your butt out of the gym.
rle

Monday, July 2, 2012

A Little Philosophy

In an earlier post we noted we're different.

We're different in many ways, our approach to strength and conditioning and in our approach to nutrition, just to name two.

We don't make better weight lifters; we make better athletes, in this case fighters. We're not interested so much in how little you can lift at the beginning versus how much you can hoist at the end of camp. Not that this isn't useful information; it can be.

We're not number chasers. We're interested in flexibility, explosiveness.
Sure, we promote power, strength and muscle endurance. Any self-respecting S&C coach does. Conditioning is paramount in our view. A well conditioned fighter will train well. He or she will fight better and have more confidence. And that's a huge difference.
rle

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Pre-event Meals

The standard is to load up your athlete (especially in weight-making sports like boxing,wrestling and MMA) with carbohydrates--usually some kind of pasta smothered in tomato sauce.

Timing of meals is another issue since nerves can play an important role, often slowing down or impairning digestion.

We like to do things a bit differently, not, however, just for the sake of being different. Timing should be 3 to 4 hours before the event. We prefer black beans and brown rice with a dollop of extra-virgin olive oil. Some grilled fish or chicken and a small serving of veggies can be added. The emphasis here should be on small.

Remember, food in the stomach pulls blood from the muscles to aid in digestion, not a good thing for muscles that will soon be demanding an increase of blood to perform well.

Breakfast on the day of the event also presents some interesting choices. Oatmeal is a good staple, but for those who dislike the stuff we prefer baked beans and scrambled eggs on a piece of whole wheat toast with some fruit, mellon, apples, berries or orange juice. No bananas.

For a quick pre-event drink, we eschew all those expensive, over-rated sports drinks,including the less expensives ones like Gator and Powerade. We prefer sipping a small 6 oz. glass of choclate skim milk 45 minutes before showtime. The athlete doesn't have to consume the entire amount to get the maximum benefits. Reseach in fact shows that just swirling the drink around in the mouth for several seconds and spitting it out provides the same effect as actually drinking the contents.

Truth, as they say, can be stranger than fiction; and this is one of those times. The recommended swirling time is 5 seconds, but we've found that there's no magic in the number five, just long enough for the brain-mouth connection to kick in. So 5 to 10 seconds max should suffice.

Researchers tended to use a carbohydrate load with the commonly used sugar in the supplement business, maltodextrin. We use non-fat chocolate milk. We told you we're different.
rle

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Water for your horses

Drink an 8 ounce glass of water a day before each meal to cut down your hunger pangs. It'll also rev up your metabolic horses to help you lose weight.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Quercetin

Quercetin is a flavonoid found in a variety of foods from green and black tea to red onions, red grapes and numerous berries to cayenne pepper. It reportedly has numerous medicinal properties one of which is to fight viral infections as in colds or the upper respiratory tract.