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