Recovery.

Hey Guys,

Today I just want to share a great video from dave Tate on recovery.

You can see the video HERE

This is a really interesting video for athletes as it goes over your ability to recover from certain things such as ploy work to heavy singles.

This is really important as how many guys do you know that max out on squat or deadliest then  go and hard spar?

This is something that is holding everyone back and its something I'm going to look at more in future posts.

Hope you enjoy the video.

Stay healthy,

Mike

PS I still have the offer for a 4 week nutrition plan for ONLY £25 on the website!!

When people drop calories to low.

Hey Guys,

The other day I talked about how using the scale was a bad idea in terms of assessing health and getting the body that you want.

I talked about how when the scale stopped moving people had a tendency to drop calories. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to start, the problem comes when people use this as their only form of adjustment. After a while you're going to start to run into some serious problems!

For the purpose of this post I am going to talk about people who are just focusing on a reduction in WEIGHT using the scale as their only indicator of progress. Remember that weight loss is different to fat loss, and people should focus on the other indicators mentioned in the previous post.

Let's say we have an individual who is on a diet of 2000 calories a day. They are exercising a few times a week and are seeing results in their weight reduction. After a few weeks the weight loss stops, so they do what they think is right and drop calories by 500 per day.

They are now taking in 1500 calories everyday (this is quite low). The weight loss starts up again and they manage to lose a few more pounds, then it halts again. So what do they do now? Most people  drop by another 500 calories because that's what worked before right?

The weight loss starts up again but this time it stops a lot quicker. By now the dieter is probably feeling tired all the time, feeling run down and may have any number of the following issues,

• Getting colds and infections all the time.
• Dry skin.
• Poor sleep quality.
• Irritability.
• Loss of sex drive.
• Skin tender to touch.
• Weight gain.

Plus many other symptoms.

Weight loss as now pretty much stopped. even if they did ridiculous things like dropping even more calories or add in more exercise. 

So what's happened?

Well they have gone far to low, far to soon. As they have dropped calories without looking at the plan as a whole, and the body has down regulated their metabolism to combat the lack of nutrients and fuel. 

This is called metabolic or adrenal damage (another article for another day).

Your body is now in a state where it will do everything it can to not lose weight. As far as it knows, it is on the brink of starvation. All your body wants to do is to survive, it has no idea that you are trying to make weight or just want abs for the summer!

The scope of this is far beyond this brief blog post, however here are a few things that you can do to prevent it in the first place,

• Know what you are doing. If you don't, ask your coach or a professional.
• Make sure you are eating a sensible amount of calories for your body and your activity.
• Get the right nutrients in! Make sure you aren't neglecting any macronutrients.
• Consider refeed meals if your calories are low.
• Look at adding activity in before you cut calories.
• Make sure that you are recovering from your training and you're not just running yourself into the ground.

Running your calories to low for to long can do some serious damage to your metabolism and body. 

Having a damaged metabolism can effect your ability to build muscle and lose fat in the long run. You may also experience a number of other symptoms that will effect your life dramatically. 

NOT GOOD!

Make sure that you are making intelligent, calculated changes to keep you moving towards your goals while keeping you HEALTHY!

Remember that while calories do count in a fat loss plan, there are many other factors that make just a big difference!

Stay healthy,

Mike

Focusing on the scale

Hey Guys,

Today I wanted to talk briefly about people using the scale as a measure of progress.

Most people use the scale when it comes to judging just about everything when it comes to fat loss, weight loss and muscle gain.

Now if you are a weight class athlete then you simply have to keep an eye on the scale. There are plenty of people out there who have believed the poor advice 'just eat healthy and you won't gain weight', only to step on the scales after a few weeks to find out that they have ballooned up beyond recognition.

However for most people, they just want to look a bit better when they are on the beach or by the pool (vanity is always first, health second. It's the way of the world).

Now the main mistake that these people make is that they confuse weight loss and fat loss. For most people, they want to lose fat. They don't really care how much they weigh. I always ask clients "If I had a magic wand that could give you the body of your dreams but you would weigh 1000 pounds every time you stepped on the scale, would you do it?" 

Most people say yes.

So if this is the case, why do you measure your progress by just the scale?

If you want to have a lean, healthy, muscular body, then the best way for you to judge progress is to use photos, the mirror and the tape measure. This will give you a good indicator of progress and stop you getting bummed out when you see an unexpected jump in the scale due to many different reasons that include,

• Stress
• Lack of sleep
• Digesting food
• Water retention

Plus a load of other things that make your weight go up and down throughout the week.

If you only focus on the scale number going down, then you're applying a very one sided (and unfair) view of your progress. You are also inevitably setting yourself up for a negative experience ass the scale isn't always going to come down!

So what happen when the scale doesn't come down?

Well people generally do one of two things. They either,

1. Reduce calories
2. Add in more activity (extra training sessions, more cardio etc).

Now in some cases this can be a good strategy depending on what the rest of the plan looks like. However after a certain point this just does more damage than good! Quite a lot of clients come to me in this position. They have been trying to cut fat for a while, hit a road block and decided to drop calories right down. 

So what happens when people do this? How does it impact them?

On Wednesdays blog I will look at what happen in that situation and a few tips to avoid it!

Stay healthy,

Mike

BJJ and soreness.

BJJ makes you sore.

There is no way about it.

I still remember the first time I rolled properly. For the next few days I felt like I had been run over. 

Some days I still do.

However I would say that mostly BJJ doesn't make me sore anymore (disregarding injuries). This made me think about soreness and recovery for BJJ. In other sports soreness is often an indicator for growth or that you have had a good training session. People wear it as a badge of honour, a sign that they have done a good job.

Do some people think this way about BJJ? Do you feel as though you haven't had a good session if you're not sore the next day?

One of the issues I have been thinking about is training frequency. Many state that the more that you can train BJJ, the better that you will get (pursuing their 10,000 hours etc).I would say that most people train BJJ 2-3 times a week with the more dedicated training 5-6. Are these people trying too be sore after every workout?

Now I am of opinion that you want to able to train AND recover as much as possible. Because of this I want to take steps to minimise soreness. This may include but not be limited to,

• Foam Rolling and mobility work
• Workout Nutrition
• Foods high in anti oxidants
• Foods that reduce inflammation
• Very hot and cold baths and showers
• Making an conscious effort to regulate my workout intensity.
• Taking naps.

Now I don't do all off these, all the time. However I will always keep an eye on my recovery and how I am feeling. Training all the time and feeling like crap is not a goal of mine.

What about you? Do you chase soreness? Let me know below!

Stay Healthy,

Mike

Unorthodox Superfoods for BJJ

Hey Guys,

Here is an article that I wrote for the last issue of JiuJitsu Style Magazine. Make sure to have a nip over and look at my online articles for them (plus loads of great BJJ content). Also check out the latest issue, its got a great article on protein in there...

Here is the article,

Unknown Superfoods for BJJ

Food is good.

Whether you want to call it nutrition, a diet, fuel or some munch, we all love to eat a bit of food. And why wouldn’t we? We all train hard, taking care of business on and off the mat, we deserve a bit of nice, tasty nourishment right?

However it doesn’t stop there, many of us look at our food to give us better results. Whether it be a leaner body, more muscle or recovering quicker from the beatings that are handed out in tough sparring, BJJ athletes are starting to realise that their food is important to their success on the mat.

Unlike many other sports, health is often one of the top priorities of the BJJ athlete. Because of this, the term ‘superfoods’ often comes up. So what is a ‘superfood’? Well a superfood is a certain type (or types) of food that can dramatically increase our health, recovery or aid in our physique goals.

Many people know of the standard superfoods, but if you don’t here is a brief list of commonly known ones,

·      Broccoli

·      Grass fed beef

·      Wild caught Alaskan Salmon

·      Avocado

·      Extra Virgin Olive Oil

·      Natural Raw Honey

·      Blueberries

·      Turkey

·      Quinoa

There are many more (a quick Google will give you hundreds of lists), but often there are many great and slightly unusual ones that are left out from the list. With that in mind, here is a quick list of some of the lesser known, but amazing superfoods that you can add to your diet to help you stay healthy and recover quicker!

Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut is German for ‘sour cabbage’.

Sauerkraut is finely cut cabbage that has been fermented in lactic acid bacteria including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. While the fancy names aren’t that important, it is the fact that it has been fermented in them that is.

As it has been fermented in these bacteria it has an amazing ability to improve your digestion and gut health because of the enzymes that it contains. This simply means that you can absorb more of the nutrients that you take in rather than it simply passing through your system.

It’s  low in calories, fat and carbs making it great for cutting weight.

Its is also incredibly high in vitamins C, B and K. It is also a good source of dietary fibre, folate, iron, potassium, copper and manganese. To top it all off, because of the fermentation process, it is also even more bioavailable (you digest it better and absorb more nutrients) than actual cabbage!

Kimchi

Kimchi is another fermented food.

It is made in Korea and is often a mix of vegetables that can contain tomatoes, chilli and garlic. Kimchi is often made in jars and left to ferment underground.

Just like Sauerkraut, it is very high in live bacteria (specifically lactobacillus kimchii) that to can aid digestion immensely. Just one serving of the superfood provides a person with over 50% of the daily requirement of vitamin C and carotene.

It is also highly rich in vitamin A, thiamine (vitamin B1 to me and you), riboflavin (vitamin B2), Calcium and iron!

Green Coffee Beans

I love coffee, you love coffee, everyone loves coffee. However this isn’t that type of coffee. The coffee that you are thinking of is a dark bean where these are green.

Green Coffee beans have been directly linked to help aid in fat burning (less fat helps you fit into your true weight class for competition).

Even though the beans are high in anti oxidants, it is the chlorogenic acid content that has been linked to their ability to help aid fat loss. The thing to note here are that the beans must be green.

When they are roasted the chlorogenic acid is broken down and therefore not present in normal coffee.

There have been a few concerns lately of whether it’s ok to take Green Coffee extract rather than using the bean. In a study done by the University of Scranton, they found that there was no detriment to using an extract instead of the actual bean.

Turmeric

Turmeric comes from the root of the Curcuma longa plant and has a tough brown skin and a deep orange flesh. Turmeric has long been used as a powerful anti-inflammatory in both the Chinese and Indian systems of medicine. Turmeric was traditionally called "Indian saffron" because of its deep yellow-orange color and has been used throughout history as a condiment and healing remedy.

While turmeric is a fairly well known spice found in most curries and mustard, many people still don’t seem to be using it in their dishes.

Not only will the spice make your food taste great (who doesn’t love a good curry) but it will also aid in helping reduce inflammation in the body. You know all those acting joints you get when you have a hard spar or someone viciously strips your grips? That’s inflammation. Less of this is good right?

The reason that it does this is down to the yellow, orangey colour of the spice. It contains curcumin.  Curcumin has also been linked to helping suffers of cancer, bowel disease and fibrosis suffers.

Horse

Right don’t all jump down my throats and start sending me hate E Mails because you loved My Little Pony as a kid and how dare I recommend you eat such a majestic beast etc, etc.

If we put aside the fact that most of us have great memories of riding ponies at the beach as children, and the recent scandal of horsemeat in supermarkets (which was about honesty, not what we were eating) and take a second to look at the nutritional profile of horse verses beef for a second.

Per 100g

Calories

Horse – 175g

Beef – 273g

Overall fat content

Horse – 2g

Beef - 18g

Protein

Horse – 28g

Beef – 25g.

As you can see, horsemeat is lower in calories and fat but higher in protein! This is probably due the animals diet. While most cows are fed grain to help plump them up for slaughter and sale, horses are free to roam and eat grass pretty much exclusively. Horse also contains double the amount of iron of beef and vitamins B6 and B12.

Now I’m not saying that you should run out and bump off black beauty, but if you can find horsemeat in a reputable butchers that has been slaughtered humanely and is prepared correctly (not processed) then you may want to take a look.

This is just a small list of slightly unknown superfoods that can help you recover better from training, improve your health, and add some new tastes to your food.

As with all nutrition, making sure you have a correctly balanced diet that contains everything you need is of the upmost importance. Take a few mins to see what you’re actually putting in your mouth, you may realise you can get more out of cheaper, less known food!

Stay healthy,

Mike

I've healed!

Well that may not be technically correct.

My neck (and the nerves there in) are still giving me a little niggle now and again. However they are healing very fast!

Yesterday I was able to do a few rounds of rolling at the end of technique. While I did feel slow and out of whack (always feel half a second slower after time away from sparring), my neck didn't give me any problems at all.

With this in mind I have decided to try doing another few rounds of light rolling today to see how it feels.

As regular readers of the blog will know, healing injuries is something that really interests me (handy as I seem to be made of paper in my old age!). Now I must say that trying to rush back from any injury is always a bad idea. I know how hard it is to stay off the mat but I will guarantee you that at least your art will suffer, and at most you will make the injury worse (leading to more time off the mat).

What I will say is the following that will help make the most of your inured time and help you get back ASAP!

• Do what you can. There are ways to work around injuries such as not training that area directly, using different movements, working on technique and not sparring etc. This will allow you to keep progressing, even if it is slightly slower. progress is progress.
• Talk to people who are smarter than you AND LISTEN TO THEM. Ok, I may not always do the last bit but I ALWAYS do the first. Find out what the problem is and how to fix it.
• Focus on your recovery and diet. How well your body recovers and what fuel you give it will make the biggest difference to how quick you return. Even if this means that you have to sit there and literally do nothing till you're healed. get it done!
• Use the time off to educate yourself. Whether this is on your art, how to recover better or even injury prevention. Make yourself a better animal with your time.

This is by no way a conclusive list (look how short it is!). 

If you are injured, please speak to a professional and your coach before you do anything really dumb!

Got a good tip on injuries? Let me know about it!

Twitter - @mike_unorthodox

Instagram - mikeunorthodox

Facebook - Unorthodox Nutrition

Pintrest - UnorthNutrition

Stay healthy,

Mike