Nutritional tips:
1. More meat, less fruit = leaner body. Scientific research has proven that eating too much fruit can lead to extra fat storage than normal and can seriously mess up our blood sugar levels. Now many nutritionalists are advising us to count fruit as a maximum of 2 out of our 5 a day. This is because fruits are often very high in fructose which causes a serious rise in blood sugar levels and so leads to more insulin being produced. This in turn causes extra energy storage and the human body stores energy as... FAT!
Also scientists claim that for a leaner body you want to increase your meat intake. This helps in two ways;
1. The human body cannot store protein and so any un-used protein will be removed without leading to extra fat deposits.
2. It has less calories than carbohydrates and fats and also your body will use up more calories to break it down that it takes to digest carbs.
Both of these things will result in you carrying less spare weight around.
Weight loss:
Two main methods have worked for me before, one is a new discovery ad one is an old method but works wonders.
1. Lowering carbs and increasing fats. Supprised? Me too, but this makes perfect sense when you think about it. Firstly the body's main energy source is carbs, so by taking this away by reducing,(but not eliminating) carbs fro our iet makes our bodies tap into the energy stores it has held onto for years, the fat cells. Then by increasing your fats your body realises that it has extra ftas and so burns the fats it has stored as well because it isn't in short supply. This in turn reduces the bodys likely hood to tap into the muscle tissue for extra energy and so maintains for muscle for longer.
2. Intermittent fasting. Whoa, what do I mean by this, well fasting means not eating, feel free to drink, maybe even have a protein shake during the fasting period, but no food! Try not eating for 16 hours a day, then you can eat for the other 8 hours and this will encourage your body to burn fat during the fasting period and yet will not encourage muscle wastage due to the retention of your normal calorie intake in the 8 hour window. Try eating between 1pm and 9pm each day with a protein shake post workout, which should be in the morning and you should start to shed the bodyweight in a few weeks.
Super Setting:
Super sets are a great way to increase your metabolism and heart rate while using free weights. They allow you to work opposing muscle groups along side each other, taxing your body more in a shorter space of time. Instead of resting between sets of curls do a tricep set. This will also stretch out the bicep and tricep muscles when you do the opposing movement and so will improve your lifting.
Supersets also cause more breakdown of muscle fibres forcing your body to have to repair them faster. tis results in a massive calorie burn.
Energy Boosts:
1. Drinking water, not coffee will give you a great energy boost. Dehydration leads to fatigue and so sipping water throughout your work out or even at work will give you a much needed boost in performance. Also caffine will cause an energy crash shortly afterwards and could lead to an increased calorie intake and overall lack of effort in the gym.
2. Eat eggs for breakfast. The rotein in eggs will help to keep your body firing on all fronts till bedtime and will reduce your desire to snack throughout the day. They also provide good a good protein source for a morning workout session.
3. Avoid high carb lunches, such as sandwhiches or rice. Keep lunchtime light and try a lean protein and salad mix. A high carb lunch can lead to a sudden rise and crash in blood sugar levels causing alot of it to be stored as fats or lead ing to more snaking to replace the sudden drop in energy. Try adding spices such as ginger or chilli to your lunch to boost your metabolism and increase your focus and alertness.
Free Weights:
Add 20kg to your bench press in 5 steps:
1. Get a spotter: ADD 5KG
Having someone to spot you gives you the confidence to push that little bit harder. Cause you know that they are there to help if you need it.
2. Do clap press ups: ADD 5KG
Explosive moves such as clap press ups trigger your muscles 'post activation potentiation'. These moves lead to an increase in muscle fibres and nerves so you can push that little bit harder due to your increased muscle potential.
3. Plant your feet: ADD 2.5KG
Having your feet on the floor will increase your stability for the heavy lift making it easier o generate the power needed to push the bar off your chest. But never lift your glutes or lower back off the bench. (Thats just cheating)
4. Get your grip right: ADD 3.5KG
when lifting big aim for a grip just under twice your shoulder width. this is the prime spot to get all of the main muscle invoved working at their full potential. If your gym has olympic bars aim to have your hands in a comfortable position between the second and third rings from the centre.
5. Work your back first: ADD 4KG
By working the back, the opposite muscle group to the chest, it can result in an increase in power output by up to 5% . Opposing muscles work together by activating more muscle fibres and can help to stabilise the lift.
Another tip for working your chest is to warm up your shoulders before you under go chest exercises. The shoulders are put under strain when you do most chest exercises so by simply warming them up for even 2 minutes will improve your performance and reduce the risk of injury.
Training abs while in free weights. There is a simple way to get your core and abdominal muscles working whilst training with free weights. Simply performing the exercise standing up will boost your core strength and help shape your abs. The added need for stability when doing standing free weight training gets the core muscles activated and leads to more rapid gains in core strength and can even better your over all muscle gains.
Squattting is great to build up the muscles in your legs but there are two ways to do it. If you want big quads then you want to keep your feet pointing forwards and have them just less than shoulder width appart and then squatt down to a 90 degree angle and back up
If you are aiming for overall strength then a wider stance is advised as this also activated the glutes and hamstrings. Aim to sqautt down low enough that you hips are level with your knees.
MMA:
Slams work great if your opponent has you locked up on the ground, slimply lift up ad drop them even if it's only a few feet it still works wonders to putting them off an offensive or for breaking their guard. But once you break guard you have to be thinking ahead, don't hang around or they'll wrap you up again.
Another useful ground manouver is to distract the opponent. For example take one arm and pull it across their face so they can't see what your doing, but also it makes them think you are trying to do a submission. This leaves you free to change position and get a different move going before they have time to realise whats going on.
A quick defensive tip is to tuck your chin down into your chest when the opponent tries a neck submission (e.g sleeper hold, guillitine, etc) this prevents them cutting of the carotid artery and jugular vein, keeping you conscious and of course makes the submission virtually painless and useless.
A good tip for your stand up game is always circle your opponent to their strongest side. This reduces the power they can generate from punches and kicks with their stronger side by reducing the distance and take through they can use when performing their offensive game. It also puts them off and is a great way to get the upper hand in a stand up fight.
Cardio:
There are different forms of cardio training for different goals. For example a marathon runner and Mixed martial artist are not going to want or need the same types of endurance. So by basing your cardio sessions on your fitness goals you will see the results alot sooner than if you just stick to a basic routine.
As a Mixed Martial Artist I find that the best cardio workouts for me involve short, high intensity sessions on 3 differnet machines. each machine should target a different muscle group. E.g Doing Bike, cross trainer and skipping. Or bike, tredmill, rowing. Keeping the intensity high ensures that my fitness levels are ready for the high intensity rounds I undergo in my sport.
Also for MMA training try to limit your rest time between machine to around 1 minute cause you'll get less than that time between rounds!
Motivation:
Motivation is key to achieving your training goals. Here are three great ways to keep you motivated;
1. Music and Movies:
Yep thats right, you need to get your DVD collection and Ipod stacked with big hitting song and films.
Watching a motivational movie with training sequences or big action scenes can encourage you to get out there and train so stocking up on Rocky, Never Back down and other Big hitters can boost your performance and give you somthing to do to rlax after a tough gym session.
Also motivational songs from your favourite movies and big dramatic tunes can keep you going in the gym. Next time you go try to get a playlist of your workout songs and see if you improve in your next session. Itunes also have a wide range of health and fitness tunes to download on their store.
2. Buddy Up:
By getting a training partner you can push each other in every session and keep each other going regularly. A training partner should be at the same level as you and aiming for similar physique and fitness. Otherwise you'll not get much benifit from it and it could actually hamper your training.
3. Enter an event:
If you're aiming to get marathon quality fitness why not give your self a challenge and actually compete? This is a great way to motivate yourself to achieve your goals and when the time comes it will help you see if you can do it or not.
Also going a sports team or club will help to furtehr your training, and keep you motivated to improve.
4.Set your own goals
Set goals that you want to achieve and then record your progress at regular intervals towrads that goal. For example if yuo want to lose weight select the weight you want to be and then weigh yourself and record the result every week until you reach the goal. This helps to motivate you as you can see the resuts in your weight loss even if at first it isn't visible to your own eye. This should help keep you going until you reach your goal.
But beware of foolish goals. Building muscle and losing weight are a long term commitment so don't set foolish goals such as 'I want to lose 10 pounds in 1 week'. It ain't gonna happen.
5.Log books
Log books are a great way to motivate yourself when training for strength gains or cardio gains. You record each session and then after so many days (e.g 50 days) you do a summary of all the exercises and what you are lifting. Then after another 50 days you do another summary table and you can see what gains you have made. This should help keep you motivated as you can see the results on the page in front of you.
1. More meat, less fruit = leaner body. Scientific research has proven that eating too much fruit can lead to extra fat storage than normal and can seriously mess up our blood sugar levels. Now many nutritionalists are advising us to count fruit as a maximum of 2 out of our 5 a day. This is because fruits are often very high in fructose which causes a serious rise in blood sugar levels and so leads to more insulin being produced. This in turn causes extra energy storage and the human body stores energy as... FAT!
Also scientists claim that for a leaner body you want to increase your meat intake. This helps in two ways;
1. The human body cannot store protein and so any un-used protein will be removed without leading to extra fat deposits.
2. It has less calories than carbohydrates and fats and also your body will use up more calories to break it down that it takes to digest carbs.
Both of these things will result in you carrying less spare weight around.
Weight loss:
Two main methods have worked for me before, one is a new discovery ad one is an old method but works wonders.
1. Lowering carbs and increasing fats. Supprised? Me too, but this makes perfect sense when you think about it. Firstly the body's main energy source is carbs, so by taking this away by reducing,(but not eliminating) carbs fro our iet makes our bodies tap into the energy stores it has held onto for years, the fat cells. Then by increasing your fats your body realises that it has extra ftas and so burns the fats it has stored as well because it isn't in short supply. This in turn reduces the bodys likely hood to tap into the muscle tissue for extra energy and so maintains for muscle for longer.
2. Intermittent fasting. Whoa, what do I mean by this, well fasting means not eating, feel free to drink, maybe even have a protein shake during the fasting period, but no food! Try not eating for 16 hours a day, then you can eat for the other 8 hours and this will encourage your body to burn fat during the fasting period and yet will not encourage muscle wastage due to the retention of your normal calorie intake in the 8 hour window. Try eating between 1pm and 9pm each day with a protein shake post workout, which should be in the morning and you should start to shed the bodyweight in a few weeks.
Super Setting:
Super sets are a great way to increase your metabolism and heart rate while using free weights. They allow you to work opposing muscle groups along side each other, taxing your body more in a shorter space of time. Instead of resting between sets of curls do a tricep set. This will also stretch out the bicep and tricep muscles when you do the opposing movement and so will improve your lifting.
Supersets also cause more breakdown of muscle fibres forcing your body to have to repair them faster. tis results in a massive calorie burn.
Energy Boosts:
1. Drinking water, not coffee will give you a great energy boost. Dehydration leads to fatigue and so sipping water throughout your work out or even at work will give you a much needed boost in performance. Also caffine will cause an energy crash shortly afterwards and could lead to an increased calorie intake and overall lack of effort in the gym.
2. Eat eggs for breakfast. The rotein in eggs will help to keep your body firing on all fronts till bedtime and will reduce your desire to snack throughout the day. They also provide good a good protein source for a morning workout session.
3. Avoid high carb lunches, such as sandwhiches or rice. Keep lunchtime light and try a lean protein and salad mix. A high carb lunch can lead to a sudden rise and crash in blood sugar levels causing alot of it to be stored as fats or lead ing to more snaking to replace the sudden drop in energy. Try adding spices such as ginger or chilli to your lunch to boost your metabolism and increase your focus and alertness.
Free Weights:
Add 20kg to your bench press in 5 steps:
1. Get a spotter: ADD 5KG
Having someone to spot you gives you the confidence to push that little bit harder. Cause you know that they are there to help if you need it.
2. Do clap press ups: ADD 5KG
Explosive moves such as clap press ups trigger your muscles 'post activation potentiation'. These moves lead to an increase in muscle fibres and nerves so you can push that little bit harder due to your increased muscle potential.
3. Plant your feet: ADD 2.5KG
Having your feet on the floor will increase your stability for the heavy lift making it easier o generate the power needed to push the bar off your chest. But never lift your glutes or lower back off the bench. (Thats just cheating)
4. Get your grip right: ADD 3.5KG
when lifting big aim for a grip just under twice your shoulder width. this is the prime spot to get all of the main muscle invoved working at their full potential. If your gym has olympic bars aim to have your hands in a comfortable position between the second and third rings from the centre.
5. Work your back first: ADD 4KG
By working the back, the opposite muscle group to the chest, it can result in an increase in power output by up to 5% . Opposing muscles work together by activating more muscle fibres and can help to stabilise the lift.
Another tip for working your chest is to warm up your shoulders before you under go chest exercises. The shoulders are put under strain when you do most chest exercises so by simply warming them up for even 2 minutes will improve your performance and reduce the risk of injury.
Training abs while in free weights. There is a simple way to get your core and abdominal muscles working whilst training with free weights. Simply performing the exercise standing up will boost your core strength and help shape your abs. The added need for stability when doing standing free weight training gets the core muscles activated and leads to more rapid gains in core strength and can even better your over all muscle gains.
Squattting is great to build up the muscles in your legs but there are two ways to do it. If you want big quads then you want to keep your feet pointing forwards and have them just less than shoulder width appart and then squatt down to a 90 degree angle and back up
If you are aiming for overall strength then a wider stance is advised as this also activated the glutes and hamstrings. Aim to sqautt down low enough that you hips are level with your knees.
MMA:
Slams work great if your opponent has you locked up on the ground, slimply lift up ad drop them even if it's only a few feet it still works wonders to putting them off an offensive or for breaking their guard. But once you break guard you have to be thinking ahead, don't hang around or they'll wrap you up again.
Another useful ground manouver is to distract the opponent. For example take one arm and pull it across their face so they can't see what your doing, but also it makes them think you are trying to do a submission. This leaves you free to change position and get a different move going before they have time to realise whats going on.
A quick defensive tip is to tuck your chin down into your chest when the opponent tries a neck submission (e.g sleeper hold, guillitine, etc) this prevents them cutting of the carotid artery and jugular vein, keeping you conscious and of course makes the submission virtually painless and useless.
A good tip for your stand up game is always circle your opponent to their strongest side. This reduces the power they can generate from punches and kicks with their stronger side by reducing the distance and take through they can use when performing their offensive game. It also puts them off and is a great way to get the upper hand in a stand up fight.
Cardio:
There are different forms of cardio training for different goals. For example a marathon runner and Mixed martial artist are not going to want or need the same types of endurance. So by basing your cardio sessions on your fitness goals you will see the results alot sooner than if you just stick to a basic routine.
As a Mixed Martial Artist I find that the best cardio workouts for me involve short, high intensity sessions on 3 differnet machines. each machine should target a different muscle group. E.g Doing Bike, cross trainer and skipping. Or bike, tredmill, rowing. Keeping the intensity high ensures that my fitness levels are ready for the high intensity rounds I undergo in my sport.
Also for MMA training try to limit your rest time between machine to around 1 minute cause you'll get less than that time between rounds!
Motivation:
Motivation is key to achieving your training goals. Here are three great ways to keep you motivated;
1. Music and Movies:
Yep thats right, you need to get your DVD collection and Ipod stacked with big hitting song and films.
Watching a motivational movie with training sequences or big action scenes can encourage you to get out there and train so stocking up on Rocky, Never Back down and other Big hitters can boost your performance and give you somthing to do to rlax after a tough gym session.
Also motivational songs from your favourite movies and big dramatic tunes can keep you going in the gym. Next time you go try to get a playlist of your workout songs and see if you improve in your next session. Itunes also have a wide range of health and fitness tunes to download on their store.
2. Buddy Up:
By getting a training partner you can push each other in every session and keep each other going regularly. A training partner should be at the same level as you and aiming for similar physique and fitness. Otherwise you'll not get much benifit from it and it could actually hamper your training.
3. Enter an event:
If you're aiming to get marathon quality fitness why not give your self a challenge and actually compete? This is a great way to motivate yourself to achieve your goals and when the time comes it will help you see if you can do it or not.
Also going a sports team or club will help to furtehr your training, and keep you motivated to improve.
4.Set your own goals
Set goals that you want to achieve and then record your progress at regular intervals towrads that goal. For example if yuo want to lose weight select the weight you want to be and then weigh yourself and record the result every week until you reach the goal. This helps to motivate you as you can see the resuts in your weight loss even if at first it isn't visible to your own eye. This should help keep you going until you reach your goal.
But beware of foolish goals. Building muscle and losing weight are a long term commitment so don't set foolish goals such as 'I want to lose 10 pounds in 1 week'. It ain't gonna happen.
5.Log books
Log books are a great way to motivate yourself when training for strength gains or cardio gains. You record each session and then after so many days (e.g 50 days) you do a summary of all the exercises and what you are lifting. Then after another 50 days you do another summary table and you can see what gains you have made. This should help keep you motivated as you can see the results on the page in front of you.
