Diet, Stress and Mood

Here’s a little tip for everyone who is busy and/or stressed - keep eating well! Many times when everything is going well it is easy to eat well, but once time gets short and stress levels increase it’s very tempting to turn to the junk food for convenience. The problem with this is what you eat can effect not only your body composition (amounts of muscle and fat), but also your mood, energy levels, sleep and basically your whole life!

The times when stress is high, time and sleep are short are exactly when your body most needs good food packed with nutrients in order to cope - if you turn to the junk food at this time you may end up in a downward spiral of sugar spikes, cravings, mood swings, weight gain and poor health! Therefore next time your life gets busy, prioritize good eating and you will find you can cope with what life throws at you much better!

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Tags: food, diet, mood, eating, binge, stress, junk, sleep

2 Fat Ladies

2 Fat Ladies

This is something that happens to me often, but I saw an extreme example of it the other day…

I was standing in the line at the supermarket checkout, in my own world as usual, when I happened to notice that the two women in front of me were rather large! Tony Robbins likes to say ‘success leaves clues’, and wondering if the opposite was also true, I checked out the stuff on the belt in front of me. Amongst many other things were:

- 6 loaves of white bread
- Chocolate puddings
- An assortment of biscuits
- 4 pizzas (2 for 1!)
- 6 bottles of wine
- Some sort of treacle coated cakes
- And the coup de gras… over 10 bags of assorted sweets!

Oh, they were also buying some clothes, which I managed to see the size on the hanger of…size 22! To me, it doesn’t seem to take a genius on the level of Sherlock Holmes to work out how this has happened – in fact, it’s a very simple formula (women + crap food = size 22 clothes)! I also noticed there were a few things in my basket that were entirely absent in theirs, namely:

- Any unprocessed vegetables
- Any unprocessed fruit
- Any unprocessed meat

I see this worryingly regularly at the supermarket. I am not sure even I am dumb enough to accept the explanation that these people do not know that what they are buying is unhealthy, so what is the explanation?

I am not sure I know the answer to that, but I do have a tip for anyone reading this – next time you are at the supermarket checkout, have a think…is the stuff in your trolley more like what would be in a fit, healthy person’s trolley or more like the fat women’s trolley? The closer you get to a fit person’s trolley, the more chance you will have of being a fit person!

To Train, Or Not To Train?

- That is the question! An experience I recently had (along with talking about it all at length at the seminar I recently did) got me back to thinking about optimal rest between sessions, stress/recovery and indicators. The basic question is, how do you know whether you have recovered from the last session sufficiently to go and do another similar session? Here is my story from last week:

I had backed off for a few days in order to test my maxes in the squat and bench press. This session was planned for Thursday, and I did a light lower body training session on Monday and just easy aerobic capacity work Tuesday and Wednesday. However, when Thursday came around I wasn’t feeling great. My indicators were down and I was just generally tired. I decided to go and warm-up and see what happened.

During the warm-up I didn’t get the sudden surge of energy that I have experienced in the past as a result of pushing through a tired feeling (a sort of ‘blowing away the cobwebs’ approach I guess). When doing some warm-up sets in the squat even the empty bar felt too heavy and as I worked up I could tell I was way off form. I decided to shut it down and come back another day.

That night I got very little sleep and was expecting to feel even worse, however I woke up feeling great! All indicators were up too. I thought it may be too good to be true, but went to try and do my max day again. This time I was feeling good, and as I was working up the weights were not slowing down. I got to 100% of my old max, which I was expecting before the start of the session would be too heavy, and it went up easily! I then went to 105% and got that. The same happened in the bench press, in fact I only just missed a 10% improvement here.

The lesson here is that sometimes not training can be the best course of action to take in a given situation. As the Kenny Rogers song says, ‘You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run’! This is a major reason why I urge everyone to track indicators, so you have something quantifiable to judge your progress on. However, sometimes a ‘gut feeling’ can be as useful as all the indicators in the world. If everything just feels ‘off’, it’s probably not the best idea to push for a PR. You can be the best judge of your readiness, if you listen to your body. Sometimes you will try and push through, and at these times it’s helpful to have a coach to judge when you need to be pushed or held back. Charlie Francis, the great sprint coach, says he can tell when to push his athletes by listening to them warm-up. He has such an expert ear that he can hear from their footsteps what their body needs, and that message often differs from what comes out of his athletes’ mouths!

In a sport that values ‘toughness’ and ‘heart’, it is often hard to take the ‘easy’ way out and do little or nothing when it comes to training time. However, sometimes that is exactly what you need to do, and you will benefit from greater results in less time and a much lower incidence of injuries. All you have to do is listen to your body!

For more information on indicators, see ‘Why Keep A Training Diary?’

Common Sense

Common sense would say that if a workout puts you in hospital, it’s not the most productive use of your time. Some would apparently disagree…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22Fitness.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

I love the quote:

“Mr. Glassman, CrossFit’s founder, does not discount his regimen’s risks, even to those who are in shape and take the time to warm up their bodies before a session.

“It can kill you,” he said. “I’ve always been completely honest about that.”"

High Rep Kettlebell Work…

Good for cardio - not so good for hands!

This is what happens when you do 411 snatches with no chalk = kettlebell slipping at the wrong times.

At this time I would like to recommend Elastoplast spray plaster, which forms a plasticky layer over wounds and stops them getting infected (that is why my hand is shiny in the pic). Note: It hurts like HELL when you spray it on an open wound!
http://www.hardcoresportstraining.co.uk

Motivation 1

The Pareto Principle

From the all-knowing Wikipedia

“The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of income in Italy went to 20% of the population. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients.” “

How does this relate to training? Well, I believe that in training 80% of your results come from 20% of the things you do. The key is to make sure you are doing the 20% stuff, and doing it often.

As an example,  I happen to like squatting. When I am stuck for ideas what to do, I squat. I believe the squat is an 80% results exercise,  and this has allowed me to get away with a lot. For instance, if I enjoyed using the leg extension and leg curl instead I really doubt  I would have the same muscle mass, power,  metabolic rate,  bodyfat %age etc.  I know that  if  I go in the gym and do squats, the little things will tend to take care of themselves. My legs will stay strong, my abdominal region will stay strong, my back will stay strong and my shoulders will stay strong. Every muscle that is under the bar will HAVE to maintain a certain level of strength, even if all I did were squats.

If  you are smart you can use the 80/20 rule to your advantage. For instance, if you choose to do more of the 20% that is most important to your training, you would likely make faster progress. People around you could work as hard as they liked on the 80%, but would not be able to match your results. The key is to find what is the most important action to take which will improve what you are trying to improve, do more of it and do it well.

To find your magic 20%, think of the following - if you were forced to drop 80% of what you are doing in training, what would you do? In weight training you might be left with squats, deadlifts or weighted pullups for example. In MMA you may be left with sparring, or technique work. Now ensure that whatever happens, that gets done and you will see much faster rates of progress.

20% Down…

This is copied from Alwyn Cosgrove

Tomorrow marks the 20% point of the year.

A fifth of 2008 has already passed.

Are you on track with those New Years Resolutions? Are you on track with your goals?

It’s amazing how time passes so quickly.

Don’t waste a single second.

If your goal is fat loss - start today

If your goal is muscle building - start today

If your goal is (insert anything here) - start TODAY !

20% of this year is gone forever. Will you make changes TODAY or will another 20% pass, then another 20% — and before you know it — it’s 2009…..

Don’t waste a single second. Start TODAY.

And remember, procrastination is like masturbation - at the end of the day you’re only f***ing yourself…

Alex.

New Barbell Complex

This is my latest fun torture tool to use on myself and others. Benefits include strengthening the posterior chain, increasing explosiveness and reinforcing the hip/triple extension pattern. I should mention that if you haven’t had training in the olympic lifts this complex may not be for you, as your technique has to be good enough to repeatedly perform correct repetitions even when tired. If this is the case I would recommend starting with an easier complex from a technical point of view.

Here is the complex:

• Close Grip Snatch x 6
• Power Clean And Press x 6
• Clean And Jerk (or Push Press) x 6 (3 each leg if doing jerks)
• High Pull x 6
• Jump Shrug x 6
• Romanian Deadlift x 6

Rest 60-90 seconds

Repeat x 3-5

Good luck, and make sure you have a good grip on the bar!

Lazy Perfectionist…

I came up with this term for myself while talking to someone recently, and I feel it sums me up perfectly.

I am a Gemini star sign, which as you may or may not know is ‘The Twins’, and that really describes me well - sometimes I feel like I am actually made up of two different people!

I have one side of me that is driven, focused, and destined to greatness -the other side would be  perfectly happy to sit and watch reruns of Scrubs and live on the dole.

One side of me is neat almost to the point of OCD -  the other side is the guy who lets the house get to the state where you have to find a path from the chair to the door.

One side of me loves training, pushing myself and desires a great looking, strong physique - the other side can’t be bothered training (especially if progress is slow).

Being aware of this dichotomy isn’t enough to control my lazy slob side, I have to get aggressive and force him to shut the hell up and stay out of my way! (At least until I am a millionairre!)

The only way to do this is to set goals and targets regularly, and schedule time to work towards them. Of course, the lazy side of me doesn’t want to bother doing this, so the most important appointment on my calendar falls on a Sunday, and is named ’Timetable next week’. :-)

For some great resources on goal setting, organising your life and increasing productivity check out:

7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

and

Goals by Brian Tracy