Combining your Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai Kickboxing and Kettlebell workouts with good nutrition

Combining your Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai Kickboxing and Kettle Bell workouts with good nutrition is the essence of achieving results. Without a good application of nutrition, both mental and physical gains are compromised. Here is Stout Train Pittsburgh’s 5 nutrition concepts that can help you achieve more from your game!

1) Breakfast is (and isn’t) the most important meal of the day. One concept that’s ruined breakfast is this idea that a person should eat a ton of carbs. This isn’t true. In fact, your body would do a lot better with a good supply of protein (chicken or eggs) and some healthy fats (coconut oil, grass fed butter). When you fall asleep, your body has a natural tendency to shift from a carb burning machine to a fat burning machine. The only way to break this cycle is to eat high carbs, which will naturally shift the body away from fat burning mode. If you wake up in the morning and eat a tablespoon of coconut oil and cook some eggs in grass fed butter, you will keep your body burning fat, which is the most stable energy you can have. Plus, you help prevent a blood sugar crash.

Now, if you are someone that needs a carb due to low blood sugar in the morning, opt for something like a small amount of plain oatmeal with coconut oil in it. Oatmeal has no fructose (fructose is the bad carb) and breaks down slower in the digestive track, therefore, you will keep a stable flow of energy and you will likely remain burning fat for energy in some facet.

2) Carbing up before a workout. This is more a myth than anything, you’d be better off with high fat, high protein. If you take a bite of coconut oil or grass fed butter and eat some meat before your workout, you will surely notice the energy levels and focus you are used to become amplified. However, oddly enough, eating carbs after your jiu jitsu or kettle bell training session is actually the better idea. When you work out hard, for example, after rolling in jiu jitsu, you break down muscle. The process to replace this muscle effectively comes from replacing glycogen stores found in the torn muscles. This is accomplished via carbs. Now, this doesn’t mean go eat donuts, we are talking oatmeal, rice, some fruits, nuts.

3) Processed foods are the devil, particularly if you have current or past injuries. Processed foods are laden with chemicals that are not human food, in addition, they have high amounts of sugar and no healthy fats, as well, they are heavy on the Omega 6 fat chart. All the aforementioned points cause inflammation in the body. Inflammation accounts for slow injury healing as well as causing old injuries to give you problems. Avoiding processed foods means more mat time and less ice time. A good chart for success would be researching some paleo diets.

4) Sports drinks aren’t really a good idea. Things like Gatorade are full with sugars and additives. Water is the best thing you can drink. Coconut water is another alternative. Fear mongering marketing techniques trying to convince you that you need electrolytes from gatorade are ill founded. Here is what electrolytes are:

• sodium (Na+)

• potassium (K+)

• chloride (Cl-)

• calcium (Ca2+)

• magnesium (Mg2+)

• bicarbonate (HCO3-)

• phosphate (PO42-)

• sulfate (SO42-)

There are tons of potassium in coconut water, it’s loaded. Get some pink himalayan salt for sodium. Magnesium is found in pure maple syrup. You don’t need to pound a sports drink for things that are naturally available to you from clean sources. Plus you don’t want to crash out while you are rolling or swinging a Kettle Bell.

5) Rest and water. Don’t be afraid to rest and drink water between rolling sessions. The body builds most of it’s strength and endurance when it rest. This is why long cardio sessions like treadmills really aren’t good for you and why jiu jitsu and kettle bells are. That said, when you have some downtime during your workout, for example, when you are told to rest during high interval kettle bells, or you just went 5 minutes in jiu jitsu sparing, take the rest time serious. Breath in through the nose, drink water, let the body heal up and prepare for the next battle!