Dieting through a training camp – Part 1

Dieting through a training camp – Part 1

Most amateur and professional boxers will have some time off between fights and once a date is agreed for their next fight they will increase their training and start their diet to make weight (heavyweights obviously excluded from this), this is the period they refer to as their training camp.

What I’m going to discuss here are some key diet and supplementation points to consider for the fighter who has to make weight, the what’s and what not’s to stress over, I’ll even brush on the dreaded but now almost essential dehydration process. Hopefully you’ll pick up some key points, which you can apply to your own training and nutrition plans. My experience comes from the boxers and MMA fighters I have worked with and all of my work is backed by science, something that should not be ignored in exchange for fad diets or self-proclaimed guru’s new methods. If the scientifically backed methods don’t work for you then it’s not the science, its’ most definitely you. Crash diets suck big time, don’t get in the viscous cycle of that being your only option to make weight. Oh and don’t bitch and moan about having to diet, if you hate it that much fight at your natural weight.

As a performance athlete making weight you really must do all you can to protect your metabolism, there’s no doubt as bodyweight and fat stores drop the so will your metabolic rate, however you need to protect it and make sure it is not magnified. This is your key tool to making weight the easy way. Crash dieting and bingeing after a fight are a sure fire way to metabolic damage, now the science is not vast on this area (check out the seminal Minnesota Semi-Starvation Study for good info on metabolic rate decreases) my experience with athletes is that every time you binge and add fat it becomes harder to shift that fat each fight, compounded by alcohol and age. I’ve worked with many fighters who through a combination of steady state cv, low calories and then bingeing after a fight just find it harder each time to make weight and the calories have to go lower for longer. Soon enough you’re left with nowhere to go and end up living on barely any food and using stimulants to get through training sessions, that is not a good place for increasing performance coming in to a fight. what’s really happening in this situation is your testosterone levels, nervous system output and thyroid drop through the floor and yet cortisol levels sky rocket, this is a bad environment for performance, recovery and fat loss, albeit somewhat inevitable when you do this, limiting it is key.

I have seen fighters eating sub 500kcals for 2 full weeks prior to the weigh in, this is a crucial time and using stimulants to carry you through training brings about the other real issue of adrenal fatigue. So at all costs protect your metabolism, to do this you need to be sensible and here are the techniques I use with clients who have suffered with this:

·      If you have a lot of weight to drop then drop it at the start of training camp, don’t leave it until 4 weeks out where you have to starve yourself

·      Don’t binge after a fight if you’ve starved yourself, your body is not a position to handle a huge influx of calories from sugar and processed foods you will have been craving

·      Increase your carb intake after fights slowly 25g increments per week

·      Don’t stop training after a fight, you may want a break but you cant eat all you want and not train, you’ll just get fat quickly, so just keep in your s&c sessions and your hiit conditioning work if you wish to cut back

·      Start your dieting early, get the bulk of the weight off quickly and then slowly eat and train your way in to your weight

·      Keep protein high. Protein has been shown to help increase metabolic rate.

·      Don’t steady state cardio as your calorie burner – not only will those long runs damage your knees and joints but too much of such activity has been shown to slow metabolic rate, I hear of current world champions going for a steady run to burn off the calories every night. We’ve all seen the overweight guys walking for an hour on the treadmill in the gym, saying he’s burnt 1000kcals off at a steady pace barely breaking a sweat, the fact is he’s not and he’s still overweight

·      Finally don’t worry, permanently screwing your metabolism up is pretty much impossible, what’s important is making the changes to make things easier so you can concentrate on your performance rather than constantly worrying about making weight, stress is not good for your metabolism either.

You’ll notice that I advise to strip weight quickly at the beginning of a training camp, the reason for this is two-fold: firstly it will leave you to concentrate on what should be the most important factor which is your performance as the fight gets closer, secondly, dragging a heavy body around the treadmill is hard work, you need to increase your power: weight, this is basically the speed at which you can move with keeping your heart rate in the 90%+ zone, the higher the speed the better, after all speed is a key performance component for fighter. If you’re trundling round the treadmill at 14kph at over 90% hr you need to increase this and you will see a marked improvement in your performance in the ring, which is ultimately what you want.

The single best way to do this at the beginning of a camp is a ketogenic diet. This is a far from ideal style of dieting for performance athletes, although recent research out of Italy showed performance not to be affected on a 1 month ketogenic diet it is in my experience not optimal long term for an athlete. Although carbohydrates are not actually an essential macronutrient they are essential for fuelling and recovering from gruelling twice a day workouts, however a ketogenic diet alongside a steady increase in training intensity will drop the weight off you quickly, most of which will be water/glycogen to start with but there will be some fat loss too, this method allows you to bring carbohydrates back in around training to fuel and recover from workouts quickly as well as being closer to your fighting or pre dehydration weight. 3-4 weeks should be the longest timeframe to use a ketogenic diet, if you’re doing longer than this then you’ll notice your performance either dropping or plateauing. You may also start to feel like you are overtraining as by this time your training intensity should be peaking. This is the exact tactic I have used many time with fighters, the fact they’re eased back in to training allows for this type of harsh diet.

To be continued, hopefully/obviously...

What i would do for a 10 week shape up competition

If you've not seen my other blog post on my 10 week summer shape up competition here it is 10 Week shape up competition details

Since i've posted this up i've had emails and facebook messages asking for tips on what the best approach would be, so here's a little guide on the approach i would take depending on your start point, note this goes for men and women too. This is not an all encompassing approach, it is merely to give you a rough idea of what you should be doing and what your approach to your diet and training should look like.

You'll likely fall in to 1 of 3 categories which will require a slightly different diet approach:


Group 1 - overweight, no abs, fair to say you could be classed as untrained

Diet wise start with eliminating the carbs completely, have a look in to ketogenic diets. This is the quickest way to drop excess weight and fat. Training wise it's not optimal for performance, however you wont be training anywhere near optimal just yet anyway.

Once the outline of your abs are showing for me or your stomach is looking flat for women it is time to add in carbs, i would initially opt for doing so in the post workout window only and in the form of complex carbohydrates, my preferred choice would be sweet potato due to it's higher nutrient value compared to normal white potato, i also think it tastes better! Another option would be to add in some porridge oats to your pwo shake. Once you reach this point your training will be intense too and so focussing on increasing performance should be a training consideration, you'll be wanting to lift heavier, have shorter rest periods, train with more intensity, maybe even train more often, for that you need to employ some smart nutrition techniques so timed carb intakes to fuel and recover the intense training will be needed. You'll still need a high protein and fat diet too and dont fall in to the trap of massacring calories to lose weight, your body is crying out for nutrients due to the increased training load, dont starve it of what it needs. There's a list of my preferred foods at the end of this article.

As a guide you should base your macro breakdown around the following figures

CHO <30g
Fat 1g/kg bodyweight
Protein 2.5-3g/kg bodyweight


Group 2 - skinny fat or slim and wobbly

You may have dabbled with the gym at times or you may go for the odd run to 'keep fit' overall you're not fat but you also dont have much muscle definition either, you're not out of shape but you're not in shape either. Women may have a slight paunch and men may have too but with twiglet arms, ok so you get the picture...

Diet wise you need to first clean up your diet, most people i see like this do not eat anywhere near a varied enough of a diet, it usually consists of grazing on poor quality nutrition and in some cases not eating enough at all. You're lucky that you are actually in a good position to make a huge difference to your body with only relativley small changes needed you'll be able to notice that you will add muscle and burn fat (the holy grail!) at the same time. Eat plenty of protein to recover from your training sessions and stimulate growth (ladies this does not mean you will look like Arnie!) have a good base of healthy fats and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables including root (that's root, not route) veg. Fruit wise opt for berries/forest fruits with apples and bananas, the latter is good when it's turning for around training for either an energy kick or replenishing energy stores after training.

Your main concern when you eat should be "where's the protein and is this a clean meal" coming from a porrly structured and low nutritional value diet if you hit these goals and train hard you will make a significant change to your physique.

As a guide you should base your macro breakdown around the following figures

CHO: 0.8-1.2g/kg/bodyweight
Fat: 1g/kg bpdyweight
Protein: 2-2.5g/kg/bodyweight


Group 3 - need some direction crowd

You go to the gym but never seem to really progress, you do look like you train but you're nowhere near where you could be and while watching what you eat you dont get great results unless you're on an extreme diet and you dont really know too much about nutrition anyway. Sounds familiar, then this should be your approach:

Are you eating enough of the good stuff? Lean protein, healthy fats and complex carbs with plenty of vegetables too?

The majority of people i come across like this actually need more of an overhaul of their diet than they think, the way you look is more down to the amount you train, if you stopped training it wouldnt take long before you realised how poor your diet was. It could be worse so lets not dwell on the negatives.

As you're already training and gym fit you can really crank up your training and take yourself out of your comfort zone, if you dont have a training log, start one and you'll have it written down of what you need to do to progress, most people in this catagory pick the same weights for the same reps each week, progressive overload is key!

With this increased training output you need to concentrate on fuel and recover with your nutrition, therefore i would opt for a carb cycling approach with carbs timed around training (before and after). The rest of your meals need to be rich in vegetables, healthy fats and lean protein. Keep a log of your food intake too. For more info on carb cycling then have a look on google, there's plenty of reading to be done.
As a guide you should base your macro breakdown around the following figures

Protein: 2-2.5g/kg/bodyweight
Fat: 1g/kg bodyweight
CHO:
low day: <30g per day
Moderate day: 0.5g/kg bodyweight
high day: 1.5g/kg bodyweight

Here is a basic list of 'good foods' which should make up the majority of your diet:

CARBOHYDRATES
Oats
Broccoli
Skimmed Milk
Fibre Rich Veg (broccoli, greent beans etc)
Wholegrain Bread
Basmati/Long Grain Rice
Whole-wheat Pasta
Wholemeal Pitas
Spinach
Apples
Pears
Oranges
Peaches
Plums
New Boiled Potatoes
Natural bean soups 

Chickpeas
Split beans
Black beans
Berries

Cherries


PROTEINS
Chicken
Lean Red Meat
Tuna
Mackerel
Salmon
Cottage Cheese
Quark
Turkey
Sardines
Kippers
Whey Protein shakes
Venison
Quorn
Tempeh
Greek Yoghurt
Lentils
Seeds
Egg Whites
Shellfish
Buttermilk
Bacon back

GOOD FATS (EFAs)
Olives
Olive Oil
Flax Seeds
Flax Oil
Almonds
Cashews
Nut Butters
Fatty Fish
Avocados
Nut Oils
Columbus Eggs
Seeds
Macadamia nuts 

In part 2 i'll look at the type of training you should be doing to maximise results, part 3 will cover the supplements i would recommend.

Total Body Development Summer Shape up competition - £500 cash prize!

As summer is fast approaching you should really start thinking about your diet and training to get in shape for the week or 2 of sunshine that we have or that sunny holiday you may have booked!

To help give you some extra motivation i'm launching the Total Body Development Summer Shape up competition and putting in £500 cash for first prize. I will also come up with some prizes for runners up too, bare with me i only came up with this idea today! I reckon i'll be able to draft in some good prizes though, maybe even bump up the cash prize pool too.

The competition will run for10 weeks and you must submit your start photo's between 22nd April and 29th April, the competition finishes on Saturday 6th July. Your end photo's must be submitted by midnight July 6th.

How to enter: Simply submit your photo to my Facebook page at Total Body Development Group

Or you can email me your photo's to david@totalbodydevelopment.co.uk

You must also include the following details in the description of the photo:
Age
Height
Start weight
Goals (get lean, lean bulk, add mass)
You can add in any additional info you wish such as years training or type of training you will be doing.

The winner will be decided by myself and a select few friends from your start and end photo's, we are looking for the best physical change over the 10 weeks, you dont have to be cover model ready or stick thin to win, i'll be looking for someone who gets stuck in, grinds out the results and makes a big change!

Your start and end photo must be taken from the front and we need proof of date, holding a newspaper from the day you take the photo will do. If you wish to add more photo's you can do. However rest assured i've prepped many males and females for shows, i know all of the lighting tricks so dont try and pull a fast one!

Ok so i know there will be a few people who want to enter but dont want to put their photo's up publicly, this is fine, however you must submit your start photo to me via email, i will blur/block out your face and post the photo for you, email them to david@totalbodydevelopment.co.uk

This is just a bit of fun and it's my way of encouraging people to get in shape, i will have people i trust on my page to offer out advice and tips and i'll be posting up routines and diet tips, i am not doing this to increase my page 'likes' i dont need to do that to get more work, i'm doing this as i think plenty of people will benefit from this and i'm not taking any new clients on for at least 6 months.

So to recap:

Submit start photo's between 22nd and 29th April
End photo's must be submitted by midnight 6th July
1st prize is £500 CASH
2nd prize will be £150 worth of supplements
3rd prize will be £50 worth of supplements
Everyone who finishes will receive a free t-shirt or vest
There will be other prizes along the way too.

A nutritional guide to recovering from a festival hangover by David Stache of S1 Supplements - As featured in Exposed Magazine

A nutritional guide to recovering from a festival hangover by David Stache of S1 Supplements - As featured in Exposed Magazine

If there was a magi pill we could take that would instantly rid us of the monstrous hangover that precedes a full day and night’s drinking at a festival then I’m sure it would be pretty expensive, I also know I would have invested heavily over the years if such a thing existed! Unfortunately nothing quite so magical exists. However there are nutritional tips, tricks and strategies as well as supplements that you can use which will make the following day more bearable. Here’s your quick guide to making sure recovery is as painless as possible

A hangover is the end result of not only a good night but other physiological factors, here’s a look at the main one’s

Dehydration – the one everyone knows about and probably the most important. Once alcohol enters the bloodstream it stops the pituitary gland from creating vasopressin an anti diuretic hormone which tells your body it’s time to release fluid, resulting in all further liquid going directly to the bladder rather than being absorbed by the body thus leading to dehydration. Studies have shown that 250 millilitres of alcohol cause the body to expel four times as much liquid in waste. This dehydration is what leads to headaches the next day.

Electrolyte loss – as the consumed liquid goes straight to the bladder and your toilet visits become more regular you will literally be flushing electrolytes away, those being key salt and potassium. Ever woke up with muscle cramps the next day too, this is why.

Glycogen loss – stored within the liver and muscles this converted glucose (converted from carbohydrates) is converted back to glucose and sent out of the body in your urine, that not WKD you can smell, it’s your energy stores! This is why you feel fatigued, lack coordination and lack energy the next day.

Toxins – once alcohol is broken down in the liver it leaves behind the toxin acetaldehyde, as this is so toxic the body sends 2 compounds to attack this toxin (think angry doormen ejecting you from a club) known as acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (say that after a few Jaegers!) and glutathione. The problem arises in the fact the liver has only a limited amount of these compounds which leads to a build up of the toxins as you drink more which causes liver damage.

Glutamine loss – glutamine (an amino acid) is inhibited once alcohol enters the bloodstream and once you stop drinking the body tries to make up this loss and it is this which leads to the psychological side effects post alcohol consumption as Glutamine is a natural stimulant and source of energy for the brain and nervous system so the yo yo like effect leads to side effects such as anxiety, restlessness and tremors. This effect is also the reason you will not reach a deep enough sleep, which is vital for recovering.

What about vomiting? Well this effect comes from the stomach producing too much hydrochloric acid which tells the brain the stomach’s not happy, what happens after this a nauseous feeling and usually for most a couple of minutes praying at the porcelain altar.

So there you have the reasons for a hangover but what about the tips and tricks, well here’s my top supplement and nutritional tips to make the hangover a little more bearable

Food wise some people swear by a greasy full English breakfast which is not as crazy as it may first seem, the eggs contain cysteine which breaks down acetaldehyde in the liver’s depleted glutathione, plus you will get the benefits of the high calories resorting energy levels. A much better approach is to not drink on an empty stomach as with no food in the stomach the alcohol hits the bloodstream quicker, so a full English before you go out would be the better option.

To remedy the loss of electrolytes especially potassium then bananas should be your go to food, however a bottle of sports drink will also replenish stores very quickly.

With dehydration being key you simply must consume water to rehydrate the body, a pint of water before you go to bed might be too late and will almost certainly have you up using the toilet in the middle of the night but does help to fight against dehydration once your body has broken the alcohol down so either drink plenty of water between alcoholic drinks which acts to slow down your drinking and limit alcohol consumption or have a glass ready for when you wake up, getting rehydrated as quick as possible is the best way to ease a hangover.

Fruit/orange juice contains fructose and many vitamins and minerals, which were depleted the night before and are very quickly absorbed by the body, so are always a good option, as are quickly absorbed forms of Vitamin B and C.

Most people simply reach for some form of painkillers and wash down with their coffee but that is not an advisable way of dealing with a hangover, for a start coffee is a diuretic which will make you pass more fluid than you are taking on and many of the pain killers will have further effect on the liver, however ibuprofen and aspirin inhibit prostaglandins which are associated with increased hangover severity.

Supplements wise there are 3 which are key, however one which is the most common, that being Milk Thistle is really not needed or of any use to the weekend drinker as it does not work as a quick fix and is therefore best used by those who have long term liver damage.

The second and probably the most acute one is L-Methionine which works by bonding with the alcohol in the liver and producing citric acid thus removing the toxins, if you only give one supplement a try to ease your hangover it should be this one, it’s backed by science and really works, taking 1000-2000mg either towards the end of your night or before bed is the best method, just don’t get caught popping innocent pills in a club!

To complement this Vitamin B6 is a great addition as it acts as a diuretic to flush the leftover toxins from your body.

So the perfect pre-festival (tramlines) plan would look something like this:

Before your head off have a heavy meal containing fats, carbohydrates and some protein. This slows the absorption of alcohol down and also fills your bodies energy stores for the hard days/nights dancing ahead

While out make a conscious effort to drink water, this slows your drinking rate down giving the body time to process the alcohol consumed and deal with it, you’ll still get drunk but the after effects left behind will be dealt with easier.

Take 1000-2000mg of L-Methionine before you go to bed along with 100mg of vitamin B6 and a glass of water; leave a glass of water by the bed for when you wake up too.

First meal of the day have a banana and fruit juice, this replenishes vitamins, minerals and glycogen, follow this when ready with some heart poached eggs on whole meal toast with real butter and a cup of redbush tea (great for rehydrating).

Finally swear never to drink again and moan on Facebook just how your hangover is the worst ever and you require lots of sympathy.

If after reading all of that you still think Hair of the Dog is the best method then crack on and enjoy the further compounded hangover you are merely delaying!