This appeared in Martial Arts Training magazine
 
 
 

    Can you eat yourself fast?

    Well, that might be overstating it a little, but what can be accurately stated is that you definitely can eat yourself slow. For sure, soda pop, Twinkies, donuts, and Big Macs are not going to do a thing to help you develop fast punches, kicks and blocks. Actually, these things will do much to slow you down as well as tear you down.

    Stating it simplistically, slim and trim is faster than roly-poly. Granted there are fat martial artists who are fast, but how much faster would they be if they had less weight to move. The fact is this: The less fat you have on and in between your muscle fibers, the more efficient will be your movement. Simply put, the leaner your legs, the faster will be your kicks; the leaner your arms, the faster will be your blocks and punches; the leaner your upper body, the quicker your body movements.

    There is also the issue of general health. A strenuous martial arts workout is hard on your body, and when it’s over there is a reason that you feel a general weakness, local muscle tremors, and a desire to just nod off in the old easy chair. When you train hard, you stress your reflexes, muscles, joints, tendons, cardiovascular system, and heart. It doesn’t take long to begin draining your body of vital energy-giving, growth-giving, indeed, life-giving nutrients. After an hour, these things are drastically depleted and your body is crying out for you to replenish them. Your bod’ has treated you good, now it wants something back.

    But what do too many martial artists do after a hard workout? They eat and drink junk. They stop at the local Dairy Burger and grab a 97-ounce cola (the one that’s so large it has a surf), a 99-percent-fat gut bomb burger, and a large order of double-dipped-in-lard fries.

    The bodies of these martial artists are already struggling to recuperate from their workout, and now they have to struggle to assimilate two pounds of impossible-to-digest garbage. Their internal system is either going to give up on the digestive process or give up on recuperating from the workout.

    If this is you, you should know that you will only get away with this for a short while. Although your body is amazingly tolerant, it’s still keeping tally of these abuses. It will pay you back by first making you feel sluggish (translation: slow and tired movements), slowing your progress, and teasing you with minor strains and pulls. It does this as a warning that you are not replenishing what you have torn down. But if you are like many people, you will ignore these signs and keep on expecting quality out as you put garbage in.

    One out of 10,000 people can get away with eating trashy diets their entire lives. They are the ones who live to be 100, enjoying cigarettes and bourbon right up to the end. The problem is that you don’t know if you are one of them until you get a birthday cake with 100 candles on it. If your final cake has only 50 candles, you know you weren’t one of the lucky ones.

    But we are not talking about longevity here, though it’s a nice side benefit of eating healthily. We are talking about fueling your body properly so that you can enjoy your training, make progress in general and - develop awesome speed. It’s true that some top athletes who possess tremendous speed, fuel their bodies with junk, some even brag about it interviews. But imagine how fast they could be and how good they could be if they consumed healthy diets. Most nutritionists agree that the best way to eat for superior athletic performance is also the best way to eat for general health.

    Lets take a brief look at the three basic elements in your diet - protein, fats, and carbohydrates - and see how they relate to your development of speed.

PROTEIN

    Have you noticed that the same people who advocate megagrams of protein are the same people who market it? There have been articles written by champion bodybuilders - who just happen to be writing for bodybuilding magazines that manufacture protein supplements - who claim they consume two or three grams of protein per pound of their body weight. That would be 450 to 650 grams of protein for a 225-pound lifter. That’s nonsense. The truth is, if a person really consumed that many grams of protein for an extended period, his kidneys would go off like a whoopee cushion under a fat man’s butt.

    Excess protein is not good for you. You don’t need it, it won’t make your muscles stronger, and it won’t make you kicks and punches faster. Your body can only handle so much protein per day - about one-half gram per pound of body weight. A general rule is that only 10 percent of your total calorie intake should be protein, even if you are weight training and practicing martial arts. I know of one bodybuilding champ who made gains on only 40 grams of protein a day.

    As a hard training martial artist striving for greater speed, strive for that one-half gram per pound of body weight. This will be plenty to help you rebuild what you tear down during your workouts. Make sure you get it every day.

FATS

    The issue of fats, which have become a dirty word in recent years, can get quite complicated. But for our purposes here, let’s keep it simple.

    Know that a high-fat diet can affect your training and your speed. Excess fat will bind with red blood cells, causing them to clump within arteries, slowing blood circulation and, in time, decreasing the volume of oxygen carried to your muscles. If you consistently eat more fat than carbohydrates, you will begin to drag because you won’t be able to replenish the glycogen stores from your last workout. This will snowball, and, in short order, your workouts, your progress and your speed will suffer.

    Before a workout, it’s especially important to avoid excessive fat, such as burgers, fries and shakes. These things will place too heavy a burden on your digestive track, taking away blood from your muscles and slowing your techniques.

CARBOHYDRATES

    Carbohydrates are a great source of fuel because they are made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules. Carbs should make up about 70 percent of your caloric intake. But be careful what kind you eat.

    There are two kinds, simple and complex. Simple carbs are sugars, the kind found in candy. That chocolate bar you ate just before class will give you a quick shot of energy, since simple carbs are quickly absorbed into the blood stream. But the shot will only last about 10 minutes. If you are like a lot of people, you will then come down from the sugar rush to a lower energy level than where you were before you ate the candy. Who needs that? How fast can you be when your butt is dragging?

    Complex carbs consist of long strings of molecules that are not as quickly digested and dispersed into the blood stream. As a result, there is not a dramatic rise and fall of your blood sugar, so the energy-producing effects last longer. This means you will be able to maintain your speed longer, and you will be able to train longer on exercises that increase your speed. Complex carbs are found in foods such as potatoes, pasta, breads, corn and cereal.

VITAMINS

    Vitamins and minerals will not give you immediate energy, but a lack of your daily requirement of them over time will take its toll on your energy, muscles and bones, and the speed of your techniques. There is controversy in some circles as to whether you should take vitamin/mineral supplements. Some people swear by them, others say they are unnecessary.

    Ask yourself this: Do you eat healthily every day? Most people don’t. Even if you did, do you know how many vitamins and minerals in your food have been destroyed in packaging, storing and cooking it? Since you don’t know, it’s a good idea to supplement with a high potency vitamin/mineral tablet.

CAN COFFEE HELP YOUR SPEED?

    Maybe, but you need to decide if it’s worth it. In a study at Ball University, several athletes drank coffee without knowing it (how did they managed to do that?), and every one of them found that their performance improved considerably; in particular, they were able to exercise for 7 percent longer than without coffee.

    The bad news is that caffeine makes your blood sugar level fluctuate, and it also contains lots of acid that can cause heartburn and stomach problems during your training. But not everyone experiences these problems. You have to check as to how you react.

    Studies show that two cups are optimum. One cup of coffee doesn’t render the desired effect and three cups can be detrimental. We’re talking about average supermarket cups, not the super-blast, Titanic-floating espressos that costs you five bucks.

    It takes about 15 to 20 minutes for the coffee to get into your system and about 45 minutes for the total effect to hit. Therefore, drink it about an hour before you train.

    So, will java make you faster if you are not one of those who experience negative effects from it? It will indirectly, since it will give you the energy bump to train a little harder and longer toward your goal of optimum speed.

    Champion bodybuilders claim that 50-80 percent of their success is a result of eating properly. As a hard-training martial artist, you put as much stress on your body as a weight lifter, maybe more so. It’s mandatory that you fuel it properly before you train and fuel it properly after you have torn it down from your workout.

    Think of your body as a high-performance car. If you put cheap, low-grade fuel in it, it will run like a slug. The same is true of your high-performance body. Fuel it correctly and you will be able to exhibit that speed you have already developed and work long and hard to get even faster.
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