powerDOJO

Author: Eric Wong

  • QnA: Back Pain, NOXplode, Jack3d

    I’m back (after a week off) with another Ask EricWongMMA – this week I answer 2 questions to make up for missing last week.

    The first question is about back pain and the second question is about pre-workout supplements.

    WARNING: I swear in this video. More than a few times. Probably more than I should. If this type of thing bothers you, please click here.

    It’s probably because I shot it while on the beach and I was super chillin’ and I felt like I was just shootin’ the shite with some pals.

    I also go off on a couple of tangents and rant a bit.

    Either way, I think that I share some extremely important concepts here, especially about the pre-workout supplements, so check it out when you’ve got 10 minutes:

    .

    There’s some good stuff in there and now I’m going to test your knowledge…

    QUIZ QUESTION: What are 2-3 important factors that relate to maintaining healthy adrenal glands?

    Answer below.

  • The Future of the Legal System

    “What Weed Can Teach Us About Justice”

    Read the above sentence again…

    What weed can teach us about justice is the lesson that we can learn from Mary Jane…

    That lovable character that likes to get passed around at parties…

    Who often originated with the white guy who’s rockin’ the dreadzzz.

    The role of marijuana in today’s society is a perfect case of the lack of common sense that rules our legal system.

    They say weed is a drug.

    They are fucking retarded.

    If weed is a drug…

    Then sugar is a drug…

    And caffeine is a drug…

    And they are all equal, but not the same.

    They are all as equal and different as the falling snow on the streets of Toronto in mid-January…

    No two snowflakes are alike – at the same time – no two snow flakes are bad, or good…

    They just are.

    Trying to classify weed or any substances, foods, behaviours or preferences  as good, bad or evil is blasphemy for one simple reason:

    We are all unique individuals and what is good for Tim is not necessarily good for Jane, Flavia, Ping or Shaniqué.

    Treat it on a case by case basis, but remember to remain respectful of the individual’s freedom to choose to live the way that they want to live… as long as it does not prevent others from living the way that they want to live.

    This, my friends, is the future of the legal system… If, and ONLY IF… We want to live in a society ruled by common sense and good will.

  • How to Listen to Your Body

    You often hear people say, “You’ve got to listen to your body.”

    While good advice, it’s vague and can be difficult to apply.

    I was in the gym a couple of hours ago warming up and my right knee just didn’t feel right.

    On the menu today was an appetizer of Power Cleans, followed by a secondi of Overhead Press, with the main course being a platter of Deadlifts, finished off with a delicious assortment of 1-Arm Rows.

    Not the kind of workout that is conducive to a funky knee…

    I did my best to not expect problems and lengthened my warmup a bit, ensuring that all of the muscles that cross the hip, knee and ankle were activated and mobilized.

    I stepped up to the bar to start my Power Cleans and did my usual ramping-style warmup.

    After the first couple of sets with just the bar, it was feeling about the same.

    But I continued and kept going, focusing on good glute activation. The more the glutes work, the less the quads/hams have to work and the less stress on the knee joint.

    When I got to my work sets at 185 lbs, I felt about the same, but a funny thing happened and each work set got progressively better, with the final set being my best. I finished the workout without an issue.

    Now, if I’d have thought, “My knee feels messed, I’d better not squat today” I would’ve stopped myself from having a great workout. I literally feel like a million bucks right now.

    And this is how YOU can learn to listen to your body…

    The next time something feels a bit off and you’re about to go train, I’m talking something feeling a little funky, not like a dislocated shoulder or visible ulna (an arm bone), don’t just write your workout off…

    Do your best to NOT EXPECT problems and continue with your workout (pay a little more attention to ensure your body is as prepped as possible in your warmup) as scheduled.

    The only thing you’ve got to make sure you do is to promise yourself you’ll skip any exercise that truly feels like it is making the problem worse.

    This is how you can learn to listen to your body and let it guide you to the best choice.

    Now, you’ve got some concrete actionable steps you can take to learn to listen to your body.

    That’s what I’m all about – practical, actionable, effective and efficient tips, advice and programs.

    You could follow this little routine and get great results. Power Cleans for example are such an efficient exercise, hitting your whole body and simultaneously developing power, strength and flexibility.

    If you’re not comfortable doing them, I suggest you give my Olympic Lifting Mastery Course a shot.

    Olympic Lifting Mastery Course
    This course will guide you step-by-step to mastering the world’s most explosive exercises.

    In it I’ll guide you through, step-by-step, until you’ve got these explosive lifts down pat.

    Eric

    P.S. Don’t forget about my new LIFETIME PERFORMANCE GUARANTEE – if you ever feel a program that I’ve created doesn’t live up to your expectations, just shoot me an email and I’ll get your money back to you, no questions asked.

    So if you’re not throwing barbells around your gym, scaring the guys doing curls on the BOSU, I’ve got your back. Let’s get started today:

    Click Here to Master the Olympic Lifts Today

  • Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

    As I mentioned in the BioTRUST Protein Review post, I wanted to hook you up with a great meal replacement smoothie recipe.

    Well I’ve filmed it and it’s now live, check it out here (I’ve set it to start where I do the smoothie up so you don’t have to watch the review again if you watched it already):

    I’m also going to do up the page at ericwongmma.com/supercharged-smoothies very soon, if you’re on my newsletter list you’ll be notified of when I complete the PDF, but if you’re not on my newsletter list, subscribe so you don’t miss out.

    I’ll be putting all of the details of my SUPERCHARGED Smoothie Formula in the PDF along with a few tasty recipes.

    You can subscribe to my newsletter list below (the form will appear momentarily):

  • BioTRUST Protein Review and SUPERCHARGED Smoothies

    I recently received a box of supplements from a new company called BioTRUST. 

    BioTRUST Protein ReviewThese guys are jumping in to a pretty competitive market in coming out with a protein powder, but their product has some unique properties that you can’t find anywhere else.

    I’ve been minimizing my protein powder intake and I limit my consumption to about 2 or 3 smoothies per week. I recommend you do the same and get most of your calories from real food.

    At the same time, you can’t beat the convenience of smoothies when you need something quick or to take with you on the run.

    So I’ve put together a little video review of BioTRUST’s new protein powder below.

    In the video I also reveal my “SUPERCHARGED” Meal Replacement Smoothie Formula. 

    Follow this formula and you’re sure to hit all your nutritional bases for when you need to down a shake instead of a real whole food meal that’s packed with nutritional value.

    Check it out here:

    [jwplayer config=”600×338 (Blog Posts)” mediaid=”6361″]

    Right now, you can get 3 bottles of BioTRUST protein for the price of 2, as well as FREE shipping.

    I think the free shipping offer ends Friday or Saturday, so make sure to check it out.

    And because I’m 100% transparent with you if you do decide to purchase BioTRUST protein, I may receive a commission.

    But I want to give you the option to purchase through my link and hook me up or if you for some reason don’t want to, I’m not going to force your hand:

    www.BioTRUST.info <– hook Eric up 🙂

    www.biotrust.com <– Eric won’t get hooked up but it’s all good

    Like I said before, I’m all about transparency and I don’t want you to think that I’m recommending this ONLY because I will get compensated for it. I’m recommending it because I’ll be using it myself and I think it’s a high quality product. And either way, the SUPERCHARGED Smoothie formula is GOLD, so use that with whatever protein you have.

    BTW, I shot a video of me whipping up my Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana SUPERCHARGED Smoothie, but I forgot to turn the mic on and it had no sound!

    I’ll do it up for you tomorrow and maybe some other tasty recipes that follow my formula.

    For now – bedtime for me. Perhaps my sneezing will stop once I fall asleep. AH CHOOO!!!

  • New Policy at EricWongMMA.com

    So I had a rough day today and it made me implement a BRAND NEW policy for clients, customers and friends of EricWongMMA…

    Before I get to that, I’m going to vent about my day for a minute:

    First, my backup hard drive, a 1.5 terabyte Western Digital My Book Essential crapped the bed and basically lost all of my data.

    I lost more than a few (100% legitimately owned) memorable MMA events and some other files, but luckily nothing I will really miss. I’m especially glad I didn’t lose any of the books I’ve written or exercise videos I have archived.

    At the same time, it was kinda good, as it made me realize the silliness of holding on to so much “old data” not just on our hard drives, but also in our lives.

    Think – what are you holding on to that would give you physical and/or mental space, whether they be material things like old, raggedy t-shirts or non-physical things, like limiting beliefs that prevent you from attempting to reach your goals?

    Here’s a principle I live my life by – the less you need in your life to be happy, the happier you’ll be.

    Back to the crappy WD drive (I will never buy another WD drive for the rest of my life) – I did some Googling and I am not the only one who’s had problems.

    I found a tip on how to salvage the remains so I extracted the hard drive from the external enclosure, plugged it into a new enclosure and found out that the hard drive has errors as well, so it’s basically trash.

    After that, I set today to do some work on my wife’s Jeep… I always call it my wife’s Jeep because I’m embarrassed to drive the gas guzzling hog in this day and age.

    But when my gas-sipping 4 cylinder Acura Integra got totalled (I loved still love that car) after getting rear-ended as I was driving home to downtown Toronto from Claude Patrick’s gym via the 427 South  a couple years back, I figured we could make do with only 1 car and guess what – we’ve made do. It’s actually way better (less stuff = more happy) as I’ve really gotten to know the city since I ride my bike everywhere.

    The Jeep is a 2007 Liberty and if you own this vehicle, you may know that the brilliant engineers decided to make the wimpiest window brackets and use the heaviest window glass possible. So the rear driver’s side window bracket broke and it’s been jammed to stay up with white hockey tape for years now. Ghetto, I know!

    I bought a replacement bracket from eBay and it arrived this week, so I got my hands dirty and did the job.

    It took about 3 hours to replace, as I had to remove the door panel, remove the moisture barrier, then unbolt the power window motor and slide it through the small opening, replace the broken piece and put everything back as it came out, which was no small task for a keyboard warrior like me.

    When I was done, I put the key into the ignition, powered it up and tested the window…

    Down OK!

    Up OK!

    HOORAY!

    I can’t tell you the feeling of gratification I got  from this little job.

    Makes me really respect any mechanics or tradesmen out there, that’s for sure…

    I then moved the Jeep from my temp auto shop to my parking spot and when I hit a little bump, “CRASH!”

    My heart sank…

    I tried the window and NOPE – nothing doing.

    After I parked, I ripped off the panel and moisture barrier only to find the power window motor laying in the bottom of the door.

    Apparently I didn’t bolt the motor to its housing properly and it fell right off.

    DAMN! I thought I’d done a great job and I was excited to crack a beer to celebrate. Instead, when I got home, I cracked a beer to help ease my troubled soul.

    Anyway, these events have paved the way for my NEW POLICY – from now on, I am backing all of my programs and products with a LIFETIME PERFORMANCE GUARANTEE.

    Grab a program (e.g. MMA Ripped, Ultimate MMA, the Olympic Lifting Mastery Course, etc) or any course from my store…

    And let’s say you don’t end up using it for 6 months, or even 6 years… When you actually do get around to it if you think it sucks, shoot me an email and I’ll get your money back to you, no problem.

    I’m upset with my defective backup hard drive and this crappy Jeep window problem, but what I’m more upset with is the horrible customer support and worse, the WD hard drive rep pretty much blamed me for the problem!

    So I don’t want any of my customers to have a bad experience doing business with me. So my new LIFETIME PERFORMANCE GUARANTEE is a result of these 2 companies making crappy products and my crappy experiences trying to get help from them.

    I could’ve just said that from the start, but then I wouldn’t have been able to get this stuff off my chest. Feels good to vent once in a while. 🙂

    Thanks for listening pal!

    – Eric

  • Ultimate MMA… For Females?

    Last week I got a boat load of feedback from fighters and MMA practitioners about their experiences with the Ultimate MMA S&C program.

    One email I got in particular piqued my curiousity…

    The email came from someone named Ursula.

    Turns out my Ultimate MMA S&C program was being used by a female mixed martial arts fighter in preparation for a fight, for the first time to my knowledge [if there are any other females out there using my program or who have used my program, hit me up].

    Here’s the original email from MMA fighter Ursula Marshall, unedited, albeit for a few line breaks thrown in for readability:

    “Hi, thank you so much for this fantastic program, I am now six weeks out from my next fight and have already seen results. I currently work at a MMA Centre in small town Whakatane, New Zealand (originally I’m from Nova Scotia).

    It started out as a BJJ club a few years back in a little shed and is now a proper MMA Gym in which i found my dream job lol, I only started my martial art training 3 years ago and little did i know then it would become my life :-)… I have the benefit of pretty much living at the gym, and i was spending 3 to 4 hours 5 days a week on my strength and conditioning plus classes every night, it was leaving me constantly shattered.

    I love that you breakdown the science behind the workout, it is easier to stick to the set schedule and rest properly when you know why you’re doing it. Although it’s hard not to jump on with the girls I’ve got onto it and do the work out way more than twice a week, I’ve been trying hard to stick to the schedule but I always do the back stretch and stability squat.

    I really love that stability squat, I suffered a bad knee injury just under a year ago at my last/first fight(on you tube, search Tee vs Ursula you can hear my knee tear 4mins in) and my leg strength just hasn’t been the same since and doing those everyday has helped wake up some muscles that were insistent on sleeping.

    I feel like I’m slacking because of how much I’ve cut out of my strength and conditioning but rolling last night I felt more solid than ever, even one of the guys I was rollin with noticed.

    Thanks again for putting together such an amazing program I’ll let you know how my fight goes :)”

    – Ursula Marshall, New Zealand

    Of course I looked up her fight. You really can hear her knee pop at 4:00 in if you crank up the volume and listen closely. Click here to watch her scrap on YouTube.

    I’d actually lost the original email she sent me, so asked her to resend it with any other additional feedback, which she provided here:

    “I have much more energy for my classes at night now that I don’t spend hours and hours on conditioning, it leaves me more focused which helps in many ways. I also have more energy to get stuff done around the house which the other half appreciates lol…”

    So that’s the Ultimate MMA S&C Program in a nutshell. 

    It improves your strength, conditioning, power and endurance, while taking less time than you expect and giving you more energy for your MMA training, or whatever other stuff you’ve gotta do.

    If you’re not following the program, well, I don’t know why you wouldn’t.

     

     

     

  • Is Milk Good For You?

    Is milk good for you?I got the question, “Is milk good for you?” over on my Ask EricWongMMA page from Shayne Greene.

    I’ve gotten this question from lots of people.

    So I decided to shoot a video where I talk about this topic, and give you a very powerful tool you can use to truly determine what foods (milk, wheat, corn, etc) are good for you and what foods aren’t so good for you.

    I’m also sharing a super-powerful technique that you can use to help you determine EXACTLY what foods work best for your body.

    It’s simple, but powerful. I highly suggest you put it to use ASAP.

    Check out the video here:

    Hope you enjoyed the different backdrop. 🙂

    I went up to the cottage for 1 night only because my brother and his family were there for a few days. I haven’t seen my nieces since xmas so I had to make the trek up to hang out. They’ve grown so much!

    Anyway, I hope I’ve helped empower you to make good food choices for YOU…

    … not just based on what others say is good for you or not.

    Nobody can tell you with certainty that a certain food or diet will work for your body, because all of our bodies are different.

    However, there are certain general rules that we can follow that probably work best for most, such as eating natural whole foods vs. processed foods, drinking water vs. pop, etc.

    But individual foods must be tested vs. your metabolism and nobody else’s.

    Most fruits and veggies are well tolerated, as are most meats, but if you have a suspicion that something isn’t sitting well with you, test it and trust yourself and you’ll know for sure.

     

  • Breathing During Exercise – Some Research

    In my last post, “The Little Known Secret to Endless Cardio” I talked about the importance of breathing to cardio and performance in MMA (or any other sport that requires the ability to make decisions instantly).

    I just wanted to follow up with some research data so you see I’m not just blowing smoke out of my ass.

    Check out this graph, which I totally lost the reference to. If you know the study this comes from, please enlighten me.

    Click to enlarge.

    What I want you to notice in this graph is that there is a direct linear relationship between heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate (RR) during exercise, which means that they go up together as exercise intensity increases.

    The other thing to notice is that at the highest exertion point in this study, where the heart rate is around 170 bpm, the respiratory rate is around 27 breaths per minute.

    That’s why in the video I said that Brandon Vera was hyperventilating – because his breathing rate was around 72 breaths per minute.

    Taking short, shallow breaths when exerting energy lowers the amount of oxygen you get in your system and also decreases the amount of CO2 you expel from your lungs, both bad things if you need energy.

    breathing diagram

    So when you’re sucking wind, focus on breathing slow and deep. Do this when recovering from and during work sets and hard intervals, between rounds when sparring or hitting the bag, and anytime your breathing gets elevated to get the diaphragm involved in your breathing and give you more energy to fight, train, or do whatever it is you’re doing that’s got you breathing hot and heavy. 🙂

  • 1 Little-Known Secret to Endless Cardio

    I’m baaaaaack with another Ask EricWongMMA segment.

    But I almost didn’t make it back.

    I was in the airport waiting around and was making my way to the departure gates.

    I walked through some doors, thinking they led to my gate, but when I looked back I thought, “Uh, oh” because they had those do not enter signs – you know the big red circle with the white line through the middle.

    DAMN YOU Chinese genes and your malfunctioning GPS for a brain for leading me astray (yet again).

    I asked one of the workers where to go by pointing to the gate on my ticketand he simply pointed to go that way to the end and up… When I got up there, I realized I WAS BACK WHERE I’D STARTED.

    I had to check in again, go through security and sprint to the gate. When I arrived, they looked a little upset and said I might have to stay another night in Barcelona. But they eventually let me on and my wife greeted me by laughing at me.

    Barcelona was a lot of fun and is very beautiful as well, as you may have seen in my Muscleups in Barcelona post.

    But all good things must come to an end and every ending is a new beginning so this week’s Ask EricWongMMA question came from Steve from New Zealand and I throw in some clips and relate my answer to this past UFC, specifically the two light heavyweight main event bouts.

    He asked about how to not tense up when sparring, and in answering it, I reveal 1 “Little-Known” Secret to Endless Cardio…

    Discover this secret in today’s Ask EricWongMMA video:

    The exercise I show you in the video above is best performed daily. It won’t feel like much. But it works.

    The keys are to:

    • Inhale, focusing on expanding the area below your nipples while relaxing your neck and shoulders
    • Breathe in through the nose and out through either the nose or mouth
    • Practice regularly!

    If you try too hard, you might even feel an intense shooting pain in your left chest/neck – this is a “spasm” in your diaphragm and nothing to worry about. It’ll go away after a minute or so.

    I’m going to do a post on the “hyperventilation” concept next week so stay tuned for that… It’s going to be pretty cool.

    As always, I appreciate your Likes, Shares and Comments – do so below.