Speaking of injuries, I just tweaked my knee doing 3 reps at 275 lbs of Back Squats. Reps 1 and 2 were awesome, but on the 3rd rep I strained my left patellar tendon. I didn’t hear a pop or anything like that, so I should be back to normal in a week or 2 (hopefully). I used this bag of frozen organic chicken hearts as my ice pack:
Showing my knee some ‘love’ with chicken hearts…
I couldn’t find the bag of frozen edamame that I used when I hurt my hand last time, so the chicken hearts had to suffice.
Now, let’s talk shoulder friendly training.
Proper exercise technique is critical for keeping your shoulders healthy. Especially with all the punishment they take if you train MMA.
If you’ve got shoulder issues, this is what you need to fix them, but the principles below will prevent any issues from getting worse.
Principle #1 – Ensure Proper Scapular Movement
Scapular movement terminology.
Whenever you move your arms, your scapula should move proportionally.
When you do a horizontal push or pull, the scapula should slide together as your hands move towards your body and slide away from each other as your hands move away from your body.
So in a Pushup, the scapula pinch together as you lower yourself and slide away as you push up.
During a vertical push or pull, the scapula should rotate upwards as the hands go away from your body and downwards as the hands move closer towards your body.
In a Pullup, the scapula rotate downwards when you pull yourself to the bar and rotate upwards when you lower down.
One exception to this rule is when you’re lying down on a bench or floor like in a Bench Press – the scapula aren’t free to move properly, so in this case, keep them pinched together to avoid impinging the shoulder and overusing the anterior delts.
Even if you’re just lying on the floor for a Hip Extension exercise where you’re not using your arms, pinch those blades together to reinforce good posture. We need as much of this as we can get.
Principle #2 – Coordinate Breathing to Movement
Breathing is an important consideration to pain-free training as it has a big effect on alignment of your thoracic spine.
Take a second here while you’re reading this and follow along with me…
Breathe all your air out…
Now, take a slow and full deep breath in, then just let it go.
.
.
Did you notice that you got taller as you inhaled?
Inhaling helps with thoracic extension.
Most people get breathing during pushing movements correct – you breathe out when you push. Good job, keep doing it this way.
But most people screw up breathing during pulling movements – you should BREATHE IN when you PULL towards your body, so breathe in when pulling the barbell towards your belly in a Bent Over Row, and breathe in while you pull yourself to the bar in a Chinup.
Doing so helps extend your T-spine and allows the scap retractors to properly finish the movement.
If you’ve been doing it the other way (like most stock trainers recommend), start with lower weights and slower tempos to retrain this physiologically correct breathing pattern.
Principle #3 – Activate Your Lats
While the lats are often only thought of as pulling muscles for exercises like Rows and Pullups, they are an important shoulder stabilizer, keeping the head of the humerus properly seated in the shoulder joint.
One misconception is that the lats pinch your shoulder blades together – they don’t, because they’re not attached to the shoulder blades at all, as you can see in the image to the right.
To activate your lats when you’re on the ground for a Pushup, doing a Bench Press , or rowing, keep your elbows a little tighter to your sides and think of pulling the head of the humerus into the socket.
During Pullups or Pulldowns, thinking about pulling your hands apart without actually moving your hands, like you’re trying to stretch the bar, gets greater lat activation.
Add these 3 principles to your training and you won’t be damaging your shoulders when you workout.
Now, if you’ve got restricted shoulder movement, you’ll have problems performing many different upper body exercises, so if this is you, I suggest you check out the 6-Step System to Release Your Tight Shoulders here.
This week was a tough one to stick with the whole nutrition plan, as up here in Canada it was Thanksgiving. I spent the entire Thanksgiving weekend in a very small town in British Columbia called Silver Creek.
Now, onto the training portion of things. In the sixth week I feel the strength portion of things increasing like crazy, I absolutely love the ISO pushups and pullups. When it comes to the sparring sessions, I rock through them with not a heck of a lot of effort. I have a feeling that in 5WO, the extra reps are going to put me through some grueling challenges.
I don’t know if any of you can help with some tips, but during one legged side-bridges, I find my hips ache quite a bit. I have a tough time holding for any longer than 10 seconds.
I will now mention the Thanksgiving FEAST. I didn’t over indulge, however I did have quite the turkey high. I ate a little bit of mashed potatoes and had a bun. Want to know the funny thing about eating those things though, I felt very sluggish following those extra carbs.
Because of this program, I now know what foods do for my body and what I can and can not eat.
Taxonomy – the science dealing with the description, identification, naming, and classification of organisms.
In this article, I’m going to give you the 3 general categories that MMA fighters fall into based on physiology and show you the continuum on which they lie. If you’re a fighter, this knowledge will help guide your training as you become more advanced and you build up years of strength, conditioning and technical skills.
Visualize in your mind’s eye what the ideal MMA fighter looks like. What do you see?
I’m betting that you see an athletic, muscular body. Someone who looks strong and powerful, but not overly bulky. A physique that would command respect regardless if he was surrounded by champion bodybuilders or skinny college dweebs.
But take a look at some of the top mixed martial artists today, such as Anderson “The Spider” Silva, Nick “Blunt Force” Diaz (just made that up), and on the complete opposite side of the spectrum to Blunt Force, Roy “Big Country” Nelson.
Silva is the current UFC Middleweight champ, Blunt Force is ranked 3rd on Sherdog’s August 2012 Welterweight list and while “Big Country” isn’t ranked Top 10, he’s definitely one of the gatekeepers of the UFC Heavyweight division.
What this shows you is that physique is not the be all and end all when it comes to performance in MMA.
Otherwise Phil Kevin Randleman would’ve been the champ back in the glory days of Pride, instead of Fedor. Although he came damn close after this:
Yes, your mother was right; it’s what’s inside that counts.
And the great thing about MMA is that regardless of what you’ve got inside, you can find a style and way of fighting that best matches your physiology and then go on to optimize both.
Case study: Nick “Blunt Force” Diaz (I love that nickname).
Between 2009 and 2011, on top of fighting 2-3 times per year in Strikeforce and the UFC, Blunt Force also completed 7-8 triathlons. And he didn’t just compete in triathlons, he consistently finished in the Top 10. All of this on top of regular bong hits is pretty damn impressive.
For those of you who don’t know, a triathlon is generally made up of a 1.5 km swim, 40 km bike ride and 10 km run.
But Blunt Force prefers the off-road style of triathlons, cuz they’re more gangsta, son. These events consist of a 1.5 km swim, 30 km mountain bike ride and 11 km trail run. WHAT.
It’s clear that he likes being aerobic by nature and his fighting style reflects that.
Picture a Nick Diaz, sorry, Blunt Force fight you’ve seen. What do you see?
What stands out most for me is a high volume of punches. Non-stop; head, head, body, body, head, head. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Here’s a great example:
When you think he’s going to get tired, he doesn’t. He just keeps punching and punching and overwhelms his opponents with sheer volume.
His punches aren’t bombs that render his opponents unconscious before they hit the ground, but they come fast and they don’t stop.
Now, if he looked in the mirror one day and said to himself, “I need to bulk up. I’m too skinny to be a good fighter,” do you think he’d be as successful as he has been?
I don’t think so.
Whether through proper assessment and training or doing whatever he feels like (most likely), he’s identified his physiological makeup and trained in a way to optimize it both conditioning-wise and stylistically. You don’t see Blunt Force going for violent double-leg takedowns or throwing Koscheck style haymakers.
If he’d tried to become an explosive, muscular fighter (think GSP) he may have struggled in the gym because his body didn’t respond as well to heavy and explosive lifting vs. cardio. He probably would’ve hated it because it didn’t suit his temperament. So in all likelihood, he would’ve been a lot less successful. He’s just a slow twitch kinda guy.
So is it all about training for your genetic muscle fiber type makeup?
Let me preface this by saying muscle fiber types are not as important as people think. But I have to spend some time to answer this question.
But before I do that, a primer on muscle fiber types:
There are 3 main types: Type I (slow twitch high endurance), Type IIa (fast twitch medium endurance) and Type IIb (fast twitch low endurance, mainly found in sedentary individuals).
Beyond this group of 3, more subtypes have been identified that fall between these 3 main types. Remember this point for later.
[For more background info on muscle fiber types, check out this great article by my man Kelly Baggett]
Now, I believe that this question, which does have genuine curiousity behind it, comes more from “excuse land” than anywhere else.
Excuse land is a place where you go to feel better about yourself.
“I’m predominantly fast twitch, that’s why I gas out.”
“I’m built for marathon running, that’s why I’m so skinny.”
“Don’t laugh, I’m Chinese, that’s why it’s so…”
OK the last one is real but the first 2 are from excuse land.
Instead of saying, “Yeah, I’m lazy/don’t know what to do, that’s why I have no cardio,” living in excuse land relieves you of taking responsibility for your situation.
Here’s my answer to anyone hanging out in excuse land with respect to muscle fiber type: regardless of your genetic makeup, training can influence Type I fibers to act more like Type IIa and vice versa.
While fiber types respond better to training suited to their composition, they will, through consistency and intelligent programming, shift to behave the way your training demands. A slow twitch may never be as explosive as a fast twitch, but it can get close.
Whether fibers can totally change from Type I to IIa and vice versa can only be answered through highly controlled, long-term studies. Something that our current scientific research community lacks. I’m talking years of training, not 12 weeks, which is generally the longest study length these days. Is it a coincidence that this falls within a typical 4 month term at university? Hmm…
That’s where all these muscle fiber subtypes come into play. Your muscles are basically like a gradient of muscle fiber types, from light grey to black, super slow twitch to ultra fast twitch with everything in between.
You can’t hang out in excuse land because if you’re mainly Type I and you start lifting heavy and explosively, maybe training like an Olympic weightlifter, you’ll get reasonably strong and explosive. You probably won’t win a gold medal, but if you keep at it you’ll get pretty damn powerful.
If you’re mainly Type II and you start marathon running, you might not be able to beat the Kenyans, but if you train smart and stay at it, I’m guessing you’ll be able to finish somewhere in the 3 hour range.
And if you were to train your muscle fiber types for MMA, you’d have to know the proportions of fiber types in each muscle group, since each group has different and varied demands in a fight. To do this, you’d need to get a biopsy done on every muscle in your body. Ouch!
OK, enough about muscle fiber types. Please don’t ask me about them again – they’re not that important.
What is more important is training based on what type of fighter you want to be, or what style suits your skill set the best.
And that brings us to the title of this article, “The Taxonomy of MMA Fighters”.
You can classify MMA fighters into 3 main categories: Strength/Power, Balanced, and Stamina/Endurance.
While these 3 categories are a neat way of generalizing, really there are no hard classifications and these different types lie on a continuum:
Again, Nick “Blunt Force” Diaz provides comic relief without even trying.
You can see that I’ve chosen to look at the Welterweight division and I’ve chosen GSP to represent the strength/power side, Nick Diaz sorry, Blunt Force to represent the stamina/endurance side and Martin Kampmann (a hugely underrated fighter IMO) as a great example of a balanced fighter.
While Kampmann isn’t as explosive as GSP and can’t throw as many punches as Diaz, he can throw more punches than GSP and he is more explosive than Diaz.
Of course, they all exhibit characteristics of both strength/power and stamina/endurance, it’s just they’ve tuned their games towards more of one than the other (or both, in the case of Kampmann).
And please, don’t take this as gospel, this is a theory I’ve developed that can help guide your training, nothing is cut and dry and set in stone.
The great thing about looking at it this way is because you can create a list of characteristics that go along with each classification and then train, both your MMA skills, fight strategy and your strength and conditioning, in the way that best suits where you lie on this continuum.
Check out this sweet table I’ve done up for ya. I’ve purposely left out the Balanced category because it’s pretty self-explanatory (a little bit of everything).
So how would oneuse this info?
Let’s say you’re more inclined to strength/power, you’ve got good knockout power in your hands, but you’re not too comfortable on the ground.
You want to be able to unleash bombs but you don’t want to go Chris Leben zombie style and just come out swinging, as you know what might happen. And you don’t have the endurance to keep that up anyhow.
Obviously, you’ll work your takedown defense. But not so obvious might be how you train the rest of your game…
Because you’re explosive, you could train a double leg after a jab. Once you get to the ground, land some ground ‘n’ pound then get the fuck outta there.
Now you’ve softened your opponent a little and he’s worried about going back to the ground.
In terms of ring generalship, you need to master distance and timing. You don’t have the stamina to be bouncing all over like Dominic Cruz, so you’ve got to be relaxed and when you’re in distance, fire.
The main idea is that because you’re more explosive/powerful, you don’t have an unlimited volume of punches that you can throw.
So you’ve got to get good at picking and choosing when to throw your hands.
Your goal is to capitalize on openings. In MMA, being a counterpuncher is a risky job, unless you’re Anderson Silva or Lyoto Machida, so work on feints and develop a wide variety of attacks so you have 99 ways to set up your favourite and most powerful strike/combo.
If you’ve got a big overhand right, work on a bunch of different ways to set it up. Don’t just throw it as your first strike, or you’ll be seeing out of one eye like Josh Koscheck was vs. GSP.
Your S&C programming can also morph to suit your style, so you could use Olympic lifts, med ball throws and other explosive movements, as well as short sprints to develop your cardio.
REMEMBER I said this is for ADVANCED individuals.
If you’ve had 2 fights or less, you’re definitely not ready to specialize yet. This if for guys who have been in the game for a while and need to take it to the next level.
For the rest of you, keep building your basic martial arts skills and keep training on a balanced strength and conditioning program.
For an idea of where to start with respect to S&C, my free video series is a good place to get an idea of the foundation required to build explosive power and endless cardio for MMA.
This is just an example and the game plan you follow must be a joint effort between you and your coaches.
As the sport of MMA evolves, training must evolve too and this is the type of direction that it can evolve towards.
Alright I’m done my piece, whaddya think?
Before you go, I’ve got 2 questions for you:
1. Where do you feel you lie on the continuum?
2. Out of the 10 Middleweights listed below, what 3 do you think best represent the 3 different classifications on the continuum?
Sherdog’s Top 10 Middleweights (August 2012)
– Anderson Silva
– Chael Sonnen
– Chris Weidman
– Michael Bisping
– Tim Boetsch
– Mark Munoz
– Vitor Belfort
– Yushin Okami
– Luke Rockhold
– Brian Stann
This is a week where things start to get into a groove. I usually feel more comfortable getting into the gym, as well as the nutrition side of things is all getting sorted out.
Lets get into that a little bit. Nutrition… most people think, “Hey, I’m going to hit the gym everyday, why don’t I have a 6-pack?” Well nutrition is almost the guaranteed reason why 90% of those folks out there that hit the gym daily don’t have one. At this point, I do not either, but that’s because I was a little sidetracked prior to hitting up my 8WO. I am back on the train now. I have my cheat day, that Eric gives us. However, I like to call them earned meals, like my good buddy Mike Dolce told me about.
The workouts this week were fairly straight forward, as they were almost the same as 8WO, but with different reps. I added a few things though. Following my strength workouts, I do a couple sets of biceps on Day 1 and triceps on Day 2. I guess this is just the wannabe bodybuilder side of me, wanting to keep those muscles engaged, as there aren’t a ton of arm exercises at this point.
The one aspect of the workouts that i find challenging this week are not the strength days, but instead the LIVE Sparring day. That added 10 seconds is a bit of a mind blast. I believe it’s not the body that is not capable of that extra 10 seconds, but your mind is not used to it. Keep your mind in check and push your way right to the end.
I forgot to mention in my previous post that I am a road bike rider as well. Every year I do the BC Cancer Foundation’s Ride to Conquer Cancer and this coming year will be the 5th time a ride. I do this because cancer has played a huge role in the life I live today. Enough about that, I was only mentioning this, as I ride my bike to and from work every day as well, which is an added workout in itself.
Well there is 7WO. Next week I will throw up a few other goodies for you to dig your teeth into.
You guys are probably wondering why this post isn’t written by Eric Wong, well I am going to tell you. I was asked by Eric to write a weekly blog detailing my experience with MMA Ripped.
Let me introduce myself, my name is Jeremy Brand and I am a 31yr old from Vancouver, BC, Canada. I have a beautiful family, with three kids (17,15,3)… yes that’s quite the gap and no it wasn’t a mistake. The three year old is my daughter and the other two are my step-kids. I train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with West Coast BJJ here in Vancouver and am currently a three stripe blue belt. One of my passions is MMA and since that is the case, I decided to create an MMA blog. It has turned into more than a blog, in fact we have partnered with the USA Today Media Group, as well as FOX Sports. Check it out at MMASucka.com.
This isn’t my first go-round with MMA Ripped. Many of you may know me as a graduate from the pilot session. I did fantastic with it and have pushed through three other rounds of it since… well 3.5 as some family issues came up. Unfortunately, I let it get the best of me and I’ve lost some of my muscle and stamina that I had following in the past. I plan on kicking MMA Ripped’s butt this time and keeping that weight off.
The first question I was asked when starting MMA Ripped this time around was, “What are your goals?” I had to think about it for a while, but a light bulb sort of clicked and I had it. I wasn’t wanting to just lose weight and get a nice, ripped and chiseled body this time around. My goal is to have great stamina in the gym when I’m rolling. I’d love to lose some weight and look great, but that is not the overall goal.
I had to change my schedule around a little this week to get all of my workouts in, but I did. I get up prior to work, at 6:30am and hit the gym so that I can get it out of the way.
Next week I will get into some nutrition and more.
Yep, if you want to pull off some violent, bone-jarring, wind-knocking-out-of takedowns, you’ve come to the right place…
You’ve come to EricWongMMA.com, where we deliver tha goods, son.
This exercise, when done correctly, will train your speed and power.
Speed in dropping into your counter-movement, which then increases potential energy that can be released if muscles are strong enough to quickly reverse the movement and concentrically contract with a powerful explosion that will leave your opponent stunned and scared.
How’s that for setting the stage. 🙂
BTW – ya’ll students who’ve been around here know what 3 letter acronym is being taken advantage of in this exercise. Let me know the answer in the Comments section, let’s see how smart you are.
Here’s the video:
Sick, eh?
Even sicker is executing this movement properly in the full Olympic Lifts, like the Snatch and the Clean & Jerk (and all their variants).
As I mentioned in the video, here’s the link to the readiness tests:
It’s Sunday evening, around 10:30pm and I’m having a cup of decaf coffee and a healthy brownie that my wife made from her Dessert Angel Heavenly Recipes collection I just finished up some foam rolling and I thought to myself, “I wonder what the science says about self myofascial release?”
So I did a quick search over at Pubmed and found a couple of studies.
Here’s the abstract from study #1:
Macdonald G. et al. An Acute Bout of Self Myofascial Release Increases Range of Motion Without a Subsequent Decrease in Muscle Activation or Force. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2012, May, ePub Ahead of Print.
ABSTRACT: Foam rolling is thought to improve muscular function, performance, overuse and joint range of motion (ROM), however, there is no empirical evidence demonstrating this. Thus, the objective of the study was to determine the effect of self-myofascial release (SMR) via foam roller application on knee extensor force and activation and knee joint range of motion. Eleven healthy male (height 178.9 ± 3.5 cm, mass 86.3 ± 7.4 kg, age 22.3 ± 3.8 years) subjects who were physically active participated. Subjects’ quadriceps maximum voluntary contraction force, evoked force and activation, and knee joint ROM were measured prior to, two minutes, and 10 minutes following two conditions; 1) two, one minute trials of SMR of the quadriceps via a foam roller and 2) no SMR (Control). A two-way ANOVA (condition x time) with repeated measures was performed on all dependent variables recorded in the pre- and post-condition tests. There were no significant differences between conditions for any of the neuromuscular dependent variables. However, following foam rolling, subjects’ ROM significantly (? < 0.001) increased by 10 and 8% at 2 and 10 minutes, respectively. There was a significant (? < 0.01) negative correlation between subjects’ force and ROM prior to foam rolling, which no longer existed following foam rolling. In conclusion an acute bout of SMR of the quadriceps was an effective treatment to acutely enhance knee joint range of motion without a concomitant deficit in muscle performance.
While this study doesn’t have many participants (any study with less than 30 is suspect) and it’s done on an obviously homogenous population (drunken college males) , the results show that acute ROM is increased through SMR, without affecting muscular force output.
That’s a good thing.
However, the question remains, what is more effective for a warmup, SMR or dynamic mobility exercises?
My opinion is dynamic mobility, because you’ll not only get increased ROM, you’ll also get increased activation.
That’s why nowadays, I do my SMR after workouts, especially after reading the study by Tarnopolsky out of McMaster university showing how massage post-workout increases mitochondrial regneration and decreases inflammation.
Here’s the little routine I do:
If you want to make the hArDCoRe roller I was using, check this link here.
Let me share 1 more study for you geeks in the house:
Curran et. al. A comparison of the pressure exerted on soft tissue by 2 myofascial rollers. Journal of Sport Rehabilitation, 2008, Nov;17(4):432-42.
CONTEXT: Self-myofascial release (SMR) is a technique used to treat myofascial restrictions and restore soft-tissue extensibility.
PURPOSE: To determine whether the pressure and contact area on the lateral thigh differ between a Multilevel rigid roller (MRR) and a Bio-Foam roller (BFR) for participants performing SMR.
PARTICIPANTS: Ten healthy young men and women.
METHODS: Participants performed an SMR technique on the lateral thigh using both myofascial rollers. Thin-film pressure sensels recorded pressure and contact area during each SMR trial.
RESULTS: Mean sensel pressure exerted on the soft tissue of the lateral thigh by the MRR (51.8 +/- 10.7 kPa) was significantly (P < .001) greater than that of the conventional BFR (33.4 +/- 6.4 kPa). Mean contact area of the MRR (47.0 +/- 16.1 cm2) was significantly (P < .005) less than that of the BFR (68.4 +/- 25.3 cm2).
CONCLUSION: The significantly higher pressure and isolated contact area with the MRR suggest a potential benefit in SMR.
Basically, the bumpy foam roller results in greater pressure with a smaller contact area.
Pretty obvious if you ask me. Or her.
How exactly do studies like this that go on to show the obvious like get funding?
It’s beyond me…
I mean shit, a harder object with little bumps is obviously going to exert more pressure than a big round piece of foam.
But I digress.
So that’s my review of the science of SMR.
Regardless of what the science says, I’ll do it and continue to do it because I just feel better doing it.
That’s gotta be worth something nowadays, don’t ya think?
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.
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:
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.
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.
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. 🙂
Principle #3 – Activate Your Lats
You can’t hang out in excuse land because if you’re mainly Type I and you start lifting heavy and explosively, maybe training like an Olympic weightlifter, you’ll get reasonably strong and explosive. You probably won’t win a gold medal, but if you keep at it you’ll get pretty damn powerful.
I got the question, “Is milk good for you?” over on my 
