Assessing yourself

Eating sensibly to make your ideal weight division is not something you should be doing in the short term; that would involve silly behaviour leading onto more dangerous situations such as severe dehydration and even bulimic style purging tendencies. This is something you need to look at over a period of months rather than a couple of weeks and is something you should be incorporating into your daily lifestyle rather than doing anything dramatic. You need to get a realistic snapshot of what exactly the state of your body is. This includes your gender, height, weight and body mass index (the amount of fat you carry). Although it is relatively easy to weigh yourself, it might actually be worth going to your local gym to get a third party to do this for you. One of the reasons for this is the myth of the body mass index. Most charts you find on the internet are accurate in terms of the normal range of adults who are not athletes. However, what they don’t take into account is that muscle, being a much denser substance, weighs more than fat, so a simple height to weight ratio doesn’t always equate to the highly trained martial artist.

For example, the normal adult range BMI is between 20–25%. For a man whose BMI is about 15% but is short and stocky, he can be perceived as being overweight when in actual fact, he weighs more due to his increased muscle mass. Therefore, if you are a serious athlete, you would be better off having your BMI assessed at a gym with a pair of callipers which will give you a much better picture of what state your body is in rather than doing it for yourself. According to the article entitled, “Weight Management and the Athlete” from the BUPA website, “from a performance point of view, the ideal body fat percentage for male athletes lies between 6 and 15% and for female athletes, between 12 and 18%.” Anything below that and your body will not be able to function properly.

Once you have assessed the composition of your body, you need to look at your diet. To perform at your maximum potential, you need to be eating a balanced diet that includes equal proportions of each of the essential food groups; carbohydrates, protein, fats and minerals. We need carbohydrates for energy, protein to build and maintain muscle, fat for energy and maintaining body temperature and minerals to remain healthy and disease free. These basics keep our bodies functioning normally and according to Conor Higgins in his article, “Diet & Nutrition 101” from the Martial Arts 101 website, “if any of these substances are out of proportion, abnormalities may result.”

Therefore, a meal with lean meat, potatoes and vegetables is your ideal containing foods that cover most of the food groups; as would a breakfast with a combination of muesli, eggs and fruit juice and a lunch of sandwiches with meat or cheese and salad in them. Of course there are endless recipes and combinations to choose from but these meals contain everything that your body needs to function properly and to stay fighting fit and should not, in my opinion, be messed with.

Carbohydrates

This is quite a complex area in itself but as a competing martial artist, you need these as your fuel to keep fighting and cutting this out to lose weight is a very bad idea. However, you can manipulate the type of carbohydrates you consume to your advantage. Now for the science bit: Carbohydrates are basically divided up into 2 types, simple and complex. Simple are those that trigger a quick rise in your blood sugar levels such as white bread, sugar, cake and chocolate. Complex are those that trigger a slow, steady rise such as wholemeal bread, potatoes, cereals and nuts. Therefore, it is recommended that you eat a meal with complex carbohydrates one or two hours before you train, maintain your blood sugar levels during training with a sports drink and if your blood sugar dips at the end of a hard training session, top it up with a simple carbohydrate such as half a chocolate bar to bring it back up to normal. Maintaining your blood sugar level is essential for both performance and your health. The article from the BUPA website, “Glycaemic index and the athlete” is a very useful place to read further on this subject.

Protein

As any self-respecting body builder will tell you, protein is essential for building and repairing muscle and unless you are a full-on tambourine shaking vegan, you will need to make friends with the cow and the hen and all the goodies they produce. Protein contains amino acids, which is the substance that looks after and repairs your muscles when they are tired or damaged. Therefore, it makes sense as a martial artist that you need to eat protein rich foods to aid in muscle recovery after a heavy workout. For the omnivores, this includes eating lean meat, eggs and milk. This is also an area that vegetarians need to be careful of as they are at most danger of damaging muscles as they are not eating the meat that is such a good source of amino acids. Therefore, you must make this up by eating a variety of different pulses, beans and lentils, to ensure that you cover the whole amino spectrum to help your muscles, otherwise you will make yourself susceptible to injury.

Of course, if you want to build muscle, then it would make sense to increase your intake of protein to give your body its building blocks. You can do this by either taking a supplement in the form of a protein shake or weight gainer, that is a debate I shall leave up to you, but personally I would be inclined to save your money and keep it natural by buying half a dozen eggs and make an omelette instead. Pop a bit of cheese on it, drink a glass of milk and hey presto, protein city.

Fat

Here in the western world, we seem to have a love-hate relationship with fat. We love to eat it and we hate the effects it has on our bodies when we overindulge. However, fat isn’t quite the enemy we think it is as it is an essential nutrient to our health; it is an additional source of energy that our bodies will fall back on when its carbohydrate reserves have gone. We also need it to keep us warm, which is possibly why skinny people feel the cold more, and we need fat to dissolve vitamins A, D, E and K. For a healthy balanced diet, the average male must consume 90 and the female 70 grams a day. What we have to be careful of is the type of fat we consume. There are two different types: saturated and unsaturated. Saturated is usually solid at room temperature and is often animal derived, such as lard, fat from meat, whole milk and butter. Unsaturated is usually liquid at room temperature and is often derived from vegetables, such as margarine, sunflower and olive oil. Fat holds nearly double the amount of calories than any of the other foods we consume and saturated fat is a nightmare for your cholesterol, so your goal as a martial artist is to try and replace as much saturated with unsaturated as you can. This means eating lean cuts of meat, cutting out as much fat from your milk as your taste buds can manage (I can’t quite bring myself to drink skimmed milk, but semi-skimmed is the most you should really have), replacing your cooking oils to sunflower and olive and grilling and baking foods instead of frying them.

By making sure that your daily diet spans most of the food groups by eating sensibly, with enough fruit and vegetables, you should ensure that you have enough energy to train and compete and consume enough vitamins and minerals to keep you healthy and fighting fit.

www.bupa.co.uk
www.martialarts-101.com
Christensen, L. Demeere, W. ‘The Fighter’s Body: An Owner’s Manual’ (2003) Turtle Press.

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