Sleep..oh god sleep!

Another thing about christmas is the parties, the constant nights out, so with that in mind heres a little bit of info about sleep: (but phil..i thought this blog was about training! when are you gunna get back to situps and all that..... WHEN MY KNEE STOPS LOOKING LIKE AN ELEPHANTS FOREHEAD!

Ok anyway, sleep. Most of this info is nicked and edited again from tricks tutorials, i cant help it, Jujimufu is GOD. But if you havnt visited the site yet...then read on:

So what are the symptoms of sleep deprivation?

* Drowsiness
* Forgetfulness
* Weight gain
* Mood shifts ranging from depression to being irritable.
* Reduced immunity to disease
* Reduced ability to think logically and analyze new information
* Reduced vocabulary
* Reduced motor skills and coordination
* Decreased reaction time
* Decreased stamina and energy


After the first 3-4 hours of sleep your body releases 60-90% of your daily GH (Growth Hormone) amount. Growth Hormone is responsible for the growth of your bones and muscles. It also prepares fat for energy use and spares lean body mass. In regards to muscle growth it causes muscle cells to increase protein synthesis, decrease protein breakdown, increase amino acid uptake in muscular tissue, and divide. Basically it causes growth of muscle and bone tissue.

Another negative effect of decreased GH levels is a weakened immune system. GH stimulates bone marrow growth which boosts the immune system function. A lack of sleep will slow the growth and repair of this tissue; Studies have also indicated that a lack of sleep will reduce your white blood cell count down a good margin.

Finally sleep deprivation increases levels of cortisol in the body the next day. But what the hell is cortisol? It's the 'Stress Hormone', it's your opponent on the road to increased gains in your physical endeavors. Med definition is - The major adrenal glucocorticoid, stimulates conversion of proteins to carbohydrates, raises blood sugar levels and promotes glycogen storage in the liver.
To make it simple for you cortisol causes hyper tension, stress, and synthesizes the amino acids in your muscles to fuel more vital organs (like lungs, heart, brain). In excessive amounts it can cause memory impairments, restrict tissue repair, and increase insulin resistance. It's nasty! Furthermore, elevated cortisol levels have been identified in patients with adrenal tumors. Cancer is not the sex.

On average, younger people between the ages of 12-25 need more than adults. We need between 8.5 and 9.25 hours of sleep per night. Harder working athletes will require more than that! It's easy to figure out exactly how much sleep you need. Go to bed, and wake up!

Here is a method to get the most out of your sleep. This stack reduces cortisol release and catabolism, increases anabolism, increases the effects of GH, and gives you more energy to do what needs to be done. I have gotten this stack from abcbodybuilding.com / an awesome website with plenty of good information. Thanks guys!

1) Take a ZMA supplement on an empty stomach (so intake this 1-2 hours after your last meal). ZMA has been shown to aid sleep and increase hormone levels during sleep.

2) After the ZMA has been totally digested (30-60 minutes later) eat something with complex and fibrous starchy carbohydrates such as oatmeal or a mix of fibrous green vegetables. The point is to consume a slow burning carbohydrate source here.

3) Consume 20-60 grams of casein protein. One of the the best sources of casein protein is cottage cheese. Caseinate based proteins are generally slow digesting and release aminos over a long period of time.

4) Intake 1 tablespoon of flax oil, 500-1000 mg of vitamin C, and 5-10 grams of glutamine.

5) Go to sleep for 8-10 hours.

This combination will digest slowly in your stomach giving you a steady supply of muscle building nutrients as the GH is released. The vitamin C and Glutamine will aid in tissue repair and help the body strengthen the immune system. This stack essentially doubles up the benefits as sleep already does both of these.

What about cost/safety concerns? ZMA is nothing more than a combination of the minerals zinc and magnesium. Athletes need more than the standard person, so this will benefit you if you are deficient in either of these two minerals. Most people don't realize if they are deficient or not; Moreover, ZMA is cheap and easy on your wallet. Flax oil is high in omega 3,6, and 9 acids which have a whole slew of benefits. You can buy flax oil in the gel capsules if you wish, this is a cheaper alternative to buying it in liquid form.

ok, so what have we learned...that it would be impossible to follow this method each and every day, but its definately in your best interests to try it. if anthing at all i would reccomend gettging the right amount of sleep at least 3 nights a week, turning of the tv and pc at least 30mins before you go to sleep, because your brain will have a chance to wind down, and eating the cottage cheese. some of that stuff mentioned in the sleep stack is a bit HARDCORE, you may not want to take the flaxseed or mineral supplements, but the cottage cheese thing is PROVEN to work!

So yeah, thats sleep, try it out and youll see results, i intend to try and follow the ideas pretty well because i reckon it will help the ole brain before exams and all that.

peace,

(oh if you cant tell all ready these few monster posts were made becuase i cant do any exercise, so im trying to learn as much as i can about my body, nutrition and how i can maximise my chances of a speedy recovery)

Dieting, the basics

I get alot of stick from some people (james ;)) about my idea of dieting and nutrition, but i do take it seriously, its christmas now and like everyone else i intend to chill out, eat and drink lots and generally grow fat on my own lazyness. however the trick is not to let things get out of hand, and i've written this little piece to help you guys stay in control of your eating over xmas:


Diet Basics-

1. your weight.

The easiest way to work out your weight for dieting is the american system of LBS. This is easy, get a calculator and some scales. set your scales to kilograms. Now multiply your weight in kilograms by 2.2. this will get you your weight in Lbs.

2. Your daily intake of calories;

Multiply your weight by 13 to get your average needed intake of calories.

3. Gain/Loose weight;

add or subtract 500 calories to gain or loose weight respectively.

4. The nutrients:

It breaks down like this:


CALORIES: IMPORTANT DEFINITION FROM WIKIPEDIA:

# cal- this is the small calorie or gram calorie, and approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.184 Joules.

# kcal, this is the large calorie or kilogram calorie, and approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.184 kJ, and exactly 1000 small calories


calories are usually represented in kcal, so try and work from those to keep things simple.

Carbs, fat and protien:

50% of your daily intake of calories should come from carbs. (fruits, vegetables, whole grain products etc)

25% of your daily intake of calories should come from, ideally, low fat, o protein sources (chicken, fish, eggs, soy products etc)

25% of your daily intake of calories should come from quality (unsaturated) fat sources (nuts, seeds, avocados, flax seed oil, olive oil etc).

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

* 1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
* 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
* 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
* 1 gram of alcohol = 7 calories

so when you know your daily intake of calories simply multiply by .50 or .25, then divide by 4 or 9 to get the weight of your carbs, fats and protien in grams.
thought id put alcohol up just so you know. i dont drink it much, just over holiday periods like xmas. but if you do, add it in.

here is an example copied directly from an internet fitness site, to give you an idea of what you should be aiming at:


If you weigh 180 lb. you would need approximately 2400 calories a day. A little more if you are very active. 180 x 13 = 2,350 calories

Carbohydrates: 2,400 x .50 = 1,200 calories from carbohydrates or 300 grams of carbohydrates.

Protein: 2,400 x .25 = 600 calories from protein or 150 grams of protein.

Fat: 2,400 x .25 = 600 calories from fat or 66 grams of fat.

5. Working it out:

Take a notepad, record everything you eat in a standard day.

DO NOT change your diet in this day, eg, if you normally eat junk food for lunch, eat junk food, drink coke, etc etc. dont start eating healthy becuase you are thinking healthy...yet.

ok in the course of your day record what you eat, when you eat it and the basic nutritional values, the carbs, the fat and the protien. total it all up at the end of the day. if you are unsure of the vaules of things like bananas and chicken pieces, or the amount of oatmeal you have in the morning, weigh it and use

this

site, which has a pretty extensive range of the quality and nutritional value of food products.

So work out where your basic big three are coming from, and adjust your diet accordingly

7.

Some tips:

Water: i could go so in depth about it, but chances are you already know, if you dont, read

this

article on tricks tutorials. In fact, read everything about nutrition on tricks tutorials, it goes a lot more in depth than i have,. im just giving you the basic idea.

Multivitamins: A must for any university student, but also i would reccomend starting to take them around the age of 16, i say 16 just to be on the safe side. They give your immune system a boost and get you at least a basic supply of essential vitmains, as long as you remember that they are not a substitute for eating fruit and veg

Get eggy: Nicked this one of Tricks Tutorials, if you eat oatmeal in the morning, mix an egg in, for protieny goodness! Also when dealing with Oatmeal, remember you can have it with water, not just milk. Milk is a bit of a touchy subject, no other mammal drinks milk past the basic stages of infancy, so why are you still drinking it? Answer, its a habit but human bone growth and general body change can last a long time, up until the ages of about 25. so milk is probably ok as long as its farm fresh and skimmed/semi skimmed. Factory produced milk contains traces of steriod whihc they pump into the cows to increase milk production...not cool at all.

Have a banana: or any other fruit, with breakfast and at least one other time during the day. Also cut up a few bananas and stick them in a ziplock bag and chuck em in the freezer. there's nothing worse than going to get a banana for your day and finding it all black and mushy, so make sure you have a supply of chopped ones in your freezer which you can add to your lunch or smoothie.

Tired of sandwhiches and crisps?: Remember that sandwhihces and crisps as lunch is only a habit. work on this priciple.theres nothing better than meat and veg, so for example. i take a bell pepper (hehehehe..bell) and hollow it out, fill it full of tuna and mayo salad and eat it like an apple. or take a can of tuna, add a bit of hot sauce straight to the can, mix it up and eat it from the tin and munch on a couple of tomatoes on the side, theres nothing better than a mouth full of meat and veg for lunch :)
Also, throw fruit into EVERYTHING, breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, you can add fruits and berrys to them all, maybe have an omlette with chopped strawvberries in it, bananas, apples, grapefruit, with your cereal blah blah blah EAT FRUIT DAMMIT!

Weetabix and Marmalade: An great snack and source of energy for revision or a general pick up during the day, easy and quick to make, get a couple of dry weetabix biscuits and spread jam/ marmalade on them. you get huge carbs, sugar and more protien than you might think. probably should mention here that if you havnt switched to wholegrain products DO IT NOW! i'll wait......

......
......
......
......
......
......

how's it feel? more energy, concentrating on what im saying now...i thought so.


Eat: roughly 5-6 meals a day, that the 3 main ones, with mid morning and mid afternoon snacks (ideally fruit or nuts) to keep you on yuor toes at work or school. If your looking at bodybuilding or something similar then 7-8 small meals a day is another option.

Protein Supplements: if your going to take protien supplements, keep it simple, a simple workout shake, with water or with milk, is probably all you need to boost you daily protien levels. just rember to take the milk into account if you have it with that!

So thats basically it for an introduction to your diet. If you spend a week recording everything you eat and its values you will find that youve built up a handy database of pretty much everything you usally eat, because most households follow a routine for evening meals. Then just build your diet around a foundation, for example if you know on tuesdays your eveing meal is pasta with sauce and cheese, or you have rugby training, martial arts or other sports on that day, you can look at your notebook to see what else you eat that will plug the protien gap in that day, or give you the energy to train. Before you know it youll be eating the right foods on the right days for the right reasons, and trust me, results will follow,

resources: Tricks Tutorials.com and abc bodybuilding.

The five stages of injuries

I got this of tricks tutorials.com and now i compare it to my own feelings on my injury...which is rapidly turning mroe serious than i thought, i thought i'd stick it up here..makes interesting reading, just replace the word "trickster" with "athlete" when you read;


The 5 stages of adjustment:

*

Stage 1 : Denial

Nothing, nothing is wrong with me. It's not that bad. - The first stage does not last long. Either the trickster was right in their assumption and heals up overnight, forgetting all about the injury; Or, they progress to stage two.
*

Stage 2 : Anger

When reality hits as a result of the inability to trick without experiencing intense pain they enter stage two. Why me? DAMN IT! FUCKING SHIT! ARGHHHH This often leads to panic, making the pain worse. This stage is the most dangerous. It is here that a trickster, through frustration and panic, might try to force through the pain. Each time they force an attempt at it they'll be making it more severe.
*

Stage 3 : Bargaining

Following anger, a sense of false hope arises within the trickster. They bargain with promises that might resemble "When I recover, I'll never ________" in hopes that the pain will subside. This pleading does prove futile and we progress to stage four.
*

Stage 4 : Depression

Upon entering of stage four the trickster realizes nothing can be done and they withdraw or focus on self-pity. In a position of unhappiness, the trickster might try to break the melancholy by alternating back and forth among the first four stages. Before true healing occurs the trickster has to rise to stage five - acceptance.
*

Stage 5 : Acceptance

The last stage of adjustment regarding injuries, healing! This is the final stage when the athlete accepts the reality of their loss and starts recovering. I'm injured, but I've got to get on with my life. Besides, I could use the rest. It is here that the trickster will act more responsibly with their pain and true healing occurs.

A setback...and thats an understatement!

I have torn my medial ligament and subluxed my kneecap, i did it yesterday afternoon bieng what can only be described as a cocky bellend.
during the summer months i was getting continual problems with my knees, i thought it was the early stages of jumpers knee and got physio advice from my mum. she gave me exercises to do, which i did, and the pain went away. whenever i felt it return i repeated the exercises until it left.

About 2 weeks ago i started to do bodyweight squats, as i wanted to develop my legs more. i had pretty solid bodyweight squats and could do about 4 pistol squats on each leg. it was goign well until wednesday, where i suddenly felt a tingling in my left knee after doing a 60kg weighted squat. i warmed down, the pain went, no problem.
yesterday i was walking to the gym, ina good mood becuase id been invited out to a party that night, i did a somersault of a grassy bank, without a warm up!

Jump

Flip

Land

POP

there went my knee cap. i tore my medial ligament on impact and subluxed my left knee cap. i got up to walk and it half popped back in. i limped to the bus and went home. my mum wasnt in, but i was determined to enjoy my night, i have a high pain threshold and i thought it would be ok if i shoved some ice on it and then sat down at the party a lot.
Well the party wasnt that good and we ended up walking to the pub...big mistake, i woke up next morning to a hell of a lot of fluid, and to make matters worse had to go to work. therfore my leg wasnt looked at until about 27 hours after i injured it!!! considering i couldnt put my heel down at all, thats gotta be f*cking stupid, and the forst 48 hours of an injury are critical.

So i came home tonight with my left knee about 2 times the size of my right...now im all bandaged up, had ultrasound and electrode therapy, and under orders by my mum/physio not to do active sport for at least 2 months, if i want to ski in february, which i do, skiing bieng my favorite sport,


so, much rehabilitation i need to perfrom exercises to stop my thigh muscle wasting, and may need a scan to see how my cartilage is holding up. i've lost progress in martial arts and trampolining, no flips for a long long time, maybe a year, extremely pissed off with myself for not taking what was an easy somersault seriously, and not warming up and down, and not listening to my body when i got the warning signs.

Listen to your bodies guys, becuase this sucks an unbelivable amount. when the bandage gets changed i'll get a picture up.





(on the plus side, lots of pushups, pullups, handstands and situps to do

Tabata training

a new method i have adopted to maximise training potential in a short period of time is the tabata method of strenght/resistance/cardio training. I needed somthing that would give me a massive body workout in my room, in the short period i have between revision. Basically Tabata is a series of beeps played on an audio file i downloaded. The workout is 4 mins long, the first beep is the singnal to start training, the second is a signal for a 10 second rest, and then it continues with another beep. If i get time to do this outside i whack the file on my cd player and try and perform a boxing/Tae Kwon Do tabata workout, or somthing like jogging, or skipping. but since im usually in my room, i do burpees with pressups, and jumps if my parents dont get too annoyed with the banging!, this giving me a total body workout in four minutes!

the whole point of the Tabata method is to give 120% in every 20sec workout period, this means you are doing HARDCORE speed and strength, to maximise the strain in the short time. it seems to be going well, im nicely worn out by the end but my recovery time isnt too bad, about 8 mins, and then i get back to work. meaning i can do an hours revision, do a burpee tabata workout, get a drink and a snack, and get back to work for an hour, in a 12 min interval, which seems much longer because of the workout. so i guess this is helping my focus on revision, its a two for one!


next time, dragon flags....the ultimate ab workout and my whole 1 rep of them!!!!!! id put it up now but i dunno what else id have to say tomorrow, im not sure whether ill train or not, if i do its a chest day, but more on that when it comes,

peace,

New move!

Quite a productive day, i cam home and after lunch and watching scrubs (becuase nothing should interrupt my daily worship of JD) i started practicing Valdez's. For those who dont know a Valdez is a guide of basic introduction to a back handspring, you start in a crouch, put one hand over your head and place it on the ground behind you, jump up and bacwards while following your other hand over. i thought they might prove hard, but after a couple of landing on my shoulder i got them pretty well, which means that i should progress to backhandsprings soon, with luck. I also pratciced my handstands and handstand presses and managed to do an L seat to handstand press this evening, going from an L seat position to a handstand without touching the ground! ok, so i held it for like 1 sec, but still, good stuff! got a quiet day tomorrow so i might gym it for most of the afternoon and then do some punchbag workouts plus some Tabata training tomorrow. More on Tabata tomorrow evening!

heres a quick vid of what i did today, the valdez look ok but as you can see i still need practice in getting them perfectly verticle, but should be there soon.



ciao for now, its time to do some classics essays, even though my teacher wont be there, i hate guilty consiences!

hard week

in terms of school, everythings winding down towards xmas now, im finding it difficult to concentrate on work, but just gotta keep plugging away i guess. i terms of training, ditto, i maxed out at the gym today for the first time in a few months, but got higher than ever on my bench press (55kgs) and similarly got a decent set of ten bodyweight chinups in, im increasuing this to 12 reps before i start a new set, my overall goal is 3 sets of 12 chin ups. Pullups are going strong also, but the biggest boost this week has come with me getting longer and longer holds on my elbow lever and L seat freezes and managed to get a couple of decent handstand presses in. i can hold the lever for around 20 secs and the L seat for around 12 secs. below are a couple of pics of each, just to show technique. well im off to martial arts training now, ill maybe throw a handstand press pic up here when i get home.

heres the elbow lever, but as you can see my room is too small to show it well, so ill do couple of pics tomorrow of it outside, so you can see the length
and here is the L seat, again sorry about lack of space, ill again get a couple of pics up tomorrow of it outside.

ciao for now

Finally, a stepping stone

well this has been a long time coming, but probably necessary. those who know me know im pretty into all this training malarky. But i have been so lax recently with going back to school, i need somewhere i can put my thoughts into words and see my progression, also document my life as a whole, probably to keep me sane. im going to try and hit this blog every day i train, or do any kind of workout, which will be most days. Anyway thats a basic basic basic introduction. Its late and i have reading to do.

bon soir.