Advice needed for a Martial Arts kinda work-out.

SEANoftheDEAD

Hey guys,

I've hit a brick wall. I'm currently training in Jiu-Jitsu once a week and I'm feeling more sluggish now, than when I started over a year ago.

I joined a gym in March and up until two weeks ago I was flying, I was full of energy and lost nearly a stone and built some muscle up. But over the last two weeks, I've struggled to get energy and motivation to keep going.

I'll admit my diet could be better, but anything I try to find online about advice is basically calorie counting, and I havent got a clue how to read nutrition labels on things.

Would anyone here have any advice on a training program/diet advice, that would help shed another half stone, flatten the stomach and build and tone muscle?

Thanks.

WeeBushy

Well what's your diet like now? Post up a detailed diary of what you would eat.

SEANoftheDEAD

White bread, full fat milk, grated cheese, denny's ham, packets of pork onion and tomato. banana's. diet coke.
Dinner wise, mostly chicken. Fryed in vegetable oil. Others would include pork chops, mince meat. Pizza. veg wise, green pepper, tomatos, cucumbers.

rarely eat breakfast. when i do, boiled egg and toast or oatmeal.

Normally eat twice a day. lunch and dinner and then snack late at night, tea and toast kinda thing.

Take-aways/mcdonalds... twice a week on average...
thats an average week, pasta would be in there the odd time!

UL_heart_throb

Pretty awful diet, and that's a lot coming from me. Are you overweight?

Can we get your stats, age, weight, height?
Are you 100% sure you're not actually sick (addressing your fatigue)?

Give us an outline of your training programme, martial arts one day a week and how many gym sessions?

SEANoftheDEAD

Im 26, male, 5"10, weight 84kg...
I'm pretty sure it's not an health issue. ( Thanks for the concern:) )

The martial arts is on Tuesday and is fairly intence!
I try hit the gym 3-4 times a week.

The program they have me since March, is 30mins cardio - 20mins treadmill (with inclines and speeds), 10mins rower. I throw in a swim once or twice a week too.
em, some weights and core exercises.
I went down from 14stone to 13. I don't look overweight, but I do have a beer gut thats very nasty and I cant seem to dent it!

Is the diet really that bad yeah?

UL_heart_throb

Your diet is very typical of Irish person tbh, it's not awful but it is very dense in calories and not very high in nutrition. Skipping breakfast is fairly well accepted as a bad idea too.

If I could only recommend two things for you to do in the next few month it would be this:

Eat 2 eggs and a slice of toast every morning. (consider preboiling the eggs, or switch to microwaving and scrambling if it's a time factor).

Change your training programme to 1 martial arts, 1 gym session 'weights orientated', 2 cardio.

I think they're two realistic and achievable changes that I hope would address some of your issues with energy and tiredness. Other tips would be eat around 40 mins before and as soon after training, even just a healthy snack.

Weights orientated session isn't 'a bitta weights', google starting strength or strong lifts and start squating and deadlifting and doing pullups and pressups (if you do a lot of pressups in martial arts maybe you could do a barbell or dumbbell exercise). I honestly think you need to start upping the muscle.

On a couple of side notes, one bjj session a week is a bit low, are you really giving yourself enough time to progress, everyone i know that does bjj seems to do it at least twice.
Sleep, allergies, stress etc. will all contribute to the subjective feeling of tiredness.

SEANoftheDEAD

Very helpful post mate thanks. It a traditional Jiu-Jitsu, not BJJ. so its not competion orientated if ye get me. But that dosn't mean I wouldnt say no to a MMA body haha

So you reckon train 4 times a week for the next while, dont do weights and cardio in the same session?

UL_heart_throb

utopianruins wrote: »

Very helpful post mate thanks. It a traditional Jiu-Jitsu, not BJJ. so its not competion orientated if ye get me. But that dosn't mean I wouldnt say no to a MMA body haha

So you reckon train 4 times a week for the next while, dont do weights and cardio in the same session?

sorry for the mix up i don't know a lot about martial arts.

The point i was trying to make is that you need a significant weights component to your training regime to try and convert your body into a stronger, firmer more efficient machine. you need to get more muscle on it and less fat on it? Agreed?

I was only assuming that you're current weights programme is deficient, purely because you described it as a bit of weights, as if you do a circuit of the machine after your cardio and do a few sets and don't think about it.

You can do cardio in the same session, if you had the time, 40 minutes weights and then your 20 min run and 10 min row. or maybe do the row as a warm up.

If you can only spend an hour in the gym per day, I'd just do the squats, deadlifts and arm/chest exercise separately. How about doing Squats on monday with your cardio. Deadlifts on wednesday with your cardio and bench/shoulder press on a friday with your cardio. Switch that around to fit your jujutsu in and your rest days.

I guess what I'm saying is throw out the weights training that is doing nothing for you and replace it with some big compound movements with a sensible weight and start trying to go up (50kg today, 52.5 kg next week).

I won't post any more after this to give you room to get opinions from other people

SEANoftheDEAD

Thats cool man. Thanks very much, this is appreciated.
Long live Boards and the interwebs!!