The Fighter's Body. Loren W. Christensen
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truth and for information that is healthy and productive.
While nutrition is a complex field, we have made every effort to make it easy to understand. Once your mind is ready, we think you will find it a pleasant journey, one that has two destinations: a place where you enjoy greater health and a place where you achieve the best that you can be in your fighting art.
As students of health, diet, nutrition, exercise, psychology, personal motivation, and the martial arts, we know first hand that this information works because we have been proving it for over 55 combined years of training, teaching, coaching, advising and personal consultation. You won’t find in these pages any of those whiz-bang, new supplements and diets that come out virtually every week. We present only that information that has proven itself over the years to have lasting results.
While this book could have been over a thousand pages of complex, boring data, we have worked hard to make the information succinct, usable and even fun. We have personally used every workout and eating plan presented here and, to make your path a smooth one, we have moved aside most of the obstacles and point out where others are hiding and waiting to spring like evil ninjas.
So, stir yourself up a protein shake and let’s get started.
Fast Facts
The most common belief, one based on a whole lot of wishful thinking, is that crunches, hundreds of them, trim fat from the waistline.
Crunches will develop strong abs for the power you need for your martial art techniques, but if you want them to show, you have to reduce your body fat.
Myth: Eating after 8 PM makes you gain weight.Truth: Calories are the same at any hour of the day. However, eating at night tends to lead to consuming more calories than you need because you are home near the refrigerator and near the television where you are bombarded with commercials for high-calorie foods.
Infomercials that push exercise and nutrition products zap us with, “See results in 10 days!” and “Get a defined midsection in less than three minutes a day!” While this does have a certain appeal, it unfortunately isn’t the way the human body works.
Basic, nutrition-rich foods, such as vegetables, fruit, and lean cuts of meat, are almost always cheaper than ready-made meals and dining out.
Cutting calories drastically affects your metabolism; specifically, it slows it down, and the slower it goes the more likely you are to store fat.
Do such labels as ”health food,” “natural” and “all natural” mean they are safe to use? Not necessarily.
Maintaining your weight or dropping a few pounds needs to be approached from all angles; eating low-fat foods is just one.
Co-author Christensen recalls hearing the following conversation in a health club between a pumped, steroid-sopped bodybuilder and an easily swayed 24-year-old just beginning to lift weights.
Pumped bodybuilder: “Hey man. You wanna buy some ‘roids? Guaranteed to get you big.”
Skinny guy: “Oh no, sir. My wife and I are trying to have a child and I don’t want it to be born with problems ‘cause I took steroids.”
Pumped bodybuilder: “That won’t happen, man.”
Skinny guy: “It won’t? Oh, okay. How much are they?”
That is all the convincing it took to get this beginner to change his mind and buy an unknown, toxic substance to put into his body. He didn’t research it or talk to a health professional; he simply made a snap decision about something that would affect his entire body, inside and out, based on what a gym rat told him. Why? Because he wanted it to be true.
Myths exist year after year because so many people want to believe in them. We are not just talking about those people who are convinced there are trolls living under bridges or people who believe they are routinely whisked away to other planets. We are talking about mature, educated and worldly people - teachers, lawyers, nurses, judges, and athletes, including martial artists - who want to believe that there is an easy, sweatless and quick way to get healthy, strong, lean, hairless, and get blindingly white teeth.
Let’s narrow it down and look at some of the many myths surrounding the not-so-exact-science of high-powered nutrition, exercise and weight loss. Few of these go away because so many want so desperately to believe they are true. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, well, you know the rest. As a hard training martial artist, you put tremendous demand on your body. To have healthy longevity in the fighting arts, knowledge is critical as to which methods are likely to work, which are dangerous and which wastes your time.
Spot Reduction
Just when we think the concept of spot reduction has gone away, it returns to lead folks down the path of wasted effort. The false belief is this: Work a specific muscle or muscle group especially hard and fat just melts away from that very spot.
The most common belief, one based on a whole lot of wishful thinking, is that crunches, hundreds of them, trim fat from the waistline. Convincing you that this is possible puts money in the pockets of swindlers who every six months come out with a new abdominal contraption that promises on their grandmothers’ graves to not only melt away abdominal muck, but do so in - say it with us - only three minutes a day. If that wasn’t enough, the commercials suggest that in the end, an attractive and admiring hot babe or stud will hang off your arm and gaze longingly into your eyes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Hey, don’t kill the messengers.
Where you accumulate fat depends on numerous factors: genetic make up (blame your parents), gender (men usually store more around their stomachs, while women store more around their hips), your activities, and many others. Making your life even more miserable is the tendency for your body to burn fat first from where it last packed it on. For example, if you accumulated it first around your midsection, that is going to be the last and toughest place for you to trim. Those places on your body with the least fat will be the first to show the visible effects from calorie reduction and increased calorie burning from exercise. Sometimes this might be exactly what you want, while other times it might lead to a disproportionate esthetic effect (a fancy way of saying you look funny in the nude).
3 Minutes a Day
The claim “in just three minutes a day” is used in many magazine ads and infomercials because it sells products. Technically, you will lose a little fat in three minutes, but the loss is so microscopic that you should be able to fit into your new training pants in, oh, about three years. Here is why.
A 170-pound person jogging for three minutes burns about 35 calories, about what is in half a small chocolate chip cookie. Do the math and you find that this person has to jog 100 three-minute sessions to lose 3,500 calories, the amount in one pound of fat. Since ab crunches don’t burn as many calories as jogging, it’s going to take you a long, long while to reach your goal.
Without a sensible eating plan, doing crunches until you drip blood from your belly button won’t give you that coveted washboard abdominal region as long as there is a layer of fat covering it. Crunches will develop strong abs for the power you need for your martial art techniques, but if you want them to show, you have to reduce your body fat. Now, if you just reduce fat without developing a muscular midsection, you will just look skinny. But when you follow a good ab program and diet that coveted ripped look will be yours. So, before you do your next set of 500-rep crunches to burn off fat, think about this bumper sticker.
Abs are made in the gym and in the kitchen
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