When it comes to your training and your fueling, you need to think about the bigger picture. For sports such as Brazillian jiu-jitsu, which has a wide range of intensity demands, you need to switch your mindset and fuel your body for your practice. While being strong is a sort of ‘cheat code’ in Brazillian jiu-jitsu, it is nothing without the right fuel to back it up.
If You Have Questions About Your Nutrition, You Should:
Remember that what you eat today is your fuel for tomorrow
Don't believe the hype around trends like fasting and no-carb
Work with a coach who understands your goals and can help you achieve them in a sustainable way
Alex Maclin is a fellow performance nutrition coach, strength training enthusiast, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu player. He is passionate about helping athletically minded folks fuel themselves with the proper nutrition so that they can get more out of their performance. Throughout his health journey, he has coached hundreds of athletes through online training programs for weightlifting, strength, and conditioning, and is here today to share his knowledge with you.
When it comes to your training, it does not just exist when you are on the mat or in the gym. What you do around your training, how you eat, recover, hydrate, and think about your training, can also have a huge impact on your ability to accomplish your goals.
Even if you are not competing, if you want to train consistently and give it your all, you have to put some thought, strategy, and planning into what you are doing outside of the gym. This means thinking proactively about what you eat and remembering that what you eat today is fuel for tomorrow.
Training, recovery, and nutrition practices work together as a system to help you achieve your best results. This can get tricky when we see the amount of misinformation and conditioning that we have been exposed to, especially as female athletes.
Even if you are not into Brazillian jiu-jitsu, the fueling practices talked about in this episode will help guide your performance, nutrition, and your own athletic endeavors. When you can understand how to fuel yourself optimally, you can see your optimal performance a lot clearer.
What has your experience been with fueling for sports such as Brazillian jiu-jitsu? Share your thoughts with me in the comments on the episode page.
“[This isn't] just for competitive jiu-jitsu athletes. This is for the average everyday people like me who just want to train, and they love it, and they want to feel good on the mat.” (6:38)
“These foods that you are eating are foods that are going to help you feel better, help you perform better, and give you more energy. That is a really big mindset shift. Not looking at things as just having calories… but actually how this food is going to help you kick some more ass and recover.” (25:24)
“You can eat at levels that you need to eat without fasting; you just need to make sure that you are getting the proper amount of calories per day.” (48:56)
“What we eat today is for the next day.” (50:50)
“Learn concepts of jiu-jitsu rather than just learning all these moves. I think that was the most overwhelming part.” (1:15:57)
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FYS 395 - How to Calculate Your Daily Protein Needs
FY 350 - Are You Eating Enough? Low Energy Availability in Sport
Blog - Carbs for Strength Training
Are you cardiovascular training confused? I don't blame you; there is a lot of information out there that can work counterintuitively, especially if you are just starting to incorporate cardiovascular training into your routine. While it is easy to just focus on the numbers, finding the balance between high-intensity and low-intensity is more nuanced than that. Luckily, I have my friend Jamie Scott, an accomplished sports nutritionist and endurance coach, with me today.
If You Want to Incorporate More Low-Intensity Cardio Into Your Life, You Should:
Jamie Scott is a New Zealand Registered Nutritionist. He holds postgraduate qualifications in Nutrition Medicine and Sport and Exercise Medicine, undergraduate degrees in Nutrition Science and Physical Education, and is a Level-1 Mountain Bike Skills coach (PMBIA). Over the past 25 years, Jamie’s career has spanned several roles in the health and fitness industry. He is passionate about helping others learn how to fuel their bodies in a way that supports performance and total body health.
I’m willing to bet there is a pretty good chance you have heard some rumors about cardiovascular health over 40 and the difference between lower-intensity and higher-intensity cardio. Many people struggle with lower-intensity cardio, or Zone 2 because they feel it is too boring, hard, or lazy. But when you can remain grounded in your ‘why’,’ you can stay focused on the practical things you can take away. You don't have to feel stressed or anxious about what your fitness technology is telling you. Remember to focus on the feeling an exercise gives you, not just the numbers on the screen.
Often, we as a society are in a rush to look for what is new and shiny, so we need to remember the reliable basics. But they are there for a reason! Working both higher- and lower-intensity cardio into your weekly routine benefits your training and your lifestyle.
The practical application of lower-intensity cardio, combined with the higher intensity and strength training you are already doing, is a crucial part of the puzzle regarding your overall health and longevity.
Are you ready to implement lower-intensity cardio into your training regime? Let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments on the episode page.
“Overall, for those who are just after kind of the health and longevity and want to do it in a sustainable way that is not massively hard on the joints or is not a high skill requirement… that low-intensity mix seems to be better for those individuals.” (12:21)
“The endorphins, the huffy-puffy-ness, the sweatiness, the burn, all of those things we have been conditioned over years and years and years in the fitness industry as markers of some sort of ‘success.’ And we need to unlearn a lot of those things when it comes to doing this low-intensity, high-intensity split.” (31:57)
“It's getting people into that mindset of: you don't just go from 0, drop into almost a 50/50 split of low intensity and high intensity, and just slowly kind of stack things up over a long period of time. But you are not doing it in a 7-day cycle where you are just trying to shoe-horn everything in.” (47:21)
“There can be different forms of movement that people are involved with, which does add up over time.” (47:00)
“It requires people to do a little bit of reflection and thinking about where they are at, what they are doing, and what the context is.” (53:52)
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FYS 423: Practical Cardio Training Tips with Jamie Scott Part 1
FYS 353: Fueling Best Practices for Active People with Jamie Scott
FYS 352: Energy Flux and Fueling for Athletes with Jamie Scott
FYS 392: Understanding Total Daily Energy Expenditure
FYS 381: 6 Reasons to Hire a Nutrition Coach
What is Within Day Energy Deficit?
What You Need to Know About Low-Energy Food Swaps
What is Low Energy Availability? And How to Avoid It