Nutrition for Combat Sports E-Book

Freddy Brown

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Eating specifically is an athlete's most effective weapon in the fight for fitness. An athlete simply needs to know what types of training need what servings of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. The intensity, duration and type of training all play their part, as well as a fighter's body weight and goals. A food-lover, however, wants to know what flavours and textures will excite their senses. This book gives you culinary artistry as much as it gives you scientific knowledge and practical advice. This practical guide to an athlete's nutrition requirements when training for combat sports will be of great interest to all combat sport athletes, coaches, dietitians and sports nutritionists, and is fully illustrated with 130 colour photographs.

Leseprobe

NUTRITION FOR

COMBAT SPORTS

Freddy Brown

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2016 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2016

© Freddie Brown 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 154 3

Dedication

To Bill Judd. A wise man and a patient teacher.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following: Yusuf Alyelken, Ruqsana Begum, Dean ‘Irish Lightning’ Byrne, Danny ‘Cassius’ Connor, Johnny Coyle, Aaron ‘The Marksman’ Morgan, Frankie ‘The Mad Monk’ Monkhouse, Bradley Saunders and Alec ‘The Knowledge’ Wilkey for sharing their practical experience and for their dedication to nutrition; Kevin Currell, Nigel Mitchell and Mark Ellison for professional guidance, mentoring and advice; Steven Mavrou, Wolfie Metzner, Helen Potiki, Steve Rimmer, Chris Rosimus, Martin Robins and Lyneve Ryland for recipes; Dave Roast for recipes and practical experience; Dr David Rowlands for recipes, mentoring and anecdotal evidence; Yvette Coleman for recipes, accommodation and nutritional debate; Dr Lee Stoner for sandwich recipes, mentoring and accommodation; James Duncalf for martial arts knowledge; Steve Minette for photography; Bill Judd for wisdom, guidance and technical information; Eilis O’Donnell for patience, love and support; and Mum for life, love and cooking skills.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Kevin Currell

Introduction: Foods for Fitness and Fighting

1 An introduction for Specific Nutrition for Athletes

2 High-Intensity Training

3 Endurance Training: the Nutritional/Training Demands of Training for Endurance

4 Strength Training: the Nutritional/Training Demands of Training for Strength

5 Putting it all Together in a Weight-Making Strategy: Leaning-Down while Maintaining Muscle, and Adapting to Specific Training Sessions While Preserving Performance

6 Protein Recipes

7 Carbohydrate-Dense Recipes

8 All-in-One Meals: Combine Carbohydrates, Vegetables and Protein Depending on your Goals

9 Vegetable Sides, Salsas and Soups

10  Condiments and Sauces: Fat, Carbohydrate and Protein-Focused

References

Bibliography

Index

FOREWORD BY KEVIN CURRELL

The philosophy that guides my work with athletes is similar to that which underpins my development of a world-leading nutrition service; both stem from my belief in the power of food to enhance performance. By educating athletes on how to eat, they can get more out of their training. Nutrition and recovery underpin how an athlete adapts to exercise. This is rarely more important than in combat sports, where athletes must optimize performance often while manipulating their body weight. Optimal nutrition for combat athletes is needed to support strength, power, endurance, and the speed of reaction needed to defend oneself. The stakes could not be higher!

Freddy’s nutritional guidance within these pages will empower athletes to fuel improvements by using the same approach that we use here at the English Institute of Sport. I believe the power of nutrition can be effective in three key areas. Firstly, an athlete’s diet should be informed by performance; we need to know how an athlete responds to nutrition. This book is dedicated to educating athletes in order to adapt their nutrition to their progress in the gym; whether their goals are weight loss, power or endurance. Secondly, a nutritionist (and the presence of nutrition itself) needs to become part of the training environment, rather than purely being a source of academic information. The advice given here will encourage athletes to combine nutritional strategies into their daily training routine. Finally, I believe in ‘unleashing the power of food’. Real food is the basis of every athlete’s diet, and getting athletes cooking is vital to instilling good nutritional habits. Getting ‘buy-in’ from athletes, and focusing their dedication and commitment on to their food as well as their training, is the biggest victory a nutritionist can get!

With this book, Freddy has translated scientific findings effectively into practical information that athletes can use. This book will help educate, inform, and ultimately empower all levels of athlete to get the most out of their nutrition – and so their training. This book also helps to get across some of Freddy’s infectious enthusiasm for food and combat sports, while the tasty recipes are spiced up by a variety of flavours as well as Freddy’s personable style! By getting a sense of Freddy’s passion for food, and commitment to performance, I am sure readers will be able to improve their skills in the kitchen to support their performance in competition!

Kevin Currell, 2015

Kevin Currell is head of performance nutrition at the English Institute of Sport (EIS). His career has developed from that of an academic researcher (where his research contributed to the formulation of many of today’s carbohydrate gels) to an applied practitioner, and then a strategic leader as head of service.

INTRODUCTION: FOODS FOR FITNESS AND FIGHTING

Health. Beauty. Expression. These words might just as easily be attributed to food as to fighting, the two great passions in my life. The links between fighting and food are obvious; food provides fuel and the materials for regeneration and repair. However, the appeal of combat and the pleasure of eating share other similarities. What drew me to combat sports and helped me overcome my initial fear was embracing the raw essence of combat – the adrenalin, the focus, even the pain. The mind can be affected similarly by both experiences, interpreting physical sensations as neural activity in the reward centres of the brain. After this, I was also drawn into the culture and the rich heritage of boxing. By doing up a pair of gloves and entering the ring, I was treading in the footsteps of so many ring-walks before me. I took great pleasure in being part of such a rich tradition that involved so many different cultures and important historical events. Just as different styles of combat take great pride in their lineage, different culinary styles are similarly entwined with their history, philosophy and geography. Becoming a ‘foody’ is like joining a new club. It had been similar when I had practised kung fu; learning the various strikes and techniques went hand in hand with learning about the lineage of my art.

Fighters push their bodies to the point where they are in a perpetual state of repair and regeneration. Damage and repair is a cycle that underlies training, and so food is at the foundation of fitness. From the Shaolin warrior-monks to Dickensian boxers, food is a constant common to all fighters. The tastes and textures of different traditional cuisines have flavoured the cultures of as many styles of combat throughout history.

Asian Arts: Food and Fighting

Chinese culture, religion and medicine all share a similar set of principles that are central to the country’s martial arts. Underpinning their beliefs on physical training and fitness, the Chinese hold the notion of energy being central to physical and mental well-being. Energy is created and harnessed within us all and can be directed in ways to enhance physical performance and health. It is thought these beliefs and practices date back to the ancient Chinese Xia dynasty, around 2000BC, while written documentation of Chinese dietary therapies stems from The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine written around 300BC. In these practices, it is believed that energy is contained within foods, which in turn impacts upon the body. In a departure from Western thinking, however, different types of foods contain opposing and complimentary energies, which must be balanced for good health. The ideas of yin (cooling) and yang (hot) energies extend to the properties of foods, and different foods are advocated for different functions. Yang foods are believed to increase the ‘heat’ of the body and mind, and yin foods are believed to have the opposite effect. It is a loss of balance that is thought to lead to illness. Although these concepts may be somewhat contentious, the ideas of a balanced diet, and eating according to your specific requirements, are central to modern day healthy eating practices. Increasing one’s energy intake when more active, or turning to citrus fruit during illness, are typical everyday examples. Another applicable concept from Chinese dietary medicine is the simple idea of eating what you wish to regenerate; ‘you are what you eat’. Eating vital organs is assumed to support one’s own vital functions, and (rather sadly) animals’ reproductive organs have even been prized as aphrodisiacs. Although the extension of this idea to literal implementations; such as eating (eye-shaped) carrots for good vision, or (pancreas-shaped) sweet potatoes for the health of the corresponding organ is dubious, the thought process of replacing what you have damaged is sound. This is the main tenant of Specific Nutrition; eating exactly what you require. Damaging muscle requires the consumption of protein for repair, whereas burning energy requires some carbohydrate calories. You are (the product of) what you eat.

From Asia to Africa; the Pan-Continental Appeal of Protein

From China, the spring of modern civilization, to Africa, the birthplace of humanity, fighting will always be ingrained in a culture, and food is just as much a part of the fabric of society as conflict. Two notable examples of African combat are involved intimately with food – and the possession of protein. The first example veers away from combat sports and towards warfare but, still, meat is at the very heart of the matter.

As a scientist, I’m somewhat reluctant to explain historical events with speculation and anecdote but, to give a historical context to science, there is a place for story telling. This one begins with the tribes of the Masai Mara and finishes with a nation of proud, successful endurance athletes.

There has been much speculation about the reasons for the spectacular success of Kenyan endurance runners, with genetic and environmental theories both being used to explain this phenomenon. Recent studies have failed to show a genetic difference between elite Kenyan runners and their non-athletic countrymen in endurance-related genes. It would seem that the combined effects of altitude training, intense training from childhood, and the Kenyan tradition of long distance running have combined to mould generations of elite athletes. Interestingly, nutrition may have played a role in the development of this endurance culture.

The Masai tribespeople of Kenya and Tanzania are a semi-nomadic population whose economy, lifestyle and food have traditionally revolved around cattle. Protein is precious in agricultural or nomadic communities, and cows once equated to status and dowry payments. Masai tribesmen would fight over cattle as this precious source of protein could be harvested repeatedly for milk and blood, and eaten eventually as meat. Historically, the more cattle a man owned (or stole from competitors) the more he was worth, and the more he had to offer the family of a prospective bride. To steal cattle from a neighbouring tribe would have required great levels of endurance to escape across the vast plains of the Masai Mara. Capture would have resulted in death. Although the natural advantage that would have been conferred on good runners has not resulted in genetic selection [1], it could be argued that a history of rewarding the fastest and fittest with wives and cattle may have left a deep imprint on the culture. At the centre of this whole tale is the prize of protein. It was deemed important enough to risk your life, woo a wife, and would likely have aided the recovery and physical development of those who possessed it.

On the opposite side of Africa, Western Africans of Nigeria, Niger and Chad gave rise to the tradition of ‘Dambe’ (meaning ‘boxing’) fighting. This fighting style, actually involving both wrestling and boxing, was traditionally practised in preparation for war. Dambe developed eventually into an accepted fighting challenge by travelling clans on a local village’s harvest, before metamorphosing into a form of harvest-time festivity. This tradition was dominated by groups of the butcher caste of the Hausa people – a specific lower caste and the only ones who could slaughter animals and handle meat. Travelling butchers would visit festivals marking the end of the harvest season to slaughter animals for the community. Along with natural bounty and economic plenty came social celebrations, such as festivals, gambling and fighting. And so travelling butchers formed boxing teams (called ‘armies’) and incorporated comparative training into their rich tradition. Not for the first time, butchery was to be bound to boxing.

Western Culture – From Antiquity to Modern Day

While China’s history has helped shape the world of today, much Western modern thinking comes from ancient Greece. From our logic and ethics to the mathematics we use in modern engineering; the Greeks influenced the society we recognize profoundly. The Olympics was a Greek institution that showcased athletics, boxing and wrestling in similar guises to today’s sports. Amazingly, the Greeks also planted the seeds of modern sports nutrition. It was noted how athletes aiming for increases in strength and size would benefit from meat and milk. As a result, the word ‘protein’ was used to describe the contents of these muscle-moulding foods – coming from the words for ‘first’ and ‘importance’.

Boxing Clever – Pugilism and Protein

Boxing and wrestling have persisted from ancient Greece to the present day, their simplicity and beauty appealing to each generation of athletes, spectators and sporting purists. The sport of boxing has been called ‘the noble art’, yet has united competitors from backgrounds as far apart as the aristocracy and the working class. Similar to the ancient Greeks, boxers of the modern era started to realize the importance of dietary protein; the relationship between food and performance being documented from the late seventeenth century until today. Indeed, the first documented records of boxing contests from 1681 suggest the Duke of Albemarle held a competition between his butler and… a butcher [2]. Continuing this association between red-blooded fighting men and red meat, carnivores continued to make use of their predatory instincts (in the kitchen and the ring) from the Victorian age through to the end of the twentieth century. Stronger, larger boxers were often noted for their predatory dietary habits, with butchery and boxing going hand-in-glove. In Dickens’ David Copperfield a young bully, referred to as the ‘terror of the youth of Canterbury’, is noted as being a butcher. Emphasizing the link between butchery and brawn, the villain was said to have ‘…unnatural strength and that he is a match for a man’, being described as ‘a broad faced, bull-necked young butcher’. These fictitious boxing butchers were to be joined by real life counterparts throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. William Poole, the leader of the New York City gang the Bowery Boys and depicted by Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, was a real figure who transcended into dubious legend. Known as ‘Bill the Butcher’, Poole was a bare-knuckle brawler renowned for his strength as much as his brutality. This tradition carried on throughout the twentieth century, as the carnivorous German pugilist Max Baer became heavyweight champion of the world. Baer was raised by his butcher father to help in the family business, often working carrying heavy carcasses of meat. More romantic stories suggest Baer was known to stun cattle with his fists before slaughter, as well as working at a gravel pit, as part of an upbringing that developed his heavyweight’s powerful physique. Later, in the early 1970s, Muhammad Ali was reported to ‵fix two steaks and scramble about eight eggs’ for himself during training for The Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman. So, the importance of protein has been established throughout the sport of boxing’s long historical development.

Sports Nutrition and Combat – Carbohydrate Controversy

Sport requires energy, and so many of the most influential studies in sports science revolved around providing sufficient fuel for intense exercise. Carbohydrate is stored in the muscles as a readily accessible and fast-acting fuel called glycogen. This energy source was known to be the predominant fuel for anaerobic exercise and high-intensity activity. In the 1960s, it was this muscular store of glycogen that was identified as being the major limiting factor to endurance performance. Throughout prolonged exercise, performance was shown to gradually decline in line with the duration of activity, as well as the muscles’ remaining glycogen stores. Replenishing glycogen stores with a high intake of carbohydrate was shown to be the most effective way to restore glycogen levels, and restore performance [3]. High-carbohydrate diets maintained glycogen stores, replaced them effectively after exercise and were demonstrated to provide athletes with the fuel to maintain their training intensity over several days. To keep athletes training hard, and therefore reaping the benefits from their training sessions, a high-carbohydrate diet was universally accepted as being key to performance. Furthermore, studies looking at how consumed carbohydrate was stored in the bodies of athletes concluded that it was only converted inefficiently to fat. Consumption of radioactively labelled carbohydrates didn’t lead to radioactively labelled fat stores for days [4, 5], implying that a high-carbohydrate diet was not the enemy of a fat-fighting athlete. Carbohydrate loading protocols were developed to squeeze ever more glycogen into athletes’ muscles, and big business cashed in by marketing sports drinks in harmony with the emerging carbohydrate-focused consensus.

However, endurance capacity is not the be all and end all of sports performance – so should we really be applying these ideas to combat athletes? To assess a sprinter’s performance, for example, there would be little point asking them to run a marathon. Similarly, although boxing fitness requires a certain amount of endurance, three minutes of intense punching is very different to 120 minutes of continuous running. Coaches and sports scientists alike have come to realize that different aspects of fitness should be emphasized more or less for different sports. While a training programme for a boxer may be aimed at enhancing the combination of power and endurance necessary for twelve rounds of intense combat, an endurance runner would focus more specifically on… endurance running. However, many of the sports nutrition guidelines to emerge from the 1960s to the 1990s were most relevant to endurance athletes. A generation of non-endurance athletes and recreational exercisers were faced continuously with high-arbohydrate recommendations that weren’t specifically relevant to them. Most people who exercise recreationally will do so with the aim of losing weight, while weight categorized athletes can often ill afford to consume additional energy in the form of sugar if they want to compete in a lower weight category.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, some researchers started looking at the possibility of adapting endurance athletes to make better use of fat throughout exercise. However, not until the early 2000s was sufficient momentum gathered to cause a major shift in nutritional research. Although the evidence to date had shown that carbohydrate was key for endurance-performance, researchers started to look at the longer-term effects of diet on training adaptation. Nutrition wasn’t just being considered as a means to fuel competition but also as an important part of getting fitter over time. And while many athletes were fuelling their training successfully in line with high-carbohydrate recommendations, the cultures of both combat sport and endurance sport remained heavily steeped in self-denial and austerity. Athletes who would train traditionally in a fasted state to get light and lean (for example Peter Robinson, one of the most successful Olympic distance triathletes of all time) would commonly go on to win. A study in 2003 helped rediscover this way of thinking; that short-term pain was beneficial for long-term gain [6]. Training twice a day, although compromising the quality of later training sessions, was shown to be more effective for simulating cardiovascular training adaptations over time. Subsequent research has since confirmed that training with low levels of muscular glycogen is responsible for the improvements observed after the use of such strategies [7], and that these adaptations can be quenched literally with sugary sports drinks [8]. However, again, we must consider the relevance of the literature to combat athletes. Biochemical endurance adaptations will not necessarily help a boxer punch faster or harder. Training with depleted levels of glycogen has not even been seen to improve high-intensity performance. Changes in the muscle that help an athlete burn more fat and theoretically produce more energy have not translated into real world, high-intensity performances.

Finally, we come to the present day. Where exploration, innovation and experimentation continue to thrive in the field of sports science, a single ‘healthy diet’ for athletes is still far from a universally accepted reality. Much of the low carbohydrate evidence has been packaged into commercially viable diets, and mis-sold to athletes who require carbohydrates to perform. Diets such as the Paleo Diet or Atkins try to implement a simple rule to lower energy intake (normally from carbohydrate) and improve body composition. However, no one has demonstrated faster or more powerful performances following long-term carbohydrate restriction. Even weight-categorized athletes may consume carbohydrates without getting fat, as long as the amount and type of carbohydrate is appropriate for training. Likewise, consuming fat won’t make you fat – as long as it’s eaten in proportion with an athlete’s exercise.

This book is designed to help cut through fads and slogans by educating athletes and coaches on a simple, common sense approach to nutrition. Learn how much of what foods to eat and when, and plan yourself a strategy you can follow. Fuel your training… and get fighting fit!

CHAPTER 1

AN INTRODUCTION FOR SPECIFIC NUTRITION FOR ATHLETES

The purpose of this book is to guide athletes towards eating specifically for their goals. To achieve this, we need to understand some basic concepts and the roles of each type of food. Also, as combat athletes aim to maximize every area of fitness, we need an understanding of the energy requirements of different types of training.

Specific Nutrition from Specific Foods

Example foods and portions are given in later in this chapter.

Foods are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’, but provide nutrients that may be more or less suited for a specific situation

Various fad diets have short-term success by applying simple, easy to follow rules. Slogans and titles including ‘Paleo’, ‘low fat’, and ‘low carb’ can often aim to vilify certain types of food to establish regular practices. However, some of the healthiest populations in the world thrive on the very foods these fad diets demonize. A ‘healthy diet’ is achieved by matching your food intake your activity and considering the entirety of your intake above a simple slogan.

Your food intake should depend on your activity and your body weight

Bigger bodies with larger muscles require more energy to move and more protein to repair. All recipes given in the book therefore give recommendations on portion sizes according to body weight.

Vegetables should fill your plate and represent the basis of every meal

This is the best way to ensure a consistent intake of vitamins, antioxidants and minerals (known together as micronutrients), whether you’re reducing your energy intake for weight loss or aiming to pile on the pounds. These should primarily come from leafy, green vegetables, grown above the ground, rather than root vegetables, which are richer sources of carbohydrate (these should be added specifically to your training load).

Protein should be included in every meal

This is essential for your body to adapt to training and maximize your relative amount of muscle compared to fat. On a practical level, it keeps you full.

Carbohydrate is an athlete’s source of energy

Far from being ‘the enemy’, carbohydrates should be portioned relative to the energy demands of training and making weight, meaning an athlete can eat to sculpt their physique, while still getting the benefit from training sessions. Fat should be consumed to make up an athlete’s energy needs.

Micronutrients: Vitamins and minerals that are needed in very small quantities. They support health and exercise in a number of ways, including: