Fighters Only

Issue 090

July 2012

Gareth Nicholas is part of the elite sports nutrition team at Maximuscle, one of the world’s leading sports nutrition suppliers. Beating the blubber can even be a problem for the ring’s hardest working warriors. Here’s your guide to making sense of effective fat-burning practices.

Messages about fighting fat are usually directed to the growing number of obese people in society. For a relatively lean fighter, however, unwanted fat will still provide a hinderance; that extra weight making you slower and speeding up your time to fatigue in the ring. Indeed, if you were to write a list of attributes that contribute to success, carrying too much fat wouldn’t feature. Fortunately, MMA is a high-intensity calorie-burning sport with a combination of cardiovascular and resistance elements making it ideal for fat loss. However, training is only half the battle when it comes to weight loss. The other half is a health and performance-supporting calorie-controlled eating plan.

EAT RIGHT FOR THE FIGHT

Mixed messages and fad diets make burning fat difficult to make sense of. There’s no denying some flash diets work in the short term but more often than not, they are unrealistic and/or unhealthy, often accelerating muscle loss and leaving any hard-training fighter aiming to lose weight fatigued and struggling to keep the weight off.

A prime example of this would be a no-carb diet. Theoretically, it makes sense. The reduction of daily carbohydrate intake could amount to cutting out 1,000 calories or more. However, the body relies heavily on carbohydrate as a fuel source, most noticeable during intense exercise. To deny the body carbohydrate would not only mean a reduction in training duration but limit intensity of each session and leave your immune system vulnerable; therefore reduce the outcome potential. A more pragmatic approach would be to maintain a carb intake in and around training and restrict at other times during the day.

GUIDE TO WEIGHT LOSS

Many diets would recommend a daily calorie reduction of 500–1,000 calories. However, to help maintain training intensity and avoid any muscle wastage due to a calorie deficiency, it is wise to limit the calorie reduction to 500. In addition, aim to train for a minimum of 30 minutes, five days per week. This will help a fighter, not only lose weight but also keep the weight off (in line with the American College of Sports Medicine recommendations). More drastic measures are sometimes taken during the weight-making phase in preparation for a fight, however these shouldn’t be adopted on a regular basis from a healthy weight loss perspective.

GET LEAN, GO GREEN

To support weight-loss goals, a wide variety of nutritional supplements have been developed over the years. Most widely used, are thermogenics – supplements that increase heat production through the metabolism. The theory being that additional calories are burned with an increased metabolic rate (thermogenesis). Caffeine is a main nutrient found within thermogenic products due to its stimulant effect. Along with the well-accepted mental stimulus from caffeine ingestion, a physical boost is also produced whereby a fighter will be able to maintain a higher intensity for longer during their workout. Which means a greater calorie burn and therefore weight loss.

Hydroxycut Hardcore Elite, is one such thermogenic supplement that, amongst a well-formulated ingredient list, contains 270mg of caffeine per serving – designed to support your weight-loss goals. Caffeine is also one of the core ingredients found in diet supplements such as VME: Vaso Muscle Expander which, combined with 23g of protein to support muscle repair, retention or growth, makes it an ideal shake to support lean physique targets.

LESS IN, MORE OUT

The math behind weight loss is simple: less calories in and more calories out. A sensible approach is to aim to ‘graze’ across the day, eating little and often. This will not only help to avoid hunger and over eating but support better energy levels for training so you can burn even more calories. Dietary supplements such as ‘thermogenics’ may offer additional supporting benefits to weight loss and could be considered alongside a diet that avoids nutritional sacrifices, with sensible restrictions and an increase in the overall exercise type, intensity and duration.