Jack

Strife - what do you want from your abdominal training? Endurance, strength, speed, or bulk/size? Let me know and I'll get back to you.

I am sorry to hear of this shuriken_girl, I wish you all of the best in recovery. You can still attend all of your Karate classes, so that is a definite plus. If you want to be able to train outside of class, you can sit on your bed or on the toilet seat () Practicing your hand techniques. You can also train your mind. Research your chosen art, learn about its roots and founders. Meditate, learn to remain peaceful and focused, happy and respectful. You have been given a situation from which to work from, the past has been done... now what will you do with the future? Best wishes.

Thank you all for the replies.

Thank you for the replies, everybody. I have looked further into my school and compared what I want from a martial art to what I get from my current school. Physical Conditioning? To a degree Realistic, effective self defence? No Mental/Spiritual fulfillment? No Motivating instructor? No So, it appears that a move of some sort is in order. I will check out the Oriental Arts Centre nearby, they have over 10 different arts all practicing in the same building there. I was impressed by the Wing Chun Kung Fu lesson I attended there last Sunday, I will check out some different classes next week. Unfortunately there are no Thai Boxing schools nearby. And I will wait for my dad to be in a better mood before I mention this.

Lol, you make some very good points. Some low fat, high protein foods include as you said beans, and fish, but also chicken and turkey. I love a good can of tuna or chicken sandwich with lettuce and tomato on wholewheat bread. I do however drink a lot of 2% milk due to the whole host of good things in it, as well as the casein protein (good to drink before bed, keeps your body recovering properly overnight). I havn't personally been to a fast food joint in at least six months, unless it was just to stare at the pictures and drool.

Thanks for the response guys. Hmm I have thought a bit more about this and I would have to agree that the negativity is from the school I attend. I think it is because I was going to leave it before to experiment with other schools and arts to see what satisfied me, and my father decided to have a 'go' at me, called me a quitter and said I'd be wasting the last year etc. I think because of this perhaps I tried to look for other reasons as to my unhappiness. Now I've realised this - it is my school I am unhappy with - I will have to have a chat with my dad on the subject. Just a shame he is majorly stressing over some eBay fraud thing at the moment. Thank you both for the advice, now onto the next step of talking to the most uninformed, stubborn father of them all with some intelligent quotes like 'Jack why do you need to eat so much protein? Protein shakes will give you estrogen' and 'Why do you drink so much water? Your body is fine with 1 litre a day, and coffee dehydrating you is lies.' Thanks again.

I am having some problems with being motivated for TKD. I entered the martial arts a while ago I think for fitness, or simple because it was a cool thing to do, I really had no clue about the martial arts or which one was right for me etc.. I enjoyed it and started training seriously, I think possibly as some naive fantasy about following the tradition of the masters of old. I think what I really want is fitness, not to be a great martial artist. I mean my motivation is not there much. Maybe it's because my school seems to revolve around gradings and sparring, and not defence or spiritual developement, or maybe it's because I only ever entered for fitness which I now understand I can get from other sources. I don't know what I want right now, I am not motivated to train TKD at the moment - either because my school focuses on sparring and frequent gradings, or because I would rather hit the gym for exercise. Just working out to be muscled, buff, cut or whatever would be nice but also seems like it lacks in spirituality a bit, but my school is not satisfying my desire for the spiritual practice of the martial arts. Any ideas what I can do to determine what I want out my life, or what I can do? No 'take a week off and you'll be good to go' posts please, I have thought these things several times throughout my studies and have taken weeks off before, it never really got my motivation together. Thanks, guys.

Great advice BladeLee. Eating 2-3 large meals in the day is not as effective as eating 5-8 smaller meals throughout the day. Your body can only handle and absorb a certain amount of food at one time, once your body has been filled with the nutrients it needs, the excess will either be stored or excreted. If you eat smaller meals frequently however, less food is stored as fat and more is sent on to be excreted. Also, say you're awake 14 hours a day and eat three meals. That's eating approximately every 4-5 hours. In those 4 hours your body will be deprived of nutrients, and your body will feel hungry - your body telling you to eat. "After your body is used to such large breaks between meals, it will start storing more and more of what doesn't get absorbed into muscle cells. This, means that it will start depositing the excess into your fat cells. This leads to growth in your fat cells, which means you might turn into a tub of lard!" (quote from Icex999, Bodybuilding.com forums) Eating frequently will also prevent hunger pangs, and teach your body to use the nutrients it's provided and to not cling onto the excess you get from large meals. This is what bodybuilders do yes, but if you want a six pack, you want less fat, and if you want less fat, it involves doing the above for optimun results.

Taikudo that is a great example of a diet, yet I feel that he would lose a lot of muscle too if he were to follow that, and having trouble recovering from intense workouts, due to the lack of protein in that diet. If he were to have, say, a snack between breakfast and lunch, and another between lunch and dinner, he could just have a small serving of fish or meat in either, like a can of tuna or slim jim. This would help him to keep some muscle as he slimmed.

Kickchick I read that just the other day! Great, thanks for sharing that with everybody here.

Well, try having breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, dinner, and a snack before bed consisting of cottage cheese or milk.

Great idea, Deby! For all of those that get bored doing a certain number of pushups. Get a stopwatch. Now do pushups as quickly as possible (with correct form) for 2 minutes and count how many you did. Take one minute break then repeat this, for a total of 4 sets. Try to break your previous record, mix it up by sometimes adding resistance with a weight on your back or by doing knuckle pushups, or increasing the working time/decreasing the rest time. I used to get a total of 186, now just a month later my total is 264.

I just broke up last Friday (19th July) and am off for six weeks of 'sun'

This is why it is good to share. I think everybody at one point or another in their life has felt or will feel like you feel now. As Karatekid and Pizzaboy do, I also like to run my problems away, or let it out on the punchbag. Meditation really does help you to become calm and happy with yourself, I think you should give it a try - it helped me when I was feeling down. http://www.meditationcenter.com/index.html Best of luck in a speedy recovery, bud. Summer is here now so take it easy.

Please do not crosspost, it breaks our posting guidelines. Please continue this discussion here: http://www.karateforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=3680&forum=2&4 Thank you.

Ad, what you will find helps you greatly in loosing weight is that you do not have to stick to eating three meals a day - that is simply tradition. Eating more frequently and smaller portions is better for you since it helps to keep the metabolism elevated and prevents the body going into starvation mode. Try eating 6 small meals throughout the day. Try to have a source of protein and a source of carbohydrate in each - aim for 120g of protein daily to minimize muscle loss as you lose fat, that would equate to about 20g for each meal if you ate 6 meals a day.

You could have pizza as a weekly treat. Bodybuilders have a cheat day once a week in which they eat above their set number of calories. This boosts the body's metabolism and also gives the mind a break. So throw in some pizza once a week, sure.

Yes, but with a clean bulk you can minimize fat loss.

Eye of the tiger, yes you are correct on cutting the calories you eat to something like 500 below maintenance per day, but 3 meals a day is poor advice. Eating 6-8 smaller meals a day boosts your metabolism, burning more fat and preventing your body from entering a starvation mode. Peace.

Deby - one of the many reasons I would love to live in the countryside when I am older. So much nature around, lots of space to practice and scenery to absorb... a martial artist's haven. Sai - I have never heard of that before, I can see the tie between religion giving you the strength to continue when your body is saying know, but reading the bible at the same time as physically exercising? I would be too busy wiping the sweat out of my eyes for that.

Some bodybuilders get up in the middle of the night to consume a protein shake, but many do not considering how that messes up natural sleep patterns (There are four stages of sleep and you'd be interrupting the 2nd or 3rd stage, and when you went back to sleep its back to step 1... kind of wasteful) And yes more growth hormone is released when the body is asleep, so sleeping more will lead to more gains. I think Combat Conditioning will get you strong and buff just like weightlifting, but will also condition you for your martial art.

Heh, well in that case you will be wanting to follow something known to bodybuilders as a 'bulking' phase. With a bulking phase, you weight train regularly with heavy weights and eat a calorie excess, along with consuming 1-1.5g of protein per lb of bodyweight. You will put on muscle, and also fat. After you have bulked for a period of time, bodybuilders then get rid of the unwanted fat to reveal their hard-earned muscle with a cutting phase, in which they create a caloric deficient state and add cardio. For proper indepth information, check out this article... http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/layne2.htm Good luck to you.

Sounds good ad, I'd think in two weeks (concidering you have your diet in check) you will have some results, but think of the long term, give this six months and see how you feel then.

PROTEIN! Protein is essential to building new muscle and is vital in recovering and rebuilding damaged tissue. Aim to get most of your protein from meats and fish, but you can also get protein from dairy products and legumes. You should also aim to get your Carbohydrates from foods such as potato, rice, bread, and pasta. You should still have sugary simple carbohydrates such as juice and fruit but try not to have too much. However, what exactly are your goals here? Do you want to become big to look good, or are you interested in functional strength to aid your athletic performance? If you are after the aesthetic side of building muscle, check out http://www.bodybuilding.com - but note that aiming for large muscles will not necessarily give you much strength, speed, or endurance which are all vital qualities for Martial Arts performance. Strong and Buff would mean training for strength and for size, you can train for both but it would be far more effective picking which one you would like most - size or strength - and then letting us know so that we may be able to help you sort something out. Let me know,

Yes, breathing is very important. Breath deeply into your abdomin during your stretch, that cannot be stressed enough! A good rule of thumb I have heard concerning the duration of a stretch is that for minor stretches 15 seconds is good for a warmup, and 30 seconds for cooldown/increasing flexibility, while for major stretches 30 seconds for wamrup and 60 seconds for cooldown is good.