My reading for this weekend.Nutrition has always been a problem with me, every since I was a kid. An aversion to typical breakfast foods made breakfast a grueling experience for at least a decade. Part of the fallout from this has been a weird obsession with performing on an empty stomach - or relying on as few calories as possible.
That was then - and a little bit more of the "now" than I'd like. Today, during the first conditioning interval of the competition training, I could barely finish 20 push-ups. That has nothing to do with cardio. That's all muscle endurance and, specifically, in today's case, a lack of fuel.
Of all the sports I would never want to perform with a meal in me, jiu jitsu may not have a close second. The twisting, the bending, the unpredictability of movement in jiu jitsu mandates having a body as ready to go at all times - not a body that is constantly busy digesting. I can't help but wonder if the relative lightness of the Gracie Diet is in part to accommodate the body's preferences when it comes to grappling.
For the past week, I've eaten like a 14-year old. And at my age, I just can't get away with that kind of shiite for very long. That's all the more so with the July Revolution just over 9 weeks away.
So this weekend will be the end of all that - at least for the next couple of months. I'm desperately curious to learn what might happen if I put everything I've got into preparing for the July event. And getting my fuel systems on track is a very big part of all of that.
