Don't Let Your Diet Ruin Your Endurance And Your Self-Defense Training

To improve skills at combat sports, martial arts or self-defense, you must spar and drill both consistently and in a safe manner. Safety while sparring and training does not only mean you should wear proper equipment. You must avoid a diet that hampers or undermines the ability to perform effectively. Specifically, you want to avoid food choices that deplete your endurance or else your class time, self-defense training, and sparring sessions end up lacking the safety levels necessary for a productive workout. 

Avoid Dairy to Avoid Injuries

Drinking a pre-workout shake is a great way to boost endurance provided the ingredients of the shake are the right ones.

In order to prevent injuries when sparring or engaging in freestyle self-defense drills, you need to be sharp. Dairy products are notorious for causing the body to be sluggish, which is why they should be avoided before sparring. Upon reaching the point of tiring out, you become a proverbial sitting duck. Reflexes become slow, labored, and weak limiting the potential to maintain adequate defenses. 

Getting extra endurance-supporting calories from a healthy meal-replacement shake prior to a workout is not a bad idea. Just don't put any dairy into it. A shake made up of almond milk or fruit juice mixed with servings of fruit is a better plan. 

Stay Away from Beef, Eggs, and Other High-Fat Proteins

A nice serving of steak and eggs for breakfast definitely is going to provide a significant amount of protein for your sparring sessions. Muscle mass ends up being preserved thanks to the protein's ability to replace what was lost during long, drawn out workouts. The trouble is these particular servings of protein are loaded with fat. A body tasked with breaking down fat calories ends up with endurance sapped.

Again, without endurance, your sparring and training sessions become a chore to get through. Mentally, you just want to quit and, physically, you are prone for injuries.

Avoid Drastic Weight Cutting

A lean, fit, well-conditioned physique greatly aids self-defense capabilities. Drastically cutting calories to achieve weight loss goals, however, is a real bad idea. Endurance will drop immensely and you are going to end very hungry. During the workout, your mind will drift towards focusing on what to have for dinner after class instead of improving self-defense skills.

Endurance plays a huge role in being able to defend yourself. A good diet can support endurance. Once you clean up your diet, you'll find your self-defense skills at places like Newbury Park Martial Arts Center actually improve.


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