Health in Martial Arts
Your Health in Martial Arts
A few words on maintaining your health for those starting martial activities. The following short notes are assembled from general professional medical articles and are for information only.
All medical queries should be addressed to your own doctor. If you are over 35 then it would be wise to get checked out for any problems before you start.
When your body is relatively unfit your sweat will be delayed and normally taste very salty. This causes early fatigue during training.
As you become fitter, you will begin sweating as early as the first few minutes of warm up and not lose much salt – preserving your endurance and concentration.
Early sweating helps minimise risks of heat loss. To aid this, drink a pint of water at least 20 minutes before each session.
Muscle protein is used as an enzyme to enhance contraction. Enzymes, and thus muscle protein, are normally destroyed during severe muscular contractions.
A muscle continues to lose it’s protein or fibre for a duration of six hours after a strenuous session – this indicates that protein is a very essential part of your diet, along with rest and recuperation. A variety of useful foods include meat, fish, eggs, peas and beans.
Too much fat in the body stops it from utilising carbohydrate energy via glycogen – this fuels a lot of our exercise and techniques.
The relatively unfit body needs fat sources to fuel relaxed exercise, or any exercise that requires under 40% of your maximum effort.
Carbohydrate stores can be depleted within 30-120 minutes during a strenuous session and it takes your muscles from 24 – 72 hours to restore their carbohydrate stores.
It is advisable to consume high carbohydrate meals and drinks within 4 hours of a strenuous session and 24 hours before the next session if possible.
Avoid any carbohydrates 30 minutes before a session as this can minimise your endurance.
There are two major classes of carbohydrate – sugary foods (sugar itself, biscuits, cakes) – and starch foods (bread, potatoes, rice and pasta).
Some carbohydrate foods can also be high in fats, particularly snack foods such as crisps and pasties. As eating too much fat is detrimental, the low fat/high carbohydrate foods such as jacket potato and baked beans should be chosen.
Stick to vegetable oils if possible, especially olive oil. Fat takes some time to be released in the blood for energy. This is why, initially, the untrained body switches to carbohydrates.
After about six months average of hard training the body learns to release fat much faster than before, so that a lot more carbohydrates can be saved for exercise performed at near full power.
The remainder of the session would be fuelled by fat.
Vitamins and minerals – information is best gained from appropriate publications.
Vitamin A is considered essential for blood sugar availability for energy and can be better digested if taken with milk. You do not really need supplements of this vitamin if you normally eat plenty of carrots and milk.
Vitamin B is said to be essential to release energy from food and is important for digestion, the function of the adrenal glands, liver and nervous system (helps co-ordinate muscular activity). During exercise, your training can benefit from some vitamin B circulating in the blood. Vitamin C stays in the body for up to 3 hours and is believed to stimulate production of hormones and improve alertness and concentration, so access to this in fluid intake will help during training.
Calcium is essential towards maintaining fitness as during exercise bone metabolism increases and calcium can be lost. It is also linked to muscle and nerve excitability and alleviates quick muscular fatigue. Milk is well known as a good source of calcium- but if you are unable to take milk then supplements are available.
Zinc is believed to be necessary for muscle growth and regeneration and useful for faster recovery during injury. Great care must be taken not to exceed a recommended daily dose (ie.100mg) as it may depress the immune system.
Remember that bran and fibre normally bind with minerals and prevent the mineral digestion in the body. Do not mix them in the same meal.
Alcohol after exercise exacerbates dehydration – so avoid it!
Malcolm Keith
Chief Instructor
Youshiki Goshinjutsu
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