conversation in a health club between a pumped, steroid-sopped bodybuilder and an easily swayed 24-year-old just beginning to lift weights.
Pumped bodybuilder: “Hey man. You wanna buy some ‘roids? Guaranteed to get you big.”
Skinny guy: “Oh no, sir. My wife and I are trying to have a child and I don’t want it to be born with problems ‘cause I took steroids.”
Pumped bodybuilder: “That won’t happen, man.”
Skinny guy: “It won’t? Oh, okay. How much are they?”
That is all the convincing it took to get this beginner to change his mind and buy an unknown, toxic substance to put into his body. He didn’t research it or talk to a health professional; he simply made a snap decision about something that would affect his entire body, inside and out, based on what a gym rat told him. Why? Because he wanted it to be true.
Myths exist year after year because so many people want to believe in them. We are not just talking about those people who are convinced there are trolls living under bridges or people who believe they are routinely whisked away to other planets. We are talking about mature, educated and worldly people - teachers, lawyers, nurses, judges, and athletes, including martial artists - who want to believe that there is an easy, sweatless and quick way to get healthy, strong, lean, hairless, and get blindingly white teeth.
Let’s narrow it down and look at some of the many myths surrounding the not-so-exact-science of high-powered nutrition, exercise and weight loss. Few of these go away because so many want so desperately to believe they are true. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, well, you know the rest. As a hard training martial artist, you put tremendous demand on your body. To have healthy longevity in the fighting arts, knowledge is critical as to which methods are likely to work, which are dangerous and which wastes your time.
Spot Reduction
Just when we think the concept of spot reduction has gone away, it returns to lead folks down the path of wasted effort. The false belief is this: Work a specific muscle or muscle group especially hard and fat just melts away from that very spot.
The most common belief, one based on a whole lot of wishful thinking, is that crunches, hundreds of them, trim fat from the waistline. Convincing you that this is possible puts money in the pockets of swindlers who every six months come out with a new abdominal contraption that promises on their grandmothers’ graves to not only melt away abdominal muck, but do so in - say it with us - only three minutes a day. If that wasn’t enough, the commercials suggest that in the end, an attractive and admiring hot babe or stud will hang off your arm and gaze longingly into your eyes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Hey, don’t kill the messengers.
Where you accumulate fat depends on numerous factors: genetic make up (blame your parents), gender (men usually store more around their stomachs, while women store more around their hips), your activities, and many others. Making your life even more miserable is the tendency for your body to burn fat first from where it last packed it on. For example, if you accumulated it first around your midsection, that is going to be the last and toughest place for you to trim. Those places on your body with the least fat will be the first to show the visible effects from calorie reduction and increased calorie burning from exercise. Sometimes this might be exactly what you want, while other times it might lead to a disproportionate esthetic effect (a fancy way of saying you look funny in the nude).
3 Minutes a Day
The claim “in just three minutes a day” is used in many magazine ads and infomercials because it sells products. Technically, you will lose a little fat in three minutes, but the loss is so microscopic that you should be able to fit into your new training pants in, oh, about three years. Here is why.
A 170-pound person jogging for three minutes burns about 35 calories, about what is in half a small chocolate chip cookie. Do the math and you find that this person has to jog 100 three-minute sessions to lose 3,500 calories, the amount in one pound of fat. Since ab crunches don’t burn as many calories as jogging, it’s going to take you a long, long while to reach your goal.
Without a sensible eating plan, doing crunches until you drip blood from your belly button won’t give you that coveted washboard abdominal region as long as there is a layer of fat covering it. Crunches will develop strong abs for the power you need for your martial art techniques, but if you want them to show, you have to reduce your body fat. Now, if you just reduce fat without developing a muscular midsection, you will just look skinny. But when you follow a good ab program and diet that coveted ripped look will be yours. So, before you do your next set of 500-rep crunches to burn off fat, think about this bumper sticker.
Abs are made in the gym and in the kitchen
We aren’t going to tell you that reducing fat and developing a strong midsection is easy, because it’s not. On the other hand, it’s not terribly difficult either. It just takes knowledge and discipline. In subsequent chapters we show you how sound dietary habits and exercises aimed at your entire body stimulate overall weight loss, including ridding the midsection of fat. We even show you how to get maximum benefit out of just a few crunches. Before you get giddy, though, know that these crunches are tough and make the veins in your forehead stick out. But you can do it.
A Word About “Ripped”
A ripped midsection isn’t mandatory for optimum martial arts performance. Case in point: Movie star/martial artist Samo Hung, star of Martial Law and numerous kung fu movies, moves extremely well for an overweight fighter. But he is a rare exception, as few martial artists carrying extra pounds move with such grace and speed. We use the term ripped and its visual image as a way of describing an ideal, one that affords you strength for your techniques and one that offers visual proof of your conditioning.
If you are currently soft around the middle, but four months from now you have developed a six-pack of ab muscles as a result of discipline at the dinner table and in your training, feel proud of your accomplishment. However, if you choose not to reduce your body fat to the extent that your developed abs show (some people naturally have a thin layer of fat over their abdomen), it’s okay as long as they are strong.
I’ll Just Eat Less to Lose Weight
The assumption with this myth is this: Eating makes me fat. Therefore, I’ll eat less and I won’t get fat. People who cut calories radically or skip meals “to drop a couple of pounds” are following the assumption to its seemingly logical conclusion.
Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. In actuality, cutting calories drastically affects your metabolism; specifically, it slows it down, and the slower it goes the more likely you are to store fat. Yes, store it. It’s a cruel joke: eat a whole lot less, and get fat. Real funny!
Stress Reactions to Excessive Calorie Reduction
The human body knows two powerful stress reactions: Acute and prolonged. Think of acute stress as how you react physiologically when a mugger jumps out from the dark and points a knife at your face: Your body dumps adrenaline instantly into your system for fight or flight. Think of prolonged stress as the physiological reaction of being trapped in a collapsed house for several days after an earthquake without food and water: To survive, your metabolism slows down and energy drains from your muscles, digestive system and sexual system, using it mostly for primary functions, such as thinking, breathing and keeping your heart beating. Your system becomes highly efficient with its resources
