Training on holidays
Yep, BJJ practitioners usually make poor holiday partners if your family is just into the ‘relax’ style of holiday. However, my wife knows now that if there is not a gym/sports-activity/beach with waves then the holiday will be a nightmare. So gratefully this holiday is all about sport, there is a gym and there is a mountain with snow. So firstly you need to think what you need to achieve with your training on holidays. For me, especially in a sporting holiday, then it’s all about warming up early in the day, focusing on vulnerable body areas and some short explosive strength combos.
My first stretch is stepping high and ducking under. This pretends there is a piece of wire strung about hip height on your right hand. You step up over the wire to the right and duck back under it to the left. I do about 20 of these and then repeat on the other side. I finish this off with 30-50 push-ups. Fortunately there is a rowing machine here. Again I just am focused on warming and stretching so I do five sets of 1 minute, 10 seconds hard and 50 seconds easy. This 5 minutes is ideal. Its enough to really stretch out all the main muscle groups and get them warm and ignited! Again I focus on the deep stretch forward and the long pull back in the slow period, and speed in the 10seconds. If there is no rower, I tend to use air squats and push-ups with 50 seconds air squats and 10 seconds pushups. In the gym here they have plenty of fixed machines of which I tend not to ever use. They are too focused on individual muscle groups, and for me are not very ‘bang for buck’ as far as training. I never use these in normal training anyway because of this!! Fortunately there are dumbells here to about 30kg. I use these like a kettle bell and just do single arm snatches, single armed cleans and thrusters. I do a few sets to prepare for the exercise and then hit out about three sets of each, with about 5-6 reps. I keep all this to a minimum as far as volume. The last thig you need is injury!! Finally I stretch my back. Here I have a roman chair, so I can do back extensions. If there is no roman chair I use planks and supermans on the floor. I can punch out this session in about 15-20 minutes and be back ready for breakfast as the team are still getting ready. As always my session is not the ‘be all or end all’ fabulous session, but I think no matter what you do:
1. Be safe and reduce volume and weight to prevent injury
2. Focus on the exercises that warm and stretch the bodyparts you are stressing
3. Keep it short

Getting back into a ketogenic diet in preparation for the Pan Ams in March, I’m working on taking the lessons learned from previous episodes to try and accelerate the process as much as possible.

One thing I’m doing differently is cutting right back on milk. I knew it was insulinogenic, but didn’t think at the volume I consume it would be much of an issue.

“Milk has a higher proportion of insulin calories compared to cheese. Butter and cream have a lower insulin load and proportion of insulinogenic calories.”

food	ND	% insulinogenic	net carbs/100g	insulin load  (g/100g)	calories/100g
butter	0.09	0%	0	1	734
cream	0.08	5%	4	5	431
goat milk	-0.05	40%	4	7	69
full cream milk	-0.10	44%	5	7	65
low fat milk	-0.12	58%	5	7	50
human milk	-0.14	43%	7	8	71
reduced fat milk	-0.13	59%	5	8	51

Another thing I am particularly aware of is the diuretic effect and the loss of electrolytes:

“When carbohydrate intake is restricted, 2 metabolic processes occur, both of which simultaneously reduce total body water content. The first process is mobilization of glycogen stores in liver and muscle. Each gram of glycogen is mobilized with approximately 2 g of water. The liver stores approximately 100 g of glycogen and muscle has 400 g of glycogen. Mobilization glycogen stores result in a weight loss of approximately 1 kg. Patients notice this change as a reduction in symptoms of “bloating” and are very pleased with the effect. The second process is generation of ketone bodies from catabolism of dietary and endogenous fat. Ketone bodies are filtered by the kidney as nonreabsorbable anions. Their presence in renal lumenal fluids increase distal sodium delivery to the lumen, and therefore increase renal sodium and water loss.”

“One group of investigators provided supplements containing 3–5 g sodium/d and 2–3 g potassium/d and found that circulatory competence during submaximal exercise was sustained. These supplements also allowed the subjects to achieve nitrogen balance, which had not been achieved in studies that did not use supplements.”

So that reinforces a focus on hydration, and also considerations for supplementing electrolytes, or at least salt.

On the topic of supplements, I have been using a ketogenic supplement of beta-hydroxybutrate in the form of KetoCaNa (trying the Strawberry Lemonade flavor for a change), but had also ordered some Perfect Keto Base (in the Chocolate Sea Salt flavour), which turns out is easy to drink, at least for beta-hydroxybutrate.

I had also tried some EAS Myoplex Ketogenic Powder Packets (in the Strawberry Banana flavour) as a meal replacement, but found these unpleasant to consume.

So the end result? After six days I hit 3.3 mmol/L of blood ketones, well in the range of 1.5+ for nutritional ketosis.