Self Defence Made Easy.Com

This article was written by the celebrated author,dietitian,trainer Mike Geary who has helped literally thousands of martial artists and non martial artists alike to achieve healthy balanced lifestyles. With the added bonus of sound and tested methods to help you achieve the kind of body you always wanted.

Click Here <<<<<……

I’m sure by now you’ve heard all about the amazing health benefits of antioxidant rich foods in your diet. Not only do these free-radical fighting antioxidants help you look and feel younger by slowing down the aging process, but they also help to prevent cancer, heart disease, and loads of other degenerative diseases. But that’s not all. Antioxidants also help you to recover better from exercise…and that means more muscle and less fat on your body in the long run!

The function that antioxidants play in aiding your recovery from exercise is the inhibition of free radicals produced during exercise. Any time you workout, free radicals are produced in the body that damage muscle tissue. Having an adequate supply of antioxidants about an hour or so before your workout can greatly reduce the muscle damage caused by free radicals, hence, improving your muscular recovery from exercise.

Some of the most potent sources of whole food antioxidants are berries (blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, cranberries), cherries, acai fruit, various teas (green tea, oolong tea, white tea, black tea, and red tea – a.k.a. rooibos tea), nuts, seeds, red and black beans, purple potatoes, grapes, red wine, cinnamon, and dark chocolate or cocoa. Don’t be fooled by all of the intense marketing for expensive antioxidant supplement pills…remember whole foods are always better for you (and cheaper) than a pill.

My favorite pre-workout antioxidant-loaded snack is a piece of whole grain toast with almond butter, a small amount of blackberry jam, and topped with a pile of fresh blueberries or sliced strawberries. I wash it down with a glass of iced green tea or rooibos tea sweetened with just a small bit (about a teaspoon) of raw honey. This is literally a quintuple-whammy of potent anti-oxidants! The almond butter, blackberry, blueberries, raw honey, and the green or rooibos tea are all loaded with different varieties of muscle protecting, youth promoting antioxidants. I throw down this snack about an hour before my training. Give it a try for yourself, or be creative and come up with your own antioxidant-rich pre-workout snack based on your tastes.

Remember, your body is continually bombarded every day by free radicals (creating oxidative stress) from exercise, air pollution, smoke, sun exposure, junk food, exposure to chemicals, etc. To reap the full benefits of antioxidants, try to make sure that every meal and snack you eat has at least one or two sources of antioxidant rich foods. This will give you a continuous supply of antioxidants throughout every day to prevent damage from the free radicals you are constantly exposed to.

Antioxidants are just one piece to the puzzle of a healthy diet that will give you the lean, muscular, youthful, and disease-free body that everyone wants. To discover the secrets behind all of the other pieces to the diet puzzle that create a lean body (macronutrient profile, glycemic response, hormonal response, glycogen storage, muscle protein synthesis, the role of leptin, the insulin process, etc.),

Click Here <<<<<……

Like most of you when I thought about the idea of self defence it all boiled down to a fairly narrow view. What I mean by that statement is all self defence meant to me was protecting myself from would be or actual attackers. I continued to hold this view even after many years of training in various martial arts my thoughts had gone no further than that.
As a martial artist who thought he knew a thing or two about the subject I thought I would start a blog and give you all the benefits of my years of training and experience.
Well before I dipped my toes into the sometimes muddy waters of blogging I decided to see for myself what was already out there in the fields of martial arts self defence or self protection as some of you will prefer. What I discovered in some ways delighted me in others horrified to the point of anger.
One website in particular caught my eye and I read with growing amazement and anger, this gentleman and I use the word loosely went on to state I have had over five hundred street fights sometimes against multiple opponents and never with a capital N lost a fight. He then went on to describe how he had beaten down and in some cases hospitalised his unlucky opponents and the long list of his own injuries including being stabbed multiple times been shot at hit with baseball bats iron bars. Was this the sort of self defence I would teach or advocate the answer is a resounding no? In fact I have a few questions for this man.
1 / How come you are not in prison?
2 / Are you a psycho?
3 / Are you a liar?
4 / Have you got a face only a mother could love?
5 / Do I want to train with you or have anything to do with you? Hell no!

To be fair this was the worst of these sorts of websites or blogs some I found actually started me thinking not only about my own attitude to self defence but about the words self defence themselves. What I came to realise instead of just being about protection from would be attackers the words encompass virtually our whole lives not just this narrow view.
From the moment we are born we struggle to survive our bodies start to fight back against disease by developing anti bodies so in effect self defence starts early.
The older we get more and more things threaten us stress ageing being overweight fitness to name just a few and the list goes on. On some level we are all practicing self defence on a daily basis be it watching our weight or trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In fact I would go as far to say at some level we are all experts.
This thinking has made me realise my blog though called self defence made easy will cover over time many diverse subjects I freely admit my first love is the martial arts and some of the great and influential people I have met and in a lot of cases trained with whose teachings or philosophies I am happy to promote on my blog. So my blog will cover a vast amount of information and will also give me the chance to stretch my writing muscles and produce some interesting and hopefully thought provoking articles in the future.

This article was written by leading MMA conditioning coach Eric Wong. I hope you find it as useful and informative as I do.

I just love how MMA fighters train. They train with full intensity and are some of the best athletes out there. They need to have combination of a lot of different aspects to become the best in their sports.

MMA fighters need to be strong, powerful, and must have an incredible level of stamina. They also need to have a high tolerance for pain. Over the years, I’ve incorporated MMA style training into my training routine.

The following are my favorite forms of MMA-style training:

“NO REST” Workouts

All my workouts right now involve no rest. For a long time, I trained with supersets, where I would perform 2 exercises back to back with no rest, then rest for 1 minute straight. This form of training gave me great results.

However, after seeing a lot of MMA fight videos, I noticed how little they rest between sets. So that’s when I began to really go all out and see how long I could keep going. At first, I had to reduce the weight on all my movements.

But eventually, I was lifting more than I used to, and feeling better than ever. “NO REST” doesn’t really mean no rest. It means that you keep going for as long as you can, through a variety of movements.

If you need to take a rest, then take a rest, but don’t rest any longer than you actually need to. So right now, I don’t count my rest periods. But they usually are less than a minute, and they’re certainly not planned.

Variety of Implements

I would rotate between bodyweight training, kettlebell training, and barbell training. However, one other thing I realized about MMA fighters is that they incorporate a wide range of exercise implements WITHIN the same workout.

Hence, I began to experiment with combining kettlebell and barbell moves in the same workout. Then barbell and bodyweight. Eventually, my workouts became a mish mash of resistance band, bodyweight, medicine ball, barbell, and kettlebell training.

I try to make my workouts as unique and as different as possible each time. This involves a lot of creativity and research. YouTube is great for coming up with new ideas. But, done for you workouts from a variety of strength coaches online, where you can see a list of unique movements and their descriptions, along with workouts you can use as samples, really helps.

Specific Warm ups

Most trainees have a warm up that they do each and every time. This is the same warm up they do, regardless of the workout they’re doing at the time. This will work for you, but eventually you will need to make your warm ups more specific.

Specific warm ups are important for any athlete, because every single day, you have a different part of your body that hurts more or requires more stretching than the others. In essence, my stretching routines and warm ups have become just as random as my workouts.

It’s a good idea to learn and study as many different stretches and warm up methods as possible. However, the most important thing is to listen to your body. Right when you wake up in the morning, take a mental note of what muscle are sore.

As you walk around the house, take a mental note of what needs to be worked on that day. Do your hips feel tight? Is your back feeling a bit funny? Maybe your lower back is extremely sore from those dead lifts you did the day before.

Bottom line is that you need to adapt your warm ups and stretching routines based on your workouts.

Heavy Strength Days

Because MMA fighting requires so many abilities, fighters train with both light weights and heavy weights. Most have a specific day in the week where they work on their strength. This routine closely resembles a Olympic Lifting or Power Lifting workout.

This is because multi joint lifts such as the snatch, clean, jerk, bench press, squat, and dead lift will help build strength throughout your body. Fighters don’t have time to isolate every single muscle group.

That is why most fighters focus on lifts that will give them the most for their results. However, I have seen a few fighters, such as Matt Hughes, perform isolation movements. You must realize that MMA fighters need to work on different things and different times.

Shadow Boxing

Fighters do a lot of work on heavy bags, focus mitts, and speed bags. They also spar with other partners. However, shadow boxing is another form of training that most people don’t recognize as being important.

Shadow boxing is preferred by many MMA fighters because it allows them to work on speed and coordination without having to hit a stationary target or worry about hurting someone. It’s almost like a lower intensity version of sparring.

I personally love shadowboxing because it’s great cardio. It’s certainly not as boring as running or cycling. You can pretend you’re beating up someone you’re angry at while you shadowbox. Turn up some loud music and go crazy!

Sledgehammer Swinging

Another form of cardio I’ve come to appreciate is sledgehammer swings. Sledgehammer swings are surprisingly fun and intense.

You can get a tire from your local mechanic. Don’t go to a chain tire store because they need to account for all their tires. On the other hand, a local privately owned garage will gladly give you a tire for free.

Sledgehammer’s cost around $30 at your local hardware store. You may need to place something to prevent the tire from bouncing around. I usually like to place a 35lbs weight plate in the center.

Perform your sledgehammer workouts as sets and reps or as timed sets. For example, you can do a 100 swing on one side, then switch to the other side. Or you can do a minute continuous swinging on one side, then switch to the other side.

Either way, you’ll get a great cardio workout. For more on this amazing coach click below

Click Here!

Most first impressions of Tai Chi have been what we have viewed on television and from that impression you would be forgiven for thinking that it is just for old people.  As invariably we see old Chinese people performing slow fluid almost dance like exercises in the open air often next to water.

The idea that it is just for older people could not be more wrong Tai Chi just as an exercise regime is highly beneficial to anyone of any age.  To the martial artist who may wish to delve deeper you will discover a fighting system that is reputed to be the father of most forms of Chinese martial arts.  That is a subject for another day,today we are looking at the health benefits of being a Tai Chi practitioner.

Tai Chi has been used by the Chinese for hundreds of years and there the health benefits have been well documented.  The spread of Tai Chi to the west has been subtle not overstated but is gaining in popularity as people come to realise the benefits and the fun you can have with this training.

Tai Chi teaches us breath control balance improves our posture the gentle flowing movements are said to help blood flow so reducing blood pressure.  These are just a few examples of how Tai Chi can enrich our lives.

The more controversial claims such as the effects on diabetic patients and people suffering from afflictions like MS are not widely accepted.  Though scientific research trials are being run to investigate what benefits can be gained if you suffer from Diabetes,MS,Parkinsons,Alzheimers and Osteoarthritis.  When the results of these studies become available I will of course bring this to your attention.

Further studies are being done on the claims that it helps reduce stress and even attention defeciit hyperactivity disorder in children.  Though the tests run so far have been inconclusive definite improvements have been noted by the researchers the tests continue.

The one thing nobody argues with is the general well being you feel after exercise though that can be said of any exercise not just Tai Chi.  Overall the benefits from performing Tai Chi do show distinct advantages to people of all ages.

For more information  Click Here  <<<<<…….

Over the last fifteen to twenty years there has been an explosion of interest in the art of Brazilian Jui Jitsu thanks chiefly to the Gracie family.  With the phenomenal success various members of the family have had in mixed martial arts fights both amateur and professional.  It is no wonder we now see many new schools opening to teach the methods used by the Gracie’s, plus the usual books and DVD’s published in the main to cash in on that success.

So it was with no real expectation of reading anything new or interesting when I was sent a copy of the BJJ Manifesto.  This is a book written by two martial artists called Rob Arryo and Matt Khan.  Together they have over twenty five years of experience in the art of Brazilian Jui Jitsu first as enthusiastic students then later becoming well known instructors.

What they have done with this book is put all that experience and knowledge to good use and they share with you the reader all that they have painstakingly learned over the years.  This book is published online so unlike the traditional printed paper book not only does it have quality photos it benefits from many DVD clips so you are left in no doubt as to how each technique works and how to train it.

Alongside the technical training they also talk about tactics how to defend how to attack how to deceive your opponent giving you a greater chance of success.  I found the sections in this part of the book particularly interesting and much to my delight worked exceedingly well in training.  Far too old to be fighting now but some of our younger students have had great success with these methods.

So in short I would not hesitate in recommending The BJJ Manifesto to anyone who is interested in Jui Jitsu or mixed martial arts.  The last word should come from a more illustrious person than myself Royce Gracie himself enthusiastically endorses this book which on its own is good enough for me.

To get more information and hear what Royce thinks of this book.

Just Click Here   Click Here! <<<……..

Tweet

Kettlebells have been around for generations. They’re a time tested tool — great for building strength, muscular endurance,coordination and even new muscle mass. But kettlebell programsaren’t always all that exciting. Until now…

Click Here <<<<<……