Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

For those of you who do not know me very well, I love foot­ball. That’s an under­state­ment. Besides inter­ac­tion design and fit­ness, foot­ball is what occu­pies my life. So, it shouldn’t be a sur­prise to learn that I’ve spent quite some time research­ing train­ing meth­ods in this sport.

Recently, I’ve started to work with a com­pet­i­tive sports team (Ulti­mate Fris­bee) in Madras. While the two sports are obvi­ously dif­fer­ent, there are a lot of com­mon themes between the two — cut­ting (mak­ing runs) amongst them pri­mar­ily, apart from speed, agility, sta­mina. Delv­ing deep into under­stand­ing foot­ball train­ing has solid­i­fied my beliefs and what I know about train­ing. See­ing com­mon pat­terns in train­ing meth­ods of pro­fes­sional foot­ballers and the train­ing regimes that I follow/recommend to my reg­u­lar clients (not the sports guys, just reg­u­lar peo­ple) — I just had to write about it. There was noth­ing mind-blowing about the entire deal — which is the mind-blowing bit!

Let’s get on with this then.

Pre-season (or) Get­ting to a base-level of fit­ness

Every sum­mer, after a long sea­son, foot­ballers go on hol­i­day. And basi­cally come back a lot more unfit — a booze­fest can do that to you. That’s why they have pre-season train­ing — to get them­selves fit for the long sea­son ahead, and to negate the effects of the vacation.

My ‘sum­mer’ lasted about a decade, right from when I grad­u­ated high school in 2000 to around 2008. How long was yours? It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. The basic idea remains — we need to get to a base level of fit­ness, to func­tion at a higher level for the rest of our lives. The day you flip that men­tal switch in your head — that’s an awe­some day for you! Unfor­tu­nately, if your sum­mer lasted for as long as mine did, pre-season is a bit longer than the 6 or so weeks.

How does this translate?

• The core idea in this phase of train­ing is to get your base level of fit­ness up. By fit­ness, I refer to four quad­rants — strength, speed (includ­ing power), endurance, and mobility/flexibility.
• We are impa­tient by nature, and often hurry up our train­ing — I have made the same mis­take mul­ti­ple times in the past.
• It is imper­a­tive to build a strong base, to focus on form, and get stuff right.
• The gains one will see from doing things in the cor­rect fash­ion right from the start are mas­sive, when com­pared to jump­ing the gun, suf­fer­ing a set­back. Kinda like the frog that jumps three feet up the well, but slips two feet back.
• Work­ing on com­pound move­ments in pre-season — Squat (and vari­a­tions), Presses (and vari­a­tions), Dead­lift (and vari­a­tions), with some other aux­il­iary stuff like box jumps, swings — that’s what the train­ing is about.
• Build­ing strength, vary­ing inten­sity to improve con­di­tion­ing, proper warm­ing up and cool­ing down, stretches, work­ing on flex­i­bil­ity — basics. Start from there.

Main­tain­ing fit­ness for the sea­son, or the rest of your life

Play­ing a game of foot­ball every week keeps foot­ballers fit for the most part. Duh — if you are run­ning about 10kms at high lev­els of inten­sity, it can take a lot of you. Dur­ing the week, train­ing is mostly about tech­nique, and a lit­tle bit of weights. As Wes­ley Snei­jder says,

You need to know your body and how far you can push it, you need to eat right, have ice baths, do your stretches, the lit­tle things to give you that edge. I know there have def­i­nitely been times when I’ve not been able to give my best in games because I trained too hard in the week, and took too much out of myself.

You can­not push your­self in every work­out — an inher­ent issue with Cross­Fit. Come game day, you are gonna be lack­ing in the stuff. Car­los Tevez, an ener­gizer bunny if you ever saw one, is known to train well within his lim­its, and is ready to explode on match day! Tony Strudwick’s quick tip to get a good, short work­out for his play­ers — to play a smaller game at a higher inten­sity!

How does this translate?

• First, you need to set your goals. The footballer’s goal is to be in great con­di­tion for the game. You could be train­ing for some­thing spe­cific (hike to Ever­est base camp, play a game of cricket with your kid) and your work­out rou­tine needs to reflect it.
• Once you are at a decent level of fit­ness (step 1), you can work on spe­cific stuff that inter­ests you. The path just gets eas­ier and eas­ier as start to morph into a bionic machine!

Nutri­tion, includ­ing post-workout

Cou­ple of quotes from the sports direc­tor of West Ham United,

Refuel within half an hour of the game fin­ish­ing with some quick carbs

Eat green veg and foods high in car­bo­hy­drates and pro­tein within two hours of the match to replen­ish your depleted energy stores. Add spices like gin­ger which will help to boost your recovery.

For open­ness sake, if there is a part of the entire train­ing sys­tem that falls short, it is nutri­tion. The above com­ments, regard­ing post-workout nutri­tion, are spot-on. But reg­u­lar nutri­tion pre­scribed involves a lot of grain — load­ing with pasta is a com­mon activ­ity. But stuff like Paleo is just start­ing to make waves, and am sure sports nutri­tion will take a giant step for­ward soon.

How does this translate?

• Your post-workout nutri­tion should be high in carbs and pro­tein, espe­cially if you are an athlete.
• And if you are train­ing reg­u­larly, you should aim to eat about 1gm of pro­tein per pound of body weight (or 2.2g of pro­tein per kg of body weight).
• Eat clean, eat real food!
• Don’t be scared of fat.

Sleep, Rest, & Recovery

Here are some quick excerpts from inter­views with sports experts from var­i­ous clubs,

• Tony Strud­wick, ManUtd’s fit­ness coach, ensures the play­ers get 8–10 hours of sleep. Some play­ers sleep even more. The impor­tance of a good night’s sleep can­not be overstated!
• Mas­sages for recov­ery, and mus­cle rehab.
• Ice baths after inten­sive train­ing ses­sions. An ice bath will def­i­nitely get rid of aches and pains in the short term. Aim for 10 min­utes at 10 degrees.
• Remem­ber­ing to warm-down (cool-down), stretch­ing on rest days and obvi­ously after the work­out. Just basic stuff!

How does this translate?

• Sleep 8–10 hrs a day, in a dark room
• Warmup prop­erly before your workout
• Stretch after the workout
• Sched­ule a mas­sage peri­od­i­cally — once a month, for example
• Ice-baths are for extreme work­outs — after you run a marathon, for example.

Sleep, rest, and recov­ery are as impor­tant as the work­out and nutri­tion. Your body will not heal and improve if you neglect this stuff. Over­train­ing is a big prob­lem. Like Snei­jder says, lis­ten to your body.

Con­clu­sion

Don’t rush it. If you abused your body for years, it will take a while to get to where you want to go. Patience is key! And ensure you are doing the right thing, oth­er­wise you will be spin­ning your wheels for a long time. And round out your work­out rou­tine in the four basic quad­rants of strength, speed, endurance, and mobility/flexibility.

For my part, am in Seat­tle for a Start­ing Strength sem­i­nar, to ensure my lift­ing basics are strong! Never hurts to learn from a giant in the field. If you do not who Rip­petoe is, time to look it up!