Cmd Training Journal

Copyright 2008 Rodney King and Randy Borum. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-0-620-40761-8


Publishers noteEvery possible effort has been made to ensure that information contained in this e-book is accurate at the time going to press, and the publishers and authors cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss of damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or the author.

Self-published by Rodney King and Randy Borum. www.crazymonkeydefense.com

Copyright 2008 Rodney King and Randy Borum. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the authors, who are also the publishers of this work, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Martial Arts-Life and Crazy Monkey Defense Program are registered trademarks of Rodney King.

FIRST EDITION E-BOOKFirst printing 2008

ISBN978-0-620-40761-8 Crazy Monkey Defense- MMA Training Journal E-Book

http://www.martialartgame.comhttp://www.martialartgame.com


Welcome to the Crazy Monkey Defense- MMA Training Journal. We created this journal to help athletes develop greater focus in their training and to develop "deep learning" by systematically tracking some key mental, emotional and physical elements of their performance . Not only is space provided to fill in and to track all this important information, but the journal also includes the how to material to help you realize your ultimate training goals. To our knowledge, there is no mixed martial arts (a term we use very broadly here) training journal available on the market. In addition, this journal is so versatile that no matter which combat sports or martial arts you train in you can use it to track your progress and to monitor your individual patterns for success. In an effort to give back to the martial art community that has given us both so much, we are offering this Training Journal absolutely free. We hope you enjoy it and that it will keep you focused, excited and motivated to train.


Training Goals

Goals provide a road map for personal excellence. In fact, goal setting is one of the most valuable performance-enhancing skills you can acquire. Goals should be the foundation of your training plan. A training plan should point you toward your goals, give you directions on how to get there and help you identify some markers along the way. This training journal should provide a record of how you have enacted your Training Plan.

Training should be a continuous process of learning and improving moving closer to both your short-term and some term goals. Every day or every training session you should have a plan for what you are going to do during that session to bring yourself closer to your goal. Aspire to improve in small ways every day. This is sometimes referred to as the Kaizen Principle. Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning improvement but it connotes a particular method of progress that occurs gradually over in time, often as a result of small, incremental changes. That can be a useful guiding

philosophy for your training. You can use this journal to (1) prompt you to think about a particular goal or focus for a given training session, and (2) reflect on what you learned and how to use it in future sessions.

All goals are not created equal, however, and effective goal setting is a skill. Here are few tips for creating goals that really work:

1. Be Specific: Specific goals are better than vague or general goals. A vague goal might be something like: I will have a good workout. A specific goal might be something like: I will do circuit training for 30 minutes with my heart rate at XXX BPM. Write it so that someone else could watch you on screen and clearly determine whether or not you did it.

2. Be Positive: Your goal should state what you WILL do, not what you WONT do. Telling yourself what not to do almost never works. Your brain is not wired that way. So, instead of writing you goal this way: I will not (insert common mistake here), you could say, I will focus on executing proper technique when doing (insert technique you need to work on here).

3. Make It Challenging, but Attainable: Accomplishing your goals feels great! It boosts your motivation and accelerates your confidence. So you want to set yourself up to succeed, but you want the goal to be challenging enough that you feel like you really worked for it. Lots of research shows that people who set more challenging goals for themselves improve more and accomplish more than those who set easy goals or no goals at all.

4. Emphasize Performance Over Outcome: Goals works best when they focus on your performance (which you control) rather than outcomes (which you do not fully control). A performance-focused training goal might be stated as follows: "I will focus on stand-up attacks and execute good defense to my opponent's takedown attempts."



Train Hard, But Dont

Overdo It!

Training effectively to reach your goals requires planning and balancing. You want to train hard and push yourself beyond your prior limits, but you dont want to overdo it. One of the main challenges facing elite athletes or even regular men and women who exercise compulsively or train multiple hours/session per day is not that they arent training enough; its that they are training too much. It causes staleness, burnout, or what is more formally called overtraining syndrome. Two types of over training syndrome have been identified: Sympathetic and Parasympathetic, each present with a different constellation of symptoms relating to their respective autonomic nervous system functions.

Overtraining of the Sympathetic type is the most common among young athletes and among strength/power athletes. It most likely to occur as a result of doing too much training activity or training too close to your maximum intensity, for

an extended period, without allowing your body to properly recover between sessions. With a well-planned training regimen, good nutrition, and proper rest and recovery, you should notice a steady, but discernible training effect. That means you should notice that you are able to do more work, with less effort, or at a higher intensity across time (remember the Kaizen Principle). If you feel yourself getting stuck or stale, you may try to push yourself even harder to overcome it. That may not be the right course of action. It will serve you well to listen, when your body is trying to send you a message that it is overloaded.

If you are not making progress over several training sessions or notice a decrease in your performance when there is no other known medical cause, this is a potential sign of overtraining.

Other signs of overtraining include:

Changes in mood (especially depression, discouragement, or irritability)

General fatigue and lack of energy Limbs feeling heavy

Problems with sleep or appetite

Heart Rate and Overtraining

It is a good idea to obtain a baseline reading of your resting heart rate (RHR) and to monitor your average heart rate after training so that you can use it both to gauge the progress of your cardio performance, and to monitor yourself for signs of overtraining syndrome.

Heikki Rusko, a Finnish sport scientist, (based on research with elite cross-country skiers) developed a fairly simple orthostatic test that has shown some sensitivity and utility for detecting the onset of an over trained state. The easiest way to record it is with a heart monitor, which is relatively inexpensive and a useful training tool to have in any case.

You can, however, record the data points for Ruskos test simply by feeling your pulse. You can do this by placing your index and middle finger against your carotid artery, locatedon your neck, beneath the jawline and to the side of your windpipe, locating



the pulse. You can count the pulse for one minute or count for 15 seconds and multiply that number by four to estimate your heart rate in beats per minute.

Here is how you can do Ruskos Orthostatic Test:

1. Choose a specific time of the day that you can use for consistent measurements, perhaps even first thing in the morning on waking, but before getting out of bed. 2. Lie quietly and still for 10 minutes. Your heart rate during this 10-minute period should remain relatively constant. This is your Resting/Supine heart rate.3. Then stand up.4. Check your heart rate again, 15 seconds after standing. This is your Standing/Immediate heart rate.5. Check your heart rate a third time during interval of 90 to 120 seconds after standing. You can make a 10 second check (then multiply by 6) at 90 seconds, then do another 10 second check (then multiply by 6), 30 seconds later (at the 120 second mark), and use the average of those two figures. This is your Standing/Delayed heart rate.

These three rates will be somewhat different from each other, but when you are not over trained each should be relatively stable when measured on different days.

If your body is approaching an over trained condition, however, you may notice that the standing heart rate figures especially the 90 to 120 second rate may be higher than your usual (baseline) rate. An increase of 10-15 beats per minute over your baseline may be a sign of overtraining. Such pronounced changes, however, usually occur gradually over several days not suddenly from one day to

the next. Because the training effect should actually create a lower heart rate over time, an increase in your standing heart rate should cause you to reflect on whether you may be approach an over trained condition.

Muscle Soreness and Overtraining

Ongoing, severe muscle soreness (often along with weakness) is another potential sign of overtraining. But even if you are not over trained, achy muscles can hinder your

performance and put a damper on your motivation to train.

Athletes often struggle with two different kinds of muscle soreness. The first kind is the type you may experience immediately after high-intensity exercise. We will refer to this as acute muscle soreness when your muscles feel exhausted, depleted and achy at the end of a workout. This type of soreness often results from your muscles being depleted of glycogen (which they use for fuel), producing too much ATP to metabolize, and as a result- experiencing a marked drop in pH (resulting in a state of acidosis). It is commonly regarded as a build up of lactate or lactic acid in the muscles.

Before you decide to do anything to treat your own muscle pain, first be sure the soreness is just from intense activity, not from an injury. If you felt a sudden onset of pain associated with a particular movement, the resulting discomfort may be caused by a strain or sprain.



If you have a mild injury, consider applying the RICE formula for treatment

Rest

Ice

Compression

Elevation

If you do not have an injury, know that muscle soreness usually resolves on its own within 3-7 days, but if youre hurting for some relief, here are few tips:

Allow the affected muscles time to rest. You might consider doing some light aerobic activity (called active rest) to increase blood flow and circulation, but it is usually best to avoid using those muscles for heavy lifting until the pain subsides.

Stay hydrated. Be sure to drink plenty of water to replenish fluids lost during training and

also to help flush out waste products in the muscles that might contribute to inflammation. Some athletes have found that consuming a sports drink with carbs immediately after training helps to facilitate glycogen replenishment and reduce post-workout soreness.

Use the power of cold and heat. Applications of heat and cold can both help alleviate muscle pain and facilitate healing, but each much be applied at an appropriate time. Cold applications are often helpful in the first few hours after exercise, but heat has some benefits when applied after 24 hours or so. Some sports teams use ice dips right after high intensity exercise. They fill a tub or plastic bag with ice and water to bring the temperature down to about 55 degrees. Then they quickly immerse a limb or extremity sometimes for just a few seconds, but no more than a few minutes. Trainers usually advise you start slowly when first trying this approach and work your way up to larger areas of coverage and longer immersion times.

Taking a hot bath or soaking in a hot tub may be relaxing a day or so after intense training, but not

immediately after. The reason is that heat increases circulation and promotes inflammation. Another approach suggested by massage therapist and sport injury specialist Patrice Morency- is to alternate applications of heat and cold, either with hot and cold packs or by switching the shower from 2 minutes of hot water to 30 seconds of fully cold water for about 5 to cycles. Morency suggests that causing the blood vessels to repeatedly open and close will facilitate the flushing of acidic waste products out of the muscles.

Try massage. There is not yet a clear scientific answer to whether or not massage therapy can claim to be an effective treatment for delayed onset muscle soreness, but at least one review concluded that it s a promising intervention. The idea is that massage like the alternating hot and cold treatment- helps to move the lactate and waste products from the muscles (where they cause inflammation and soreness) out to the bloodstream for elimination. To maximize the benefits, be sure to drink plenty of water after getting a massage.



Plan ahead for prevention. There is no guaranteed way to prevent post-workout muscle soreness, but sports medicine professionals offer some practical tips to help lessen the damage.

First, do ten minutes or so of active warm up activity before engaging your muscles in high-intensity exertion. Second, make progress in small increments. When you are making planned advances in the intensity of your training, try not to exceed a 10% increase at any given time. Smaller changes will regulate the amount of damage your muscles incur from your new training demands. Finally, try both static and dynamic stretching after your workout. Although there is not compelling research evidence that stretching will reduce soreness, it can improve your range of motion and help mobilize acidic waste products to be eliminated by your post-training hydration.

The second type of muscle soreness sets in 24-48 hours after exercise. This referred to as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS). Though still causing feelings of soreness, the

cause is rather different from the immediate post-workout pains. There is some debate among exercise physiologists and sports medicine experts about the precise cause, but it seems to be related to microscopic tearing in the muscle fibers occurring, particularly during intense eccentric contractions (what many people call negative repetitions), and the resulting inflammation. It is part of the bodys adaptation and response as it repairs and builds strength. The muscles will heal and strengthen on their own, facilitated by proper nutrition. The inflammation, however, is what causes the discomfort. Over the counter pain relievers like aspirin or ibuprofen may help to reduce the pain and discomfort and perhaps even decrease inflammation, but those medications do not accelerate the healing process.

One treatment that has some research support is enzyme therapy. When your muscle fibers are damaged, your bodys immune system responds by infusing white blood cells into the affected area. The white blood cells produce proteins called cytokines. Protease enzymes help to increase the bodys production of anti-inflammatory cytokines and decrease its

production of pro inflammatory cytokines. The net result in some studies is less discomfort (because of reduced inflammation) and a quicker recovery time.

Yoga is another promising intervention. Recent research shows that yoga training and even a single session of yoga may significantly reduce DOMS-induced pain and discomfort. The effects are probably not just due to the stretching that occurs in yoga; several recent research reviews have shown that stretching does not improve DOMS-related discomfort.



Taking Care of Your

Body

By exercising or training regularly, you are making big investment in your physical health. You can get an even greater return on your investment by eating well and being sure you get sufficient amount of quality sleep so you will have the energy you need to train the way you want.

Sleep Well

Your brain and your body handle some very important restorative functions during sleep. It is not just down time. Most adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night, but it is also very common for people at some point to have problems getting to sleep, staying asleep, or waking too early in the morning. If your sleep is persistently disrupted or you are just not getting enough, you may be more likely to get sick, to feel sluggish, to have trouble concentrating

and generally to have your body not perform the way it should.

The National Sleep Foundation (WWW.SLEEPFOUNDATION.ORG) offers the following advice for maintaining healthy sleep:

1. Maintain a regular bed and wake time

schedule including weekends.

Our sleep-wake cycle is regulated by a "circadian clock" in our brain and the body's need to balance both sleep time and wake time. A regular waking time in the morning strengthens the circadian function and can help with sleep onset at night. That is also why it is important to keep a regular bedtime and wake-time, even on the weekends when there is the temptation to sleep-in.

2. Establish a regular, relaxing bedtime

routine such as soaking in a hot bath or hot

tub and then reading a book or listening to

soothing music.A relaxing, routine activity right before bedtime conducted away from bright lights helps

separate your sleep time from activities that can cause excitement, stress or anxiety which can make it more difficult to fall asleep, get sound and deep sleep or remain asleep. Avoid arousing activities before bedtime like working, paying bills, engaging in competitive games or family problem solving. Some studies suggest that soaking in hot water (such as a hot tub or bath) before retiring to bed can ease the transition into deeper sleep, but it should be done early enough that you are no longer sweating or over-heated. If you are unable to avoid tension and stress, it may be helpful to learn relaxation therapy from a trained professional. Finally, avoid exposure to bright light before bedtime because it signals the neurons that help control the sleep-wake cycle that it is time to awaken, not to sleep.

3. Create a sleep-conducive environment that

is dark, quiet, comfortable and cool.

Design your sleep environment to establish the conditions you need for sleep cool, quiet, dark, comfortable and free of interruptions. Also make your bedroom reflective of the value you place on sleep. Check your room fornoise or other distractions, including


http://WWW.SLEEPFOUNDATION.ORGhttp://WWW.SLEEPFOUNDATION.ORG


a bed partner's sleep disruptions such as snoring, light, and a dry or hot environment. Consider using blackout curtains, eyeshades, earplugs, "white noise," humidifiers, fans and other devices. {Expose yourself to bright light/sunlight soon after awakening. This will help to regulate your body's natural biological clock.}

4. Sleep on a comfortable mattress and

pillows.

Make sure your mattress is comfortable and supportive. The one you have been using for years may have exceeded its life expectancy about 9 or 10 years for most good quality mattresses. Have comfortable pillows and make the room attractive and inviting for sleep but also free of allergens that might affect you and objects that might cause you to slip or fall if you have to get up during the night.

5. Use your bedroom only for sleep and sex.

It is best to take work materials, computers and televisions out of the sleeping environment. Use your bed only for sleep and sex to strengthen the association between bed and sleep. If you

associate a particular activity or item with anxiety about sleeping, omit it from your bedtime routine. For example, if looking at a bedroom clock makes you anxious about how much time you have before you must get up, move the clock out of sight. Do not engage in activities that cause you anxiety and prevent you from sleeping.

6. Finish eating at least 2-3 hours before your

regular bedtime.

Eating or drinking too much may make you less comfortable when settling down for bed. It is best to avoid a heavy meal too close to bedtime. Also, spicy foods may cause heartburn, which leads to difficulty falling asleep and discomfort during the night. Try to restrict fluids close to bedtime to prevent nighttime awakenings to go to the bathroom, though some people find milk or herbal, non-caffeinated teas to be soothing and a helpful part of a bedtime routine.

7. Exercise regularly. It is best to complete

your workout at least a few hours before

bedtime.

In general, exercising regularly makes it easier to fall asleep and contributes to sounder sleep. However, exercising sporadically or right before going to bed will make falling asleep more difficult. In addition to making us more alert, our body temperature rises during exercise, and takes as much as 6 hours to begin to drop. A cooler body temperature is associated with sleep onset... Finish your exercise at least 3 hours before bedtime. Late afternoon exercise is the perfect way to help you fall asleep at night.

8. Avoid caffeine (e.g. coffee, tea, soft drinks,

chocolate) close to bedtime. It can keep you

awake.

Caffeine is a stimulant, which means it can produce an alerting effect. Caffeine products, such as coffee, tea, colas and chocolate, remain in the body on average from 3 to 5 hours, but they can affect some people up to 12 hours later. Even if you do not think caffeine affects you, it may be disrupting and changing the qualityof your sleep. Avoiding caffeine within 6-8hours of going to bed can help improve sleep quality.



9. Avoid nicotine (e.g. cigarettes, tobacco

products). Used close to bedtime, it can lead to poor sleep.

Nicotine is also a stimulant. Smoking before bed makes it more difficult to fall asleep. When smokers go to sleep, they experience withdrawal symptoms from nicotine, which also cause sleep problems. Nicotine can cause difficulty falling asleep, problems waking in the morning, and may also cause nightmares. Difficulty sleeping is just one more reason to quit smoking. And never smoke in bed or when sleepy!

10. Avoid alcohol close to bedtime.

Although many people think of alcohol as a sedative, it actually disrupts sleep, causing nighttime awakenings. Consuming alcohol leads to a night of less restful sleep.

If you have sleep problems...

Use a sleep diary and talk to your doctor. Note what type of sleep problem is affecting your sleep or if you are sleepy when you wish to be awake and alert. Try these tips and record your

sleep and sleep-related activities in a sleep diary. If problems continue, discuss the sleep diary with your doctor. There may be an underlying cause and you will want to be properly diagnosed. Your doctor will help treat the problem or may refer you to a sleep specialist.

Eat Well

Food is fuel for your mind and body. What you eat and when you eat it has a profound effect on how you feel when you train, how you perform during your workout, how you will feel after your workout, and how your body will recover from the intense demands you place on it.

Performance nutrition is an evolving art. Nutritional consensus about how to compose the food pyramid for the general population has even changed substantially over the past decade. Diet crazes periodically vilify carbohydrates while encouraging consumption of fatty, greasy meats. News headlines will one day warn of a products harmful effects, and the next day extol its virtues. Cookie diets, grapefruit diets, supplements promising to pack

on the lean muscle all compete for our attention. Here are some well-established, fundamentals of performance nutrition:

Hydration getting enough water is the cornerstone of any effective performance nutrition plan. Water is one your bodys main modes of transportation. It carries vital nutrients where they are needed most and ushers out excess and waste products. It allows perspiration, which your body uses to regulate its temperature. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends drinking 64oz of water every day (8/ 8ounce glasses). If you are going to be training, be sure you drink several ounces before the workout, periodically during the workout, then after training to be sure you replenish whatever you sweated out. Water is the best fluid to keep your body hydrated caffeinated beverages will cause you to urinate more (losing more fluid) and many sports drinks contain a hefty dose of sugar and unnecessary calories. If you are going at it hard for an hour or more, however, sipping sports drinks may help replenish the sodium and electrolytes that your body has eliminated in perspiration



and give your body a boost of fuel to keep it going.

As for what to eat, foods contain three main macronutrients carbohydrates (4 calories per gram), protein (4 calories per gram), and fats (9 calories per gram). All of these (yes, even fats) serve essential functions. Carbohydrates are your bodys main and preferred - source of fuel. It can use carbs easily and efficiently, so it will typically use them first. As a result, however, carbs can also cause a fairly rapid rise in insulin, which could lead to a crash after the blood sugar peaks out. The effect can be mitigated by eating carbs with a lower glycemic index (those that dont convert to sugar in the bloodstream as quickly); by eating some protein first (which releases Glucagon, and slows the carbs absorption); or by eating some accompanying fat, which also slows the absorption/conversion to sugar.

Your body also uses proteins and fats for energy, but less efficiently than carbohydrates. Protein has a vital role, however, in muscle repair and growth. It is essential for restoring a proper nitrogen balance in the muscles after intense

exercise. After all, your muscles grow after exercise (during recovery), not during exercise. There is some debate among nutritionists about exactly how much protein strength and power athletes or those who train at high intensity may need. Among those specializing on sport / performance nutrition, though, many seem comfortable recommending 1.5-1.8 grams of protein per day for every kilogram of the athletes bodyweight. For example, an athlete who weighs 185 lbs (or 84 kgs) would require approximately 126-151 grams of protein per day.

As for when to eat, the general recommendation is to eat small meals often throughout the day. It usually helps to eat at least a little something before training. You might get some gastric distress, however, if you eat too much, too soon before training or if you consume a lot of high-fiber (like bran) or high-fructose (like fruit) foods. When your body has fuel available, you will feel like you have more energy to train, so dont skip breakfast or a pre-training meal altogether.

After training, you should replenish fluids, of course, but the first 30-60 minutes after intense

strength / power training is an optimal time to infuse your system with a hefty dose of high-quality, easily digestible protein. Recent research shows that sending some carbs along with the protein, helps to speed up absorption, and it facilitates you body replenishing it glycogen stores.

As you proceed through the day, consider breaking away from the traditional American pattern of eating three big meals, with 6 hours and no snacking between them. That pattern causes you to get really hungry, so youre likely to eat more, but it also puts your metabolism on a roller coaster. Your body comes to learn that you will starve it between meals, so it stores more fat to adapt.

A better approach is to eat continuously throughout the day. Every three or four hours eat a small meal (maybe 300-400 calories, depending on your overall nutritional needs) that contains protein, carbohydrate and a small amount of fat. Fat (as a macronutrient) helps send messages to your brain tosignal that your belly is full, so including some in each meal will keep


you from constantly being hungry. Eating throughout the day also has two other significant advantages: it keeps your metabolism constantly active and it keeps your blood sugar levels more stable, so you will have the energy you need to get through the day, and are less likely to crash.

Though carbohydrates, proteins and fats are essential nutrients, there are certainly more health and less healthy choices you can make about the type or quality of each nutrient and how you get them. Lean meats (like chicken) and fish are good sources of protein. Whole grains and vegetables (and some fruits) are good sources of carbohydrates. Fish oils and nuts are relatively good sources of fats. They contain more of the good fats and less of the bad fats

Manage your Energy

We all feel better at some times of the day than others. Some of this variation has to do with nutrition, and lifestyle patterns, but for some it

comes from biologically based preferences in our bodys natural circadian rhythms. Thats why you may think of yourself as a night owl or a morning person.

To get the most from your training, you should try to time your workouts to synch with your bodys preferences. Research has shown consistently that people who exercise and are physically active report having more energy throughout the day than people who do not (Puetz, Beasman, & O'Connor, 2006). So, if youre making a point to train on a regular basis, you are already reducing your chances of suffering a personal energy crisis.

Though our level of vigor or energy will naturally fluctuate throughout the day, sometimes you may just feel stuck with a case of the blahs. If you find yourself feeling fatigued and lacking energy on a regular basis or for a prolonged period, you should probably think about whether there is some discernible cause that you can fix. Some of the usual suspects are:

Inadequate sleep. Not enough or just poor sleep quality.

Poor nutrition. Especially problematic are the bursts of caffeine or sugary substances that set up your body to crash about an hour after you ingest them.

Overtraining. As we noted before, feeling sluggish and feelings of heaviness in your limbs can be signs of overtraining. You can check with the orthostatic test.

Depression. Clinical depression not just the usual blues may strike one in five people at some point in their lifetimes. It can definitely sap your energy. If your lack of energy is accompanied by persistent (most of the day, more days than not, for 2 weeks or more) feelings of sadness, irritability or loss of interest in nearly everything, then consider discussing the issue with your doctor.

But what if youre just having one of those days? Or you just need a boost to get through a mid day slump what can you do? Here are a couple of possibilities:


Zone out for a while. Sometimes your mind and body just need a break. Being stressed or having too much on your plate can drain you pretty quickly. You can try meditation or just take a 10-20 minute stress-relief break. Close your eyes. Clear your head. Breathe deeply in through your nose, exhaling through your mouth. Imagine that you are breathing in strength and energy as you inhale. And imagine the fatigue flowing out from your body as you exhale. Picture a relaxing, pleasant scene and go there in your mind. Try to experience it with as many of your senses as possible. Clear images. Hearing the sounds. Smelling the air. Feeling the textures. Escape there for a quick break, and then allow yourself to return, feeling refreshed and renewed.

Have a light snack. Many people experience a midday slump about 2:00 or so in the afternoon. A heavy lunch is often the culprit. Two things happen: (1) Your body is using energy and resources (including blood and oxygen) to digest your meal; and (2) Your bodys insulin levels rise sharply, causing your blood sugar to drop, leaving you feeling sluggish. Though a candy bar or fruit juice may give you the quickest

boost, they also may leave you back in a slump an hour later. Consider a light snack that wont affect your insulin levels quite so sharply (youre looking for foods with a moderate-low glycemic index) having an apple or a couple of peanut butter crackers may help revive your blood sugar without setting you up for another fall.

Take a power nap. A quick nap can sometimes be quite rejuvenating. Quick nap here means 10 to 20 minutes. Napping doesnt work for everyone. Some people just feel more groggy. But if you find yourself nodding off at your desk, sometimes that 10 minute snooze is all you need for a quick re-charge.

Get the blood flowing. Consider walking briskly for 10 minutes or so or doing some other light activity that gets your body moving and raises your heart rate. You may get an extra benefit from going outside and exposing yourself to sunlight.

ReferencesPuetz TW, Beasman KM, O'Connor PJ. The effect of cardiac rehabilitation exercise programs on feelings of energy and fatigue: a meta-analysis of research from 1945 to 2005. Eur J Cardiovasc Prev Rehabil. 2006 Dec;13(6):886-93. Puetz TW. Physical activity and feelings of energy and fatigue: epidemiological evidence. Sports Med. 2006;36(9):767-80.



Put Your MIND To It.

Your motivation, commitment, and focus are as essential to your training as your nutrition and physical energy. Ideally, your goals will motivate you, drive your commitment, and sharpen your focus. In this journal, we have suggested that you monitor these mental and emotional facets of your training over time. The rating scales provided in each daily entry serve both as a prompt and reminder for you to consider these in your workout plan and also as a quick gut check to reflect on how you feel.

Motivation

Motivation is at the core of why we do what we do. Psychologists often talk about motivations being intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic rewards are those that come from inside us, like feelings of accomplishment or fun. Extrinsic motivators are rewards given to us- such as prize money, belts, trophies or praise - for our participation or performance. Top athletes in nearly every sport

possess a high degree of intrinsic motivation. A fire needs to burn from within.

Sport psychology researchers have also identified two main dimensions of achievement motivation in sports: Task Orientation and Ego Orientation. Those with a high task orientation are motivated by feeling really competent at what they do, giving their best effort, and by constantly improving their skills. Those with a high ego orientation are motivated mainly by feeling they are better than others, showing their ability, and by the outcome of winning.

Here's another way to look at it: when you read the following two sets of words, which one immediately appeals to you more:

Learning, Improvement, Mastery

Winning, Ability, Superiority

The first set of words obviously relates more to task orientation, while the second is more resonant with ego orientation.

From a performance perspective, motivation relates to the direction and intensity of your effort. This means there is a mental/cognitive aspect and an emotional/physical aspect. Both affect your performance and both affect each other. If you want to boost your motivation, you might try sharpening the focus of your effort or elevating its intensity. Greater focus can facilitate more intense effort, and heightened intensity can sharpen your focus.

Focus

Focus in training is measured by your ability to concentrate on essential training cues and tasks and to filter out any distractions, irrelevant, or negative interference. Training focus does not necessarily mean that you attend only to one thing. It means that you are attending to the right things at the right time. The right things are stimuli, cues, and sensations that facilitate your best performance. Distractions are those that might hinder your performance. Distractions can be external (e.g., crowd reactions and sounds) or internal (e.g., negative thoughts or butterflies).



Here are few tips to help your focus:

Plan Your Training: It almost always helps to have a plan. Planning out what you are going to do in a given training session can help keep you focused. Your mind is less likely to wander or get snarled in distraction if you are following a planned routine. Have a plan for your training, run through it in your head several times, and then follow it.

Use Cue Words: If you get slightly off-track, using "cue words" can often help you to quickly re-focus. A cue word is a simple one-word instruction that interrupts the distraction and signals your brain back to the present. It should be simple and direct, You might use words like "focus" or "present" or "now" or "on plan" experiment during your training sessions to see what kind of cue words work best for you in different situations.

Plan for the Unexpected: You can and should plan for the distractions that you think will happen, but sometimes the unexpected event can send us into a spiral if we are not prepared to handle it. You can prepare for the

unexpected, by building unpredictable distractions into your training and sparring. Some unexpected events will occur naturally, of course. Use these as opportunities. Your task is to maintain your composure, to continue to breathe, and to redirect your focus. You can train your mind to filter out a lot of unnecessary input, and you can discipline yourself to stay focused in the present.

Commitment

Sport psychology researchers have studied the issue of sport commitment, which is often defined as the psychological desire and resolve to continue participation. This applies to your training whether you are a competitive athlete or an average guy or gal just trying to get more fit. Your commitment largely drives your intention, which is the immediate precursor to doing the behavior. Unless you commit to eating well and exercising more, your desire to be fit is really only a wish. Approximately half of all people who start a program of physical exercise drop out within the first six months. You want to be in the half that sticks with it.

Commitment does not have to be an all-or-nothing thing, but it should align with your goals. You need to decide what you want to accomplish, assess what that will require, and commit to a planned course of action to make it happen. You cant expect to perform at an elite level in your sport, and only train for one hour, twice a week. But you also dont have to aspire to elite performance. You can achieve tremendous health benefits from doing 30-60 minutes of exercise several times a week.

Even among those to stick to it, there are different kinds of commitment. Two main types identified by sport commitment researchers are attraction and entrapment. Those who have high levels of attraction-based commitment tend to really enjoy their sport or chosen activity; they perceive that the benefits from their participation are high and the costs are low. They see following through on their commitment as being much more satisfying than the alternative (e.g. being overweight, not liking their appearance, feeling lethargic). On the other hand, some people stick with an activity or programeven though it has lost its appeal, and the costs seem to be mounting in



comparison to any benefits. They may hang in there because of social pressure (e.g., from teammates or training partners) or just because they have already invested so much energy and effort they feel obligated not to quit. Both may be committed, but both may not be equally happy about it.

Once you commit to a course of action, however, you should be prepared to follow through. This may mean that you get out of bed when you are tired. It may mean that you give up time to do other enjoyable activities. Ultimately you are the only person who can follow through on your commitment. You are responsible for whether you act on your commitment. The fact is, for most of us, that psychological desire and resolve is dynamic. Our appraisals of costs and benefits change over time and across situations. Your task is to keep yourself moving forward in pursuit of your goals.

Here are a few ideas that may help with your follow through:

Take charge: It is easy to make excuses for not training by blaming external factors. The coachs personality, the time of day, competing demands can be readily used as reasons for skipping a session. Soon, you may find that you are skipping more training session than you are making. Enacting your commitment is a habit. It is easier if you assume responsibility for your behavior and accept that you are the main factor in determining whether or not you will reach your goals. Keeping a training journal, like this one, can be a useful way to help you monitor and track your progress. But also be sure to reward or reinforce yourself (preferably not by eating an entire ice cream cake) for doing what you set out to do. Acknowledge your progress and your success.

Keep your eye on the prize: Your psychological desire and resolve to train is related to your goals and how important they are to you. Consider putting reminder notes to yourself in various places about your goals and perceived benefits of training. Some people use images of inspirational figures in their sport. Others use motivational words, quotes or phrases. But the objective is to keep the goals

and rewards constantly prominent in your mind. Hard work typically involves sacrifice. You must keep yourself mindful of the benefits, so that that they can overshadow the costs.

Plan for the rough spots: As we noted before, commitment is fluid. Most people at some point - will be seriously tempted to quit a training program or to slack off into a pattern of non-commitment. As you are developing your training plan, you might anticipate what factors or situations might challenge your resolve, and plan in advance for how to handle them. This relapse prevention strategy is commonly used in treating addictive behaviors. It improves your self-monitoring and makes the rough sports less unpredictable. It may be useful for you to have a couple of training activities planned that add variety and help to renew the enjoyment you get from training change locations, cross-train, work with a new partner. Increasing your enjoyment can be a great way to get your commitment back on track.

Make yourself accountable: You can increase your commitment to your goals just by sharing them with others.



There is explicit or implicit accountability that comes from making your intentions and commitments known to others. This is one reason that marriage vows are exchanged in front of witnesses, family and friends. Share your goals and commitments with your coach, teammate, or family member. You might even find some benefit to working with a training partner or coach. Knowing that someone else will be affected if you dont show up often provides enough momentum to get you there showing up is half the battle, right?



Kaizen Revisited:

Reflective Learning

and Moving Ahead

Remember the Kaizen Principle? Continuous improvement through small, incremental changes. Let this guide your training. Your training program whether for competition or general fitness should be a learning process. You can view every training session as an opportunity to improve and to learn. In your training journal, space is provided for you to make notes to yourself about what you have learned in that session and how you might apply it to future training sessions.

Did I meet my training goals today? After setting a goal, you should get feedback about whether or not you met it. You should have some way to measure your results, and a timeframe in which you will assess whether you met your target goals. Research on behavior change shows consistently that "feedback" is a key

factor for modifying and improving performance. It is often helpful to enlist others' help in monitoring and measuring your goal attainment. Having an outside observer (like a coach, trainer, or training partner) adds a degree of objectivity and also frees you just to focus on your performance. Your watcher or monitor, however, must know the specific details- what to look for, how you want it counted or measured.

What did I learn today? This might be the most important question you ask yourself about your training. This will involve a process of reflection about or thinking back on the session in some detail. In his book, The Reflective Practitioner, Donald Schn defines reflection-in-action as on the spot surfacing, criticizing, restructuring, and testing of intuitive understandings of experienced phenomena.

You might ask yourself some specific questions or use reflective prompts, then consider how to interpret or what to make of these facts.

You might reflect on:

On what did I excel and why?

Where did I struggle and why?

Was there a point where everything seemed to flow? If so, what was that like and how did it happen?

What thoughts were in my head when I was performing at my best?

What thoughts were in my head when I was performing at my worst?

What was my emotional state like when I was performing at my best?

What was my emotional state like when I was performing at my worst?

How was my focus (direction and intensity of effort)?

How did I respond when I was exhausted or frustrated?



What useful feedback did I get from others?

What did I learn about strategy?

What did I learn about technique?

What technical skills might improve my performance?

With that information, you might begin reflect on:

So what? (Just sit with that question for a few minutes and see what comes up)

How does what I learned today relate to things I have learned before?

How might what I learned today apply to other areas of my life?

How might I apply what I learned today to improve my next training session?

How might I apply what I learned today to help others?


Print out the page to follow as many times as you need it.


About The Authors

Dr. Randy BorumDr. Randy Borum is a Professor at the University of South Florida. He is a licensed and Board-Certified Psychologist, and has been recognized as a Certified Sport Psychologist by the National Institute of Sports Professionals.

He is a regular columnist for Black Belt Magazine and writes articles for MMA magazines addressing applications of sport psychology to MMA and other combat sports. He has consulted to the National Academy of Sports Medicine and to the IFL and with professional and other elite-level combat sport athletes from the UFC, KOTC and other national and regional promotions. He was previously a strength and conditioning consultant for the USF Boxing Team and currently holds a Copper-Level (Intro) Coaching certification with USA Wrestling.

Dr. Borum is also the Performance Psychology Advisor to the Crazy Monkey Defense (CMD) Program.

He can be contacted at [email protected] or though MySpace at: www.myspace.com/combatsportpsychBlog: combatsportpsychology.blogspot.com

Rodney King RSMEFor over a decade and a half Rodney King has coached world champion athletes to become the best they can be in the ring.

He has consulted with Special Force Military Units on helping them define and implement a winning performance mental game for the battlefield.

He has acted as a Performance Coach for countless CEOs, business leaders and inspiring entrepreneurs to find their center of power, manage their fears, anger and frustration and help them develop into Embodied-Warriors for the boardroom.

As a Somatic Movement Educator, creator of the Crazy Monkey defense Program and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt under Rigan Machado, he offers a unique program of warriorship tools, grounded in training the body through martial arts to refocus the mind.

Rodney can be contacted at [email protected] or visit him at: www.crazymonkeydefense.com

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.myspace.com/combatsportpsychhttp://www.myspace.com/combatsportpsychmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.crazymonkeydefense.comhttp://www.crazymonkeydefense.com

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