Overeem, TRT, and Drug Testing

If you don't follow MMA you might want to skip this post.

I'm writing this just as news of Alistair Overeem's failed Testosterone: Epitestosterone test are coming to light.  As of right now his B sample hasn't been tested, nothing's been confirmed - as far as I know this is a huge mistake (not that I think it is).

Having said that, I've already read a few comments (some posted by professional reporters) that indicate that the authors don't understand this test or what it means.  I thought I'd explain.

We're all probably familiar with testosterone, a sex hormone produced in naturally higher levels in males than in females.  Testosterone positively influences muscle hypertophy (how big your muscles can be), recovery (how fast you can recover from a tough workout), mood, health, and a bunch of other things.  People's levels vary naturally - men almost always have higher levels than women, levels tend to peak in early twenties or so then decline gradually, and levels can be affected by your genes, stress levels, sleep, nutrition, various legal herbs, and even looking at naked women (seriously).  How much those things can influence T levels is relative - if you're at a 400, watching a bunch of porn and getting a good night's sleep might get you  up to 500, but it won't get you to 1200.

Incidentally, one way to permanently decrease your T levels is repeated head trauma.  Think about that in terms of fightsports for a moment.  And one of the most serious consequences (in my opinion) of depressed T is increased risk for depression (along with heart disease)... think about that the next time a former fighter commits suicide.

So we can all imagine that if you're going to compete in almost any sport that involves strength and/or power, higher T levels, at least up to a point, are going to be beneficial.  They'll allow you to train harder, recover faster, hold more muscle in the face of high stress, and generally be, all else being equal, a better athlete.  How do you get higher levels of T?  Sleep, nutrition, porn - they'll all help a little bit, but the most effective way is to add testosterone to your system - inject it, use a cream, whatever.

Of course, that's against the rules.  Mostly.  There's an exception - Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT).

You see, if a normal joe (like me) has low T levels - that is, significantly lower than those of an average male of our age (roughly mid-600's are average) - we can go to our doctor and get a nice legal prescription for injectable T or a T cream.  Boom, levels go back up, but, depending on how much we take, our levels may not be very high - they may still be on the low side - just higher than they were.  If your T level is 200 and you use a cream or injections to get up to 500 your T level is still lower than the average guy on the street.

Now to compete in MMA there are all kinds of hoops you have to jump through - just because something is legal doesn't mean it's okay with the athletic commission (see Nick Diaz, marijuana).  They'll accept a fighter on TRT if they go to certain doctors, file specific forms, tell them ahead of time, etc. - like I said, there are hoops to jump through, but the use of TRT isn't banned outright.  In theory, they would test you to make sure you weren't on a high enough dose of TRT to give you a competitive advantage.  Basically, if I can show them that I'm using TRT to bring my 200 up to an 800 (still well within the range of "normal"), I'd be okay, but if I bring my 200 up to a 2000 I wouldn't be allowed into the cage.

There ARE tests that check your overall T levels - blood tests, not urine as far as I know - but that's not what Overeem failed.

You see, along with T, your body makes another hormone called Epitestosterone (E) that isn't very interesting - it doesn't do too much that we're aware of, and doesn't seem to help with athletic performance.  About the only reason we do care about E is that humans tend to make about as much of it as they do of T - in other words, for pretty much everybody, whatever your T levels are, your E levels will be almost exactly the same.  Have a lot of T (say, you're a teenager watching porn)?  You'll have a lot of E.  Have a low T?  Low E.  The ratio stays at around 1:1.  But what if you inject a bunch of extra T?  Well, the ratio gets out of whack, because it's the stuff your body makes that comes out in a 1:1 ratio - when you inject extra T there's no feedback loop that has your body ramp up its production of E.

Overeem's reported T:E ratio was 14:1.  If that's true it ONLY means that he had a lot of artificial T swimming around in his system.  As far as I know he doesn't have a TRT exemption - that information may be available - but we don't actually know if his T levels were really high OR if his natural T level was ridiculously low an he used supplemental T to get his overall levels to a high-normal range.  I'm not saying that is the case - I'm just saying that we don't know if his T levels were very high, offering him some competitive advantage - only that he was injecting (or smearing through cream) extra T.

Now if Overeem hadn't applied for a TRT exemption and was still applying/ injecting extra T then it doesn't matter if his overall levels were higher than normal or not - he broke the rules, he'll be punished for it.

Please note that I'm not arguing in favor of the current regulations (or against them), I only think we should be clear on what the various test results actually mean.  I'm a little sympathetic to the view that the athletes should be allowed to drug up however much they want to - we're not seriously worried about their health, are we?   If we cared about the long term health of athletes they'd all be in headgear, if combat sports were even legal.  Forget football.  Or marathon running.  High level sports is not good for people!

One last note - if you're an amateur athlete buying illegal drugs to improve your performance then you're an idiot.  Overeem makes hundreds of thousands of dollars to risk his health - if you're an accountant who trains in martial arts for fun, to risk your health at 60 for your hobby is just dumb.  When you buy steroids from some guy at your gym you don't know what's in them, the purity level, etc.  Now if you have low (or low-ish) T levels and you want to get TRT from your doctor, that's another story (the pharmacy will sell you real T, no rat poison in it).  I don't claim to be an expert on Hormone Replacement Therapy, but I suspect that artificically replacing your T levels back to where they were when you were in your mid-20's will have only positive side effects for most people (but I'm NOT positive about this).  

So, stay away from illegal drugs, but consider legal ones.  Osu!

Countdown to Promotion: Penultimate Week

My promotion for sandan (third degree black belt) starts next Friday (July 8).  I wish I had another six months to prepare, or better yet a year, but I don't.  If you're new to the blog, here are the important details:  Promotions in my style are fairly rigorous physically (but not insanely so - we don't regularly hospitalize people during promotions or anything) and are taking place this year over a three day weekend.  I've been training since 1988, but I took a 12 year break from 1994 - 2006, and another year from late 2008 to late 2009, so I'm nowhere near as skilled as I should be.

Assuming you're trying to peak for an event like a promotion, a major tournament, or whatever kind of karate event you're participating in, there are a few things you should be doing.  Note that I'm going to assume that you: a) are not a professional athlete - no 3/day workout schemes here, I assume you have a real life that can't be put totally on hold; b) not a beginner - if you've been training for 3 months and you're testing for your first yellow stripe or whatever in two weeks, you need to just keep on training, not peaking; and c) not injured.  If you're hurt then you need to be dealing with that injury.

The first thing is to come to terms with what you can and cannot do in the last two weeks before a promotion.  If you've been training for years you're not going to get siginificantly better, skill-wise, in two weeks - you're not getting any better at kicking and punching.  You might be ablea to fix some technical errors of memory - for example, suppose you tend to punch with the wrong hand at a certain point in a kata - that's something you can work on, but if you just suck at something, you're probably still going to suck when the test date arrives.

You're also not going to get significantly stronger in two weeks.  Unless you are brand new to strength training (which you shouldn't be) neurological adaptions are slow to come by, and you can't build much muscle tissue at all in such a short time.  Getting stronger takes years, not weeks.

Your'e also not going to get much leaner in two weeks.  If you still have bodyfat to lose it's not going to happen now - putting yourself into a serious energy deficit at this point in time will leave you depleted and weak for your test, which is NOT how you want to present yourself.  If you're competing in a weight class event that's another story, but otherwise don't run yourself down by cutting back on food.

What you can do is improve your conditioning.  Maybe not by miles, but you still have time to add a few extra percent to your endurance while maintaining your skill and strength.  Here's what you have to do:

This week do some planned overtraining (sometimes called over-reaching).  Here's how:

• Every day do a hard session of skill training.  Don't focus on any one thing - remember, you're not going to improve much.  Do a few reps of everything in your syllabus - every kata, every combination, etc.  This is the time to make sure there aren't any kinks in your skills.  You're not going to develop wicked spinning kicks now, but if you haven't done any in three months you can sharpen them up quite a bit.  If you want to devote some time to really focusing on one thing, like your punches, do it after the test.  If you are sparring keep the pace high but the contact very controlled - this is NOT the time to do hard full contact sparring (because of the injury risk).
• Follow each skill session with a serious conditioning session.  As always, think in terms of doing high intensity intervals - work very hard for 10-45 seconds, rest, repeat.  Jump rope, sprint, do kettlebell swings, air squats, thrusters, burpees, bike sprints, etc.  Rotate your efforts - don't choose the same thing every day.  And don't do exercises that you've never done before - the soreness from starting swings for the first time can really hamper your efforts the rest of the week.  Also, do more than you think is probably good for you - really toast yourself.  And DON'T use karate skills for this part of your workout - don't do kicks until you're gasping for air.  It's bad for your kicks.
• Do just enough strength work to maintain your strength levels.  Maybe twice this week do an even more abbreviated session than usual - and follow it with skill training and more conditioning.
• If you can handle it, add a second conditioning session in the morning.  I try to get in a 4 minute workout - Tabata style sets of swings and thrusters with a kettlebell (Tabata protocol means 20s work/ 10 s of rest/ repeat).
• Do light stretching every day.  You're not going to work yourself into a split for the first time, but you want to work near the limits of your range of motion for all your muscles every day to stay limber and help with recovery.
• Eat plenty of clean food.  DON'T cheat by chowing down on ice cream and candy - instead eat plenty of protein and carbs in the form of meat, protein shakes, and starchy root vegetables - think lots of steak and sweet potatoes - to keep glycogen stores high and to improve muscle recovery.  This is NOT the time to try to trim off some excess weight - for two reasons.  First, cutting calories will hamper your body's ability to adapt to the training and make it more likely that you stay sore or get some mild injuries.  Second, if you managed to change your body composition now you'd throw off your balance and technique and you won't have time to adjust before the test.
• Make a special effort to cut back on possibly inflammatory foods.  Even if you think you're okay with dairy, this is not the time to push it.  Cut back on dairy, grains like rice and corn (you shouldn't be eating wheat ever anyway), vegetable oils (again, you shouldn't ever eat them, but...) and peanuts. 
• Do a TON of recovery work.  Foam roll yourself, use a self - massaging tool on sore spots (even better, get a massage or two, if you can afford them), sleep extra, eat more often (this is the week to be less than strict on your intermittent fasting schedule).
• Supplement with creatine, beta alanine, and acetyl-l carnitine to improve endurance.  Will they help?  Maybe, maybe not, but if you have the money this is the time to splurge.  Remember, we're peaking!

I'll write another post about the last week before promotion, but the general idea is we're going to taper off our training a lot and give our bodies a few days to heal, recover, and adapt to all the training.  If you time it right you can come into your test in the best shape you've ever been - and that's pretty much all you can ask for.

Summary: Blog so far

I've recently noticed (I know, I'm a little slow) a huge surge of traffic coming from Dan Djurdjevic's awesome blog (thank you very much!)  Welcome - the kind of people who read Dan's work are exactly my target audience.  For you new readers, and anybody else new to my blog, I thought I'd write up a summary of the key points I've been trying to convey.

KC Philosophy:

I began training in the late 80's.  I took a 12 year break and when I got back into training in 2006 I found that a few things had changed.  I was in worse shape (not as strong, not as flexible, with less endurance, less resistant to injury) at 35 than I had been at 21 - and I had never been what you'd call an athlete.  I had less time and energy for training - a family and a full time job can really interfere with two hour training sessions.  But, (and this turned out to be my saving grace), I was connected to a huge body of information about training that I hadn't had access to before, all thanks to the internet (thank you Al Gore!).

I've spent a considerable amount of time over the past 5 years reading and looking at books, magazines, blogs, websites, videos, and DVD's about diet and training - not just about martial arts training, but about training for athletes in all sports, and every minute of it was devoted to figuring out how that information could make me better at karate.  I learned a lot - I learned how to become and stay more flexible throughout the day, how to get faster and stronger, how to improve my health, how to dramatically improve my endurance, how to practice my skills, all without having to train more than a few hours a week.

It didn't take me too long to realize that not everybody knows all this stuff.  Plenty of wonderful karate instructors spend their time learning and teaching technique instead of poring over the latest research on VO2 Max.  Which is fine - I don't mean to criticize anybody's teaching.  I thought I had learned some things that could help other people - people like me, older people or people who aren't very athletic or don't have fifteen hours a week to train - become better at karate.  Not by showing them or teaching them karate, but by helping them train better so their karate can be better.

Nothing, or almost nothing, in this blog is original.  I stole every last idea from sources from Pavel Tsatsouline to Mike Boyle to Bret Contreras.  I've discovered no secrets, no ideas that you couldn't figure out yourself if you want to spend the hundreds of hours of reading to learn it all.  But if you don't have time for that, you can read my blog and hopefully get a few useful tips that will make your karate training more productive and more efficient.

Here's a summary of the key points I try to convey:



1.  Flexibility Training:


You should do two types of stretching: static stretching and dynamic stretching.  Static stretching means moving a muscle into a stretched position and holding it.  Think of things like sitting on the floor and leaning over a locked leg to stretch the hamstrings, or wedge your legs apart to stretch your adductors.  Dynamic stretching involves moving a muscle fairly quickly into and out of a stretched range of motion.  Think mae keage, or swinging your leg up and back, or up to the side and back. 

Do your dynamic stretching daily, preferably early on.  Do ONLY dynamic stretching before a workout unless you have an injury.  I like 2 sets of 10 leg swings to the front and sides per leg.  Do 3 sets if you're very tight or sore.

If you do any static stretching - which will gradually lengthen the muscle tissue - do it when you're cold (not right after a workout).  You can do it as often as you'd like, but you'll probably need at least 3 times per week to get any results.  And don't do it before a workout!

If you need better range of motion, say in your adductors so you can round/side kick higher, you have to build strength in the target muscle (the one that's holding you back) when it's stretched.  If your adductors are tight, get close to a split (as close as you can) adn draw your legs together - either pulling into the ground or actually pulling them together, sliding so you end up standing.  You can do various other exercises as well, but the point is to build strength in the stretched position - that's how you get the muscle to relax when it's being stretched so it doesn't restrict your movement.


2.  Skill Training:

When you try to get better at a skill (say, punching or kicking) you are making a neurological adaption - your nervous system is changing.  This process doesn't work the way, say, building muscle does.  Your nervous system learns new things best by practicing them well; and practicing them often.

That has several ramifications.  You want to practice your techniques as often as you can - every day or more would be best.  You want to practice most often while fresh.  At the end of a workout, if you're tired and drained, your technique will be relatively sloppy.  That is the wrong time to practice karate.  Instead, practice karate when you're fresh - even performing just a few minutes of drills several times a day - and save your endurance work for when you're tired.

That also means your workouts should start with a warmup, then dynamic stretching, then skill practice, then strength training, then endurance training - don't put the strength/ endurance stuff before the skill stuff or your technique will suffer.


3.  Strength Training:

If you're doing a routine you got from your typical personal trainer or the pages of a fitness/ bodybuilding magazine you're probably training wrong.  Karateka need explosive strength, not big muscles (although you will gain some size as you get stronger). 

• Focus on workouts shorter than 45 minutes in length. 
• Do exercises with enough weight/ difficulty that you can only complete 5 or fewer repetitions at a time (for example, don't do regular pushups if you can do more than 5 of them; work on one-arm pushups instead). 
• Focus on movements instead of muscles - hip extension (kettlebell swings, deadlifts), knee dominant squatting (one legged squats), an upper body push (pushups, presses) and pull (pullups, body rows) and core (next bullet).
• For your core do mostly exercises where you stabilize your core against a resistance - for example, a plank instead of a situp.  Do a ton of anti-rotation - holding your core stable while some force tries to twist your body - think one armed plank, medicine ball throw, etc.

Stay away from high rep work in the name of strength training.  If you can do 50 pushups, working up to 100 pushups won't make you stronger, just give you better endurance.  You're better off working up to 10 one arm pushups.


4.  Endurance:

Presumably you want more endurance so you won't gas out during sparring or intense kata practice.  Some people train for that by doing lots of LSD (long slow distance) - jogging, hopping on a bike or treadmill for long bouts of steady state "cardio" work.  Unfortunately, you'll get at best mediocre results from that type of training.

The name of the game is High Intensity Interval Training.  You need to work at a level of intensity so high that it really stresses your cardiovascular system.  Instead of jogging, sprint.  Instead of biking, do burpees.  That means you won't be able to keep it up for long - that's fine.  Just rest for a little while and repeat.  Over and over.  I don't know the best work/ rest time ratio - working 20 s, resting 10s, repeating is popular, I also like 15/15 - but the principle is to make the work very, very hard and not to do anything during the rest.  As you get in better shape don't extend the work intervals - don't make them longer - make them harder instead.

One other point:  you may be tempted to kill two birds with one stone and do your conditioning by working martial arts techniques until you're exhuasted.  For example, doing 500 side kicks.  Don't do that.  Why not?  Becasue if you're pushing your endurance close to its limit you're going to end up doing a lot of sloppy kicks - practicing bad technique.  You only want to practice kicks when you're fresh, then once you're getting tired, hammer away at your cardio with a non-skill movement like running or burpees or something else where you don't care about your skill.


5.  Diet:

I'm a big advocate of a roughly Paleo diet.  Put simple:  Avoid all grains (especially wheat, corn, soy); avoid legumes (beans); eat no seed and vegetable oils (corn oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, etc.); restrict any artificial and processed foods; limit dairy; and limit fruit and nut consumption.  Eat animals that are fed on the same principles - so eat only grassfed beef, pastured chicken, etc.  What can you eat other than meat?  Vegetables, fruit, root veggies (sweet potatoes, yams), some nuts and fruit, some dairy (preferably raw, preferably from grass fed cows).  Yes, you'll be eating a lot of fat.  Yes, it's okay.  No, it won't make you fat.  It might heal your gut and cure your arthritis, though.  This diet, which improves insulin resistance and lowers inflammation, will improve recovery, enhance your endurance, help you drop any excess fat, and make you healthier.

There are a lot of resources on the ins and outs of paleo eating both on this blog and in other places.  This diet has made huge differences in my personal health and fitness.  Many paleo bloggers lean towards the low carb end of the spectrum - I don't.  I find that my karate goes better if I eat plenty of carbs.  I just get my carbs from sources other than wheat, corn, and soy.  Meaning I eat plenty of sweet potatoes and rice but no bread.  Try it for 30 days and see how you feel!

 

 

That's a brief summary of the key points to improving your karate practice that I've discovered over the past 5 years.  I have posts up about all of this which cover each in more detail - if you're interested in more explanation of anything here please post questions to comments.

 

Thanks!

Spirit Training

I"m not sure how common this is (though I suspect it is pretty common) but my style tends to get together for extra - intense workouts every so often in a large group setting.  We do it for the new year (Kagami Biraki), an annual beach training, an occasional black belt only training - maybe 2-4 times per year.  Not every person attends every workout, but if you're in the area you're expected to make it to most of them.

The workouts are ineveitably preceeded and postceeded by some social interactions, as people are gathering who don't normally train together, and usually some meeting type stuff - announcements, administrative stuff, etc.  Then the workout.

These workouts are not very technical - there are usually a lot of people involved with a broad cross-section of skills, and communication is often difficult due to the size of the group.  The goal here is not fine tuning anybody's technique.  We're also usually packed nearly shoulder to shoulder, so nobody's going to do much in the way of moving - think lots of punches, lots of blocks, lots of squats/ knees, lots of pushups and crunches, and lots of kiais.

If you're not a martial artist you might not appreciate how taxing it is to, say, throw a thousand punches into the air, but if you're really executing with full force that's quite a workout.  Obviously it's possible to pace yourself and kind of half-ass the whole thing, but we try not to.  After all, you're surrounded by your senpai - your seniors - and you don't want to be the guy slacking off in the middle of the group when everybody else is giving 100%.

Now if you're a regular reader of this blog you know I'm not a fan of marathon workouts.  Long workouts lead to two results - either you pace yourself, which means spending a lot of time practicing half speed techniques, or you don't pace yourself and wind up exhausted, which means spending a lot of time practicing sloppy techniques.  Either way it's the wrong kind of neurological programming.

So why do I go to these events?  There are a few reasons.  There's a social dimension to them, of course (funny story - I'm lined up, randomly, next to this guy who seems familiar.  I vaguely remember him having been around when I went for my nidan promotion four years ago.  I talk to him, and he agrees that we saw each other then, but he knows me from elsewhere.  Turns out he was a year ahead of me in high school and we were on the football team together!)  There's a certain amount of social pressure to show up - the seniors like it when you attend these events.  But there's also a useful training aspect to the workouts.

Training to exhaustion, if you do it right (and by "do it right" I mean put real effort into every technique - I mean don't pace yourself) you're going to get a few benefits.  First, you're going to practice executing technique while exhausted - there are compensations you have to make, and it's not going to hurt to be familiar with them.  Should that be a primary focus of your training?  Of course not.  But once in a while you should remember what it feels like to throw a knee when you're exhausted, and practice mustering up force in your techniques while gasping for air.

This kind of training has an effect on your spirit - your will.  Think about the euphoria people express after finishing their first marathon or climbing a mountain.  Some of it is probably endorphins, sure.  But you also gain confidence in your ability to push through adversity, to push your own body to extremes, to work at your limit.  Most of your training should be done when you're fresh, in short bursts, which is great for developing skill, but it doesn't tell you anything about your ability to push the limits of your endurance.

Making it through these workouts is a bonding experience and a confidence building experience.  There might be an endurance training effect, but I wouldn't swear to it - not if you're doing these things infrequently, which is all you should be doing.

Here are the secrets to benefiting from spirit training:

• Don't pace yourself.  Really work - put everything you have into the first punch, even if you know that you'll pay for it later. 
• Focus on technique.  Don't get too, too sloppy - you want to be sore afterwards but not injured.  You're not going to be crisp on kick #273 - but don't throw your back out either.
• Sleep as much as you can the night before and after.
• Double your protein intake for the two days after the workout.  I recommend my magic recovery formula - 12 oz. milk, 2 scoops MetRx chocolate protein powder (not the meal replacement, just the protein), Rice Krispies to taste, once or twice a day.  Any animal based protein will do.  Probably not a good idea long term, but for a day or two it really helps with recovery.  If you normally do intermittent fasting, don't schedule any fasts for the days after the workout.  You need to be in full anabolism to recover.
• Double your fish oil for the same two days to control the inflammation.
• A little bit is good; a lot is not.  If you run a dojo and you try to do these, for example, every Sunday, you're doing the wrong kind of training.  Your students will start to pace themselves, and if they don't, they'll deeply ingrain sloppy karate into their nervous systems.  In my style we do these at most maybe 4 times a year - which seems about perfect to me.

The leader of our style always exhorts us to show "strong spirit" during these events.  It took me twenty years, but I think I understand at least part of what he means when he says that. 

Osu.

Reasons NOT to go Paleo

Check out this week's Paleo rodeo; some good stuff in there, as usual, from all over the paleo blogging world.

I'm continuing the Great Leucine Experiment.  Some thoughts:

1. The leucine tastes much better if it's dissolved in at least 12 oz. of warm water.
2. It still tastes pretty bad.  It also smells bad.  
3. I think it's working, but I've been less than perfect diet-wise, so it's hard to tell.  I'm also handicapped by my libraphobia.  Since I can't get on a scale it's hard to discern small fluctuations in bodyfat, especially when you add in the problem of my salt intake varying so widely (I don't watch my sodium intake very much).  If I eat a few ounces of prosciutto on occasion I'm pretty sure I'm going to retain water the next day, so that's going to disguise any visual evidence of fat loss.  Overall, it's hard to tell what's working and what isn't when you have an experimental population of 1.

I went shopping the other day (not my favorite activity) and realized that there are many good reasons not to start or continue a paleo diet.  Here are a few:

• You may receive unusual attention from the opposite sex.  This can be very disconcerting as well as being hard on your existing relationships (perhaps your marriage).  Let's face it, hotness is a curse (so I hear).
• You will likely need to buy new clothes.  I am in the midst of replacing all my size 38 pants with size 32's. I also need a new suit and some new shirts.  Thank goodness my shoes still fit.  This is time consuming, expensive, and bad for the environment (throwing away old clothes and getting new ones).  Sorry, environment!
• Many clothes off the rack will fit you poorly, if at all.  You may find the waists of regular (even loose fit) pants are too loose while the butt and thighs are tight.  Buy a belt!  Sorry, fashion!
• Some people will hate you for effortlessly losing weight - you're sabotaging their ability to excuse their own obesity.  Some will hate you overtly, others will subvert you by encouraging moderation (have just one donut!) or splurges (have some cake, it's your birthday - surely one piece of cake won't hurt!)
• As you age, your continued interest in physical activity will put you further and further out of touch with your peers.  Your old friends will gradually spend more and more time sitting in place and, eventually, in wheelchairs, while you pursue kickboxing, rock climbing, Zumba, and other high intensity activities.  This can be very alienating.  Sorry, friendship!
• Your continued mental vitality will make you acutely aware of how many stupid people there are in the world, preventing you from enjoying the relative bliss of a long, slow slide into dementia.  Sorry, peace of mind!
• You may find yourself annoyed and angry when you read articles by registered dieticians recommending that people feed their kids "heart healthy whole grains" instead of, say, bacon.  Knowledge is a difficult burden to bear.
• With your newfound energy you may find yourself doing more cleaning, home repair, and organizing, instead of living in a disintegrating craphole.  This is great as long as you enjoy cleaning, home repair, and organizing - which I don't.  
• Your doctor will try to convince you to eat more grains and vegetable oil despite the fact that your blood panels show you're in better health, by far, than (s)he is.

I could go on, but I won't.

Stick to your guns!  Eating right is difficult, but it offers serious rewards.  Try a strict paleo diet for 30 days and see how you feel.  See if that feeling is worth more to you than the joys of having toast with breakfast.  It's your body; your call.

Do as I say...

Not as I do.  Sometimes.

I seem to fairly regularly include in this blog descriptions of how I do things - how I eat, how I train, etc.  The intent isn't just to entertain people - when I say "I do X" I usually mean to say "I do X and so should you and here's why..."  Sometimes I write what I do as evidence that it's is doable - I'll write about how I eat or train to show you guys that a middle aged, untalented guy with little in the way of willpower, two young children and a full time job can make pretty good progress by acting according to the right set of plans.  Then I'm really answering somebody saying that they can't get in shape, get lean, or get better at karate.  Today I'm going to write about some things that I do because they're wrong - I shouldn't be doing them.  Because, much as I wish it were otherwise, I'm not perfect!

So here are a few areas where I'm doing the wrong thing and I know it (there are many other mistakes that I'm making and don't know about, but I can't write about them... just think about it).

• I don't eat nearly enough vegetables.  My diet is pretty good, most of the time, but I don't like veggies very much and I don't eat them enough.  You should eat like me, more or less, but with a ton more vegetables included (both in quantity and in variety).
• I don't do enough soft tissue work.  I never get massages and I rarely use the foam roller at home.  I've been working my hips and legs with a self-massaging device (kind of like a stone sphere set into a handle so you can roll it over your muscles), but I don't do it enough.
• I eat plenty of grass fed beef but not nearly enough organ meat or bone (obviously you don't eat bone, but you can make broth by boiling bones in water and get a lot of good nutrients that way).  No excuse but laziness.  If I could get a ground beef that was part liver/organ/kidney and part regular meat in 1 lb. packs I'd buy it, but I haven't found such a product (if you know of one please let me know).
• I don't do enough static stretching at night.  I don't do any before working out - which is good - but I think I'd benefit from another 20 minutes a night of stretching.  I'm just too lazy.
• I don't meditate enough.  For stress relief and improving one's concentration we should all meditate every day - at least for a while.  I don't.  No excuse.
• I don't hit stuff enough.  That's changing now that I have a Body Action System in my house.  Punching and kicking air is good but you shouldn't do it exclusively.
• I don't practice sanchin or tensho enough (should be every day).  Like I said, I'm lazy.
• I don't sleep enough.  That's probably not entirely my fault - I get a little insomnia and I'm trying to fix it, and if I slept the whole time I was in bed every night it would be enough.  So it's not like I'm up all night partying.  But, end result, not enough sleep.
• I don't work out outside enough.  Partly because I'm lazy, and it's winter, and partly because I'm allergic to grass and trees (the outside, I've noticed, is full of grass and trees).  

I'm sure there are others I couldn't think of (I"m not saying this list is the sum total of all my flaws by any stretch).  What's the point of this list?  Well, first of all, you should get that when I describe my lifestyle I'm not bragging, I'm quite aware that I fall very far short of what I ought to be doing.  I'm just doing better than I was doing, say, a year ago, and better than most people my age who don't pay attention to these things.

Keeping a list like this is also a key to making progress.  As time goes on I try to work on these things - not all of them at once, but in small groups.  This list was a lot longer a year ago.  I identified things I could fix and changed them.  I'm still doing that.

You, my reader, should write out a list like this (of your mistakes, not of mine).  Then pick a few of the items and start working to improve them.  Like my "I don't hit stuff enough."  I saw that on my list, asked for a BAS for my birthday, and now I hit it almost daily.  Every once in a while I need to re-do the list and pick new things to work on.  I'm about due now, actually!

Don't expect to eliminate the list completely, at least not in a short period of time.  Expect to add things to the list as often as you take them off, as you learn about new things you should be doing for your health and performance.  Stay on the path to perfection, don't worry about reaching perfection.

Osu.

The Metabolism Myth(s)

There are a couple of myths - in separate categories - that I see promulgated in the fitness community and popular consciousness related to metabolism.  I thought it worthwhile to take a moment to clear them up.

Without getting overly technical, what we mean by "metabolism" is the calories burned by your body at rest - otherwise called Basal Metabolic Rate or Resting Metabolic Rate.  These things may not be exactly the same but they're close enough for our purposes. 

Basically, even if you sit on the couch and watch TV all day, your body burns bunches of calories just keeping your heart and lungs going, your body temperature normal, and maintaining itself.  This sounds like a great thing, right?  Calories burned means they're not being stored as fat.  So everybody and their mom wants a super high metabolism, which means your body is like a little furnace burning energy, and you can eat tons of food without getting chubby.

There are two general myths regarding metabolism:

1.  Eating food X or doing Y will elevate your metabolic rate.  This isn't always wrong, but it is usually wrong or overstated.  Stimulants (caffeine, green tea extract, and so on) might elevate your metabolism but only a little bit and only for a little while (you get used to them quickly).  Otherwise all coffee drinkers would be thin, and we can see that's not true.  Eating multiple meals a day won't work either - you get an energy burning effect from food (called TEF), but it's proportional to meal size, so splitting your bigger meals into smaller, more frequent meals will do all of jack for your caloric burn.

Vigorous exercise will elevate your metabolism as your body repairs itself, but it's not an enormous increase.  Would burning an extra 50 or 100 calories be nice?  Sure, but that's what, half a Twinkie's worth of calories?  It's not exactly a licence to eat junk food.

There are supplements that will significantly elevate your metabolic rate, but they tend to have serious side effects - thyroid hormone among them.  I am far from an expert on the use of pharmaceutical substances to aid fat loss, but they're out there and your nearest pro bodybuilder is probably using them.

Here's the bigger myth:

2.  Raising your metabolic rate is unequivocally good.  This isn't so much something people say as what they imply.  Marketing campaigns for various products will often tout how good they are for your "metabolism."  Diets do the same thing.  A particularly egregious exampe is the High Everything Diet (I won't provide a link because it's crap, but feel free to google it).  The HED advocates say that by eating a certain way - lots of starch, protein, and fat but no juice or artificial sweeteners - you can elevate your metabolism and eat tons of food while losing bodyfat.

Here's my question:  even if they're right (and I don't think they are), would that be a good thing?  Do you want your cells churning away, burning tons of energy more than you need, sucking calories away from your system?

Think about a car engine.  What happens when two identical engines ar run at different rates - one faster than the other?  Outside of a pretty narrow range you can count on the higher-revving engine blowing up quicker than the other one.  Trust me, Formula One engineers don't turn the revs up when they think their engine might be on its last legs.  All those processes in the cell that burn energy - what else do they do?  They result in some damage to the cell, even if it's a small amount, as they oxidize all those lovely fats and carbs to generate ATP.  I'm sure there are few short term consequences to this, but over the course of a lifetime of wear and tear, do you want your cells working hard or gently when you're at rest?

If you want to be healthy and intact for a long time a slow metabolism might be advantageous.  Calorie restriction, the one way we know of to increase a mammal's lifespan, certainly doesn't make the cells rev faster or at a higher temperature.  It makes the animals run cooler and slower. 

I certainly wouldn't argue that slowing your metabolism more is always better, either.  Being cold and lethargic all the time, whether it extends life or not, is not a fun way to live. 

Take home message:  if you're lean, or in the area of lean, and relatively healthy (have a decent amount of energy, etc.) then speeding up your "metabolism" may not be a good thing.  Be wary of diets, exercise plans, and supplements that claim to do so - they probably don't work, and if they do work they might be limiting your longevity.  Conversely, if someone criticizes your healthful lifestyle on the grounds that it might slow your metabolism, just smile, nod, and walk away.  You can have the best revenge - outliving your enemies.

Osu.

Supplements that WORK

There are several ways you can go about picking supplements to use.  Scientific research (either reading it yourself or reading the opinion of someone else who reads a lot of studies) is great, but there are a few problems.  Most studies use young, fit people as test subjects, and your results may not resemble theirs.  Most studies are also fairly short term, and the benefits of a supplement might wear off after a few weeks or months.  So if you plan to use a supplement for a long time you might be misled by the research.

Another common sense method is to take a supplement for some fixed period of time (say, 30 or 60 days) and see if it helps you.  You could use actual performance measures - how you do in training - or something more subjective, like how you feel.  The subjective measures are tricky because there's always the placebo effect to consider, but I'll be honest - if you use a bunch of different things and are always trying something new I think you can get past placebo effects.

A problem with the "I feel better" test is that many supplements have effects that you can't feel.  Take fish oil for one example.  If you have serious inflammation problems (joint pain, for example) fish oil may give you tangible benefits - you might feel better taking it.  But if you have a little insulin resistance and some subclinical inflammation - the type you can't feel but might be contributing to the development of plaque in your arteries - then the fish oil might be improving your health without you noticing it.  Imagine someone taking some supplement to improve bone health.  How do you know if it's working?  If in twenty or forty years you don't break a hip.  I can't think of any simple at home test to see if you're losing a minute fraction of bone density.

There are a handful of supplements that I am convinced work because I immediately feel their effects.  That doesn't mean that other supplements don't work - just that I'm positive these do work.  It's a short list:

• Caffeine.  Stimulant.  People's responses do vary, but if you're not a caffeine user, drink 3 cups of coffee before doing something and see how you feel.  Lots of evidence makes it seem that you get used to caffeine, so eventually you're less stimulated by it and need the stuff just to get out of bed.  Best use for caffeine is occasional use when maximum effort is needed - maybe once every week or do take in 200 mg before a super intense training session, sparring session, or promotion.  If you use it every day the benefits will quickly taper off.
• Ephedrine.  Stimulant and weight loss effects.  Banned by FDA (for totally crap reasons, but that's probably an argument for another day).  Oh, how I miss my sweet, sweet ephedrine...  Maybe I liked this stuff too much.
• Magnesium citrate.  Either calms you down or stimulates you - weird, huh?  Depends on the person.  It might help you sleep, but it will definitely loosen your bowels.  DO NOT experiment with a large dose at first unless you want to spend the next day in the bathroom.  This may seem out of place in a martial arts blog, but having regular bowel movement is important to health and constipation does not improve your fighting skill.  I'm not a big fan of overdoing fiber - I think some is okay but large amounts may damage your colon - so an easy alternative is magnesium.  
• Quercetin.  For allergies/ asthma.  I definitely feel better on quercetin than I did without it.  Not a cure, but an improvement.
• Extra protein.  This one's a little more marginal, but a couple of times I've had some serious soreness (DOMS, or delayed onset muscle soreness), then pigged out on meat (try your local churrascaria), and wasn't sore the next day.  I know my usual healing time pretty well, and it was cut short by an overload of  protein and calories.  I've never tried overloading on protein day after day for a long time, and I don't think that's a good idea (your body will get better and better at burning protein for energy, and I don't think that's what you want), but occasional bursts may help your recovery.

Where's creatine, beta alanine, multivitamins, calcium, fish oil, and carnitine on this list?  Like I said, they might work - maybe even probably work - for most people, but I don't personally get any short term measurable benefit out of them.  With creatine that's unusual - most people see very short term weight gain and endurance improvements with the stuff, and I'm sure I'll experiment with it again in the future.  The two times I tried to use it I got nothing (many supplements work for only portions of the population - there are usually a minority of people who don't respond because of some biological peculiarity they have).

Please post to comments if you've had short term tangible results from any common over the counter supplements or if you've tried one of these without effect.  Thanks!

A (Too?) Merry Holiday Season

I can't speak for everybody everywhere, but in this country, among my acquaintances, the holiday season often winds up looking like a 10 week eating binge where we get fat, decondition as much as possible, get a ton of presents we don't want and struggle valiantly to buy things for our friends who don't need anything.  Oddly enough, Christmas manages to dominate my life for a considerable period of time every year despite the fact that I'm not Christian and don't actually celebrate the holiday.

Now I can't help you if the holidays force you to spend time with family members you'd rather do without, but I have a few suggestions for avoiding some of the damage that you might otherwise do to your body and psyche.

Plan your de-load for the busiest time of year.  You should periodically back off from your training to give your body a chance to rest and recuperate.  Really ramp up your training - both intensity and volume - in the weeks leading up to the time when you'll be busiest (maybe Christmas - New Year's?)  Then, when you miss workouts, you'll be periodizing, not just slacking off.  You'll supercompensate during the "rest week" and come back stronger than ever.

Note:  I don't suggest you take a week off from training entirely.  Try to do some lower intensity strength training a couple of times and some dynamic stretching every day at least.  You want to recover, not de-train yourself.

If you're going to overeat, strength train beforehand.  People tend to think they should do tons of cardio before/after an eating binge.  Nice idea, but unless you're a real lightweight in the eating department there's no way you can burn off enough calories to outpace a good feast.  Do you know how much work it takes to burn 1,000 calories (a lot)?  Do you know how easy it is to eat 1,000 calories (well, at least for me, pretty easy)?  But if you can pack a grueling strength session before the binge you can try to shift as much of that excess energy into building muscle rather than just padding your rear end.  If you can come out of the holiday season with a little extra muscle you'll be much further along on the way back to fitness than if you gain fat and lose beef.

Blow your diet, but don't completely blow your diet.  Look, if you have the willpower to eat clean during the holidays, that's great for you.  But if you don't there are things to do to minimize the damage.  Here's my new favorite trick:

1. Figure out which food is your biggest problem.  I don't mean the one that does the most damage - I mean the food that most often leads you into an eating binge.  For me the answer is wheat.  I can overeat chocolate or ice cream easily, but the foods that really send me on a binge are all wheat based - bread, pasta, bagels, pizza.  Now wheat might not be your weakness - I'm not saying it is (although I suspect that more people have issues with wheat than realize it, because of gluten's opiate properties, but I could be wrong) - but figure out what is your weakness.  Don't forget to consider alcohol.
2. Make a rule for yourself:  Do NOT eat any of your "weakness food."  I don't mean eat it in moderation, I don't mean avoid it except in your mother's famous holiday dinner treat, I mean NONE.  Whatsoever.  
3. Make sure your rule leaves plenty of room for eating treats that aren't in your big problem area.  For example, I won't eat wheat, but I can eat chocolate and drink tequila.  See?  I'm not totally depriving myself of all that is good in the world, I am only totally depriving myself of my favoritest thing that is good in the world.  If necessary, bring treats you can eat.  Dark chocolate covered cashews are delicious.
4. People will tell you this:  "Oh, have some [food X] - it's Christmas!"  Ignore them.  If you wish, slap them.  You can say I gave you permission.  We could spend a lot of time going into the why's and wherefore's behind well meaning people trying to sabotage your diet, but I'm not going to.  Just smile, slap the person silly, and knock the cinnamon bun out of their hand.

In short:  make one single dietary rule and stick to it no matter what.  If necessary, eat yourself sick on foods that aren't forbidden by the rule - I might really pound back some ice cream or dark chocolate when I'm feeling weak - but don't violate your rule.  You'll see that over the whole season you'll end up much better off.

Ask for gifts that support your goals (think wish list).  Don't count on friends and family to buy you fitness equipment or martial arts DVD's - they're all too likely to get you pun-of-the-day toilet paper instead.  But if you're into fitness and karate most people will be happy to buy you stuff you actually want if you can let them know what it is.  Try using an online wish list - I've had great success with them over the years.

It feels weird to ask for presents - I understand this.  Try to remember that people want to get you things you'll actually appreciate.  If you need some ideas, here are a few (I have no financial relationship with any of these companies, aside from the fact that I give them money for stuff!):

• A Gymboss Timer.  Great for intervals and so forth.
• A heart rate monitor (I don't have a specific one to recommend, so no link.)  I think the next phase in my endurance training will be using a monitor to pace the workout instead of slavish devotion to a clock.  Plus, measuring resting heart rate can help you know when you're overtrained and if you're getting fitter, and who has time to stand around with their finger on their pulse for 15 s to measure it the old fashioned way?
• Get some books.  Supertraining by Mel Sif might just be the only training book you'll ever need (warning: very dense and technical.).  If you're in the mood for some martial arts philosophy try some of the books by the founder of my style, Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura (shameless plug, I guess!)  I've found value in everything I've ever read or seen from Pavel Tsatsouline - you can't go wrong with this stuff.   I have a bad habit of picking out training and technique books written by popular fighters - try some!
• Get some training equipment for the home..  Kettlebells?  Bands?  Weights?  Valslides?  A slideboard?  DVD's or books?  Spend half an hour browsing at Perform Better.  It's like porn for exercise junkies (that's like the second porn reference this week on this blog.  I'd better start cutting back).
• Get yourself a new uniform, new patches, a heavy bag, or new sparring gear.  I like Karate Depot, and Fighting Arts has awesome stuff but a small selection (disclaimer:  Fighting Arts is run by my former instructor - but he doesn't know I'm plugging it here, and as far as I know he doesn't know I blog at all).  I haven't done enough comparison shopping to promise there aren't better places to shop, so if you have time spend some of it on Google or whatever and look around.
• Pick up some martial arts movies.  Frankly, if you haven't seen Ong Bak an argument could be made that you should have your black belt taken away.  Get the movie "Black Belt," aka "Kura Obi" (again, not sure where the best deal is).  I think Kill Bill is one of the better martial arts movies of the decade, plus, hey, it's Uma Thurman - you can't go wrong.

This is far from a complete list, of course.  Depending on the situation (time where gifts will be sitting around) you might get some grass fed beef for the holiday.  You could get some supplements you've been meaning to try (which seems like a weird gift, but what the heck?) 

I'm asking for a Body Action System for myself - I am compelled by the website (I'm not saying it's good - I'll do a review after using it for a while!)  I'll also ask for Gray Cook's new book, a heart rate monitor, and a few other choice items.  The point is, anyone who feels compelled to spend money on me for some reason will have plenty of things to get me without resorting to whatever's in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble.  Result - happy shoppers and happy me.  It's a win-win.

Get a designated driver.  Seriously, like I need to tell you not to drink and drive?  If you're going to overindulge (color me guilty on this one - I don't drink often, but when I do, it's usually too much) get a designated driver beforehand.  Stick to clear liquors - tequila's good - or gluten free beer (hard to find but not as bad as you'd think).  Wine is also fine.  Stay away from regular beer and malt beverages (gluten).

Surviving and thriving through the holidays is a combination of damage control and keeping your eye on your long term goals.  Look, if you're the type of person who can sit through a Christmas dinner and completely forego all the treats, that's a fantastic testament to your willpower and character.  But if you're not - and I certainly am not - don't use the holiday as an excuse to completely wreck yourself either.  You can do a lot of damage to your health in 10 weeks (I count the holiday binge as starting the week before Halloween, which is the earliest I'll dip into the Halloween candy, to whenever the leftovers run out, which is early January).

Regardless, have a great holiday season!

Osu.

More on Paleo eating

Quick recap:  For optimum health and performance, eat a paleo diet - a diet composed entirely (or at least predominantly) of foods available to our ancestors during the paleolithic era.  That means meat (preferably from animals also fed a paleolithic diet, which means grass fed beef), vegetables, fruit, nuts, eggs, and berries.  That means especially no grains (wheat, barley, oats, corn, rice), legumes, or dairy.  Different versions of the diet tolerate breaking this rule to a greater or lesser extent - some permit certain types of dairy, some corn or rice (but rarely wheat), and so forth.  Nobody owns the concept, so you'll see "paleo" authors and bloggers differ, but the emphasis on meat and veggies over grains and sugar is pretty constant.

Having established that, I think that people following a paleo diet go wrong in two different ways, to greater or lesser detriment.  The first is not recognizing that not all neolithic foods are bad for you.  The second is not recognizing that not all paleolithic foods are good for you.

The first point is less of a serious problem than an inconvenience for the eater.  If you take the "paleo" concept too religiously you will avoid foods that are probably okay to eat and might even be good for you.  Many paleo authors openly endorse a handful of neolithic foods, based on whether the foods in question contain anti-nutrients or toxins that cause problems.  Chocolate is a good example.  While the sugar and milk solids that go into commercial chocolate are definitely problematic, cacao itself doesn't seem to have negative effects on health.  So very, very dark chocolate is probably okay, at least as an occasional treat - and it's certainly a pleasant break from meat and veggies at every meal.  Butter, especially clarified butter or ghee, and cream are also relatively unproblematic - they don't contain the milk proteins or lactose that cause digestive problems.  I suspect tea and coffee also belong to this group, although the evidence on the safety of limited amounts of caffeine is somewhat mixed.  Another (little discussed) example of an absolutely neolithic food that really has no health impact at all is seltzer - it's just carbonated water.  No impact on digestion or the immune system.  Also definitely something cavemen didn't drink.  Now if someone else wants to avoid seltzer because it "isn't paleo," that's fine with me, and it's no detriment to them, of course, as long as they're not too bored drinking plain water.

As far as the second point goes, this is where some people get themselves into trouble.  If you look around the paleo websites, especially the cooking oriented ones, you can find recipes made from ostensibly paleo ingredients that are probably serious problems.  I've seen desserts made with crusts made of nuts, fillings made from dried fruit or crushed figs or nut butters, and more nuts on top.  I'm sure we've all been tempted by bags of dried fruit or nuts that seem paleo.

The problem isn't that nuts or fruit are absolutely bad for you - the problem is quantity.  If you make a pie out of nuts and fruit with an almond butter/cocoa topping, and have a slice for your birthday or Christmas, you'll be fine, and you'll be better off than if you ate half a dozen regular cookies or a big piece of regular cake.  BUT if you make that pie and have a slice each day after dinner and two slices on weekends, you're regularly getting a huge load of omega-6 fats (and not omega 3's) and fructose, both of which can lead to insulin resistance and increased inflammation.  You could probably make yourself quite sick and fat on a paleo diet, if you tried.  Now if you eat a handful of nuts each day and an apple or half a cantaloupe after dinner, that's fine.  But if you chow down on a bag of dried fruit or keep an open bag of almonds by your side all day long you can eat yourself into some real problems.

The take home message:

You can probably make yourself fat and unhealthy by eating too much of almost anything, but within reason there are certain foods that can make up the bulk of your diet without causing problems, foods that are okay to eat daily, foods that are okay only as an occasional treat, and foods that you should probably never, or very rarely, ingest.  You need to keep a handle on which is which: I group foods into staples (make up the bulk of my diet); daily but limited (I'll eat them all the time but in smallish quantities); treats (I'll eat on the weekend or for a cheat day or if I'm out to dinner); and forbidden (self explanatory).


My staples include grass fed beef, coconut oil or animal fat, green leafy veggies, and green tea.  My daily but limited foods are 85% or higher dark chocolate (no more than 100 cal/day), root vegetables (1 lb/day), caffeine, nuts and fruit.  My treats are grain fed beef, dried fruit, ice cream (less frequently), white potatoes, food made with vegetable oils (like Taro chips), and 60%-85% dark chocolate.  My "forbiddens" are basically wheat, diet sodas, and legumes.

The categories aren't important - what does matter is that you organize your foods in a way like this.  I find that if I try to forbid myself all but the healthiest foods I'm asking for trouble.  By having a treat and limited category I give myself permission to "cheat" or indulge myself without eating the most harmful foods.  But I remember not to make these foods part of my every day menu.

Exactly where should each possible food item go?  Here things can get tricky.  I can only suggest that you both continue reading and continue experimenting on yourself.  Are you feeling lousy?  Having trouble sleeping?  Look at what foods may have crept into your daily eating that are problematic.  Six months ago I tried to keep all starch on my "treat" list.  It didn't work out for me - specifically when working out with high intensity.  So I moved things around.

Remember that the paleo idea is just a guideline.  There is no logic to the notion that every neolithic food is bad - but there is a lot of logic to the idea that we should be much more skeptical of the healthfulness of neolithic foods and much less skeptical of the healthfulness of paleolithic foods.

On Supplements

Supplements (as in dietary supplements) are a fairly contentious issue in the health and fitness community.  The research on supplements, like general nutrition, is hard to do - there are just so many variables in diet and in performance, let alone in genetic makeup from person to person.  A lot of supplements should work but don't seem to actually work for practicing athletes (HMB, anyone?)  A lot should work to improve health, in theory, but in practice have mixed or even negative results (multivitamins are the classic example of this).  A handful of supplements definitely do work to improve performance - but it's a small handful.  Creatine is one - it's safe, effective for most consumers, and has few to no side effects.  Other substances will work but have side effects of various sorts - think anabolic steroids.  Worth it?  Well, I'll offer my opinion on steroids in a future post.

A lot of the disdain for supplements is a reaction against those people, usually young people, who buy into the supplement company marketing and think that supplements are the key to health and fitness.  They'll eat crappy diets and have crappy training and focus on getting the latest, greatest pills and powders into their mouths.  This is silly - you can't supplement your way out of a crappy diet, unless the "supplements" are anabolic steroids, and even then you won't come close to maximizing your potential.  That doesn't mean supplements are of no benefit.  Think of them like extra stretching sessions - if your training is good, extra stretching will somewhat improve your karate.  But stretching alone or instead of real training won't come close to making you a great martial artist.

Down to brass tacks.  You do NOT NEED any supplements to be healthy and perform well IF you eat a good diet.  By "good diet" I mean lots of grass fed beef (including the organs) and wild caught fish, fresh fruits, vegetables, and berries in a wide variety, and plenty of sunshine year round.  So why take supplements?

There are two general reasons.  First, some supplements can enhance your performance above what it would be on an excellent diet.  A person eating a great diet who added in some creatine would probably see a boost in endurance and size - even a fantastically healthy diet won't supply an optimal dose of creatine.  Another example is caffeine.  Take a fantastically healthy person in great shape and have them spar for an hour.  Compare them to another equally healthy and in-shape person who spars for an hour after taking 250 mg of caffeine.  We can argue about the overall benefits of caffeine, but in the short term at least you'll get a definite performance boost out of it.

The second reason to take supplements is to make up for some deficiency in diet or lifestyle.  For example, I work indoors in a climate where there isn't much opportunity for sun exposure during half the year.  So I take Vitamin D3, 5,000 - 10,000 IU of it, every day.  Would it be better to spend hours in the sun with my shirt off?  Well, it would be healthier for me, but it's just not going to happen.  The same goes for sleep.  I'm sure I'd be better off reducing my stress levels, going to bed earlier, and staying away from electronics for an hour and a half before bedtime - but none of that is going to happen.  So I take supplementary magnesium before bed, which seems to help my sleep quality.

If you have limited money:

• Seriously consider spending it on better food first.  You're going to get a lot more out of a pound of raw butter from grassfed cows than from $10 worth of pills.  Upgrading your beef to grassfed and adding in some more fruits and vegetables, are both better investments than anything from a bottle.
• Go with the sure things first.  Probably start with a multilvitamin (there is mixed evidence about this, but this is a pretty common recommendation).  After that, fish oil (aim for 3000 mg/day total of EPA and DHA - ignore anything else in there, and DO NOT take flax oil, it's not useful for humans) and Vitamin D3 (2000 - 10000 IU/day) are pretty well researched, important for health and inflammation, and relatively inexpensive. 
• Creatine is cheap and safe if it works for you.  I personally don't respond to it.  Try it out.  Creatine should cause some immediate weight gain (not fat, just water in the muscles).  I don't know how that might affect your lateral quickness.  Post to comments if you have insight into this issue!
• ALWAYS shop around.  I personally buy most everything from Netrition (no, I don't have any relationship to them other than customer).  They usually ship quickly and have good prices and good customer service.  Plus they send free t-shirts with your order, so now I have a drawer full of Netrition.com t-shirts that I wear to the gym all the time.

If money is less of an issue for you, by all means do some experimentation.  Buy something, try it for a month or two, and see if you feel any different.  Things I would try (but I'm not confident in them) are:  Beta alanine, Acetyl L-Carnitine, green tea extract, phosphatidyl serine, Vitamin K2, ZMA, greens products, digestive support, and joint support products with glucosamine, chondroitin, and MSM.  There are lots of others, too many to list.  As I find products with good results I'll write individual posts about them.


I personally take a multivitamin, quercetin (great for asthma and seasonal allergies), fish oil, 5000 IU D3, 100 mg K2, calcium carbonate in the morning, magnesium or ZMA at night, green tea extract (for the caffeine, mostly), 1 g C, 400 IU E, and am always throwing new stuff in there to try.


One last point - I tend to have a slightly laissez faire attitude towards supplements (I'm a little bit of a supplement junkie), but many openly sold, legal supplements do have potential side effectcs.  Do some research before you just fill a basket with pills to take.  Beware of anything that's supposed to affect hormone levels or stimulants.  Not to say that they're all dangerous, just that I wouldn't pop them willy nilly without putting some thought into it.