Should You Fast Intermittently or not?

"Hi Dave, my question today is...can a combat athlete train and fight with interval fasting? Or should he eat 3 meals instead? What should these meals look like, 4 hours apart or 5 hours? Are there any good sites on YouTube where you can watch this? By interval fasting I mean everything, so 16/8, 22/2, 20/4 etc..

Best wishes Tanner"

Great question from Tanner, and one that is actually quite simple to answer.

Let me tell you a story from several years ago that will help illustrate the point first.

This goes back to the early days of Wild Geese, maybe around 2010 or so.

At that time kettlebell sport was in it's infancy in Ireland and I was training and competing in the very first events in the country.

In Wild Geese we had a Muay Thai group trained by another Dave, the inimitable Dave "Hammerhead" Gordon.

Myself and Dave constantly bounced ideas back and forth, which was great and really benefited not only ourselves, but, and perhaps even more so, the people we trained.

One point that came up was diet.

Dave was, as many were at that time, a big fan of the "Zone Diet" from Barry Sears and I was eating along the lines of the "Warrior Diet"

Zone will have you eat 5x/day

Warrior once

Zone is closer to the oldschool bodybuilding, high meal frequency, split your macros across 5 portions. And Dave had been a bodybuilder.

Warrior was the first popular media on intermittent fasting, even still is recommended eating very light during the day and having a monster meal in the evening when the day is done.

At that time, I was actually living in Wild Geese trying to make it pay, so I didn't want the hassle of prepping food during the day, so saving my meal for the end of the day when the place was closed was perfect. My background working in Hotels where breaks were "optional" and the time I spent travelling where meal opportunities would be intermittent meant going for extended periods without eating was nothing new to me.

So we have 2 Dave's

Dave 1 is building a gym and training & competing in Kettlebell Sport (back when we didn't know how to train for it properly, so we all just brutalised ourselves!)

Dave 2 is a former bodybuilder turned Muay Thai fighter and now building a Muay Thai club of his own.

So, who was right?

Eat 5x/day or just once?

Truth is, we both were and we both had the results to prove it.

Both had all day energy, trained hard, recovered well and performed when required.

How?

Well, in recent years more and more research is being done on things like meal timing and the "anabolic window" and more and more it's showing that it isn't as important as we once thought.

What Dave and I both actually did that was the same was prioritised fresh food, lots of veg, both raw (salad) and cooked, plenty of meat and used carbs to "fill the gaps"

In the one meal a day Warrior Diet, you'd start with salad, eat meat & veg and then fill up on starchy carbs.

Zone was each of the 5 meals had a balance of 30% protein, 30% fats and 40% carbs which you would manipulate according to your needs.

The two plans may seem vastly different on first glance but look closer and you see there was more in common than not.

And that is the point.

Whatever diet plan you choose to follow, so long as you are getting in enough Protein, Fats and Carbs to fuel you, you're getting in plenty of veggies and a variety of meat & carbs to expose yourself to a wide array of micro nutrients (vitamins and minerals) then you will be fine.

Figure out roughly how much you need to eat, then divide it up according to your schedule.

It's that simple.

Now use this lens to look at any diet plan you want:

• 5:2 (which was born out of Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon)

• Paleo (read the original book by Loren Cordain, or Rob Wolfs follow up, not any of the later ones)

• Keto - it's a medical intervention, not a lifestyle choice

• Carnivore - unbalanced, it's the paleo folk who wanted to more extreme so went keto, then the even more hardcore decided they wanted to be "primal" and eat only meat...

• Vegetarian - can be done and done well, may require supplementation, may be lacking in amino acids, iron and certain B vitamins found mostly in animal products

• Vegan - not a diet, a lifestyle choice, otherwise see vegetarian.

• Fruitarian - a mental illness

• Fodmaps - you have IBS which sucks

• Mediterranean - decent, real food, lots of fats

• Low Fat - don't like, we need fats

And so on and so forth.

If you really want food advice hit up our Seb on www.WG-Fit.com, he's our nutrition guru

It's not my favourite subject, I will stick to rebuilding broken bodies

As always, hit reply with your comments and questions

Your questions fuel this newsletter, so send them in.

Chat soon

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Regards

Dave Hedges

www.DaveHedges.net

A Story on Attitude and Persistence

I want to tell you about a particular client that's been working with me for about a year now.

Like most of my clients they found me after exhausting other avenues.

They have problems that no one seems to be able to help them with

So they thought they'd try me.

She is a Doctor

Young and ambitious

However she was born with a congenital hip issue.

Essentially, there is no hip socket on one side.

Leading to pain, limitations in movement and potentially a bleak future.

Previous personal trainers tried to help but she'd wind up getting hurt.

The medical community told her the only option is a total hip replacement.

Which, if we're honest is true. She knows it and as a Doc, knows that currently these replacements have a lifespan and can only be done twice on the same hip.

She did the maths.

Didn't look the way it added up

So she winds up in my Dungannon Clinic

And we made a plan.

I gave her the speech, “everyone can improve, we just never know by how much”

And

“In your case it is management we need, to slow the inevitable decline “

If, and it was a big if, we can build muscle and improve proprioception around the joint, maybe we can slow the decline.

We created a workout plan and gave her “fidgets” to play with.

Now here is the magic.

As a girl that had been failed by the gym, she wanted to exercise at home.

Over the course of a few months the workouts started being done more consistently.

The “fidgets” became natural.

And a 12 hour shift on the ward became more manageable

Then she joined the gym.

The training program evolved

Consistency bedded in, became a habit, something she looked forward to.

And just the other day she was in for a monthly consultation and she told me something that I missed the significance of entirely.

She had to practically spell it out for me like I was 5 years old!

She had been sore for a week because her and her fella while away for a weekend went for a walk.

She walked 3-4 miles along a beach.

Me, being me, got stuck on her being sore and trying to figure out strategies for managing that pain

I didn't think about how significant a win this was.

It was pretty much the first time in her life she had been able to get out the car and walk to enjoy a location.

Even the boyfriend was shocked, she told me he kept asking if she needed to stop or take a break.

And now she's hungry for the next part.

Can we build more strength? Can she keep improving?

We can certainly try.

As a coach specialising in injury management, this is an incredible story.

And as a numpty, I almost missed the significance.

I hope you are smarter than I am

And you get how big this is.

And how this can be a story about stopping to smell the roses.

To appreciate the wins, no matter how big or small

And to not get bogged down in problems

Take time to appreciate the wins.

And before I finish off, her results to date are 100% down to her patience and persistence.

Her willingness to listen and apply.

Her trust in the exercises I gave her, and the candour I offer when I say that a particular exercise may not be suitable but we will try.

When I say “you are responsible for you”

This lady understands that completely, and has taken full and complete responsibility for her actions knowing her quality of life depends on it

And I am proud to have her in my stable.

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.davehedges.net

The Reason We Train

While fitness and performance may mean different things to different

people, there is a constant.

The performance or purpose.

A physique athlete trains to look a certain way

A sprinter trains to run very fast

An older person trains to maintain strength and mobility

An injured person trains to get back to, no, beyond the ability they had

pre injury

And so on and so forth

My own training has chopped and changed as my goals / purpose has changed.

I began lifting because I needed more strength for my Karate.

This is also what got me running.

When I worked as a Doorman, I needed some extra mass, so I trained to

get bigger. And be strong. And be enduring.

And ready for anything and anyone I may have to deal with.

When I was injured, I trained to become better than I was pre injury.

In fast, my wife stills reminds me that when we met my arms were the

biggest she's ever seen them. But at that time I was not long recovered

from a severe back injury and had spent a year doing Pull Ups and 1 arm

Push Ups. I was lean and upper body dominant!

Now, as a 47 yr old Dad, I train to protect my family, to feel strong

and mobile, to remain an example to my kids.

You could say, I train to be the Warrior in the Garden, which is better

than being the Gardener in a War

I want to be more capable than my environment requires.

I want to be able to move well, with power and grace despite the

injuries and mileage, right up until I inevitably can't any more.

This purpose drives the training.

The training supports the purpose.

Whatever your purpose, you can make progress towards it.

Are you?

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Regards

Dave Hedges

www.DaveHedges.net