Lucas Lepri coming to Alliance, ATL, 2012!!!

If you thought Alliance in Atlanta was dead without Cobrinha, you are DEAD wrong!  Join hands down one of the best gyms in the country where world champions are on the mat in every class!

Alliance lives and the level of training will only continue to grow with our new co-instructor Lucas Lepri.  Look for many of our guys to be on top of the podium again this year.

Alliance 

OsssssSSSS!

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http://www.alliancebjj.com/

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How carbohydrates affect your body. Part 5- Putting it all together (Building Mass)

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If building muscle is your primary goal then your carbohydrate plan is quite the opposite of someone who is trying to lose fat or slim down.  The same hormones that are responsible for fat storage play a strong role in muscle growth.

Insulin is a powerful hormone that not only turns glucose into fat, but also turns it into glycogen (a complex form of sugar stored in your liver and muscles for energy).  When your body produces insulin it also produces a hormone called insulin like growth factor one (IGF-1).  IGF-1 production is also triggered by growth hormone secretion.  All of these powerful hormones, along with testosterone optimization, should be used together to create a highly anabolic environment for muscle growth.  Combining a caloric excess with plenty of carbohydrates, and heavy weight, high intensity, compound exercises you can being to see lean mass add up on your frame.  Read more about weightlifting here>http://everystepblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/strong-base.html or here>http://everystepblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/beginners-guide-to-power-lifting.html

When building muscle is your primary concern you want to choose plenty of foods with high GL especially after a workout.  Foods like: pasta, white bread (organic), fruit juices, white rice, and white potatoes are good choices as they lead to increased insulin, and ultimately increased GH, and IGF-1.  Insulin has the powerful capability to super saturate muscles with nutrients, amino acids, and glycogen making them able to recover faster and ultimately grow through increased protein synthesis.

The most important times to eat high GL carbohydrates for muscle gain are: morning immediately after waking up, immediately post workout, and 1-2 hours post workout.  I recommend a complex carbohydrate mixed with simple carbohydrate for breakfast for a spike with sustained energy; a high GI high GL carbohydrate like fruit juice, chocolate milk, sugar, white rice, or white bread immediately after your workout, and then a complex carbohydrate 1-2 hours after your workout.  Basically when adding mass is your primary goal you want to eat, eat a lot, and eat often.  The foods you usually want to limit during a cutting phase become your best friend during a bulking phase.

There is a fine line between a clean mass building phase and a dirty mass building phase.  You can gain a lot of muscle by lifting heavy and eating McDonald's three times per day, but the proportion of fat to muscle that you will gain may be undesirable, however if you keep your diet pretty clean (still include a lot of fruits and vegetables, slightly decrease fat intake, increase healthy fats, and increase lean protein), you will be able to gain much leaner mass with a higher percentage of it being muscle as opposed to fat.

This concludes my five part series of carbohydrates.  Please like my page of facebook, subscribe to my RSS feed, or subscribe for email updates if you are interested in the content I provide here in my blog.  By adding my page facebook you help me to reach more people in your friends list and increase traffic to my blog!  I am always more than happy to answer any questions from my readers just comment below or on the Chasing the Dream page on facebook. Thank you to all of my readers!

Please take a few seconds to check out my new website Http://www.makeyourbestself.com
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What's the perfect game plan to beat you? (turning weakness into strength)

An extremely important part to achieving any goal is self examination.  You know yourself better than anyone on this earth, if you can learn to look at yourself objectively and identify your weaknesses you can become virtually unstoppable.  Pride is often a byproduct of being blinded by your own success and if you only focus winning you may forget what helped you win in the first place, or worse yet, forget what has made you lose.  It seems to me that one of the best ways to improve at anything is to constantly observe areas that need improvement.

In Jiu-Jitsu I believe it is of incredible benefit to keep a journal of how your training sessions go.  Lets say everyday you keep a journal and it becomes obvious after a week or two that you are constantly getting hit with armbars.  Chances are there is something you are doing, or not doing that is causing you to get armbared repeatedly.  You may never have realized this problem unless you took the time to journal, now that you know your weakness you can begin to solve them.  In order to succeed or improve at ANYTHING in life, it is of paramount importance to realize that there is no such thing as failure unless you give up.  Every time you get tapped in class be happy because now you can learn to defend that submission, every time someone passes your guard rejoice, because now you can learn to defend that pass.  It is important to keep a log of all of your problems and immediately address them.  Ask an upper belt how to counter your issue, watch videos of black belts competing, do drills with the position until you get it, this is how you really improve.  People don't become champions by rolling to beat everyone in class all the time, they don't succeed by only doing what they are good at, you might be tall man on the totem pole in the gym, but how do you do in tournaments?

If you want to be the best at anything, you must understand your weaknesses and overcome them.  If you want a promotion at work, you need to know what your strengths are, but it is most important to know your weaknesses.  People will see your strengths clearly and if they must compete with you they will avoid your strength and attack your weaknesses.  Your bosses know your strengths, they hired you for them, but what will really impress a boss is improvement!  Maybe you know tardiness has always been your problem, you have justified it to yourself making excuses for it:  I always stay late, I always pick up when they need it, I am always on call on the weekend, but trust me your boss will remember you are always tardy.  If a promotion is what you are after you better start showing up on time, then it will show your employer that you are improving, and you are turning your weakness into a strength.  This is one of the secrets of everyone who has truly been successful in life, being humble enough to observe yourself and find your shortcomings and turning them into strengths.

A great way to find where your game needs improvement is to pretend that you have an evil twin.  They think just like you, they roll just like you, move just like you, and they know your game inside and out.  What would this twin do to beat you?  Would they pull guard first?   Would they go for the take down?  Would they play de la riva?  Would they counter your spider guard?  If you ask questions like these and answer them honestly you will begin to find your weaknesses, make note of your problems in every class, because this is one of the best ways to improve.

Getting back up is the number one indicator of any one's determination.  Many people stay down when they fail, and so they are defeated.  If you truly want to succeed you must turn failure into success, one way or another you must realize that every failure is a chance to improve, and a chance to succeed.  A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.  Maybe you don't want to be a world champion, but you should know what your goals are and they should be definitive, if you don't know where you are going you will NEVER get there.  Keep going, keep learning, stay positive, and keep rolling!

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Creatine, the most tried and tested supplement of all time!- Part 1 (What is creatine?)

What is creatine?

Creatine is one of the most popular supplements of all time.  In countless studies creatine has shown the ability to increase muscle mass, increase strength and endurance, increase metabolism, decrease belly fat, and even increase testosterone.  With all the benefits of creatine supplementation the only real question is why aren't you using it to help you achieve your goals?

Creatine is composed naturally in your body out of several amino acids.  The main source of creatine, however is meat, especially red meat.  It is worth note that in studies where vegetarians were observed they had significantly lower levels of creatine than non vegetarians, but after supplementation both groups were equal, making creatine supplementation important for vegetarians.  Of all the creatine in your body over 95% is found in the skeletal muscle.  Creatine is responsible for increasing production of ATP in the muscle cell (the first source of cellular energy);  this leads to an immediate increase in strength and endurance once the muscle cell has been saturated with creatine.  Creatine supplementation has been shown the ability to greatly increase ATP supply of the muscle cell.

A little more on creatine.

Research performed on creatine has repeatedly shown that oral doses of 5-20 grams per day are extremely safe and associated with only very minor side effects like: dry mouth, minor cramping, and stomach upset, and most of these side affects can be mitigated if you use creatine properly.  Creatine should always be taken with at least 8oz of water.  If you are supplementing with creatine you should drink at least 32oz of additional water per day.  When you take creatine it should be COMPLETELY dissolved in water or juice, if there are visible particles of creatine then it can increase stomach upset.  Creatine pulls a tremendous amount of water along with it (which is also one of its benefits), but if particles are left intact and not completely dissolved it can pull additional water into the intestines which can cause gastric upset and diarrhea.

Creatine enters the muscle under several different mechanisms.  Since taking creatine orally elevates plasma levels of creatine it enters the cell through osmosis, where concentrations of less dilute composition move into more dilute areas.  Creatine also enters the muscle cell via insulin transport, this is why creatine's benefits can be multiplied when taking it dissolved in juice, or taking it with a simple carbohydrate like table sugar (this stimulates insulin response and increases uptake of the creatine into the muscle cell).

How does creatine work?

As I stated before, creatine works through several mechanisms to increase: strength, endurance, and recovery.  The primary effect of creatine is that it increases production of ATP (the cell's first source of energy).  Creatine is converted in the body into Phosphocreatine, this allows ATP to be regenerated and recycled more efficiently.  The amount of ATP in the muscle cell is the main limiting factor in muscle fatigue, since creatine extends the life of the ATP store, it can immediately increase the amount of time your muscles can perform a maximal contraction.

Creatine also contributes to a state called "muscle volumization".  When a muscle cell is volumized it is super hydrated with nutrients and fluids from the blood stream.  This added circulation immediately increases muscle endurance and size (this is also the thing most people complain about, claiming to feel bloated with creatine supplementation).  This effect usually will contribute to somewhere between 2-6 lbs of weight gain, strictly due to the extra fluid in your muscles (this weight gain is temporary and will be lost when creatine supplementation ceases).

Creatine increases protein synthesis.  Protein synthesis is the process of converting amino acids into new muscle cells.  Protein synthesis will only occur in an anabolic environment.  Creatine contributes to this environment through both muscle cell volumization, and also through increasing endurance which allows you to work harder and stimulate a stronger recovery response from your training.

The other effects of creatine are less widely studied, but are still believed to be a very important component of why creatine is so effective at building strength and muscle.  These benefits include: increased testosterone production, increased growth hormone and insulin like growth factor, and some research has also shown that creatine is a powerful antioxidant.

In my next article I will cover some of the different types of creatine and which kinds I have used with the most success.  I will also cover dosing, cycling, and ways to increase the effectiveness of creatine.  Please make sure to like Chasing the Dream on facebook or sign up for email updates so you don't miss this important article!

Here is my recommended creatine.  It is affordable, effective, and doesn't cause too much water gain.

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How carbohydrates affect your body. Part 4- Putting it all together (Losing fat)

Now that you understand a little bit on how carbohydrates affect your body let's put together a loose guideline on what to do when you are trying to lose weight or gain muscle.  It is not impossible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, but it is incredibly inefficient and not very likely.  If you are overweight I suggest building a solid muscle base first and then losing extra fat (this will be easier because muscle burns fat).  It is nearly impossible to do both simultaneously, because burning fat requires caloric deficit while muscle building requires caloric excess, or at minimum a caloric balance.  Through following the principles I have described and will describe in this article, it will become possible to gain very lean muscle and also to lose fat while maintaining your muscle mass. You can read more about weight training here http://everystepblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/strong-base.html, and here http://everystepblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/beginners-guide-to-power-lifting.html
Know that weight training is incredibly important for body changes and is much more effective than cardio for changing your body composition.

1) Losing fat.  When losing fat is your main concern there are several key things to consider.  The goal here is to keep your glycemic load fairly low.  The best way I can suggest doing this is with a diet called the metabolic diet.  This consists of a low, moderate, and high carbohydrate diet that alternates each day.  For example: Mon.-low carb, Tues.-moderate carb, Wed.- high carb, Thurs.- low carb,  Fri.- moderate carb, Sat.- low carb, Sun.- high carb (with one all out cheat meal).  The basic idea behind this idea is that you keep calorie intake relatively consistent while you switch up the amount of carbs you consume each day.  By keeping the body in a state of confusion you can maintain fat burning hormones while keeping fat storing hormones like insulin low throughout the week.  One day per week you allow yourself one all out cheat meal (this is especially important if you are training intensely in BJJ, doing cardio and weights, or both).  There are other modifications you should make when you are looking to shed fat, but I will save those for a later post.

By using an alternating diet you can confuse your metabolism and keep your sanity at the same time.  It is much easier to keep a diet where you know: you will have two days a week to have some carbs, and you'll get one cheat meal each week.  It is important to make all of your carbs throughout the week quality carbs, which mean low glycemic index.  On low carb days avoid all grains, limit fruit consumption, increase vegetable consumption, avoid tubers (potatoes), and increase your fat intake (omega-3s, poly and monounsaturated fats, and quality saturated fats from organic dairy, eggs, meat, or coconut oil).  On moderate carb days limit grains to one serving (whole grains only), increase fruit consumption slightly, keep vegetable intake the same, one serving of sweet potato is allowable as well.  On high carb days 2+ servings of grains, increase fruit intake, slightly decrease vegetable intake, sweet potatoes are acceptable, and decrease fat intake.  One meal per week is to all out eat what ever you want, eat as much as you can, this will keep you sane and keep your metabolism white hot.

Try to eat 6 meals a day minimum and never eat a carbohydrate by itself.  If you have bread, eat nuts or peanut butter with it, eating carbs with protein and fat slows digestion and lowers the GI, which decreases fat storage (due to decreased insulin response).  A good rule of thumb is to try to consume between 0.5-1 grams of protein per lb of body weight, but this of course varies due to activity level.

I could be much more specific about this, but I would have to create a tailor made program based off your specific needs and metabolism (instead I am giving you a rough guide to follow), just be aware that dietary modifications may need to be made based off: activity level, age, sex, weight, and personal goals.

Please feel free to comment with any questions below.  If you haven't liked Chasing the Dream on facebook yet please do so and help my page to grow!

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Why buy organic?

Organic foods have a ton of benefits to offer anyone interested in buying them.  There has a been a huge surge of interest in organic foods as documentaries like Food Inc. have shown the horrors of factory farming and some of the terrible conditions our foods are grown in.  Here are six quick reasons you should look to buy organic foods whenever possible.

1) Reduces toxic chemicals in the environment.  This is good for: water quality, soil quality, air quality, animals, and ultimately good for you and the foods you eat.

2) Better soil.  Since organic foods can't be grown in soils with artificial nutrients or fertilizers the soil is free from harmful chemicals and is more naturally full of nutrients.  Farmers must use sustainable farming practices to keep soil healthy, which leads to more nutritious food as well.

3) More humane for animals.  Animals raised on organic farms live much better lives than those raised on factory farms.  Factory farmed animals are:  raised in tight living quarters, often never see sunlight, fed hormones and antibiotics, and fed unnatural diets.

4) Free from GMOs.  While still controversial GMOs are genetically engineered foods that are produced in a laboratory by mad scientists.  Monsanto says that they are just as healthy and totally safe, but some independent studies have shown otherwise.  Since legislation to label GMO products was struck down, the only way to be sure you aren't eating franken fish or franken beans is to buy organic (GMOs are banned).

5) Supports sustainable agriculture and small farms.  Most organic foods come from small independent farms that respect nature and the earth.  By buying organic you help support the farmers that create food for people while giving back to the earth instead of destroying it.

6) Organics are healthier.  Not only do organics have higher nutrient values, but they are free from pesticides and other chemicals that harm your body and it's cells.  Plus as foods age they often lose nutrients.  Organic foods are usually sourced from local farms which makes food fresher too!

These are just some of the benefits of buying organic foods, I try to buy everything I eat organic.  Start buying organic today and start eating for a healthier earth, and a better you!

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How carbohydrates affect your body. Part 3- Glycemic Load

Glycemic load is the combination of two factors: a food's glycemic index, and a standardized portion of 100 grams.  What this means is glycemic load uses the glycemic index of a food along with the portion of carbs to create a more accurate measure of how a food will affect your blood sugar. Glycemic Load = GI x net carbs/100.  Since glucose is used as the standard these equations are divided by 100 to find glycemic load.

A GL of 20 or higher is considered high, 11-19 is considered medium, and 10 or less is considered low.  I do not actually take the time to measure out the glycemic load in every meal I eat, even when I am looking to lose weight, the point of this is to help you actually understand what effects the food you eat will produce so you can plan accordingly.

The main point of this article is so that you understand that a small portion of a high GI carbohydrate will produce a response equivalent to a medium or large serving of a low GI carbohydrate.  This is important for several reasons; when you are trying to lose weight no one likes to starve and its not productive to do so, if you understand that 1 cup of brown rice will have the same effect as 1/2 cup of white rice, you can eat more  and still maintain weight, or eat the same amount but with a lower GI food and lose weight.  The main reason this works is because of the hormone insulin I mentioned early.  Less insulin is produced with a lower GL food, which means less fat storage.  This is how you can eat the same amount or even more and still lose weight.

The basic idea is to take a look at the nutrition labels on your food and find out how many carbohydrates are present.  On the label it should list protein, fats, and carbohydrates, present in grams, in one serving of the food.  The best way to gauge how many carbohydrates are actually in a serving, is to find the total carbs and then subtract fiber, which will give you the net carbs present (the carbs that will actually affect blood sugar).  For example a food has 25 grams of carbohydrates in a serving with 9 grams of fiber, you subtract 9 from 25 to get 16 grams of total net (or impact) carbs.  If you already know that this is a low GI food then it would be an excellent choice for a carbohydrate source.  Without even thinking about it much at all you should be able to take a look at a label, look at sugar content and fiber content and tell if the carb source is a healthy one.  Labels that show a lot of sugar (5 or more grams) comparitive to total carbs is usually a bad choice, while a label that lists a high amount of fiber (2-10 grams) is usually a good choice.

Glycemic Load combats the main problems with Glycemic Index.  For instance, a carrot is actually a high glycemic food, however the amount of net carbs present in a serving of carrots are low so the glycemic load ends up being small as well.  If you would like an excellent resource to find glycemic loads along with nutrition data check out this site. http://nutritiondata.self.com  They have an extensive collection of foods with in depth nutrition data and they always show glycemic load as well.  Start out looking up the foods you eat, after a while you will have a good understanding of which foods have a favorable glycemic loads and can make better choices based off that knowledge.  Remember, if you are looking to lose or maintain weight, or lose extra fat always avoid processed and refined carbohydrates: white bread, white rice, white potatoes, sugars, sweets, and white pasta.

Avoid these for a smaller waist.

Now that you understand: what carbohydrates are, the types of carbohydrates, the glycemic index, glycemic load, and net carbs, I will show you how to put it all together in my next post to lose weight or build muscle.

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