Mike Fry and Dr John Berardi discuss the importance of sports nutrition for the grappler.

 
Mike Fry with the Brazillian Top Team
(In case you couldn’t tell, Mike’s the bald, pale guy standing up in the middle)

If you want to dominate your opponents, and to do it with a safe, effective approach to feeding yourself, The Grapplers Guide to Sports Nutrition is for you. Whether you’re a wrestler, grappler, boxer, or practice any other martial art, the prerequisites to sound nutritional habits are the same and must be learned. They then need to be applied consistently if you truly want to take your performance to the next level and beyond. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to speak with both the authors of the Grappler’s Guide to Sports Nutrition and learn a bit more about why and who they wrote this book for.

Maki R: Why was this book written?

Mike F & Dr John B: That’s a great question and the answer is simple. Grapplers have a long history of stupid nutritional practices. They’re sometimes better with their training (sometimes not, however). But when it comes to nutrition, grapplers are often worse than anorexic women.

As we’ve both worked with some of the top grapplers in the world (think UFC, Pride, and more), and have helped these athletes take their training and their nutrition games to the next level, we figured it was time to share this info with the grappling community.

Maki Riddington: What is the main underlying message you want to get across to readers?

Mike F & Dr John B: There’s a right way and a wrong way to eat for peak grappling performance – both during training and during competition.

Since there are so many athletes doing it the wrong way, they start to believe that what they’re doing “works for them.”

However, with the application of the principles of this book, some athletes are tearing their competitors apart. You’d be blown away by the list of top guys using the advice in the Grappler’s Guide.

So, in the end, there are guys who have started to do things the right way – and they’re becoming unstoppable because their competitors have been too slow in adopting the right practices.

Like we said, the Grappler’s Guide lays out the foundation of the right practices.

Maki Riddington: What are the main nutritional deficiencies in athletes today that
compromise performance?

Mike F & Dr John B: In addition to a host of vitamin and mineral deficiencies, usually energy is deficient in most grapplers.

When we say energy, we mean calories.

What happens when grapplers underfeed is that their metabolisms slow down, causing a reduction in their ability to recover from training and in their ability to accomplish the goal of hard training – a remodeling of the body.

Other deficiencies lead to smaller muscles, an excess storage of body fat, a reduced capacity for consuming oxygen, and a reduced energy production through glycolysis and the kreb’s cycle.

These are all fancy-sounding terms, we know. But the result, poor performance and poor health, isn’t fancy at all.

Maki Riddington: What 3 areas should a good nutrition program focus on for a grappler?