| Friend,
Okay, time to get serious about a topic that I've been known to joke about a lot.
That topic is weight gain among martial arts instructors. This email topic was prompted by a video that Stephan Kesting posted recently, where he talks about how martial artists get fat after being injured.
Well, you've probably heard me joke about "fat masters" in the past (as I did in this viral post from a few years ago), but this is a serious subject.
And the truth is, I'm hardly immune to this issue. Years ago when I was running my first studio (the one I talk about in Small Dojo, Big Profits), I had what I call a "cascade" of injuries.
In other words, I went through a period where one injury led to another, then another, and then another, all over about a one-year time period. It started when I had a routine surgery to repair an umbilical hernia. I didn't know anything about rehab back then, and jumped back into training way too soon.
That led to a knee injury, then a serious inversion sprain, then a repeat of those two injuries multiple times, requiring more surgeries and more rehab.
Those of you in the know can guess what happened next. I went from training 2-3 hours a day to sitting around waiting to heal. What I didn't realize at the time was that training hard was my main coping mechanism for stress.
And I had a lot of stress, both from running a successful school with a lot of moving parts (that was when I realized the importance of simplicity and systems) and due to some personal issues (the kind of stuff that happens to you as a child, that comes back to haunt you as an adult).
Add on to that the fact that I grew up not having a lot of food in the house (I'm one of the few people I know from the States who knows what it's like to go hungry). So, food represented comfort to me.
Combine lots of stress, a loss of my primary coping mechanism, little to no exercise, and comfort eating, and it's a really bad combination.
Needless to say, I gained A LOT of weight. Pretty soon I was one of those guys with a big huge gut who almost never worked out with their students, because I kept getting injured. But duh, it was because I was out of shape.
The tipping point for me though was when I saw a picture of myself that a student had taken. I was wearing a red uniform, and I looked like Santa Claus in that thing. It was freaking humiliating.
So, I went on a mission to clean my act up and lose that weight. That led to me dragging out my personal training texts (I have a degree in health and was a certified trainer, go figure) to study up on how to rehab injuries and build functional strength. I soon started teaching a weight loss boot camp and eating right, and got really into kettlebell strength training and other functional fitness methods.
Eventually I dropped the weight and got back in pretty decent shape. But it was tough, because the older you get the harder it is to drop those pounds.
I'm going through a similar experience now, but it's a bit different this time around. When I sold my kickboxing and boot camp studio a few years back, I decided I was going to eat whatever I wanted for the next year or so. However, I kept working out just as hard as always, and I noticed I was getting stronger and packing on muscle, so I kept it up.
Well, now I'm that muscular guy with a gut. No bueno. My wake up call this time around was ending up in the ER with chest pain. I went through a battery of tests over several weeks, including getting an MRI done of my heart.
Turns out it was a false alarm, and I have the heart of an 18-year-old (so they tell me). But it definitely made me reconsider my lifestyle choices over the last few years.
So what have I learned from all this? A few things...
1. You can't out-train a crappy diet. Unless you are among that very small percentage of the population who has an unusually high metabolism (think Bruce Lee) and you can eat whatever you want and still not gain weight, you need to eat right and avoid overeating if you want to stay in shape. This is especially true as you get older, because your hormone profile changes and your metabolism slows down.
2. You can be fit and not be "in shape." Yes, you can carry an extra 20 or 30 pounds and still be fit in the cardiovascular sense. You can also be fat and strong (just look at power lifters and NFL linemen for proof). However...
3. Carrying all that extra weight means you are not going to perform at an optimal level. My heart and lungs are working just fine and they're just as strong as ever. Yet, I still can't run as fast as I used to, I can't spar as hard or as long as I used to, and honestly when I'm doing ground work my gut makes it harder to breathe, especially when I have someone smashing me.
But why is that, if my heart and lungs are in great shape? Well, that extra 20 or 30 pounds is just sitting there using up oxygen and glucose and doing nothing to help my body perform. And that is making it harder for me to perform athletically. Let me tell you, it ain't fun being fat, and I don't recommend it at all.
4. Fat is an endocrine organ that keeps you fat. Fat releases hormones that basically increase appetite, increase fat storage, and decrease your body's ability to burn fat for energy. This has been proven in study after study. So, once you get fat your body tends to want to stay that way.
And, those same hormones contribute to the development of metabolic diseases like heart disease and diabetes. Plus, they increase systemic inflammation... and that increases your risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke. No matter what the media tries to tell you with all that "fat is beautiful" bullshit, being fat is NOT healthy.
5. People don't respect you as much when you're overweight. Look, if you're teaching martial arts classes and telling people in your marketing that martial arts is a great workout, and you're a fat-ass, due to something called "cognitive dissonance" (and common sense) people are going to look at you and laugh.
It doesn't matter if every one of your students is ripped to shreds; people are going to see you and call bullshit. Bottom line is that it's our job as instructors to set an example and look the part. And by being fat, you are making it much harder on yourself to attract and retain students.
Obviously, the moral of the story here is "don't get fat." But if you're already in that boat, then what's the solution?
I'll break it down for you on Monday, based on what I know from 20 years of training clients and losing the weight myself.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
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P.S. - It's fortunate that all that "good eating" I partook in didn't cause any hardening of the arteries or other cardiovascular damage over the last couple of years. It's likely that I just don't have the genetic make-up for developing heart disease, but the bottom line is that I was lucky to dodge that bullet. Consider all the martial artists you know of who have died of strokes or heart attacks in their 50's and 60's... this stuff is not something you want to play with.
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