1. Breakfast
   • Make a direct difference to your day every morning. According to the American Heart Association, a boiled egg is the best way to go. The AHA has also removed its previous limits on weekly egg consumption – as long as you diet your fine. An average egg only contains 1.5g of fat, and 72.5% of it all protein. Here’s the low down on the perfect Egg. Place the egg in a small pan and cover with at least 3cm (1 inch) of cold water. Add a pinch of salt and set at a high heat. When the water is just shy of boiling stir and set the time at three minutes for soft boiled, five minutes for a firm yolk and seven for a hard boiled egg. Now reduce the heat so the water is bubbling and stir again carefully. Done. Remove with a slot spoon and serve immediately.
   • Kitchen Craft White Porcelain Double Egg Cup – £3.50
2. Work Shade
   
   • Make sure your surrounded by colour/color.The Science Journal published a research article stating that certain colours improve your work productivity in different areas.  Seeing the colour red makes you more accurate and blue increases your creativity. Researchers at Columbia University, New York, tested 600 people and found that office workers shown red shades performed better on spell-check tests whereas the ones who ever given blue shades performed far superior in creativity.
3. Drink Smart
   • Drinking caffeine during the day is not a good idea. Whilst it can work wonders, it begins to be a problem once you start to drink it everyday. Your body becomes more tolerant and the stimulant causes less effect as an aid to concentration. Fill the void in your motivation by a sharp shot of glucose. Lancaster University has researched that a small dose of sugar can boost your memory by 50%. Sugar they say has had significant effects to memory long term boosts. They say it is linked with the spike in arousal and alertness associated with glucose consumption. Just 25g of the amount found in a standard bottle of isotonic drink can provide a positive full psychological effect in under five minutes. So your brain will be able to soak up more facts.
4. Listen Up
   
   • You might think you’ve heard it all before, but there is now a very sound reason for training to your own tunes. You can pump out 10% more weight. The right playlist can reduce anxiety and increase motivation and even make your kids more sharper.
   • Sennheiser OMX 80 Sport II – Sport Line – headphones ( over-the-ear )

Did you know that the CIA have been known to use mind focus tactics for their training schemes. An example you ask? Well, next time your lying in bed about to go to sleep, look around the room or try to focus on the light (now turned off), look at your light bulb for 5 seconds, really focus on it, think nothing but the bulb.. now close your eyes for 30 seconds or so and try to focus on that bulb and that image in your head – nothing else but that image. You will slowly see it disappear within the blackness of your inner eye – bring it back and try focusing in whilst still having your eyes closed. Keep doing this by opening for 5 seconds and continue to close and focus. Within a few weeks you will have some real raw focus skills and your mind will be stronger. Anyway.. to the interview..

We got to interview Michael Darbyshire – a fitness mind coach. Take a quick read and learn how you can change your perception of training through mind training. If you can conquer your mind whilst training you can switch off – training more than ever and without feeling or thinking tired. It’s like a legal and non-intoxicating stimulative.

Mind Over Matter

Sports Mind Coach Michael Darbyshire explains how Boxers and Martial Artists can put their grey matter to good use.

Can working on the mental side really make someone a better fighter?

Sure. If you feel weak, tired or negative in a fight, you won’t feel as good as if your confident and focused.  To give you an example I recently worked with a boxer and chatting to him he said “This fight is going to kill me, I’m not looking forward to it, I’m going to get beat up.”  His language was very negative.

I set about changing it by getting him to visualize that the fight would be easy and seeing himself out-boxing his opponent.  I also worked on making him feel powerful and focused.

The next day he fought his best fight ever, and stopped his toughest opponent ever in two rounds.

Peak performance is about three things, physical excellence, technical ability and mental focus – many athletes spend money on equipment or a coach to get an extra edge and think nothing of it.  But they often omit the mental side.  That’s a big mistake.

But there’s a perception that anyone seeing a mind coach must be mentally weak themselves?

There is but its changing.  It takes a very strong person to say, actually, I want to develop my mental toughness.  I’m good but I want to get even better.  I want to see if there are more techniques that I can tap into.

OK, so what sort of problems can a mind coach help with?

Three things.  First it can help with setting goals.  Second, it can help build up confidence levels: it might be someone’s first bout and they may be nervous.  So power states, breathing techniques etc will all improve performance.  And finally, it can help calm the internal dialogue we all get both before and during a bout or competition – the dialogue that says “I’m going to lose” and help turn it around.

Let’s deal with each of those in turn.  How can people improve their goal setting?

Lot’s of people have unclear goals.  They say, right, I’m going to be a Champion and they see it in there head and that’s it.  They have one chance to achieve their goals.  I encourage them to set many goals.  Flesh out their ambitions.  What other goals do you have?  Can you improve your preparation?  Your mental approach? Give yourself lots of small goals, not just one major one.

What about improving confidence?  Say a person wants to win a championship, but doesn’t believe they can do it?

There were lots of things I can do using relaxation, visualization and various nlp techniques.  Another thing you can do before a competition is to think of all the negative things that may happen.  Analyse them and ask yourself, is there any validity in your fears?  If there is, work on them in training, if there isn’t concentrate on the things you are good at.  Often I get them to make notes about the things they are good at to say it to themselves over and over to reinforce self-belief.

Does that sort of thing work?

Yes it does.  Its very powerful because it brings to the conscious level the things you like about yourself.  So when your going down a negative path you can stop it in its tracks.  With repeated practice your unconscious mind stops thinking negatively.

What about internal dialogue you get during a bout or competition? How can they turn it around?

Focus on being in the present.  Forget about what happened 30 seconds ago.  Perform each technique at a time.  So if you didn’t get a good start to a fight, get over it.  You still have to think strategically.  Relax don’t tie yourself in knots.  There is still a long way to go.

And if you have a loss?

Put it in context.  There are many reasons we may have off days, it could be family or relationship problems or something else.  Work on your mental toughness and preparation during your off-season.  And remember, there’s always another competition.

Sports Mind Coach Michael Darbyshire can be contacted on mail(at)michaeldarbyshire.com or by phone on +44 (0)7955 995 202 for more details on my work visit www.michaeldarbyshire.com

You can muscle up next year after all the holiday food with some of these simple tips. Before I mention them I wanted to let you know about some cardio boosters. Cardio boosters are a way to jump your energy levels and place your brain into thinking you can work out longer. I’ll give you an example: A cup of coffee or anything containing high levels of caffeine can reduce your brains perception on how hard you think you have trained. The high levels of caffeine (Note I have not mentioned Lucozade Sport with Caffeine Boost – I find it the worst taste and I can never finish it, the Lemon Plus one) act as stimulant that interferes with the part of your brain that is responsible for dealing with pain – The University of Illinois in the US say’s that the caffeine can give you this energy boost resulting in you training for longer without mentally and physically taking note. Another cardio booster is having a warm shower before your morning training sessions – not only because it’s like -100c outside (Manchester) – but having a hot shower gets your blood pumping to your muscles and priming them for action and doubling as an effective warm-up ahead of early-morning sessions, helping you avoid strains and tweaks. Take a read of our “4 steps to go from skinny to biggy”..

#1 Go easy on the cardio

I can tell you know that your six-pack will only come out of hiding when you have reduced your body fat down to around ten per cent, but this doesn’t mean you should spend hours pounding the pavement. In order to put muscle on you need to consume more calories than you burn, so that means keep your cardio sessions brief. Having short breaks between your weight sets will work your cardiovascular system and your muscles.

#2 Stick to complex moves

You need to keep to Isolation movement, such as biceps curls and calf raises. They are great for building up your muscular endurance. The fact is however is that these exercises won’t build mass in the same was as squats, deadlifts and bench presses do. These compound moves involve more than one muscle group which means they’ll shock shock your body, flooding it with good ol’ testosterone and leading to greater sizes gains – everywhere.

#3 Keeping sets short

Cranking out hundreds of reps will fatigue your muscles but it won’t make them grow back bigger. Stick to low-rep sets with heavy weights to overload the muscles, fatigue them faster and force them to grow stronger.

Someone told me (at the gym where I go) that they heard the more hardcore lifters mention that you should stick to low rep building – start on the shoulder press at 10kg and do 15 reps. Then go up the next weight, 15kg and do 15 reps, then go up to 20kg and do 15 reps – just keeping adding the weight on as you go on each rep and at each session.

#4 Eat up

The average man needs around 2,500 calories a day just to maintain his weight, so you should take on 500 more calories to put on muscle – naturally speaking this doesn’t mean eating more calorie-dense foods (junk food). You can get high quality protein from eggs, fish, nuts and lean meat, all of which make these the best source for muscle-building grub. You should aim for 1.6g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight every day – you should also take it an hour before you workout and 20 minutes after your workout.

Arm-Bar