Wednesday 1230 class at LFF and the secret to my success...

After a lovely short break away in sunnier climes with my lovely lady, it was back to business down at London Fight Factory, hitting the mats for the lunchtime class with Sharpey.

With John Kiely

It feels really great to be back on the mats, especially for us older mat rats, having any time away from training seriously impacts on cardio and endurance, your timing is way off the mark and every roll feels like hell.

I've been back training consistently for the last three weeks and I've weathered the initial storm of feeling like dying from just doing the warm up, getting my arse handed to me from the young fresh white belts, getting crushed from everyone else and am starting to get back into the groove once again.

The aches and pains after class are ever present, I think that's one of the hardest things to deal with when you get older; every morning feels like I've been run over by a truck and getting the socks on is a Herculean task.

Stretching is key, every single day, before during and after class, just stretch as much as you can; diet is also key here, you are what you eat, so aim to put the best fuel into your aging tanks and you'll save yourself a lot of grief.  Alcohol consumption has been knocked on the head and again this is another key area where you can really make inroads into feeling good every day, by not waking up with a foggy head, you've just got one more obstacle to deal with before you hit the mats.

As a Northerner, drinking is a big part of our DNA, but it's something that has to be dealt with, you can't keep on going at it like you did in your twenties and expect to shake if off as quickly as you used to do.

Before I went on holiday I'd stopped drinking for five weeks and I felt fantastic and I did indulge when I was away, but didn't go crazy and now I'm back training, I'm starting each class as fresh as I can be, injures nothwithstanding.

I was asked on Facebook what my secret was to losing all my weight (20K) and looking trim and the answers are in the text above; no Paleo diets, no intermittent fasting, no fads of any kind, just plain common sense.

Eat well, drink in moderation, train regular and look after your body, stretch every day without fail and have a foam roller close to hand; that's pretty much it to be honest, most people are looking for the Holy Grail when it comes to weight loss and training success, for me it's not rocket science and I've probably saved my wallet a good hiding as well.

So there you have it, some nuggets of advice from the Northern Monkey, hope you older grapplers take something from this article, would be great to hear your comments in the feedback section on here.

Oossss