Club Blog

The La Jolla Sports Club is honored to host one of the best if not the best Brazilian Jiu Jitsu trainer and fighter, Clark Gracie. Clark Gracie has been with our club many years now and teaches a range of beginner and advanced Jit Jitsu classes. He is a true talent, an amazing instructor, and famous as a photogenic athlete . Check out this short video on what it takes for Clark to exude greatness in this challenging sport.

By: Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D
Fitness Psychology San Diego

See those club members who look like they can’t make up their minds on the treadmill, recumbent bikes, elliptical machines, and other cardio equipment? Fast, slow, on the treadmill running as fast as they can, then jumping to the side and barely able to catch their breath before jumping back on. They aren’t confused. They are getting fitter, healthier and stronger often in half to one-third the time of typical endurance workouts.

They are also improving their insulin sensitivity, improving their cholesterol numbers, turbo-charging their fat metabolism, potentially eliminating diabetes type 2 and some forms of depression and hypertension, increasing their levels of human growth hormone and expanding aerobic capacity. Interval training trumps steady state uphill exhaustion when it comes to putting a smile on your face and reducing stress as well.  Not bad for someone who doesn’t seem to know if he/she wants to give it his/her all or coast for a bit.
Don’t let that up and down fool you. It’s intentional. If you haven’t tried High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT, what are you waiting for? A pill to swallow?

Maximum exertion followed by a brief rest period for 6-10 cycles, is the essence of HIIT.  Start with a comfortable 3-5 minute warm-up and then a series of 30-second sprints each followed by 90 seconds of recovery, and end with another 3-5 minute cool down.  Or adjust the incline while going at a steady pace, increasing the exertion peak and decreasing the recovery time as you become fitter. Some like the idea of sprinting for a couple of minutes and then doing a slower jog or walk for a minute, followed by 6-8 cycles. When it becomes too easy, sprint for four minutes and cool it for two minutes.  Go faster and longer with about a 50% reduction in your cool down time for each “peak.” Think approaching 95% of your max heart rate and peak VO2 Max.

Your VO2 Max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen you use during peak exertion, is a measure of your cardiovascular fitness.  HIIT boosts this measure increasing your ability to use oxygen more efficiently, allowing longer and more strenuous workouts before fatigue sets in.  Your metabolism continues to burn longer as well post-exercise, some say burning up to 15% more calories during the 24 hours following a HIIT session.

Of course, obese, deconditioned, injured folks, or those with hypertension or heart disease should check with exercise savvy physicians to be cleared for this type of elevated demand.

Think of HIIT as a dance, back and for the across the aerobic-anaerobic line, each time, catching your breath.  Probably won’t get you a trophy on “Dancing With the Stars,” but it sure will increase your health, fitness and happiness in a condensed time frame. You decide what’s more valuable.

Good read: Importance of Weight Training For Weight Loss

Our very own Jiu Jitsu instructor, Clark Gracie, has been recognized as one of the most photogenic individuals on the internet in 2013! Clark Gracie recently appeared on Good Morning America to discuss his newly found fame to claim!

There is a lot to celebrate at Clark Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy! Recently at the 2013 Pan American Championships, we had a number of our team members compete and they all did an amazing job!

Here are our team members who medaled!

Clark Gracie La Jolla
Clark Gracie – 1st Place
Mike Scott – 1st Place
Akim Assenine – 3rd Place
Ron Blake – 3rd Place
Brettao – 3rd Place

Clark Gracie Tijuana 
Agustin Rivera – 3rd Place
Jose Navarro - 3rd Place
Jose Robles – 3rd Place

The Pan American Championship is the second biggest Gi Tournament in the International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation.  The tournament took place in Irvine, CA from March 20th – 24th.

San Diego Fitness Psychology

By: Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D.

On March 16th, at 10:00 a.m., I’m giving a presentation on the psychology behind eating. No, don’t worry, if you know me at all, it won’t be filled with any nonsense psychobabble…well, mmm maybe just a tad bit. But it’ll be down to user-friendly earth.

For a taste of what I’ll be talking about—and I do hope you’ll join in, I thought I’d share some interesting and novel takes on weight management here. Simply put, research has shown that people who use the approach I’ll be describing in my presentation, along with lifestyle change, lose more weight than those who only make changes in their daily habits. The link is what you think.

Typically, folks who want to lose weight have negative views of themselves, are self-conscious and perhaps even embarrassed to be around others who are trimmer, toner and more “in-shape.” Self-esteem and self-confidence trip these people up since they erroneously believe that the ONLY way to increase self-worth is to lose weight. Of course, becoming healthier is a key factor in motivation to reaching a normal weight goal, along with wanting to be more active and maybe even seeing their grandchildren grow up.

Identifying and modifying thinking patterns and negative mood states that undermine healthy eating approaches is a critical factor in understanding successful weight loss. Cognitive behavioral coaching for weight loss helps you to identify your unhelpful patterns of thinking that are maintaining your current weight problems. Thinking patterns tend to be over-learned and occur almost “automatically” – they just pop into your head without you noticing. This is because they are so familiar that you don’t even recognize they are there – it’s like you’ve tuned out the ‘background noise’ of your thoughts. The first step learning how to ‘tune in’ and recognize your patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving in relation to weight.

Otherwise, your self-esteem, body image, stress that affects problem-solving, social anxiety and other similar issues will continuously get in your way of successful weight loss regardless of the diet and exercise program you adhere to—if you do adhere to one.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you think what are called, “sabotaging thoughts” about exercise. “If I don’t have enough time for a long workout, it’s not worth doing.” Unless you catch that erroneous thought and have a ready more accurate response in your head, you are likely to avoid exercise that day. Thus, “ANY amount of time spent exercising is better than no amount of time. It’s important to sometimes work out for smaller amounts of time so that I prove to myself that exercising doesn’t have to be ALL or NOTHING, it’s somewhere in the middle.”

When it comes to the overall success of your weight loss, you might have a sabotaging thought, “Well, I did lose a bit of weight this week but I’m really upset and disappointed that it wasn’t more.” Instead, a rational counter would be, “C’mon, real life weight loss has nothing to do with being the “biggest loser.” Losing a half pound or up to two pounds a week is the normal range. While I WISH and would PREFER to lose more, every pound I lose is a victory and adds up to serious weight loss.”

What about dealing with a craving? The sabotaging thought might be, “I need to eat to make this craving go away—it won’t go away any other way.” The rational response is, “Cravings are just like an itch. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. It’s just a craving and when I distract myself from it, it’ll start to go away.”
How about this familiar one? The sabotaging thought is, “Since I didn’t lose any weight this week, I’m a failure and this is not working. I give up. The rational response is, “Hey, nothing is perfect, and it’s absolutely normal to not lose any weight some weeks. I need to stay at it and I will succeed.”

While exercise is important, what, when and how you eat are most important. Some say the balance is 70% diet and 30% exercise. But it’s all based on 100% in your mind. You need to learn to create healthy responses to those sabotaging thoughts, choose a healthy diet plan, get involved in proper exercise with a trainer ideally, give yourself lots of credit, eat slowly and mindfully, consider getting a diet/health coach, arrange your environment, make time for proper nutrition preparation, differentiate between hunger, desire and cravings, practice hunger tolerance, monitor your eating, prevent unplanned eating, and stop fooling yourself.

The link is what you think…even more than simply dieting and exercising. Remember that DIEt has the word “die” in it.