I want to know if anyone in the forum has any particular food to eat before HDGD practise? The food that will give that strength and stamina. The food I meant is not vitamins but just ordinary food you eat. Anyone?

Well, I try not to eat anything within an hour or two before practice, so as to to ensure the good is fully digested, etc., but something light and healthy like a salad or yoghurt might be a good choice if you're feeling peckish. As for strength and stamina, I can only advise a balanced diet. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of food and health can suggest something more specific

Haidong,
Dean.

I'm a shinning example of what not to do. My teacher and I would ate a huge plate of dokpoki minutes before a class. Eesh... SSBG 9 was never so hard.

My and my freind stop and get Metrex Meal Replacement Bars about an hour and a half before class and a can of red bull energy drink right before class. The combination provides lots of protein, complex carbs, all the B and energy vitimins such as riboflavin, and niacin, as well as a bit of sugar and caffine to give us a little pick me up after the hour drive to the dojang. We dont get the combo Everytime we train, prolly about half the time when we are feeling down on energy or didn't have time to eat anything recently. It works very well giving both a short and long term energy boost that easily gets us through 2 classes and the rest of the evening.

Aside from that, i would recomend eating a small sandwich about 2 hours before class.

On a similar note, how do you folks approach hydration? How much and how often do you drink water etc before, during, and after a workout.

Well, i dont drink any less than half an hour before class, never during, and i drink between 20 and 32 ounces of water starting 15 minutes afterwards. I find that drinking right afterwards make me feel sick if it has been a strong class(I should add that i take both a Haidong Class and a Tang Soo Do class back to back and these hydration measurements take 2 back to back classes into effect).

I never drink before I train. It sloshes around and I can't seem to keep my balance. Maybe it's because I'm to conscious of the water and it messes me up.

After a work out, I'd chug a lot of water, and then again when I got home. I'm not very fond of sports drinks. Pure, ice cold water is my favorite way of cooling down. I usually have a bottle nearby. It's a habit I picked up in highschool during my fencing days.

(For those living in Korea, what the heck does "POCARI" mean? The stuff tastes like camel sweat.)

Don't tell me THAT'S what you've been drinking for hydration???!?!?!?!!!? No WONDER you'd get sick after class!! ( )

It is a Japanese sports drink, just like Powerade or Gatorade. It is called 'Pocari Sweat'. When I was in Korea, I didn't have any problem with the name. Now I think about it, it was not named very well. So didn't 'Human Water'

Human water [now called 2%] was a very funny, but short-lived name. The best part was that the can was tinted yellow...


It came out at the same time as Coffee Soda... another disastrous idea.

When people come to 2006 World Championship, I will buy everyone a round of 'Coolpis'.

You can lead a gumdo-in to coolpis, but you cannot make him drink...

ahhhh....Pokari Sweat...thank you, Charles, for that foul memory...ha!

As to food...I found that no matter what I ate, I left so utterly destroyed that I stopped worrying about it.

But, in high intensity exercise, your body's main feul source is carbohydrates (as opposed to low intensity where the main source is fat). What I don't know is at what point you should eat those carbohydrates. I think that the carbohydrates come out of stores in your body, not from what is currently sitting in your stomach. My tkd instructor always told us to eat lots of pasta the day before our tests... Diabetics actually have to pay attention to digestion rates of carbs to control their insulin, so if you want deeper information on that, there should be plenty of information about it available.

In general though, energy in exercise also has to do with your sleeping and resting (post-workout recovery) habits as well as your day-to-day diet. My feeling is that there's nothing you can eat that can supplant this.

When I used to fence, any physically demanding training had to be cut 1 full week before tournaments, especially the legs. There's an article in Grappling magazine that speaks about the reasons for this. It's mostly because people underestimate how long it takes for quadriceps to recover. It's the biggest muscle in your body, and therefore requires more time to heal.

Back on topic, has anyone tried Red Bull? I tried it once before class and I found I had trouble focusing. I dunno' why people go on and on about it. Has anyone else benefited from it?