Barbell Shrugged - Nutrition For Jiu-Jitsu w/ Alex Maclin, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane #855

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

In this episode, OG Barbell Shrugged crew member Alex Maclin joins Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to talk nutrition for jiu-jitsu, combat sports, and high-performance training. Alex shares his evolution from overweight beginner to Olympic weightlifter, nutrition coach, and four-stripe brown belt, explaining how his personal nutrition shifted from fat loss to strength, aesthetics, and now athletic performance and recovery. The crew breaks down practical fueling strategies for grapplers, including why total calories come first, why carbohydrates are king for high-intensity scrambles, and how protein, hydration, sodium, and nutrient timing all affect recovery and performance. Alex explains how to eat before training, what to use during longer or hotter sessions, why tournament-day nutrition must account for adrenaline and digestion, and how caffeine can help or hurt depending on arousal. Whether you train jiu-jitsu, CrossFit, weightlifting, or just want to perform better, this episode gives you a simple framework for eating like an athlete. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family. Doug Larsen here. And this week on Barbell Shrug, we've got OG Shrug crew member. My man, Alex Macklin, back on the show. He's a nutrition coach, a four-stripe brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It's a close personal friend of mine. Used to be a part of Shrug for many years, probably from 2013 to 17, back when we were kind of in Shrug 1.0, and he ran operations for us. He did a lot of coaching.

He even hosted the show for a period of time, so no stranger to Barbell Strugged. and he has since gone on and started his own nutrition coaching business, which he's been running for about a decade now. I've watched him essentially go from a complete beginner back in 2009 or 10 or so when I first met him to a competitive weightlifter and now a high-level jujitsu athlete. He just won American nationals. He competes regularly. He's actually in Japan as we speak competing out there.

So an awesome dude, very knowledgeable, a great competitor and just, of course, a good friend of mine. So I loved having him on the show and enjoy talking. into them. We get into all the basics. Nutrition for Jiu-Situ, why calories of the foundation, how carbs fuel your training, how much protein you actually need to be recovered and build muscle mass, what to eat before, during and after training, as well as all these subtle differences that you need to know on the day of competition. So if you want to train Jiu-Jitsu or you compete in a weight class sport, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Doug Larsen here with Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane. And my man, Alex

Macklin. For people that don't know Alex, Alex was an enormous part of shrug. I'll call it shrug 1.0. The OG shrugged crew from 2012-ish to 2016-ish or so, those first few years, Travis, or Alex was the enormous part of that crew. And you even hosted the show for a period of time as well. It's about a decade ago now. And you've been doing a lot of nutrition coaching in Jiu-Jitsu since then.

Back then, you were competing primarily in weightlifting. and you're a big part of the gym that we are at as well. Met you in Memphis and, you know, a great friend of mine and now an excellent jiu-jitsu competitor as well. You're a four-stripe brown belt, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, man. Yeah. Knocking on the door being a black belt.

That's right, man. Don't F with him. That's right. So for people that don't know Alex, that was a short intro from me. Alex, you know, tell the people who you are and what you've been working on lately. Yeah, no, man. I'm OG shrugged. yeah and uh no i i i uh i live out here in in southern californ i live out here in san diego um and i run my own

nutrition coaching business i've been doing that who probably since 2017 2017 2016 almost eight years or so so um yeah no it's been going really well and uh moved out here a few years ago and like Doug was saying like, you know, I got super into Jiu-Jitsu. So this has been a really good place for me to like improve my Jiu-Jitsu and then start working more with Jiu-Jitsu athletes. So it's just been really helping Jiu-Jitsu athletes perform and fuel themselves better for Jiu-Jitsu competition or Jiu-Jitsu training. Yes. Yeah, I'd imagine on the nutrition side at all, it all really started with you doing nutrition for yourself, of course, like competing a weight, a weight class sport and then moving on to another weight class sport.

How is your nutrition focus for yourself changed over the last, you know, decade or more? I eat a lot more. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, when I, when I, um, a lot of people don't know, like when I first started training CrossFit back in CrossFit Memphis, Faction Strength and Conditioning Days, I was really overweight. So I was, I was probably pushing like 200 pounds and, you know, not a good 200 pounds.

like it was more like a flabby 200 pounds like um and uh so i you know obviously like back in the old days like we did a lot of paleo and stuff like that but a lot of my nutrition was focused on more so like weight loss fat loss um trying to be you know smaller to lose weight to be to get healthier um and then over time like as i got into like olympic weight lifting my focus shifted to just being you know i wanted to be strong want to be able to like compete in Olympic weightlifting. And then when I started to transition out of Olympic weightlifting, I have this muscle mass that I built up, but I got a little, I wanted to like look like I, like I trained. So I got really into the more aesthetic focus, like trying to get shredded and

stuff. But now, but now, you know, I, because I train and compete in jujitsu, a lot of it is more so focused on athletic performance recovery. You know, I train. train multiple times a day, compete, you know, regularly. So, you know, that's where my main focus is now. So I gear more of my nutrition towards athletic performance and recovery. How up to you compete? I see you competing all the time. I usually try, I try to compete at least once a month.

Yeah, which is pretty often. Some people compete more, but it's kind of expensive. So, and I don't have a sponsorship, I'm not professional athlete. I'm a master's guy. So, but, yeah, I try to go once a month. Tell me about like at a competition. Like what, like how many times do you normally have to roll with somebody in a typical competition? And like how long, like where are the rounds?

I'm just curious for energy, you know. Yeah. So it depends. It depends on the tournament. If I'm doing an IBJF, it's a single elimination tournament. So you might only have one match. you know and you might be one and done or you might have several matches i think the most that i've ever had was four um and the matches for masters two which is uh their age groups right so we have

age brackets um master two is i think 36 and above uh 36 to like 40 um yeah and everything above master two is five minutes so master one is six minutes master two is five minutes now if you're an adult competitor, those have different time frames. Like Blackbell is like 10 minutes. Got, yeah. Yeah. That's a long as 10 minutes.

Oh, that's, yeah. I mean, again, it just depends on, so for example, at Black Belt, like 10 minute match,

they're not, they're not going, balls out for 10 minutes. It's a, you can watch a match if you guys watch a jujitsu black belt match. It's a very paced, uh, tempo like it has to be yeah they they're not going 10 minutes like balls out yeah nobody

nobody anybody could do that like they're playing chess and white they're playing chess oh man white belts is just chaotic yeah watching two mongooses go for it you know and just somebody gets the position and also like in in recent years like some of the like high level matches have gotten much longer there's 30 minute matches now and so now there this isn't strength conditioning but this is more jihitsu talk but um now this there's this new concept that has really emerged in the last five or 10 years called camping, where like you're strategically trying to find positions where you're not expending very much energy and you're in a position of control, but the other guy is expending lots of energy and you're

supposed to just hang out there. Yeah, with the intention of just wearing the other guy out, that way, you know, 10, 15, 20, 25 minutes into the match, like there's a huge differential in the amount of energy that has been expended. And then now you're now it's not apples to apples anymore. Like if you were kind of at the same level, that guy's way more fatigued. And then now you can hopefully get them in a position to actually submit them. Yeah.

If you're fighting Mike Tyson, you would want to wear him down for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Cycle sports. All the same time here.

Yo, cycling back real quick to the intro Alex gave. You are, you are one of the biggest kind of success stories slash like like people that I've been up close and personal with that has gone from a person who has not. been into training and didn't know fitness nutrition you know you said yourself like you're kind of like overweight you're like 200 pounds when you first started training like i met Alex out of bar like on a Friday night late on a Friday night we're we're both drinking and hanging out and i was like you should come you should come train to my gym in the morning and then Alex showed up early the next morning trained and you know was not oh yeah it was I'm i'm like walking outside and seeing him just like looking pretty rough the next day probably hung over and but at the same time he was like this

this is like what I need to do and like fucking yeah like just 100% full speed in in the fitness strength conditioning direction for the next you know 15 16 17 years yeah and now you know lean shredded super knowledgeable and and and damn near a black belt and jiu jitsu so many years later so it's been very cool to see man and and as your friend i'm i'm fucking super proud of you he's he's working with some of my best athletes even hunter even when hunter elam was their absolute best Alex was her main nutrition coach now remember her saying thorough he was it was like it was like so thorough more than anybody else that ever worked with her so yeah yeah yeah yeah it's been a long journey man it's been it's kind of crazy

yeah yeah it's been watching what you evolve you know personally i'm a guy who coached you too by the way yeah yeah yeah like we're just reminiscing about when he did the american open and we we did the american open and we videoed the whole thing and like oh yeah it was super cool to get you ready get you qualified yeah yeah man the strong as I ever got the strong as I ever got was working with Travis man I got so strong I still I still have that strength left over um when I first started jujitsu man people always were common and like damn dude you're strong as fuck it's like didn't have any technique but but but uh but you're strong had that strength man had that strength sorry Mike go ahead what we're going to no man it's all good

So obviously, and that's the unfortunate, I haven't obviously had a chance to meet you and work with you like these gentlemen have. When you say 200 pounds is overweight, I mean, I'm trying not to take that personal since I'm still over 200 pounds. So how tall are you in like, I mean, yeah, man, I'm like 5'8 on a tall day. So I'm not a big, I'm not a big guy. But yeah, so I was about 200 pounds. And then right now I compete at lightweight. So I fight at 168 with the Gion. So I walk around like 165, 164.

A quick break in the action here to let you know that I've just recently chosen to get back into coaching. And I specifically am looking to coach Masters Jiu-Jitsu athletes just like myself. I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for 22 years and strength and conditioning for 30 years. I'm a black belt, of course. And I live that life. I understand exactly what goes into it. I understand what's like to run a family, do Jiu-Jitsu, try to tie strength and conditioning into it all. all of the ups and downs that come with it from,

from joint pain to busy schedules, to travel, and all the things. So if you are a master's jujitsu athlete and you're looking for some support, I'm happy to give it. You can DM me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson, or you can email me, Doug at barbell shrug.com. Happy to help. Back to the show. Whenever Travis brought up that you were a super meticulous on the diet,

like what were the things that you were having to do with that athlete that was kind of going above and beyond of, you know, because I thought we just do different amounts of broccoli, rice and chicken. Yeah. And then we're done. We can just eat anything else. Yeah. Oh, man.

I've got oatmeal. Sorry. No, man, I take, I've always, I've always been a, taking a very detailed approach to, like, an individualized approach to, to athletes. I mean, of course, like, you know, it just depends on the athlete and what their goals are and where they're at and what they need. But, you know, if we're having somebody like, you know, they're looking at trying to optimize their recovery, then we need to be looking at not just macro nutrient split, but we need to be looking at things like, you know, nutrient timing. We need to look at food selection. We need to look at now, especially with jujitsu athletes, like hydration is really important. So, you know, just getting more into the, the specifics of not just, hey, here's your calories, here's protein carbs and fats, but like how do we actually get that done? And then how do we equate that to what you're doing

from a, from a training perspective? And let me preface it by saying, too, like Hunter is the most meticulous athlete I've ever coached as well. Yeah, she was. Let me tell you this girl with the help of Alex. You know, back then, people would come to me all the time. I want to make it to 10. USA I want to do this and I was you know you hear it so many times I roll my eyes I'm like sure you do but this girl moved from Oklahoma on a win moved to here in North Carolina said hey I want to make team USA one year later made that shit and like in like in the most fabulous fashions like opened up with her the bit the biggest clean jerk of her life and hit that shit after

missing the last two warmups in the back badly like getting spit out like food like a like a paper wide or something and but this girl and like one more thing I want to mention so you'll understand how good Alex is is like her teammates once came to me mad at her because she wouldn't want to go she didn't want to go to a birthday party where they were going to be drinking and eating cake where she was cutting and getting ready for the world championships and they thought I was going to have their side and they're they're all yelling at me and yelling about Hunter and I brought them out to the gym and there's this big thing on the wall or said, Matthew of the mundane, and I list all the things it takes to be that person.

And I'm like, I'm wondering which of you, you know, like really portrays that more than anyone. And they all put their head down. And they knew at that moment that it was Hunter. And everything they were saying was the opposite of that. You know, and so, and that Alex, it's for Hunter to say how intent Alex is, says worlds about him as a human and as a coach, about how dialed in he was with her. And a big part of the reason why she went from didn't even do weightlifting to team you were saying one year.

You know how unheard of that is? The world of weightlifting was turned upside down by her. So she killed it. She's locked in. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. There's the story of the day.

It's my favorite story of all time too. Yeah. Part of the reason I want to bring you on today is like you're, you're very analytical and you are very good with numbers. And we just did an episode, me, Mike and Travis last week where we talked about training for physique and aesthetics, et cetera. But we didn't really like drop a lot of numbers on people. So I wanted to bring you on here today to actually talk numbers, like starting with the obvious of macros and nutrient timing, number of meals per day and all that type of stuff. You walk us through how you think about nutrition from like a quantitative perspective.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So first, I think the biggest thing that at least for, are we talking about like, more so performance athletes or let's let's focus on jiu-tsin for the moment okay keep it right right the center of the bulls out here yeah so i think the biggest thing uh that a lot of performance athletes don't really realize is that they've got to get enough calories i talked about this on on other podcast before but um calories is going to be the baseline main important thing obviously macros

make up calories but if we're not getting enough total amount of of calories of energy intake balancing our energy intake with our energy expenditure. We're going to be in an energy debt, which means that, okay, yeah, I mean, there's sometimes where we want to do that if we're trying to, you know, cut weight or lose body fat, but if we're talking about optimal performance, we need to be matching our intake with our output. So always looking at the calories first and then breaking that down, you know, into the protein carbs and fats, right? I mean, there's all sorts of calculators and things like that.

These are all estimates that you can use, you know, equations, Harris Benedict, all that kind of stuff. But really, I think the key thing about any kind of starting off like calories is we need to figure out what your activity level is, what your energy expenditure is, what your training looks like. And we can make a best guesstimate, but we have to utilize the data of you cracking your, your calories and seeing, okay, hey, what's our response like? What's our energy levels like? What's our recovery like? What's our weight doing? Things like that.

And then once we have those calories figured out, I mean, obviously we can break that down into the macros, but that's really the main thing. And if we're not recovering, if we don't have enough energy, we ain't eat enough food, right? That's why the communication comes in. You know, like, are you responding like we thought? Because like you said, it's just a guess. It's a, now, of course, okay, so I guess we can break it down into further into macronutrients, right?

So protein, carbs and fats. Protein, I think a lot of people, especially athletes, just people in general. Protein intake is like the most important one. It's the one that most people focus on. And the most, the most, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the research is going to give you a range, right? I think like currently like at a minimum, it's like 0.73 grams per pound at a minimum to up to 1.2 typically you'll see that kind of range. So for athletes, I generally put people in that range and it just depends on, and this is

where the coaching aspect has to come into play because it really depends on the person. For example, if I have a leaner individual, I might put them more closer to the higher end of that protein spectrum because they have more lean tissue. They're trying to maintain that lean tissue. They maybe also be more active, so they need to have maybe a little bit more protein in their diet to help recover from the training that they're doing. Someone who is maybe a little bit more, they have a higher fat percentage, might have them on the lower end. or maybe they just have trouble eating protein. Some people, you have to take that to account. Some people just struggle with certain aspects of their diet.

And of course, we can try to help them get to the optimal, that ideal, but kind of got to meet people where they're at. So it just really depends on them, but there is a very wide range for protein intake. What I find with that protein amount for the individuals is really, it's also kind of like, how's your soreness and how's your recovery? Sure. And then you get the folks where you think you're ballparking enough, but you jump up that protein by another 20, 30 grams. And they're like, yeah, I don't feel wrecked anymore.

Yeah. And it's not really a caloric surplus. It's just making sure they got the brick and mortar to make the repairs. I want to jump. I'm going to go backwards for just a second because you threw out the whole calorie estimate thing. And I think too many people think all of these equations are perfect. And then they run the, you know, they run the equations. They run it all for the week.

And they're like, but I gain weight. It's like, yep. Some people run hot. Some people run cold. like how much of that flux do you find with some of your clients? Oh yeah, I mean, for sure. That's the thing. Like with any nutrition prescription,

so if we just start out, if I have a brand new, if I have a brand new client day one, I'm going to give them, uh, you know, almost like a hypothesis. It's a best guesstimate.

And we have to run, we have to run the test, right? We have to take it a very run the scientific method pretty much, right? So, um, you know, some people,

And also, too, you have to think about adherence is a big factor. So, you know, like someone like, okay, for example, we go back to like Hunter, who was super serious athlete, locked in and really cared about her result, had this big goal that she was working towards. Okay, she's going to approach it a little bit differently than maybe somebody who's just like, well, you know, I just kind of want to lose 10 pounds or, oh, I'm thinking. about doing it. They're not really super serious. Or maybe they just got a lot of stuff going on their life. They're not a full-time athlete and they've got other obligations. So adherence is a big factor. You know, they may be great, you know, Monday through Thursday and then, you know, Friday hits and, you know, they're doing something else. And that, we see that. But coach, I did nine to five Monday through Friday. My diet was perfect. It worked like a full-time

job. And you absolutely blew it on the weekend. Absolutely. I don't think and again too like experience levels like some people don't have experience with nutrition or tracking their calories and they just they just either do it they don't do it correctly or they don't even realize that they're doing it incorrectly like they may they're like wait a minute what do you mean this salad dressing I can't just like pour on myself like you just poured like 400 calories on your salad brother like you didn't even realize it instead of weighing it measuring it out you just eyeballed it and you just eyeballed it and. you that's not something you want to eyeball and they just don't know yeah they don't know they don't know that's the place off crushed you bro crush you oh yeah it's good it's delicious for a reason man yeah yeah yeah so you know calories calories are always going to be a starting point but you know you have to look at what's actually happening and how somebody is responding and then we can adjust based on um you know their goal you know if they have a goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. They got to lose a pound a week. And we could see that.

If we're not losing that rate, then I don't care what the numbers say on paper. They're not, that's not it. It's not a deficit. And we have to either change calories or change energy expenditure or, yeah, however we need to do that. Or tell the person to tell the truth. Again, they may not even know. Yeah, exactly. What about using protein for weight law? You know, like some people will any actually the first person who brought to my attention of how much it might help with like you know hunger like yeah satiating in nature so like um have you have you ever you know prescribed more protein to someone who was struggling to lose weight to help them with hunger yeah i mean you can you can adjust obviously we can adjust like i said it's a big range

um the problem the problem with uh if we're talking about performance athletes like if you're talking about jujitsu or anybody who does anything like at a high level and high intensity when you we're always going to be limited by calories which means you know at there is a certain point where if we exceed caloric intake um over expenditure we're going to start gaining weight and if we're in a weight class sport that cannot be a great thing if we're close to competition so if you start to uh eat more protein in your diet you know for whatever reason, say tiety or whatever, you are now going to have to reduce your carb and fat intake. It has to.

So what do you choose from? Well, okay, yeah, you can reduce your fat intake and try to keep your carbs as high as possible. But maybe you still realistically cannot keep your carbs maybe where they need to be in order to fuel the training that you're doing. You know, if you're doing high intensity and jiu-jitsu stuff, like, man, like you got to have carbs. and and and uh or at least helps and if you're shorting yourself there then you might be shorting yourself in terms of your ability to perform where where do the energy comes from carbs or fat when it comes to jiu jitsu because like if you do what doug said that what do you call that the whole where you're like chilling for a long camping like yeah so if you're doing that like fats would be important

as well but like yeah i mean you're gonna use it's it's it's a it's a unique sport where you have all the energy systems represented. So it's kind of like CrossFit, you know, where you have explosive movements, right? Like if you go down and try to take somebody down with a double leg, like that's an explosive movement. Or you try to pick them up and throw them, like do a judo throw. It's an explosive movement. You have scrambles, which can last, oh, God, man. If you're in a high-level jiu-jitsu match, I've seen scrambles last like 15 seconds, man, 15, 20 seconds.

And we're talking, this is 100%. Like you're vying for a position. And if you give up, you lose that match. And they're not willing to do that. So those are incredibly anaerobic and gas you out hard. And then you have like the situation where you have the aerobic capacity. Because like Doug was saying, some matches, man, nowadays, they're going like 20 minutes. You know, again, Blackbell at adult, it's a 10 minute match.

And so we're talking sustained effort for 10 minutes. It may not be always at red line level, but we're at a baseline and we're still moving. You can't give up. Like you're going to get submitted. So you're still fighting. And like Doug was saying, if you're in an inferior position,

like maybe you're on the bottom and you're getting smashed, if you don't, you're carrying their weight. That is a very difficult thing. Your whole body is carrying another human's weight. You don't know what that feels like. you felt it and it is and it is exhausting. So yeah. And you may be burning some amounts of fat during your matches or or even more likely during

like a two hour long practice. But, but I'd also say that you're like, you're likely not limited by the amount of fat that you had in your diet on that particular day or that particular morning or that particular week. Like when I was cutting weight for MMA, I said on the last show. Like I would cut down to 170 way and then and then in between my MMA five, so I was competing weightlifting. I'd go back up and compete over 200 pounds.

and weightlifting. So I had these big fluctuations. When I was making my bit my big cuts to make weight for MMA, you know, for the for the week or two leading up to the fight for I was doing like that last cut. It was it was very low fat, extremely low fat. I would have have some amount of protein for sure, but it was it was carbohydrates around my training, you know, like right before and during training and that was about all the all the carbs I took in. It was like a little bit of protein and some like almost no calorie vegetables just have something in my stomach but yeah fat fat in that case was not a concern for short-term

performance and short-term hitting weight long-term you want to have fat in your diet for general health and there's many other reasons to have it in your in your diet long-term if you want to be lean long-term with and not being a in a weight class sport then having a lower carb a higher fat diet to to moderate your calories where your your carbs are low instead of your fat like over the long-term could be a great strategy the pros and cons of that too but as far as short-term performance and short-term just hitting weight and also having enough calories in particular enough carbs to perform well in a high

intensity of sport like crossfoot or jiu-jitsu. Fath's really not a concern in the short term. So much. Yeah. Abohydides are much more important. Carbohydrates definitely the king in terms of jiu-jitsu and a lot of jih Tjitsu guys are so afraid of carbohydrates or jih Tjitsu people in general. Really? Why?

To get those folks that go, well, demonization because carbs are bad and. Yeah. I mean, it's just from the, yeah, the fitzbo, the, yeah, the fitness. It's like carbs are bad, you know, we should go keto, carnivore or whatever, and carbs make you fat. And that's not, that's not crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting.

Yeah. Well, eating too much anything for the most part, except, you know, we can talk about some of the protein overeating studies, but it's harder. But it's that the center to energy systems. Like that's your anaerobic glycolytic and your aerobic glycolytic and both are grounded in jujitsu. Yeah. And so, like, it's hilarious. because go figure the people are like, oh man, I'm keto. I never do carbs.

I'm a power littered. Like, yeah, dude, you live in beta oxidation and then you do something for five seconds and you never live in that in between. Yeah. Yeah. You live in that in between. Yeah. Harbs are going to come at you real hard. The scramble sounds like you better be having your carbs.

Yeah. No, Doug knows, Doug knows, man. Like the scrambles, man, they are, they will gas you out. And I mean, that's, yeah. So if you had to choose a split, like, you know, 30, 60, 30, 30, 30. What would you say when it comes to protein carbs fat? Like where would you split your macros? You talk about like percentage of calories?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean the general like 40% 30, 30 is pretty good for just, you know, you're just a general, maybe I would say like a hobbyist. Like you're not really maybe competing or training at a high volume. What about for you? For me, for someone like me who competes or who trains multiple times a day, I'm currently, I'm pushing my carbohydrates almost like 50, 55% a day, sometimes more, depending on the day. Sometimes I just have like really super high carb days.

Like, and I, because I just, again, I can feel it too. Yeah. When I'm starting to get like really fatigued and not able to, um, kind of tap into that gear on the mat. And, you know, I'll bump my carbs up even more. So, like maybe even 60% of my diet. And so the protein's going to be like around 30 or so? Try to keep, I try to keep the protein around the same. I actually, this is, and again, this is where you have to look at individual because,

okay, I weigh 165 pounds. Okay, everybody's like, ah, you should do like one gram per pound. I probably sit more closer to like 140 so that I can have more carbohydrates. Yeah, because again, I'm limited by calories. And my fats are not usually that high, usually somewhere around like the 80, 80 gram range. So I really push cards. I mean, there's been days where I've hit like 500 grams of carbs, like very easily. Wow.

Yeah. So it's just the simple reality of I like thinking it for me as kind of like, here's your floors, your floor of protein intake, your floor of fat, sorry, much smaller, floor of carbohydrate. And then you have a certain amount of discretionary because then you got the folks that yeah they love carbs they love fat so they love protein and they had that type of room but when you're thinking about fueling the athletes that are doing multiple sessions a day you know how do you like to have them like is there do you have a preferred strategy for like pre peri post workout carbs like what do you find is the thing that you know is the general works for

everybody and or kind of like but given there's always individual cases yeah for sure So if we're talking from a general standpoint, like, we'll start with like the pre-workout, right? Typically, we want to get carbs and protein before we train. Again, we're talking about getting protein throughout the day just to make sure that we're, you know, maintaining muscle, you know, 20 to 30 grams a meal. We can do more, but generally that's, I think that's like kind of our, for terms of muscle protein synthesis. that's kind of our like, yeah. So, but carbs, but carbs, again, I'll say this, your pre-workout nutrition is not going to save you if you are consistently under fueling and under-eating on a regular basis. Again, I go back to the calories because this is so important.

And if we are not eating enough calories, just getting enough energy on a daily basis, yeah, okay, getting pre-workout carbs and food can help you for sure, but it will not make up the difference between, hey, like we're adequately fueled and we're getting pre-workout versus we're undercutting. So generally, I would say, and again, it depends. but anywhere from one to three hours before you train, you want to get a meal with some protein, like 20 to 30 grams or so, and then carbohydrates. I like a kind of a two to one ratio.

So let's just say we did like 25 grams of protein. I would do like 50 grams worth of carbs. Yeah. You can do, you know, maybe three, but some people prior to training don't really handle a lot of food in their stomach very well. If that is a person that you, like if you're like that, I would give yourself more time. Again, the closer you are to training, we also need to look at the type of food that you're eating and ingesting.

So, for example, like if you're three hours out, yeah, sure, you can have some like whole grains and, you know, maybe like a piece of lean protein. But if you're like an hour out from training, good luck. Like you don't want that, that something, you want something very, like, quick and easily digestible, maybe like a, maybe something like a protein shake or even something faster than that, like, like, um, like an applesauce, like a squeeze pack. Um, man, I know people are probably going to scoff at this, but I am a big fan of rice crispy treats. Uh, I will smash them before. Because usually I train, I train at like 6 a.m. or sometimes like 7.30, wake up. I don't really have a whole lot of time. that I want to wake up beforehand. So I just have like something like Rice Krispy Treat and Protein shake and a couple of Rice Krisp Street protein shake and I'm out the door.

You know, and I think a thing that a lot of folks don't think about with the carbohydrate thing is one, you have the person that's like smashing a Gatorade where they're walking at two miles an hour on a treadmill and it's like, who cares? Like you're not going to matter what matters. Yeah. But if you're going to get folded up,

you got to worry about taking a shot to the abdomen. You don't want anything heavy in that butt in the first place. And you want something that's going to clear quick. Like, my, my peri workout choice is gummy bears. Gummy bears.

If I want to make sure nobody touches it, black licorice. You can put that bag next to your workout bag. Aerial killer. I'm one of the weirdos that I like that stuff. So like, but it's a simple carbon. Yeah,

the rice crispy treats is, I'm, no. It's so funny how they're like, wait, you're not doing asaia berry. with some organic bluebells. I love Osahee. I love that's Aisuboles.

But like, yeah, those go bad. Yeah. You can go buy a box of Rice Krispie individual treats and toss one of your bag at 6 a.m. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, keep it simple. Keep it things that you know that your body can digest very well.

You know, again, and this goes for if we're competing as well, like you don't want to, you don't want to do anything that, you know, you know that you're not going to do well with. And so, yeah, pre-workout, you know, mostly carbs and protein, very minimal fat. Try to keep it low fiber if you're very close to training. During, it really just depends on how long you're training. If you're doing like a standard class, like an hour, I would probably say you don't really need anything. But obviously, if it's more intense, like if it's a competition style class or it's very hot, Again, if we're exerting ourselves a lot more, then hydration is going to be key.

Electrolites, I sweat a lot, especially in the ghee. So I think I've clocked it where I think I lost like five pounds in an hour of training. Yeah. And judicious gyms and like crosswood gyms, they don't run air conditioning up in there. So it's like it's good. You're going to be sweating. And you're also, yeah. you're with somebody you're like up close and personal so body heat right um so hydration becomes

really important um i like to do uh electrolytes sodium um and then if i if i'm training for a while like more than an hour uh i will do carbohydrates with that so i'll generally do about like um anywhere from like 25 to 50 grams of carbohydrates with electrolytes something simple like kind of like a multodextrin or otherwise. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like liquid I like liquid IVs. Those are great. You know, again, like sports drinks.

But yeah, you can do you can do carb powders, multidextrin, cyclodextrin, dextrose, any of that stuff. And then getting it with salt. Salt is important to have if you're training for long durations in the heat. And especially doing something like jihitsu. Yeah, the liquid IV, I mean, it's just so much easier on the body than trying to go solid IV because you can shove solids in the body. It doesn't work well. Gas IVs. That's how you cause heart attacks.

Get an old embolism in there, you know. Like how much, I know when it comes to hydration, are you like, you know, I know Andy talks a lot about hydration and like someone who sweats a lot. So like, is there a certain amount of, you know, hydration you're trying to get while you're training or you're just trying to as much as you can? I mean, it, again, it's all individual, but generally I would suggest anywhere from 15 to 20 ounces and then of water, 500 milligrams to 1,000 milligrams of sodium. If you think about it, like a saline pack, I think is like a liter and it's like basically 0.9 osmoles. So basically it's like a thousand milligrams of sodium with a liter of water.

So that's kind of where we want to try to keep our fluid intake, kind of just keep it like the same as our blood. And so if you are training for multiple hours, yeah, I mean, you're going to want to have, you know, a lot more fluids and then and salt. And again, it just depends on you, but like me, I sweat a lot. So yeah, I'll do too. Yeah. So I definitely, because this is, this will help. prevent like things like cramping which is going to be the biggest performance killer um oh god yeah yeah uh cramps cramps and if you cramp your muscles are contracting erratically and you can also

just get injured that way very easily so cramping's fairly common in jiu jitsu if you've never done juts to get like a calf cramp or like a hamstring cramps something like that you ever got one at your foot cramps also yeah yeah all these are very common even better yeah terrible. Ah, cramping. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.

Yeah. I mean, and people, literally, I train with people all the time. And they're like, oh, I'm cramping. I'm cramping. I was like, did you get any salt in your diet? Did you drink any, drink anything? It's like, I don't know. I didn't do it.

Yeah. What about like, you know, like, say, say you're competing. You're going to have multiple matches that day. You like, do you weigh yourself in before and after to see how much you should replace? You know, I know, I know, I know any talks about you want more. You don't want to just like match it. You want to do more. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so for Jiu-Jitsu competitions, it just depends on the federation, but in IBJF, you weigh in mat side. So you don't have time to rehydrate. Um, yeah, and then you go, right then you go, literally. Like, um, you might have, you might have 15 maybe, maybe minutes. It depends on when you go and weigh in, but you're, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's different from, uh, like an MMA fight or, um, anything I've ever heard yeah yeah or professional grappling like where generally they have a day before so yeah it's more closer to like the waylifting where you get like a couple hours in some federations but again you're it's same day generally yeah you have to weigh in more than once like you know so

if you got multiple matches that day so you weigh in before your first one and then that's it you're done yeah you weigh in just once uh again unless you're doing two two, types of ghee or no ghee the same day, but generally you weigh in just once, and that's, that's, that's it. So, intriguing, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's good. But in between

matches, yeah, you, depends. How much time they have, but, yeah, man. Like, I, like, when I was in Brazil, man, I had like 45 minutes, maybe an hour between matches, which, you know, again, it's a lot, that's a long

time to be sitting around. So, you know, you're going to want to, and Brazil is hot, so you're going to want to, I definitely took in fluids and I only had one match, you know, but like, again, it's like, I had two matches. But, yeah, took in fluids and things like that in between. Yeah, if you get a little, if you get like blood sugar feeling like you drop in, like that's where it's good to have those little snacks, like, you know, the gummy bears or, you know, stuff like that where it's, like, very easily digestible carbs. It seems like so much fun for an exercise scientist, you know, like, you know, weight living is so, like, you know what's going to happen. You've got two hours and you're going to get three, you know, three times of compete. It's just creatine phosphate and that's all you got to worry about.

But with you guys, it would be super intriguing just because there's so much to consider. It's like you've got to be explosive. You got to have all the systems like running perfectly. So, yeah, it's kind of like, I see why Dan and Andy love working with MMA so much. Yeah. It's a harder problem. And one of the things that I also want to touch. John is the fact that in your world, practice in actual competing are kind of two different worlds.

Like powerlifting and Olympic lifting, competitions are easier. Yeah. You've got three attempts and you're out. You know, on them. You've got nine total attempts and like it's nowhere near. Whereas, you know, and this is my ignorance, which we know is unending. For jiu-jitsu, I imagine there's elements of practice that's far harder than competitions from, you know, drilling and share volume and probably your rest intervals and when you go live 100% against

an unknown opponent so to speak that and then hence you guys brought up the piece on pacing and the tactics involved do you change much about your kind of protocols with nutrition and otherwise for the actual like tournaments compared to practice or are they pretty much identical because you know if it already works you don't really want to fiddle with and risk, you know, something negative occurring, maybe more of like a nocebo slash placebo effect. Yeah, so that's a really good question. And I will say that the elephant in the room that we did not talk about between tournament and training is adrenaline. So.

Yeah. Yeah. Adrenaline. Yeah. adrenaline affects so much. People don't even realize like the, when you get out there in a tournament and, you, yeah like everything a lot of things are different because of adrenaline so even stuff like digestion is going to be affected by adrenaline um so sometimes strategies where like especially like timing um

you may need a little bit more time because your digestion is just erratic or slow down um because of adrenaline your body's not trying to digest food it's it's fight or flight at this point um so yeah like some of the timing definitely changes I for for athletes like if they're about to compete we try to do even simpler carbohydrates like maybe if it's just like straight liquids it's not we're not doing anything solids um and maybe we're giving him a little bit more time like i actually have a client like he we talked about this recently he tried one strategy and he was like man i just felt kind of like i was kind of heavy on the on the tournament mat and i was like well how long did you have and he's like maybe like hour is like okay we probably need to push that out maybe another 30 minutes, 30, 30, 45 minutes because, again, the adrenaline is just going to slow things down out there. And, you know, also warning them that you're going to feel the desire to use the restroom. Oh, yeah.

You plan that accordingly because you are blowing the ballast. Oh, man. A little bit faster when it comes to the flight of the flight. Oh, yeah, man. Oh, like I don't get that nearly as much. But yeah, my digestion when I first started competing. um man it was all over the place i would probably take like like three or four doms man for just get nervous man just gets nervous and it's just you know that fight or flight um obviously

the more the more like seasoned you are like with like competing um that that kind of dissipates but it's that adrenaline is still there every time controlling arousal is like so important in all sports i feel like i feel like it's not talked about enough you know like people don't do enough work on that you know like even in training like being able to go hard without blowing it up you know i feel like with ryan it's what something we've had to work on is like can you go really heavy without going crazy you know yeah yeah saving it because it blows him up too much too much too much that's what that's why um oh yeah another thing and we maybe didn't talk about was like caffeine uh you know People, people do pre-workouts before training and will be fine.

You know, like I'll, like me personally, I'll chug a, I'll chuck a C4 and before training and I'll be good to go. But, you know, 200 milligrams of caffeine, I'll be fine. I'll be ready to go. But, but I will not do that actually before a tournament. It amps me up too much. I'm already amped. Too much arousal. Travis, you probably, you probably could talk about this.

Like there is definitely like a happy point where we want enough, but not too much. If we have too much, then we're going to be all over the place. We're not going to be focused. And if we have too little, then we're going to be slow. We want just like kind of that, that sweet spot. Yeah, I would imagine, especially with, you know, combat sports, if you're going to have more than one match, especially, you better save it for like the spot that you think. I mean, it's a guessing match.

You might get a badass right out of the gate. you better be pretty aroused but but like i guess you know you'd want to save it because once you use it you use it same thing and even in smith sports like let's say that ryan goes get crazy from the very first attempt about time he's clean jerking it's like he's dead yeah yeah yeah he's the same thing like you know i would always i would be smiling in my opening squad because i mean you should be able to do it easily it's an opener and then maybe on the last one i I turn it up a little. It's like, man, it's like knowing how to turn.

You know that you're a great athlete when you can turn the gas just enough. There's a couple other pieces there. One is also know how to turn it off. Absolutely. Because that's the thing is the guy. Reading. Third attempt on the squad. They're like, yeah.

And it's like, now go take a nap. Like shut it off because you're going to have X amount of lag before you go into benching. And you got the guys that think they can hold it for the entirety exactly. They blow themselves out. And the other thing is, you know, you guys know in the grappling sports, is it's not a perfect inverted you. Certain things like powerlifting, it skews to where like,

if I'm imagining like a life and death situation for my family member, I'm going to do better on that deadlift. But if I'm shooting a free throw, I'm sitting on the other end where I want to be a lot more calm and a lot more chill. And you guys in that, you know, if two guys don't know how to fight

and they both go full rage monster, the one who's the bigger, more powerful one is probably going to win. But if one guy really knows how to fight, And the other guy, you know, is me going full bone rage monster. We're going to get to like, watch this 210 pound power lifter get taken apart by 140 pounds. It's like real quick. She knows how to throw a punch.

Yeah. She knows how to die. She knows how to survive for just a few seconds. Oh, dude. I got long arms, but I just, I know who I am. If you need something pulled off you guys, I got you. Yeah. But if you want to shoot in on a single leg, I got sprawl and I got try to put you in a half Nelson.

Like that's it. And you guys survive about 10 seconds. But, you know, so you guys know, like, for that you need to have that right mindset where you're awake enough. But you're not burning yourself out in the first two minutes. A hundred percent. Yeah. And that is, and of course, you've got multiple bouts in the same day. And that's a cool thing.

Like, when you go see. More. You know, like, there's so many people out there. You know, like. Yeah, they can turn it off. Yeah, George Mumford, the guy who, you know, worked with Chicago Bulls. I read his book. It's amazing.

It talks about how he worked with Jordan and all those guys on how to. you know turn it up turn it down breathing i know hanging out and i first started hanging around you guys you're talking about breathing deep down i was like you fairies talking about breathing you know but then but then when i started looking at the studies it was it jill the girl was on our podcast i read her big thick book it's in forever but like i'm like oh my god there's actually science to this and like learning how to you know use breathing to bring you know to get back to you know parasympathetic it's a thing And like then being able to pass it on to my athletes was a huge difference in the performance that they would then turn around in you. So like yeah, man, that's a big one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You read that whole thing. Yeah. Joe Miller's enormous. Yeah. And guess he's. And guess who's real type? Yeah. And believe it or not, I'm like, I'm so proud of Ryan. He's like he's like becoming his own man now. He's reading it. And he's, he, he, uh, he messaged me. He said, you know,

Jill Miller and this big, you know, book. I'm like, yeah, man, he got the, he got the ball. He bought all the stuff. And he's using it. And he's like, it's, it's cool to watch one of your athletes, like a hunter now. And maturing into an adult and, like, learning things on them, you know, taking responsibility for their breathing and things like that. But I'm super proud of Ryan and the man he's becoming several of my athletes,

you know, Hunter, going out and doing her business and killing it, like a D. Like, it goes on and on and on and on. yeah yeah oh fellas we gotta shut it down uh Alex good to see you my friend yeah man on the show we gotta have you back again relatively soon where can people find you learn more about nutrition coaching jujitsu all the things yeah um mostly on instagram so my instagram handle is Alex Q Maclin and it's just my name and then you can find me at my website alex maclin.com yeah you just hit me up on instagram if you have any questions um i post a lot content and always happy to help right on man yeah yeah what a great show this was so much fun

thinking about just watching all you guys grow up and like change we've all been through so much since we first met and my beard has gone from being perfectly red to white so that's a big change but masclay.com it's good to see you again a yeah it's good to see you too yeah we got i got a link up got to get up to north carolina yeah proud of you though man you've really grown into a Appreciate it. Speaking of people growing up in your beer changing colors, I did appreciate you posting those elite FTS 2004, 2005. You hitting those old squats back in the day.

Like I don't even know. Yeah, just like that was a solid sodium bloat there. God, you see my face? But yeah. Bullfrog hash. That's it. All right on. Mike Lane.

Yeah, Mike Lane, PhD. you find me staring into the void. Beautiful. I'm Doug Larson on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. We are Barbell Strugged at Barbell underscore Strug. And if you want to work with Travis Masch, coach Travis Mask, Dr. Mike Lane and Dr. Andy Galpin, you can go to Biomolecularathlete.com.

Friends, we'll see you guys next week.