Dmitry Kalashnikov

Part 1: Perfect Training Schedule

Morning

Start your day right with a surge of energy:

• Literally jump out of bed as soon as you wake up … don’t hit snooze button and allow yourself to be lazy :)
• As you finish showering, gradually turn the water to coldest and try to stay there for about 3 minutes.
  Cold shower will clear your mind. It also trains “Fudoshin” (willpower, determination) and has amazing health benefits, such as flushing toxins and improving circulation.

Do a quick workout: push-ups till failure, 100 bicycle crunches, stretch for 20 min, do another 100 crunches.

Eat a full breakfast. If you had a hard workout a day before, eat lots of protein (eggs, meat). Otherwise have fruit, oatmeal, and yogurt but never skip breakfast. This will also help stabilize your energy levels and reduce stress throughout the day.

Eat snack: water, nuts (organic, raw, unsalted, non-roasted) or fruit (fresh, organic, preferably locally grown).

Afternoon

Go for a run before lunch. This will boost your metabolism, and help reduce stress at work. It will also pump oxygen into your brain and your thinking will greatly improve :)

Complex Carbs Lunch: For lunch you want to eat good carbs (complex), and salad (for digestion of it). Unless you’ve had a super hard training session a night before (sore muscles) you should skip on eating meat for lunch, as it is not the most efficient energy source. Good complex carbs examples are brown rice, any whole grain (quinoa, barley, oat, rye). Don’t eat bread (and never ever eat white bread). Drink water.

A little secret: take a 5 minute walk after lunch — the vibration from walking/jogging helps to settle and digest food.

Have a snack: water, freshly squeezed juice, fruit, and nuts.

Evening

Workout: I usually train 2+ hours every day, 6/7 days a week. Most of the time I am just climbing: I gradually warm up, then give 4 attempts at 4 really hard problems (”4×4s”), then work my way down easier climbs. Every training session is completed with 200 crunches, handstands and stretches. On my “off days” (when I am resting from climbing) I am doing one of the following: Gymnastic Rings, Free Weights, Capoeira/Yoga, Running or Rope Skipping.

Dinner: the only time your body really needs protein is after a workout — to repair damaged tissue. Eat a really big, green salad about 30 min before eating protein. This will coat the stomach for protein digesting and boost metabolism. Avoid all grocery store dressings. Instead, add a little virgin olive oil, vinegar (balsamic), or freshly squeezed lemon juice.

• Meat: organic grass fed beef, lamb, chicken, or pork (I don’t really eat pork).
• Fish: All fish is good. Buy non-farm raised fish. Never eat canned fish (or any other canned food, imitation crab).

Night

Get good sleep: get 8+ hours of sleep. Remember that you don’t actually get stronger through resistance training (which tears tissue). You only get stronger when you’re sleeping, when your body is repairing itself. If you had a super hard workout and you’re doing some sort of cross-training (climbing + anything else) you probably need more like 10 hours of sleep. Also, don’t drink alcohol right before bed as it will keep you up and also dehydrate you.

Part 2: Some “Common Sense” Notes

Really basic stuff
Never eat fast food, don’t drink soda, buy chips, or anything deep fried (french fries).

Food is not all “nutrition”
Food also stores KI! Never cook when you’re in a bad mood. Never eat something that was prepared by a person in a bad mood, as it will transfer “minus Ki”. (This is another reason why fast food is bad for you. Most people work there out of necessity, and they’re channeling negative energy into food.)

Plan Ahead
Think ahead and prepare your meals in advance, especially if you have sporadic schedule, random meetings.

Focus on quality

• Local organic grass fed free range beef is literally not the same animal as mass-produced, antibiotics/bst-injected crap beef you can buy at Safeway. Most restaurants also use the lowest quality meet they can buy. You get what you pay for … quality cost time and money.
• Farm raised fish vs wild fish are also very different in nutritional content.
• Organic free range grass fed eggs and regular mass-produced eggs are very different. One has many more times nutritional value (Omega 3, etc).
• Sunday Markets, Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Ballard Market and great choices of quality food for Seattle.

Simplest Ingredients
Buy food with simplest ingredients: look at the package contents …the fewer the ingredients, the better. Most stuff at grocery stores is inedible, as it has all kinds of additives and preservatives. For example, if you’re buying cheese, it should really only have 3 ingredients: Milk, Salt, and Rennet.

Everything else is only there to extend its “shelf life” in order to make more money at the cost of your health. Most of the cheese you’ll get at restaurants will almost certainly be of lowest quality.

On Mixing

• Do not mix 2 types of proteins (for example cheese and red meat in a hamburger).
• Do not eat bread, especially white bread, sweets, pastries.

Do not eat anything “processed”
If it’s made by someone else and packaged for shelf life, do not eat it. Things like canned food, smoked lunch meats, packaged tuna. Try to buy raw food that naturally lives and grows in your area and cook it yourself. Think about this: if you were a “cave man”, and there were no stores and food factories, what would you be hunting, gathering, cooking and eating? That’s what you want.

Avoid Big Portions

Don’t eating big portions. Eat smaller portions but more frequently (like every 3 hours):

• Buffer Overflow: your body can only digest around 25 grams of protein per hour.
• Eating a big portion also stretches stomach size (so you’ll feel hungry unless you eat huge portions). Stomach will also shrink if you eat smaller portions. If your stomach is expanded, its really hard to have super strong “body tension” (in climbing) as it messes with your abdominal muscles.
• Personally I eat 7 times a day: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, pre-workout snack, dinner and before bed snack.

Steady Energy
You want to maintain steady energy levels throughout the day (with no spikes):

Not all food gives you the same amount of energy:

• 1 gram of fat == 9 calories
• 1 gram of protein == 4 calories
• 1 gram of carbs == 4 calories
• 1 gram of alcohol == 7 calories

It also takes energy to digest food. Food also breaks down at varying rates. Protein is harder for the body to process, that’s why it makes some people groggy (”food coma”). Carbs is the most efficient form of energy you can get from food. Runners and climbers do “carb loading” (big bowl of pasta a night before the race or competition).

You want to sequence the type of food you eat throughout the day:

• Breakfast: Fruit
• Snack: Nuts
• Lunch: Complex Carbs
• Snack: Nuts
• Dinner: Protein

You only really need protein at night, so when you sleep your body will repair itself with the right building blocks (amino acids).

Not all carbs are created equal
Carbs break down and change blood sugar levels at different rates. You want to eat carbs that do not cause spikes in blood glucose and insulin levels:

• What’s good: apples, oatmeal, brown rice, nuts, and yogurt … basically “low GI” foods. Glucemic Index (GI) measures the effect of carbs on blood sugar levels.
• What’s bad: straight glucose, sugar, white bread, baked potatoes, white rice, pastries, candy, milk chocolate, cheap pasta.

Best way to stay in shape is to never get out of it!
Keep training and pushing past your comfort zone … keep elevating to new levels!