As martial artists, we spend endless hours learning and training to protect ourselves and loved ones. Learning how to spot a threat before it reaches you. How to evade and block. Counter punches and kicks. Throws and joint locks. All to keep ourselves and loved ones safe. Yet, time after time, I see poor health choices in the martial arts. The thing that affects us on a daily basis gets overlooked.

Beyond being a martial arts instructor, I am also a fitness trainer. I first got officially certified as a fitness trainer in 2009 and started working at a local gym while growing my martial arts studio. The main reason for getting certified was to better help my martial arts students. This helped greatly as it grew my understanding of body mechanics, structure and energy sources in the body, among others.

Over the years, students have asked about health and fitness advice to help them with their journey as many students get into martial arts as a way to exercise without the monotony of lifting weights or running on a treadmill. While I occasionally have written up workout plans, most are looking for general advice on improving their health.

While there are numerous things one can adjust to improve one’s health, there are four things that seem to have dramatic negative effects on one’s body and health. I’ve seen people get caught up in the woods of online advice from influencers and celebrities. Some advice is small and not overly significant to those starting their fitness journey. Other advice I’ve seen from these sources is massive, such as the carnivore diet of eating nothing but meat or only drinking juice for an extended period.

The advice I see out there is mostly unhelpful unless you have hit a plateau in your fitness and need something new. The other issue I see is that most of the advice is geared towards body builders and not the average person just trying to be healthy. Many of the videos I’ve seen lately start with someone doing a basic exercise that is entitled “Don’t do this!” or something similar. Only to clarify later in the video that if you turn your thumb two degrees forward, you’ll get ten percent more contraction from one muscle. This means nothing to anyone who isn’t a professional body builder.

This stuff drives me nuts. It paralyses people from doing simple exercises in fear that they are doing it wrong. I can make a case against every single type of food and every exercise if I wanted to. Or I can find a make an argument for every single type of food and every exercise. Health and fitness can be that confusing. It’s no wonder people feel overwhelmed or lost in their fitness journey.

To make things more difficult, here in North Carolina, only a certified nutritionist or dietician can legally make a diet plan for someone. And while I do have a certification in nutrition, it’s not the type of certification that allows me to write up a plan. It only allows me to give general advice on food choices. I’m not against this law, however, as every single person is different. There are so many different types of foods that can cause serious issues. One must have a strong knowledge of health issues and how foods can interfere with those issues and possible medications to properly suggest a nutrition plan.

With all of that said, there are four things that I’m going to list here. They are very clear, and for most everyone, and will dramatically improve one’s health if they are currently not following this advice. There is an exception with one, but I’ll cover this in that segment. But overall, if one were to follow these four things, they will notice a very marked improvement in their health. They are all doable, but not necessarily easy. Like with anything in life, great rewards don’t come easy.

Horseman #1: Smoking

This one is obvious. Everyone, I hope, knows that smoking is among the worst things you can do to your body. I’m not going to beat you over the head with information you already know. I’m going to keep this one short and address the response I tend to get from smokers as to why they choose to continue smoking. I’m not speaking about those who want to quit and can’t. I can’t imagine how insanely difficult that is. I’ll speak more about this in a moment.

The main response I hear from those who smoke and don’t have interest in quitting is something along these lines. “I don’t care if it takes years off my life, those later years aren’t desirable anyway.” First and foremost, according to studies, the age most stated that they are happiest is, on average, seventy years old. They are retired, kids have typically grown up and moved out, and it’s their time to do whatever they want. Most smokers who make it to this age, which isn’t many, are plagued with health issues and their quality of life goes down.

One thing that gets overlooked beyond happiness later in life, is that smoking leads to a lower quality of life now. More illnesses, bad teeth/breath, more trips to the doctor and a lot of money wasted on smoking and doctors’ visits and medications needed to help repair health. It’s also rare to see someone who smokes that place a lot of effort into their health on other levels. Such as food choices and physical activity, further compounding the negative effects. I could go on and on, but again, I think at this point, “smoking is bad in every way” has been hammered home. To each their own. At this point, if someone pics up smoking, it’s not from a lack of knowledge of how bad it is.

Horseman #2: Alcohol

This is another obvious one. Unfortunately, alcohol is also looked at as something every adult drinks, at least on occasion. Yet, like smoking, it’s among the worst things you can do to your body. But thanks to advertising and legality, it’s widely accepted as okay. While it’s best to abstain, it’s so engrained in our society that it makes that difficult. I’ll appeal to moderation instead. Moderation being a couple drinks a week, not moderately drinking every night.

Knowing how alcohol affects the body can help make better choices. A quick story, years ago I was training a couple clients who worked out together. They crushed their workouts, kept a food journal to better understand their food intake, and hit the cardio hard in an effort to lose weight. I couldn’t ask for better clients. They did everything I asked of them. Which is why it was so deflating when they couldn’t seem to lose weight. The first two months, they gained muscle, endurance, strength, yet no loss of body fat. I was perplexed. The math wasn’t mathing.

Eventually, while discussing every detail of the dinner they had the night before, I got my answer. One of them mentioned drinking beer. I said I didn’t see that in their food journal. I asked if it was just one beer this one night or did they drink multiple nights. The response was, “no, we have maybe five or six beers at dinner each night.” I was stunned. They stated that they didn’t write it in their journal as they didn’t realize beer had calories. I explained that, depending on the type of beer, it will have about 100 calories, if not more. Which means they were drinking about 500 calories each day that wasn’t accounted for.

As a trainer, we try and obtain a deficit of 3500 calories to lose about one pound of body fat each week. Those 500 calories times seven days a week equals 3,500 calories. While they weren’t gaining weight, they weren’t losing weight either. All that hard work was repeatedly wiped out by alcohol. Once we found the problem, and solved it, the weight started melting off.

Beer has a lot of calories, as does wine. What is mixed with alcohol is important as well. Many liquors are mixed with juices and sodas which add a great deal of sugar and calories to the drink. By comparison, alcohol by itself is seven calories per gram, protein and carbohydrates are both four calories per gram. Fat is nine calories per gram.

Aside from the calories though are the other negative effects it has on the body. Drinking within a few hours of bedtime can destroy sleep. I could have easily made sleep a fifth horseman of the health apocalypse as it’s that important. However, I felt sleep was something everyone is already wanting to improve the quality of. Plus, all of the four topics I’m discussing here are big factors in bad sleep. Fixing these four will help sleep.

Knowing that many people simply won’t stop drinking, it’s important to note the best options if one is to drink alcohol. Obviously drinking in the morning isn’t smart. And as mentioned above, drinking at night isn’t good either. Clearly the best time to drink is during work hours. I’m joking. Assuming one works a nine to five job, a drink after work with a little bit of food is best.

While it’s best to eat food when drinking, it’s kind of a double-edged sword. Alcohol affects digestion in a number of ways. It impairs the absorption of nutrients, negatively effects gut microbiome and increases acid production in the stomach just to name a few. For many people, alcohol can also affect food choices. You don’t see too many people cracking open a beer to eat their salad. It’s more likely that one will be eating wings or a burger.

Another thing that helps, beyond not drinking too much, is to slow down the alcohol intake while drinking. The body can dispose of one drink per hour. Therefore, when drinking more than that per hour, the rest gets into the blood and leads to the “tipsy” and “drunk” feelings that impair the body. This means, the faster your consume alcohol, the worse the effects.

If you enjoy a drink from time to time, do your best to drink in the late afternoon or early evening with food and drink slowly. This will give you the best outcome when it comes to the negative effects on the body.

Horseman #3: Sugar

Most know that large amounts of sugar is a bad idea. However, most don’t fully understand the full extent of how bad sugar can be on the body. There is good reason for this. In the 1960’s sugar companies paid to have scientist publish studies to downplay the negative effects of sugar while pointing the finger at fat for heart disease and other health issues. This led to the “low fat!” labels on foods as well as fat substitutes like margarine. And since sugar is loved by nearly everyone, it gave people free rein to put sugar in everything.

Looking at my mother’s old recipe books from the seventies and eighties, virtually every recipe called for sugar. Even meat recipes called for large amounts of sugar. Sadly, this thought that fat is bad and sugar is ok is still going strong today. The recommended daily intake of added sugar depends on where you look, but generally between twenty-five and fifty grams. The average American consumes more than double the recommended sugar intake, adding nearly five hundred extra calories each day. As I have written in the topic of alcohol, five hundred extra calories each day of unnecessary calories can add a pound of body fat to a person each week.

Note that I’m specifically talking about added sugar rather than fruit sugar and other natural sugars. Sugar is a carbohydrate. The body needs carbohydrates as it’s the easiest form of energy for the body. However, there are multiple levels of carbohydrates. From simple to complex. The more complex the better. Those are things like veggies and whole wheat grains. Simple sugars are not desirable, except in one scenario.

Complex carbohydrates take longer to break down and keep us satiated longer (feeling full rather than hungry). Simple sugars spike the blood sugar levels and burn quickly, leading to one being hungry and fatigued shortly after consumption. That one scenario that simple sugar is acceptable is when recovering from an exhaustive physical exertion. However, table sugar is not the way to go. Fruit is perfect for this post exercise replenishment of energy levels to last you until you get a proper meal within an hour or two.

What gets heavily overlooked when it comes to consuming sugar has to do with what I just mentioned, the spike in blood sugar levels. The calories in sugar are that of carbohydrates, just four calories per gram. But that’s not the issue. When we eat a sugar filled treat or meal, we will get a spike in blood sugar, followed by a crash. This can happen within about twenty minutes. This leads to being hungry again and reaching for more food aka more calories. For many, this leads to eating more sugar, followed by another crash, and then more sugar.

Understand that even natural sugars like fruit can cause this same issue. Fruit has vitamins and fiber with it as well though. The fiber can slow this effect down a bit. But more importantly, one should add protein to the meal with fruit to further help stay satiated as proteins and complex carbohydrates help slow down digestion. This is where the glycemic index comes from. High glycemic meals are simple carbs that burn quickly while low glycemic meals burn slower. I do suggest limited fruit personally, but I know dietitians would disagree with me.

I had a client once that was a former smoker. When beating his smoking addiction, he transferred his addiction to sugar. He gained considerable weight due to this, hence why he came to me. His sugar addiction was extremely strong. Too strong for me to simply tell him to stop eating sugar. I had him transfer the simple sugars from treats and candy to fruit. He was successful in removing added sugar from candy, but now he was eating an entire pineapple for a snack as that sugar addiction was still going strong.

I then had him transfer his fruit intake to veggies over the next couple of months. Vegetables have much of the same properties as fruits but with a lower sugar content (depending on the veggie). Once he made this final transfer to veggies, his excess weight fell off. Going from about two hundred and seventy pounds down to about two hundred and twenty, which was our goal weight for his height and age.

Unfortunately, he visited a dietician, and she began to chastise me through him for removing fruit from this diet. He ended up quitting training shortly after. Until a year later when he called me to resume training. He brought the fruit back into his diet as she suggested and proceeded to bring back that sugar addiction which led to eating candy yet again. He was three hundred pounds when he returned. Because of this, I stand behind my no fruit solution in some extreme cases such as his. That sugar addiction is up there with nicotine addiction. It hits hard, it’s hard to overcome, and destroys one’s health.

Please note, however, that I don’t suggest removing fruit except for extreme cases. Over about twenty years of training clients, he was the only client I’ve told to remove fruit from their diet. This leads me briefly explaining how your gut biome (bacteria in your stomach/intestines) is important. Much of your cravings come from this gut biome. If you eat a lot of sugar, your gut biome will send cravings for more sugar.

This is important to understand as it means you can alter your cravings by altering your diet. For those who have a sugar addiction, it will be extremely difficult to break that addiction and those cravings. Swapping similar foods out like I did with my client is a good way to do it compared to suddenly switching your diet. It takes time to change the gut biome. Going about it the way I mentioned with my client, it took numerous months. You can change it faster, but it will be miserable, and your chances of success will be low.

Once you’ve changed your gut biome though, those cravings for sugar and other unhealthy foods will be low and very manageable. Mind you that some of those cravings come from the brain as well. Most of the clients I’ve trained over the years that were morbidly obese had a lot of psychological connections to food that lead them to overeating. For some, eating certain foods can be comfort foods and learned behavior from their childhood. These cravings are much harder to adjust and for many, it takes therapy. Changing the gut biome can dramatically help with breaking those mental addictions though.

You might be thinking that taking probiotics will help be a quick fix to changing that gut biome. But no. There are a couple reasons for this. One, even though the label may state that there are billions of microbial colonies in each pill ready to fix all that ails you, understand that living things die over time. From the time those colonies are placed in the capsule, packaged up, shipped off, placed on the shelf, purchased and taken home, then finally consumed, a vast majority of those colonies will have died.

Even if they somehow stayed alive, it would be a drop in the bucket of what it would take to change your gut biome. And if you don’t change your current nutritional habits, one meal will wipe out any good biome you took in from a pill. The only way I see a probiotic working at all is if you use the absolute highest quality probiotics while altering your current nutrition plan. It may give you a slightly quicker change in that gut biome. But I’m just guessing on that result.

Lastly, I’d like to point out that if you are diabetic, please do not change your diet based on this blog post. Get all of your nutritional information from your doctors and nutritionists/dietitians who specialize in diabetes control. Hopefully that’s obvious, but I had to say it anyway. Now on to ruining one last thing for you. Sitting!

Horseman #4: Sitting Too Long

This is the sneaky one that gets overlooked a lot. I get a lot of strange looks when someone asks what simple things they can do to get in better health and I respond with, “stop sitting so much”. But it’s true. Our bodies really weren’t meant to sit in chairs. We are built for standing vertically. Occasionally sitting is not an issue. It’s sitting for extended periods of time that is the problem. How long is too long? About twenty minutes.

That doesn’t mean you suddenly will start dying if you sit down in a theater to watch a two-hour movie. Like with anything, it’s about moderation and understanding the effects and how to offset those effects if one can’t remove the issue. Before I explain some options to overcome sitting too long, I want to explain why sitting for extended periods is so bad for the body.

One issue with prolonged sitting is that it negatively affects blood circulation. This is due to not using your calf muscles (gastrocnemius and soleus muscles). The calf muscles act like a second heart due to the contraction of the calves squeezing the veins in the lower leg that pump the blood back up through the body. This is why sitting can lead to drowsiness and lowered energy levels. This results in reaching for food and drinks that help overcome these issues, such as energy drinks and sugar, which compound the negative effects in the long run.

The other issue that comes from sitting too long is how the body adjusts to sitting. The human body is incredible. It is constantly adjusting to the forces (or lack thereof) applied to it. This is how building muscle works. To build muscle you must tell the body it’s not strong enough by regularly overloading the muscles while providing it with the protein it requires to build/repair muscle.

This is one of the reasons people struggle to build muscle, even if they go to the gym regularly. If you casually lift weights within your limits, the body will not have any reason to build muscle. This is also true if you don’t provide it with enough protein to build that muscle. This is all to explain that the body adjusts to become efficient in whatever it does the most.

By sitting regularly, the body adjusts in the following ways. First, it begins to tilt the pelvis. The top tilts back and the lower portion tilts forward. This leads to numerous other adjustments and issues. Aside from the aesthetics of now having a flat butt, this tilt causes an issue with the legs. It rotates the femur (upper leg) outward. This, in turn, rotates the knees and feet outward. This now affects virtually every movement with the legs such as walking, running, squatting, and even balance.

This rotation of the feet outward also tends to lead to what’s known as a fallen arch or flat foot. The foot should have a natural curve between the big toe and heel. This collapse then causes knee issues and more hip issues due to the misalignment. Then, moving upwards from the pelvis, the lower back (lumbar portion of the spine) flattens out. There should be a small natural inward curve of the lumbar vertebrae. This flattening of that curve places pressure on the discs and can cause the discs to herniate.

From there, to maintain balance in the body, the flattening of the lumbar arch forces the thoracic vertebrae (upper back) to curve more than usual. The natural curve of the upper back should be slightly outward. But due to the lower back losing its arch, it must compensate by creating more of an arch in the upper back. This too creates added stress to the vertebrae and leads to herniated discs as well.

Now, due to the excessive curvature of the thoracic vertebrae, the cervical vertebrae (neck) must also curve inward further. Again, there should be a slight natural inward curve. But an excessive curve can lead to all sorts of issues. Severe neck pain and headaches being the most likely. I’m still not done. Due to the upper back having an exaggerated curve, this affects the shoulders mobility. The humorous (upper arm bone) rotates inward and sinks forward, much like the femur did in the legs.

This can also pinch nerves in the shoulder, which creates issues all down the arm, hand and fingers. Interesting story from a company I used to work for in the steel drafting world. I used to draw floor and roof plans for steel buildings. Portions of what I detailed went to a company that builds steel joists. Part of building these steel joists involves welding them together. This is done on a conveyor belt with multiple workers that clamp the joists, which then continues on to a more workers that weld it all together.

Eventually, the company found that many of their workers that were clamping the joists were being diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. A condition that involves damaged nerves in the wrist and hand that is usually a result of repetitive use, such as clamping a joist day after day. This would cost the company a lot in medical bills. The company wanted a second opinion before paying out and sending workers in for surgery.

Thankfully they had that second opinion as they discovered the nerves weren’t damaged, but there was a muscle imbalance in the chest, shoulders and back muscles. The chest muscles, specifically the pectoralis minor that rolls the shoulder inward, were overly tight and the back muscles were underdeveloped. This caused the nerves in the shoulder to be pinched which resulted in what felt like carpal tunnel syndrome.

The doctor’s suggestion? Place workers on an exercise program that helps build up the back muscles and stretch the chest muscles. This, along with rotating workers more often who were clamping, led to full recovery for all workers and saved the company a ton of money and saved the workers from needing surgery. I mention this story as it’s the same thing that can happen from the shoulders rotating inward due to the prolonged sitting.

Along with all the structural realignment going on from sitting too long comes the muscle imbalances. Due to the hips tilting, the hip flexors and quadraceps (muscles in the front of the leg) get stretched to their limits and the opposing muscle groups (glutes and hamstrings) shorten and weaken. This can lead to not just weak muscles, but leave the quads and flexors prone to being pulled or even torn. This same effects happens throughout the entire body in all of the areas mentioned above.

Due to these changes, many people who decide to improve their health by exercising or doing physical exercises end up getting injured often if they don’t have proper guidance. Some injuries are temporary, and they are back up and going again in a couple weeks. Others end up with serious injuries that may need surgery. This destroys their attempts at getting healthier and turns that hill they need to climb into a mountain they must climb to regain their health.

This may sound like I’m going over the top and explaining the extreme issues that affect very few, but I’m not. A vast majority of clients I’ve worked with have these issues from sitting too long. Every client with a sit-down job that comes to me has some or all of these issues. Some are minor, some are extreme. The only difference between those with minor issues and those with extreme issues is time spent in that job and what activities they do outside of work. But don’t worry, you don’t have to change careers, there is hope if you have a sit-down job!

Here are some things you can do to either remove these issues or lessen the effects of having a sit-down job. I worked in cubicle land for a number of years with that steel drafting job. My boss was ahead of his time by building standing desks. This leads to standing the majority of the time while working and taking short breaks sitting in a risen chair. This also helps keep workers more awake and energized, which is more productive. This also leads to less sugar consumption and energy drinks for most.

If, for whatever reason, you cannot build a standing desk, set a timer to go off every twenty minutes. When this timer goes off, stand up and do some basic exercises and stretches or at least walk around for about five minutes. Do some squats, maybe some push-ups, or some sit ups, maybe hold a plank or a back bridge. You can do a little of all of them or a lot of one each time. Anything that gets you moving and the blood circulating works.

Another thing that helps is to NOT have snacks nearby. Plan your snack breaks out a couple times a day. Make it so you have to get up and go grab the snack. When it’s right there, you’re going to casually snack far too much out of convenience. If you have to get up to get the snack, you’re less likely to over consume snacks and it will force you to move and circulate blood.

Another thing that one should do if they absolutely have to sit for prolonged periods is to have a workout plan. I highly recommend hiring a personal trainer. We regularly have to come up with plans for people who have to sit at their job and there are a number of exercises and stretches we can take you through to help offset the sitting issue.

There it is, the four horsemen of the health apocalypse. As long as that was, that was the short version! Obviously, there is a lot more I could list here to improve one’s health. As mentioned above, good sleep is incredibly important as is regular exercise and more precise diet as well as addressing any psychological issues that one may have that can lead to poor food choices and addictions. But those things are all much more complicated to give advice on as every is different.

I regularly have people ask for quick advice for improving their health, such as being asked to write up a workout plan for an individual. While I’m happy to do so, it’s not easy to do. Each individual has different needs and different goals. I would write a completely different plan for someone who wants to lose weight versus someone who wants to build their physique versus someone who wants to build strength versus someone who wants to overcome muscle imbalances and so on and so forth.

Then I must know the person’s health history and if they are cleared by the doctor. While I do have templates for each type of goal, it’s extremely rare that I give two different people the same workout plan. Then there is the nutrition plan. Not only do all those different goals require different nutrition plans, I also have to be aware of allergies, illnesses that are affected by food, and even just personal taste. It’s far too complicated to give general advice about those things. But the four categories listed above are universal.

Lastly, understand that genetics matter. Everyone builds muscle and loses weight differently. Going off looks alone cannot tell you if a person is healthy or not. If you were born a Volkswagen Beatle, you can’t be a Porsche 911 just by using premium gasoline. While most anything is possible, the amount of effort it takes for that Volkswagen to become a Porsche just isn’t worth it. Unless your career depends on looking a certain way, focus on being healthy above all else.

I’ve seen people with four percent body fat, which is extremely low, that were horribly unhealthy. And I’ve seen people with twenty percent body fat that were in perfect health. A long these same lines are body structure. A great example of this is the hip socket. Some people have a deep hip socket while others have a shallow hip socket. Neither one is healthier than the other, but it’s important to know for exercises and foot placement in certain movements.

As a trainer I need to know the depth of this hip socket to properly guide a client through the proper technique. Some people have a long femur compared to the tibia and fibia (bones in lower leg). Others, such as myself, have a short femur. This matters. A longer femur generally means the hip socket will be deeper while a short femur suggests a shallower hip socket. Due to this, the way a person does squats or deadlifts must be adjusted based on their femur length. It also gives one an idea of what hip injuries could come about due to this socket depth, and how to avoid it.

Again, this gets into the woods of exercise and fitness. I mention this just to explain how extremely different we all are and that there is no single thing that can fix everyone. These four horsemen are as good as it gets for helping the most amount of people correct their health. Especially as a martial artist who is focused on protecting the body. If you are seriously into learning self-protection, you must focus heavily on your health when it comes to your diet and exercise.