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Adaptive Health

I help people become healthier, happier, fitter and stronger!

16/01/2026

Beating the diet hunger.

Cos you’re not you when you’re hungry.

14/01/2026

Combat sport athletes are often left wondering why their performance tanks when cutting weight in the build up to fights 🪫

Some performance drop off when cutting weight is normal and expected. You’re taking in less energy than your body needs to run at its best. But I often see athletes go way too low on carb intake, cutting weight too quickly and see performance plummet further as a result 🤕

As a minimum when cutting weight I’d get my athletes to aim for 3g carbs per of bodyweight per day. Some athletes will get away with more than that, I’ve had some dropping weight on 5g carbs per kg bodyweight per day but it’s highly person dependent 🍚

Protein is very important for recovery but it’s often overdone, at the expense of being able to get enough carbs in, which are the main driver of performance for combat sports.

By getting that much in you’re ensuring your session performance and day to day energy runs more smoothly, while also setting yourself up for a better fight or comp week cut. If you need to drop carbs at that point for acute weight cutting, you have room to do that if your habitual intake is higher.

In a maintenance or fuelling phase I’d be bumping that up to minimum 5g carbs per kg bodyweight per day for an active combat sport athlete, again potentially even more.

Carbs are king for performance 🫡

12/01/2026

Two questions to answer today:

- Why do we usually see the scales drop faster at the start of a dieting phase?

- How much weight should a combat sport athlete drop per week in a dieting / fat loss phase?

09/01/2026

Conditioning for combat sports is something I’ve gone back and forth on the past few years.

For a while I thought we should be focusing on mostly just aerobic work and allowing sparring to take care of higher intensity work.

Then I realised that most fighters are limited in terms of how much aerobic work they have time to get done. Also as someone gets more efficient with technique, learns to pace themselves in sparring, etc, we may not have the same amount of weekly exposure to higher intensities / heart rates compared to when we’re beginners in our sports.

Saying that, we don’t want to be hammering excessive high intensity conditioning work if we’re already hitting multiple hard sessions a week on the mats and in the gym.

One exposure per week to both sprint intervals and longer intervals should be plenty for most athletes. Running sprints can be highly taxing, with hill sprints likely a better option if running is your preferred modality.

At least one aerobic session, with some extras if you can fit them in, will be highly beneficial also. Aerobic work is also easy to recover from, potentially even helping to improve recovery. It doesn’t just have to be an easy continuous 30-60 minutes either if you find that too boring. Intervals of 1-7 minutes, with some easier periods mixed in, as well as varying modalities can help to keep it from getting stale. A good podcast, audiobook or video on your phone can also be a huge help getting through it.

Regardless of how you structure it or how much you do, you can’t get away from the fact that consistent conditioning work will help to elevate your sport performance, while also benefiting your health 🫁🫀

08/01/2026

If you do intense late sessions & are still feeling fired up going to bed, you’ve probably experienced struggling to sleep.

It makes sense. Your brain sees it as the perfect time to go through every possible sparring scenario 😅

Here’s a sequence I use & recommend for clients:

🔹Deep breathing / Wind down post training. Could be right at the end of your session or on the way home. A few mins of deep breathing to bring the nervous system back down will do wonders for switching off
🔹Rehydrate, but not too aggressively. If you’ve sweated, we want to replace those fluids. But if it’s close to bedtime, we don’t want to go excessive with that to help avoid being up all night 🚽 Adding electrolytes or having salty food may help to retain more of the fluid you consume.
🔹Eat lightly. We want protein and carbs (carbs may also aid sleep quality), while keeping fats & fibre lower. Something like some protein milk & cereal can work well here but there’s plenty good options.
🔹Try sleep supporting foods. Kiwis are backed by research to potentially help improve sleep. Others include cherries, bananas, berries, sweet potato, leafy greens, yoghurt, kefir, poultry, eggs and some nuts / seeds.
🔹Dim lights. Use lamps or dimmer lights, dark mode on screens and aim to minimise screen time overall.
🔹Cool to warm shower. Not overly cold as this will often leave us feeling more alert, and we don’t want an overly hot one if we’re already warm and sweating after training. Depending on your body & room temp, a cool to warm shower should work well.
🔹Fix your sleep environment. Minimal noise (unless you sleep better with background noise), dark as possible (black out blinds or sleep mask), & a cool, comfortable room.
🔹Try reading or something relaxing (not scrolling), for 15-30 mins pre sleep.
🔹Consider supplementing with Magnesium Bisglycinate pre bed. Always check with your doctor for any potential medication interactions before taking any supplements.
🔹Do more deep breathing before going to sleep / if struggling to switch off. Progressive muscle relaxation can also be very helpful.

Try it & hopefully beat post training sleep struggles 😴

06/01/2026

Injury proofing for combat sports 🥊🥋

Is impossible.

But what is possible, is becoming much more injury resilient.

A big focus of my coaching is having my athletes set up to minimise their injury risk and then how we can best manage any tweaks or injures that inevitably do crop up from time to time for them.

Because nobody likes injuries 🤷‍♂️

02/01/2026

‼️“I’ve got a fight in 5 weeks, I need to get fit and strong for it”

^Standard enough message I’ll regularly get from fighters.

And I understand where it comes from

Most athletes:

- Don’t know if their next fight will be next week or next year
- Don’t get any ongoing guidance with their S&C
- Don’t want to give up time on the mats for time in the weights room

But the thing is, if we’re starting without a base already built then there’s not a lot that can be improved either strength or conditioning wise in a few weeks, without compromising training or fight performance.

That’s where we introduce the concept of “staying ready”.

Put the necessary work in over the course of months and years, to build a solid foundation of strength, power, muscle mass, aerobic fitness and conditioning work.

From there we have the luxury of being able to actually pull back (not cut out) heavy S&C work as fights and comps get closer as we can easily maintain these physical qualities with lower volume.

This in turn makes “camp” more productive, better sport sessions and less likely to get injured. We can then focus in on some specific conditioning work from a few weeks out, taper back and have you peaking for the day that counts.

6 months, not 6 weeks 🫡

29/12/2025

Another cracking year of coaching.

MMA fighters, boxers, Muay Thai, TKD and BJJ athletes. Hobbyists, to pros, to world champs.
Performance, fuelling, recovery, weight cutting, strength, power, speed, conditioning.

Hyrox, GAA, health, confidence, fitness, fat loss, muscle gain.

Blessed and grateful to be able to help people perform, feel and look their best, while having a bit of craic and getting to know great people.

Onwards 🫡

27/12/2025

Balance you say? Never heard of her

Sounds like a boring approach but a bit of balance with nutrition, at Christmas and year round, is where most of thrive

Solid macros in them Christmas sandwiches btw 🤝

25/12/2025

A very Merry Christmas to all 🎄

Thank you to everyone who has supported in any way with coaching, content and everything else over the year 🙏🏼

Looking forward to driving it on in 2026 👊🏻

22/12/2025

Great coaching > Bizniz guru tactics

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