Pre-workout nutrition is the X factor when it comes to training performance. Most people skip it completely. Either due to a lack of time or due to not understanding nutrition completely. Most people obsess over eating clean all the time. Due to that, they miss out on foods that could boost their performance tremendously.

Let’s take a look at 2 options of pre-workout nutrition you can use before your sessions. But also, what is required for the perfect pre-workout meal?

Pre-workout essentials.

A pre-workout meal has to meet the following 3 requirements:

• easy digestible
• a mix of glucose and fructose (2:1 ratio is ideal)
• eaten 45-90 minutes pre-workout

We use a mix of glucose and fructose because they are absorbed through different transport pathways in the intestine.

Glucose enters the bloodstream quickly and is used directly by working muscles. Fructose is processed in the liver and contributes to maintaining blood glucose levels over time.

The result is both rapid and sustained energy availability.

For explosive sports like combat sports, where repeated high-intensity efforts rely heavily on muscle glycogen, this matters. Stable blood glucose and topped-up glycogen levels mean you delay fatigue and maintain output deeper into the session.

Now, how does this look in practice?

Pre-workout nutrition made easy.

The one deciding factor for what to eat is time. So I’ll give one example for when you have time and two examples for when you’re busy.

The pre-workout sandwich

• One piece of bread
• One to two tablespoons of Nutella on top of the bread
• One banana
• Top with two tablespoons of honey

This is one of the most commonly used pre-workout snacks. Easy to make and easily digestible. But what if you don’t have time or go to the gym straight after work?

Pre-workout when busy

We have two options.

You can use

• 45 grams of Haribo
• 1 banana

or

• Gatorade or a similar sports drink that contains sugar.
• 1 banana

As you can see, pre-workout nutrition is not that hard. But whether you use it or not will determine how hard your session is.

If something as simple as pre-workout nutrition changes how your sessions feel, imagine what happens when your entire camp is structured properly.

I work with fighters and serious hobbyists to build nutrition plans that support performance across every phase of camp.

I only take on a limited number of athletes per camp.

If you have a fight booked or you’re training with intent, you can sign up on Gumroad or message me directly.

Until next time

Alex

I hear it all the time when I work with clients. They don’t want to count calories. I understand where it comes from. It’s easy when you cook everything yourself, but what if you eat out or eat at a friend’s house? That is when people stress too much about it.

The reality is that tracking calories takes about 5 minutes a day, especially with the current technology. But let’s figure out how to eat to perform without counting calories.

It all starts with…. Read More

How Muay Thai camps actually work behind the scenes. I’ve had numerous questions about the cost of gym memberships in Thailand. To be quite frank, I never addressed that in my e-book. The reason why was simple: the book was written before the gyms upped the prices even more post-COVID.

Let’s be real, some gyms charge outrageous prices. They have a big name and use it to their advantage. But where does this come from? Why do they charge so much more than gyms in the West? To answer that question, we have to go back to the golden age. Read More

Feel Like Death in Fight Week? You Planned Wrong. I wish this happened once in a blue moon. But it happens all the time. A fighter has a fight coming up and has to lose some weight to make their weight class. They go into a deep calorie deficit and burn out. When weight loss stalls, they add more cardio on top of it just to get to that desired number.

Or they drop calories even more. The result is the same. They arrive burned out by the time fight week arrives, and that’s when they contact me. Read More

You hear it all the time in gyms. Fighters claim they’re professionals because they are showing up to training and doing all the extra work. Now there is truth to this. But this is short-sighted at the same time. The professional takes care of everything.

This means training, lifestyle, and nutrition. The athlete who comes to training underfueled and sleep-deprived is not a professional. Nor is the athlete who’s always overweight outside of camp. The real athlete is dsiciplined year round. Both of these cases are bad examples of how to conduct yourself as an athlete year-round.

Something that will change your training camps drastically.

This is a trend I have frequently observed among fighters. Even if they have a nutritionist, which is baffling to me. Post fight, they blow up. Get the call for another fight, step on the scale. After that, a panic attack ensues. The weight loss is daunting. Another camp that will suck, they tell themselves.

Sounds like you? Keep reading.

You get the point. It’s a never-ending cycle. Life is great until camp starts.

And this shouldn’t be the case.

There is a better approach.

The Year-Round Standard

The best approach is to resolve the issue before you even have a fight booked. Going into a small deficit, 0.5% weight loss per week, like highlighted in this article, is the best way to do it.

It’s sustainable and easy.

But most people will postpone this until it’s too late. So what’s the second-best approach?

Post fight, you take 2 days where you enjoy food without going overboard. And after that, you start taking nutrition seriously.

You eat to be elite. The main thing that people don’t understand is that you don’t have to eat clean all the time. But the other side of the coin, eating like trash all the time because you restrict yourself too much, isn’t healthy either.

Eat To Be Elite.

Staying at a healthy weight between camps is what you ideally want. Staying within 5-8% of the ideal weight to cut from is what you want. So say you’re a 71 kg fighter who fights at 65.7 kg. That would mean you’d weigh between 74.5 and 76.7 kg. Cutting from there to 71 kg in an 8-week camp is easy.

But how do we achieve this?

With a very easy equation.

Take your current ideal walk-around weight and multiply it by 45. That is the amount of calories you need to eat on a double training day.

This is what you should do post-fight, as soon as you go back to training.

So, for example, a 70 kg fighter would need to eat 3150 calories on double training days.

After we use the 3-2-1 principle to calculate how many grams of each macro we need.

So, for a 70 kg fighter, that would equate to:

• Protein: 140 grams of protein (2 x bodyweight in kg)
• Fats: 70 grams (1 x bodyweight in kg)
• Carbs: 484 grams of carbs (remainder of the calories divided by 4)

Most people trying to eat this amount of carbs will quickly realize this is quite hard to hit if you don’t use certain foods strategically.

Most fighters never learn how to structure this properly. That’s where I come in.

Camps don’t have to feel like torture every single time.

I work with fighters and hobbyists to build nutrition strategies that support performance across an entire camp. Not just the sessions that feel good in the moment.

If you have a fight booked and want structure instead of guesswork, you can sign up on Gumroad or reach out via Instagram or Substack.

Until next time

Alex

Today, we’ll cover some of the realities of the fight game no one talks about. So, yes, it hurts, of course. What did you expect? I get this question quite often. Even had it once after a fight. My left leg was twice the size of my right leg. I was shaking my head in confusion at that point. I couldn’t figure out what was worse. My leg hurting, or the headache I got after that question.

There are many beliefs out there about fighting that are just not true. And there are many things people don’t realize until it’s way too late. Today we’ll focus on the latter.

Let’s dive into it. Read More

It’s fair to say everyone has felt lost in life. And it’s fair to say most people have been there more than once. And some people feel lost and never figure out how to leave the situation they are in.

I went through it last year. I had 4 losses in a row; I lost all momentum in my online business, and to top it all off, I got fucked over by my job. At that point, I really asked myself if I was going in the right direction.

However, during this period, I learned a great deal, and I’m still here. And it’s safe to say we’re so back. Read More

I recently wrote a post called “How to avoid burnout when training hard.” This post included 6 tips on how to make sure you don’t burn out while training hard. But there is more. That post was aimed at what to do. People are still doing things that sound great on paper. Those things actually undermine their performance in the long run.

People get short-term results and think it’s working. But they are confused when they face the long-term consequences.

Let’s dive into it. Read More

Recently, I had one of the best training camps of my career so far.

Fight number 20 in Hua Hin ended in a close decision loss.

The gamblers loved the fight and gave both of us a bonus. Next month, I’ll be back competing on the Bangkok scene due to this performance.

One of my training partners fought on the same card.

His camp looked very different.

He was underfueled and burned out toward the end. So, I gave him macro targets to aim for, ensuring he recovered properly before fight day.

Problem solved. Or so I thought.

A few days later, I got this message:

And this is how we arrive at the issue of solely relying on AI.

The Problem With “Just Using AI”

AI has been treated like an oracle lately.

The issue?

AI can be a useful tool if you already understand what you’re looking at. Most people don’t. Fighters included.

In my training partner’s case, his macros were way off:

• Carbs: hit
• Protein: low
• Fats: low

Is that catastrophic? No.
Is it easy to fix? Yes.
Should this have been an issue to begin with? No.

The meal plan he followed appeared structured on paper, but he figured out that something was way off when he tracked it. Once I looked at it, I also pointed out that there was basically zero fiber in this meal plan.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen this.

Fighters have been utilizing AI, often to their detriment.

AI Can’t Coach You

AI doesn’t see:

• How hard you trained that day
• Whether you’re sleeping like shit
• How close you are to burning out
• If you have been chronically underfueling

AI relies on your input, and most likely, you don’t know what matters when it comes to your nutritional needs.

The coach asks you follow-up questions. AI is just a glorified “yes man.”

That’s the difference.

Context matters when making nutrition plans.

Why Coaching Actually Works

It’s very tempting to use AI since it’s free.

This is why people pick it over coaching. But coaching does something that AI can’t do: give you an individualized plan.

For 50 euros per week, your nutrition becomes something to worry about less.

And you can cancel anytime.

Final Thought

Coaching gives you results. AI only gives you more things to worry about.

This is exactly what I did for my training partner. I fixed the issue with the meal plan, so he had something less to worry about.

I can similarly help you.

I work with fighters to plan and execute nutrition strategies for hard camps, including weight cuts, heat acclimation, and sweat rate testing.
If you have a fight booked and want structure instead of guesswork, you can sign up on Gumroad or reach out via Instagram or Substack.

Until next time

Alex

Burnout rarely happens overnight. It’s a very slow process.

It typically presents as flat sessions, constant soreness, poor sleep, or a feeling of being “off” by week two or three of camp. Most fighters and hobbyists go through it at least once. For some, it’s a learning experience. For others, it becomes a cycle.

The good news: it’s largely avoidable.

Here’s how most people get it wrong and what actually works to avoid burnout. Read More