Hi,

I have been low carbing for 3 weeks now and I feel great. However, just the other day I made a spontaneous decision that tomorrow I will participate in the 4 hour long Krav Maga testing. I have been doing KM for 4 months now and the classes normally last 1 hour, no problems there. But this will pretty much be four hours of the same, yikes! I have never exercised for that long at once in my entire life.

Just to fill you in if you aren't familiar, KM is a martial art that stresses training at high intensity interval levels. At a typical class session we start with 15 minute cardio warmup which includes pushups, squats, lunges, etc along with things like jumping rope, running, all that. The rest of the class alternates between high intensity punching and kicking drills, short periods of rest, and self defense technique instruction. It is never the same class twice, the instructors like to mix it up to keep it interesting.

I think these 4 months of training has done me a lot of good in gaining overall fitness and toning. I can feel muscle underneath my slowly shrinking layer of fat. I never had that before! It will be a kick to actually be able to see some of that muscle tone when I get close to goal.

Anyway, tomorrow's test is said to be more of the same but for a total of 4 hours. We were told to bring plenty of water and 2 towels.

In order to prepare for this, would it be helpful for me to increase my carbs today? I have never tried carbo loading before, and while I kind fo hate to break my diet, I will if it means I have better endurance for the test tomorrow.Also, should I up my normal multivitamin intake?

Any advice and tips are appreciated!

anybody? A little help here!

Sorry, Girlbug, I don't know much about Krav Maga. My Brown Belt test in Tae Kwon Do lasted about 4 hours, but I had been training for years. I'd never have survived it with 4 months training, but I have no idea whether there are any similarities at all. What's the purpose of this testing?
I don't think I'd do any carb loading at all, personally. I have no expertise in the area, though. I'm going by what I've read in Atkins/ Eades/ Taubes. And I always increase my vitamin/mineral intake when I'm stressing my body. Not for a day, but for weeks...... If you're going to be pouring sweat, you need to keep your electrolytes in balance and your fluid levels up. Does that help at all?
Good luck!

Anything that gets your heart racing and breathing so hard you can't have a conversation means you are burning sugar (carbs). So it depends on what you consider 'high intensity' and how long you'd be doing it. I'd suggest a high-carb meal a few hours before the event. You can't have a quality workout without some carb in the system.

I wouldn't worry about the carbs. You'll burn them up quickly if the workout is intense and lasts 4 hours. I'd also have something handy to eat after the first two hours. A plain chocolate bar would work.

Wie,

The purpose is to test for advancing from Level One (white belt) to Level Two (orange belt).

My instructors say that I am ready, so I will have to go on their judgement, but personally, I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight!

One more question: in order to hydrate for tomorrow, should I eat saltier foods today?

Okay, the test is over now, a whopping five hours!

I did mild carbo loading the night before, careful to keep it from being too sugary, and this morning had eggs.

Brought plenty of water, an atkins bar and a chocolate bar just in case. Drank the water but never felt hungry, so the chocolate and atkins bars are still in my gym bag Energy was reasonably good, I think I did well overall, made a few mistakes, not sure if I will pass. It was a heck of a thing to go through and then not pass. I hope I don't do something crazy, like binge on carbs to console myself, if I find out I failed the test. Certainly I will cry for a bit, but then move on and keep working on my problem areas.

We won't know until next Friday if we've passed. I will update this thread again at that time to let you all know. Thanks for your thoughtful responses.