5 Tips for strength trainees in Ramadan

Ramadan is upon us, so here are some tips for my subscribers that are doing Ramadan and PTs that have clients that are doing Ramadan. It will help make things a lot easier and help you preserve your gains.

Timestamps

0:00 Intro

0:13 Tip 1 – Wake up later

0:35 Tip 2 – Schedules

1:13 Schedule 1

1:58 Schedule 2

2:34 Schedule 3

3:36 Tip 3 – Mental Preparation

4:35 Tip 4 – Fasted workouts

4:45 Tip 5 – Remember the goal

5:19 Outro

Transcript

Salam alaikum.
Ramadan is upon us,
so here are some tips for my subscribers
that are doing Ramadan and PTs
that have clients that are doing Ramadan.
It will help make things a lot easier
and help you preserve your gains.
First step, try to wake up later.
If you can easily just wake up
later, that’s a very easy time to cut down
on the amount of sunrise hours,
which is the amount of hours
that you have to fast, you cannot drink,
you cannot eat.
So, if you can cut down those hours,
that’s a very easy way to do this.
Of course, not everybody has the luxury of
just being able to wake up
very late in the day.
And in general
I found that, which is my second tip.
There are three schedules
that typically, for most people,
are the best to stick to.
And consistency
is generally very important.
So it’s good to kind of stick
to one of these schedules,
whenever possible and make that consistent
because your body will adapt to it,
your biorhythm will adjust.
You will only become hungry
at the times that you have the food
and it will be much easier
than if you throw around your schedule
every single day
and it’s just completely chaotic,
because then you’ll be hungry at random
times, your sleep will probably suffer.
Sleep deprivation in turn will increase
your appetite throughout the day,
making the fasting more difficult
and everything just becomes a lot messier.
So schedule one
is, like I said, to wake up very late
and then essentially turn it
into a regular fasting diet,
which means you fast
and you break the fast with a light meal.
Light meals typically work better
because if you have a long fast
and then a big meal,
most people kind of crash.
Whereas if you have a light meal,
you could go to the gym afterwards
and then you have your big meal.
You need to have some discipline
because after first meal
and especially after a long fast,
you may not be in the mood to train, but
this is the ideal, like physiologically
speaking, this is the ideal timing.
That you would first break the fast
so you don’t train fasted,
you have some carbohydrates
and some protein,
at least 15 grams carbohydrates
and at least
0.4 gram per kilogram protein,
you can easily have more than that.
Break fast,
train, big meal, repeat every single day.
It’s kind of like a regular fasting diet.
And it’s really not that bad in this case.
Schedule two
is that you wake up very early
and you break the fast
in the morning already.
So this works
well if you don’t have to wake up too late
in kind of tropical time zones,
this can work quite well.
If it’s like 6 to 6 sunrise,
you can wake up,
like, four
probably you would have to wake up
but that’s doable
if you go to bed early enough.
Again, break the fast, train, big meal,
then you have the daytime
fast, rather, and then you have another
big meal before going to bed quite early.
And then you have the nighttime fast.
So this kind of splits it up where
you have to feeding times with two fasts.
That also works well.
Both of these fast are not that difficult
then, comparatively speaking.
Right, and then schedule
three is the siesta variant,
which can work
well in current Mediterranean like Spain.
If you can’t really do one
or the other schedule,
you have to kind of fall in between.
You would wake up early,
then go back to bed after having a meal.
So this is, if you can’t wake up so early
that you have a meal, train,
have another meal and then do the fast,
what you can do is you can wake up
before you have to start Ramadan,
have a meal, go back to sleep,
do the fast, and then at the end of
the day, meal training and another meal.
And then typically
because you have to break up
your sleep routine,
you will suffer some sleep deprivation.
So it works well to have another siesta,
like an afternoon nap
or period of sleeping.
I would, however, caution
to be careful of sleep deprivation
because it can increase your appetite and
make everything harder in the long run.
If you stick with a regular schedule
and you maintain good sleep,
it will become a lot easier.
Whereas if your sleep gets messed up
and your schedule becomes a mess, then
Ramadan will become a lot more difficult.
Right,
tip three is to prepare yourself mentally.
Ramadan is very much a mental struggle.
Physically, your body does not have issues
surviving Ramadan.
It is not a survival stress.
The dehydration is a bigger issue,
but the food deprivation and fasting
for not even a whole day
really isn’t a threat to your health.
In fact,
it may have positive health benefits.
So it’s very good to realize that,
my last video was also on my side,
I talk about it a lot in my book, so
I’m not going to go into too much detail.
But really the knowledge is that you are
physically very capable
of fasting for this period
and if you have the right mindset,
then it will be a lot easier.
You can focus on just staying occupied,
doing things, staying busy,
and you won’t have to think about food
all the time.
Like that’s the worst thing you can do.
Kind of sit around doing nothing and
thinking about how hard it is and food,
because then you’ll
just be much more focused on it.
Whereas if you try to just stay busy,
get into a consistent routine and habits,
and that way
Ramadan won’t be that difficult.
Tip four – Try to avoid fasted workouts,
but if you have to
then do your workouts fasted, it is always
better to work out than not the workout.
And then five – remember that
the goal of Ramadan,
as stated in the Quran at least, of course
interpretations differ,
but it is not to suffer.
The Quran says, “Allah intends for you
ease and does not intend for you
hardship.” Of course this is all relative,
but if you are really physically incapable
of doing Ramadan,
then most people agree
that you probably should.
Don’t risk your health to do it.
You can postpone the fasting days
and do them at a later time.
So it’s also good to know
if it really is essentially impossible
for you to fast
without serious risk to your health.
All right.
I hope that makes Ramadan
a little easier for you.