Today we’re answering a very common question that many athletes have… ‘How quickly can I lose body fat?’ When it comes to dropping body fat, we need to consume fewer calories than we expend – this is fat loss 101. However, many athletes get the magnitude of the calorie deficit wrong. From experience, athletes will
I’m sure most of you will have heard something along the lines that your body can only absorb ~30g of protein in a meal….well, is this actually true? How much protein can you actually absorb at once? When we think of absorption, we think of the passage of nutrients from the gut into systemic circulation.
Today is for those who have zero appetite after intense training sessions, games and competitions. For athletes who have high training demands and urgent recovery needs, this poses a serious problem. As mentioned in episode 15 of the Average to Elite podcast (Ultra-Fast Recovery), the hours after intense exercise is an opportunistic period to accelerate
When we typically look at intermittent fasting (skipping breakfast) and exercise performance, we see a decline in overall work capacity. However, these are when the exercise sessions are done in a fasted state. The question is; how does skipping breakfast impact performance when training later on in the day [5pm]? In a 2015 study by
In the world of a cyclist, power-weight ratio is everything. The aim is to churn out a high power output whilst having a low bodyweight to skyrocket your watts per kg, and ultimately make you a better cyclist. This definitely makes sense… The question is what is the best way to develop your power-weight ratio?
Today, we look at a potential ‘holy grail’ approach to sports nutrition for endurance athletes: The Keto:High Carb periodised diet. As mentioned last week, ketogenic diets improve the ability of the muscle to use fat for fuel (nearly unlimited fuel) and have less reliance on carbohydrates (limited fuel). We concluded that keto diets do have
Today, we cover part of a part of a huge topic: Ketogenic dieting (KD). We know that carbohydrates are king for enhancing exercise performance (especially at higher intensities). We also know that carbohydrates are rate limiting for performance as we only have a limited capacity to store them within the body, which could be an
Today, we throwback to 1975 to look at an incredibly effective diet for fat loss… So effective that all patients enrolled into the dieting programme (106 in total) lost at least 45kg of weight, where the average weight loss being 63.9kg and the maximum loss being 137kg! 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝗲𝘁. Initially developed by Kempner
When looking at ways to maximise performance and becoming the best athlete possible, we always emphasise the physical… But what about the mental? Surely we can’t forget about the brains behind the performance operation. Being shredded, strong, fit and robust is great, but if you can’t think clearly and decisively, you’re ability to express your
As you’re very aware, sports drinks and energy gels are commercially available to buy and have been shown to enhance exercise performance. The issue is that many non-athletes drink and consume these high sugar products, of which high sugar diets can contribute and are associated with obesity, insulin resistance, hypertension, CV disease (Johnson et al,
Today, we find out that the putrid, soil tasting performance enhancing supplement is lying to us and that we may not be getting the performance boost we first thought… Beetroot is therefore a dick. Well, some of them. Beetroot juice is used by many athletes as they are very rich in dietary nitrate. Once this
Do you ever wonder how elite athletes can recover super-fast and have the ability to train multiple times a day, several times a week? Apart from the obvious factors such as; sleep, good nutrition and managing overall training load, there’s something else that happens behind the scenes… We know that muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is
As the title would suggest, the main outcome for an athlete is to perform. But, chasing this without robustness is futile.. When looking at athlete robustness, one area of concern is your bone health. We know that 90% of bone formation/mass is achieved by 20 years and that peak bone mass is achieved by 30
Today, we investigate the ‘second wind phenomenon’. Remember the pre-covid times when you started a run, game or event really strong? Then you slowly faded. Before all of a sudden finding Thor’s level of strength and could power through to the finish line. To my understanding, there isn’t a singular cause, more of a sum
Today, we take a further stroll down the lane of the placebo effect. 𝗢𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻-𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗯𝗼 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁. The placebo effect can be defined as a person having a beneficial effect arising from the belief that a food, supplement or medicine will work. This is an incredibly powerful phenomenon in the world of sports
