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
Today is for all the early birds who like to get their training sessions in before work… The question is, what impact does skipping breakfast actually have on strength performance? We know that carbohydrates drive exercise performance and overall work capacity, so you would expect going ‘carbohydrate free’ before your morning session would worsen your
Today, we round off all things immunity by looking at nutrients/supplements to improve our immune tolerance. Strengthening our ‘Immune tolerance’ aims to decrease the burden of illness and infection by giving us a greater capacity to endure microbes. Therefore, athletes become less sick and can continue their training programme/cycle without large absences or interruptions. When
Today, we cover proposed nutrients/supplements to improve immune resistance. Immune resistance can be considered as our immune weaponry that protects us by destroying viruses, pathogens and microbes. Next week, we’ll cover the proposed nutrients/supplements to improve immune tolerance, i.e. our ability to endure and control infection. In a recent review, Neil Walsh (2019) identified 7
As you would have guessed, this week is entirely focussed on immune function. Before heading any further, I need to state that there’s no known food, strategy, dieting type or supplement that can fight COVID-19….so if you see anyone stating that there is, they are full of B.S. At the time of writing this, we
Today, we have a fresh off the press study looking into ‘Intermittent Energy Restriction (IER)’ and its ability to shred body fat, preserve muscle mass and resting metabolic rate (RMR) for more effective and efficient body transformations. Before heading any further, IER is essentially a form of calorie or carb cycling. You may have heard
Last week, we found that BCAA supplements don’t really offer too much value when it comes to recovering from exercise. This week, we look at the effect of an essential amino acid (EAA) + carbohydrate drink on muscle adaptations to exercise (muscle growth)…i.e. not recovery. It’s generally recommended that when you eat enough protein in
Today, we take another look at branch chain amino acid (BCAA) supplements and their ability to improve muscle recovery from training. Long story short, the title in the image gives quite a lot away. Short story long… It’s been well establish that a high(er) protein intake initiates muscle repair, remodelling and growth after weight training.
