Wednesday, 26th October

Halloween coming up and traditionally a big time for sweets and this means lots of sugar of course.

Most of us consumed lots of sweets as children and some of us are still consuming sweets on a regular basis now, but its when we become adults that the problems usually begin to hit home!!!

First of all, if we continue to get sugar from refined sources such as sweets, we can soon enough develop cardiovascular trouble and thats really bad news, especially when you start thinking about heart disease.

Eating a lot of sugar can increase the levels of “fluffy” fat that is between our arteries. This can form plaque and globules of fat that can lead to big trouble for us anytime.

When these forms of plaque break up, they travel to the heart, brain or kidney and can cause heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure.

The added sugars are just as bad if not worse, all of those names such as corn syrup, white sugar, brown sugar, dextrose, crystal dextrose etc etc are really devastating for your whole system if you continue to base your diet high in sugars!!

Sugar itself will not give you the heart attack, its just the sorts of conditions it brings with it. If you eat sugary foods every day then it doesnt take a genius to work out you will become overweight!! And from being overweight, diabetes, certain cancers and many other diseases become a lot more likely according to numerous studies!

A startling fact is that 36% of most overweight people’s sugar intake comes from liquid sources, pop, sports drinks, energy drinks are heavy contributors to ill health, and if most people just drunk water instead of sugary drinks, the obesity problem would be substantially decreased!!!

The bottom line is that a little sugar is needed by everyone, but fruits and grains are the preferred sources for good health and if you take this route, you are likely to regulate your health very successfully!

Tuesday 16th August

Swansea didn’t get off to the most promising starts in the premiership last night, losing 4 nil but it wasn’t all bad of course.

They played some very good football in the first 20 minutes and held their own most of the first half. The problem was when the first goal went in, the floodgates opened and Swansea were opened up regularly.

Apart from the fact that manchester city have the most expensive squad in the world, there was another major difference for me.

When a Manchester player had the ball, he usually just brushed away a Swansea city player with ease, because he was bigger and stronger, not necessarily quicker!

The same happened when Swansea had the ball, they were often pushed off the ball in a legal way by a stronger man city player, in fact it happened heck of a lot!!!

I trace this problem to what I saw of local football players over the last 15 years, they simply ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH, they are quick enough but not strong enough and need some serious strength work!!!

It makes me puzzled when I hear that Cardiff city for example only had their magnificent training facilities in place 2 years ago, despite getting £24 million in debt by spending on players, isn’t that crazy?!!!!!

My recent work with younger football players confirm what I expected, they are encouraged to do lots of running but little or no advice on strength work and certainly not much on diet!!!! I could go on record and be really blunt about the way they train at junior level in the professional clubs, but I want to come across as constructive and not negative, but things HAVE TO IMPROVE!!!!

It is criminal the lack of knowledge these clubs have and are too pig-headed to do anything about it!!!!!

Why are they spending money on all these players yet they could easily improve on what they have by making their current players fitter and stronger, and getting their diets so much more efficient and nutrient rich, I repeat again, THIS IS CRIMINAL IN TERMS OF WASTING TALENT!!!!!

The highest paid sport in the world and you have a proportion of their organisation at best ill-informed and if you had to be nasty about it, you would call them amateurs!!!!!

Welsh rugby is in far better shape now with conditioning.

I blogged before about the junior international I was training, and in his WRU diet, he was told to eat jam sandwiches as a snack!!!! Jam sandwiches I need to repeat that!!!!! What a joke they were and this was back in 1998/99!!!!! LUCKILY, they have come from there and got their act together!!!

It seems to me that football needs to get its act together and the swans need to get bigger and stronger, and could even improve their speed. How they are light years behind some sports is mystifying and must be very frustrating for their fans!!!!