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Thursday, 18th July

We talked this week about how to eat, what to eat and how often.

What we didn’t discuss is why and what this pattern of eating will achieve for you.

If you are heavily involved in sports performance, then you will be very keen to recover as soon as possible, and prepare properly before your upcoming workouts.

There are two states your body can be in.

Anabolic state is the one where your body is thriving, ready to grow and recover quickly. This is an ideal state to be in, and for those of you looking to perform at your best, and keep on improving at regular intervals.

Catabolic state is where your body is not energized at all, your lean muscle tissue breaks down, you feel weak at times, and you will suffer from inconsistent performances. It doesn’t take a genius to say that you need to avoid this state.

Eating every 3-4 hours not only keeps you fuller for longer, it keeps your energy levels high, keeps your metabolism going at an elevated rate, and gets you into the desired anabolic state.

Eating regular will keep you away from having big binges on food, stop you overeating at certain times due to longer periods without food, and generally let you have a very healthy relationship with food, and helping you stay in control of your nutrient intake.

So you can see that having a healthy, regular pattern of food intake will make you far closer in terms of the habits of pro athletes, and all of this will help you reach your potential FAR SOONER than if you had not taken your nutritional habits as seriously.

Having a professional approach will deliver the results you have always wanted but never knew how to get!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 24th August

Snacks-calorie breakdown

Snacks are vitally important as we talked about a couple of days ago, to keep energy levels up, and to keep important nutrients coming in throughout the day. Your diet needs to be all about energy and getting your performance levels right up there!

 Here are some ideas on what you should eat and their calorific value.

Fresh fruit for energy-100g usually

Apple-50

Pear-64

Banana-95

Blueberries-30

Kiwi fruit-29

Plums-34

Grapes-60

Strawberries-27

Satsuma-23

Dried fruit-to cure a sweet tooth and good for you

Sultanas-138

Raisins-136

Figs-43

Apricots-29

Low-fat yoghurts-provide calcium and nice desserts

Natural low-fat-56

Whole milk-79

Low-fat fruit-90

Low fat fromage frais-58

Nuts-50g-for essential fats

Cashews-287

Brazils-341

Almonds-306

Walnuts-344

Pumpkin seeds-57

Sunflower-57

Mixed nuts chopped-304

Hazlenuts-325

 As you can see by this list, we are talking about good healthy natural foods that are going to do you the world of good!

Please throw out the other sugary snacks such as biscuits, crisps and chocolate, the fact that they are still in the house means that they will get eaten at some stage or another, so give them away to someone who will appreciate them!

Snacks have often been the area where i have seen a lot of individuals leave themselves down. We have talked about the usual suspects such as chocolate, crisps, biscuits but what about the ones with real hidden dangers?

I am talking about cereal bars, and these were highlighted in the news this week as containing much more saturated fat and refined sugars than even chocolate in some cases.

When you add all the chemicals that they put in that you have never even heard of, then you have a very destructive so called snack that is going to put body fat on, and give you a lot of useless energy that is unusable by the body.

Eat natural and this means eating well

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday, 24th July

If we are feeling sorry for ourselves training in the heat that is around us right now, you have to bow to the riders of the Tour De France over the last few weeks!

You can swap our 22-25 degress for 38-43 degrees at times, all done on some of the highest mountains known in world cycling. This is why these men are probably the toughest athletes on the planet, and anyone who has observed them up close will know how extremely hard they work!

They need up to 7000 calories a day to get through such monumental days, and when most are only around 9-10 stone, this feeding regime on its own is a big feat!!

So next time you consider this week if its too warm to exercise, stop feeling sorry for yourself and enjoy the relative heat, because we don’t get it very often!

Another thing the great Bradley Wiggins victory demonstrated was the ability to recover every day, dust yourself off and get up the next day and do it all over again!! Often a lot harder and many days!

This shows extremely conditioning but this is done with an extreme amount of practice too and attention to detail! Wiggins spent the early part of his winter going up the side of a volcano in tenerife, which simulated the very real challenges he would face in the Alps and Pyrannees!!!

Like anything in life, if you prepare really well, then everything is likely to go a lot smoother and better on the day, and so it proved. Not only Wiggins but he had a super team with him too, who all prepared ultra- well in their own disciplines to make sure nothing was left to chance, and they ended up the best and most dominate team in the tour.

This is why regular training is all-important and will lead to your best results if you keep putting your mind to it!!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 13th July

Making the commitment to be fit, stay fit and always be fit is totally overwhelming for almost all of us.

This is why i encourage everyone to take one day at a time, and just do your best that particular day.

Chances are you will improve much quicker like this rather than somehow trying to plan your year!

I can totally see how you can plan your week,  but your month or next couple of months is extremely difficult for all of us.

If you focused on one day then, you can see from the following how it can work very well for you.

For example, if you concentrated on eating a good energy filled breakfast every morning, full of slow-release energy, then you’re not going to go too far wrong.

This can be fairly easy if you only buy good quality cereals with only natural ingredients.

If you go for the likes of porridge, shredded wheat and weetabix and stick to the basic versions of these fine cereals, then you’re not going to be taking excess sugars into your sytem, meaning you will be energised and still lose body fat.

Lunch from monday to friday for most people is again fairly simple, make sure you eat some vegetables, good carbs of wholegrain variety where possible and a good quality protein source.

Your evening meal will be fairly similar, and trying to make sure you get some fruit in the day along with plenty of water, at least 1.5 litres.

On the exercise side, try and commit to being active most days, there is a huge variety on offer and we talk about exercise all the time.

Sleep is often underrated, so make this a priority.

Get these things right and you will taking one day at a time very well indeed!

Twitt
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Monday, 9th July

The pursuit of excellent is continuously being shown by Andy Murray.

He may not have won yesterday, but in his own words, he is “getting closer”!!

It didn’t help of course he came up probably the greatest ever player, but he did have Federer on the back foot for some considerable time.

Hopefully, he will get at least one grand slam and hope  to see it soon.

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of hate and vitriol he seems to get especially online, when most of it is surely unjustified. I think everyone will agree he showed his “human side” after his tearful speech while accepting his runner up trophy.

Another sporting hero who is getting a hard time at the moment is Bradley Wiggins. You would think that being the first ever British cyclist to be favourite for the tour de france would be a big thing, but apparently not.

The press have turned it into a personal hate and smear campaign against Wiggins, and this time mainly from the french and spanish press. They cannot accept that wiggins is NOT on drugs, and that he MUST be doing something illegal to be such a favourite!

They forget that wiggins won three g0ld medals, and should really have had a fourth gold medal if mark cavendish had shown up on form that day.

Wiggins was also fourth in the tour de france three years ago, was tenth the year after after losing form, and was in great shape last year only to crash out with a broken collarbone.

This year he was won the paris-nice classic, the tour of romandie, the dauphine de libere so i hardly think he has somehow got “lucky” this year!!

Wiggins has shoved two fingers up at his detractors this year, as has murray.

Wiggins will surely be a grand tour champion in perhaps the world’s toughest sporting event, Murray needs one more step.

Time to stay positive and get behind our sporting stars.

Twitt