Health and Fitness

Are you doing a random training programme that you read in a magazine? Or maybe it’s from a particularly lazy fitness instructor who just wrote out a list of miscellaneous exercises for you to do. You end up walking back and forward from the rowing machine to the stepper with a vague idea of what you are doing. You’re confused!

It is common these days for busy personal trainers and gym instructors to just make a list of machines out of their heads and magazine workouts to recommend generic nonsense to people as being the holy grail of weight loss. Let’s look at a few examples.

Michelle joins a gym and asks for a programme to ‘tone up’ and she’s doing 40 minutes on the treadmill and some chest presses.

Paul wants to lose 40 lbs and he’s doing 40 minutes on the treadmill and some chest presses.

You see where I’m going with this?

Nearly all fruit juice contains 10-15% sugar. The sugars come from sucrose, glucose and fructose, a nice mix when it comes to sports nutrition and health generally. I recommend my clients always dilute their favorite fruit juice 50/50 with water (never neat juice) resulting in a nice 6-8% natural sugar drink with quality natural nutrients. You may or not be aware that this is pretty 'spot on' when one is looking for an isotonic drink!

Good quality 100% fruit juice as opposed to drinks with added sugar is best by a long shot.

Pineapple juice is particularly good as a post exercise fix as it is higher in glucose than say grape juice which is higher in fructose and can be beneficial as a regular isotonic drink such as powerade before exercise. Remember these drinks will contain a great volume of water which is necessary for good health and sports performance.

My tip!

1. Make a half pint (Mug full) pot of green tea.
2. Let it cool.
3. Get your 1 litre sports bottle ready. Buy One
   
4. Fill the bottle half way with cold green tea.
5. Top up the second half of the bottle with your favourite Juice (no added sugar).
6. Sip this as a very powerful isotonic drink, improve your health and sport and save a packet!

If you still need to think your drinking lucozade you can Buy a Lucozade Sports Bottle from Amazon.co.uk

Brendan Murphy
Phone: 087-7874050
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
WEB: www.personaltraining.ie

Green tea is a leaf and therefore a vegetable.

If you buy loose green tea rather than tea bags, then the brewed / cooked leaves are large and resemble chopped cooked cabbage leaves. It’s unusual that so many of these leaves are thrown away. Tea can be bought in whole leaf, normal ground tealeaves or as a powder. Like any green leaf they are packed with nutrients and the tea from green tea leaves is a powerful drink subjected to many studies over the years in the east and the west.

The idea behind warm up is to gradually increase intensity to allow three main adaptations to take place

1. Some fuel to be burned in the muscles to allow body temperature increase therefore softening the muscle, ligaments and tendons therefore reducing soreness, stiffness and injury and making exercise much more comfortable.
2. To allow necessary time for the joint membranes to begin making and releasing fluid into the joints to protect the joints. This ‘synovial fluid’ lubricates, cushions and feeds the joints with nutrients and takes away wastes.
3. To allow time for nerves to fire/ function properly. Nerves work much better when warm. This allows better nerve control over the muscles and joints as you exercise and reduces risk of injury and increases comfort of exercise.