Whether you are a top class athlete or a casual trainer, there is a good chance that you will be looking for the following things from your training:
Get the maximum from each training session
There are nutrients that will naturally make ATP (the energy unit) available to the body. Other nutrients will encourage the body to burn different fuels, e.g. fat as well as glucose.
Not get sick
A major drawback for top athletes is getting sick and missing training/events. Athletes get sick more often due to an unbalanced immune system. A variety of supplements can keep the immune system in balance to fight off disease. Whether you are a top athlete or a casual trainer, a strong immune system is key to achieving your goals.
Get more endurance
Now the following is yucky and something I arbore, but science does not have a heart and some of there studies are cruel. To test the endurance of different substances, they feed them to rats (because many of their bodily functions are similar to ours) and then the rats have to swim, until they drown. There are many herbs that have substantially increased swim times. These same herbs have been found to increase endurance significantly in humans.
Maximize your training gains/recover quicker
In order to translate training into gains, the body needs nutrients to repair and rebuild. An optimum balance of these, provides for optimum gains.
A diet and lifestyle to support performance
It is not just what you eat and how you train that determines your performance. There are a whole host of lifestyle factors. For example, growth hormone that repairs your body is released by the body, predominantly at a certain time of night, so your sleep pattern will play a major support role. Certain natural nutrients induce a deeper sleep and certain environmental and lifestyle changes will induce a deeper more restful sleep.
Performance on the day
What you eat leading up to an event will determine your performance on the day. Your body burns glucose first, then glycogen is converted to glucose, then fat is burned. You can build up your body’s stores of these things to take you that bit further. Some foods will impair your performance, while others are not optimum fuels.
Case Study
Lloyd was a distance runner, who was referred to me to see if there was something I could do to break a pattern that occurred leading into every major race. He would train hard and then, just before the race, he would fall sick with a cold or the flu or some other infection. He was taking lots of vitamins, but they did not seem to help.
After a series of test, Lloyd’s problem became clear, along with a host of other things. Intense exercise naturally drives down one side of your immune system, leaving you vulnerable to particular sorts of infections. During the consultations it became clear that Lloyd was also suffering from a bloated stomach, gas and often experienced stomach pains after eating, which settled down after exercise. He was told that he had irritable bowel syndrome and that little could be done for it. This was causing a situation of chronic inflammation in his body, which would almost certainly impact on his performance.
We designed a six-week program to sort out Lloyd’s irritable bowel syndrome and to balance his immune system. In the last year Lloyd has had one cold and no flu, compared to at least six in previous years.