Blog
Training and Dieting around the Menstrual Cycle
For women, having a good knowledge of our menstrual cycles and patterns can help us plan training and nutrition. Hormonal fluctuations can affect more than our bleeding cycle- mood, strength, recovery and more! The average female cycle is 28 days, so that’s what we’ll use when we talk about the phases BUT it can vary from 22-35 days. Every woman is different but there are some changes that happen to us all as our hormones fluctuate, and these can be beneficial to know about!
Making Shift Work Work For You!!
In the UK, 11% of our population work 'unsociable' hours outside the normal 9-5 with more than 3 million people regularly working at night. For anyone who does work shifts, they will recognise fatigue, lack of motivation and concentration that strikes at 4am.
Why is it a problem?
Rules of progressive overload
Progressive overload is one of the most important factors in getting bigger, stronger and fitter when it comes to training. If you haven’t heard of it before, don’t worry, there is a good chance that you are already doing it.
Progressive overload is defined as ‘the gradual increase of stress placed upon the body during exercise training’. In layman’s terms, it's aiming to be stronger, faster or fitter each time you train.
From skinny to fit
If you are reading this frustrated, I feel your pain. This used to be me. If you saw me now, I am confident that you wouldn’t label me as skinny. Sure, I have areas that I want to grow in, but that’s just down to my now, bodybuilding mindset.
I played sports all the way through my childhood up until I was injured just before I went to uni. At the time I would have described myself as ‘athletic’ rather than skinny. I was strong for my age and I was fast, but in hindsight, from a bodybuilders point of view or anyone who enjoyed training, I was skinny.
How long off training is detrimental?
Nobody likes taking unplanned time off training, it sucks. If you are anything like me then you love training and it's an enjoyable part of your day. I don’t think I would be far off claiming that many of you probably search for gyms you can visit when planning a holiday. Nothing beats going to the gym, having a great workout and setting some personal bests. The sense of accomplishment and confidence boost it can give you is unrivalled.
Exercise selection
Exercise selection is something that I feel is overlooked in many people's training programmes. They may choose exercises that are popular on social media, that their favourite influencer does or even randomly assign exercises to their program without ever thinking about why they are performing them. For the beginner, it's less of an issue. They can merely stare at a weight and begin to grow (okay not quite, but you get my drift). Having said that, a beginner will get off to a much better start if they choose the right exercises at the start of their weight training journey. Compound movements over isolation movements for example. When it comes to intermediate and advanced lifters, exercise selection becomes even more important and you really have to be in tune with your body to know what exercises work for you, how often to use them and when to change them.
Understanding BCAAs
A branched-chain amino acid is an amino acid having an aliphatic side-chain with a branch . Among the proteinogenic amino acids, there are three BCAAs: leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Non-proteinogenic BCAAs include 2-aminoisobutyric acid.
How much muscle can you really build?
This is a question that I have always been interested in, ever since I started building muscle and noticing the change it can have on your appearance. Surely, if you are able to build 4lb of muscle in one month then you can just replicate that in the next month and build another 4? Oh, if only. Everyone would be walking around as a 250lb plus bodybuilder. Plus, these types of gains only really happen when you are a newbie. The body is a very smart machine and quickly adapts to stimulus. Which sucks for building muscle, but it's what has kept us (humans) at the top of the food chain.
Reducing hunger on a diet
Most of us have all been on a diet at some point in our life. Most of us have probably all got to a point within that diet where we feel incredibly hungry, it's almost inevitable. A diet after all (one that restricts calories) is essentially starving our body of enough calories to function optimally.
I’m also sure that once most of us feel that insatiable hunger, a good few of us have caved and stuffed our face full of our favourite food at least once or twice. That’s fine by the way, we are human and most of us aren’t in prep for a competition and don’t have to be strict every second of every day. You shouldn’t feel guilty and you shouldn’t quit if this happens, dieting should be sustainable and be done over a long period of time. Think to yourself, what is one or two meals of ‘bad’ food if you are dieting for over 100 days? Very little in the grand scheme of things.
Everything you should be taking pre workout
I am a big advocate of pre workout. If like me you are serious about your training and always strive to be better than your session, why would you not take something that can help you improve your results in the gym?
Pre-workout has been around for a long time, and I find myself lucky enough to be of the generation that had access to the likes of original Jack3d and Driven Sports Craze before they were banned. These were two of the best (and strongest) pre workouts I ever tried, and I have been searching for the same effect ever since they were discontinued. If you know, you simply know. Saying that, there are still plenty of great pre workouts out there that can be used to good effect, and we will be getting onto some of the ingredients you want to be keeping an eye out for soon. First though, there are a few things you want to do before you even reach for that heaped scoop of magic dust.