• Increased thermogenesis;
• Increased satiety;
• Hormonal regulation of hunger; and,
• Increased lean muscle mass.

Protein doesn't just help build muscle. Protein can also help us lose weight.

Increased Thermogenesis

Protein helps you burn more calories than fat or carbohydrates. While the reasons for this aren’t entirely understood, a possible theory is that because protein can’t be stored like carbs and fats, it needs to be processed immediately. Whereas the thermic effect of carbohydrates is only between 5 and 15%, and even lower for fat, the thermic effect of protein is between 20-35% of energy consumed.¹ This means that your body burns extra calories just by maintaining a high-protein diet. You lose weight with protein. How many extra calories? One recent study found that people consuming a 30% protein diet burned an extra 34kj/hour more over the study duration than those who ate a 15% protein diet.² This is about twice the thermic effect!

Increased Satiety

Scientific studies have consistently found that people on higher protein diets tend to feel less hungry for longer periods than those on low protein diets. Feeling more satiated for longer helps prevent snacking and taking in extra calories, which in turn aids weight loss. By how much? While this effect is difficult to isolate, at least 5 major studies have found that long term high protein diets have led to significantly higher levels of weight loss when compared to those on low protein diets. For example, a six-month long randomized trial on 132 obese subjects found that those consuming a 22% protein diet low in carbs lost more than 3 times as much weight on average than the group consuming a low fat and high carbohydrate diet consisting of just 16% protein.³

Hormones

Your gut releases many hormones that regulate how full you feel and how often you crave food. High protein diets have been found to induce your gut to release the greatest amounts of anorectic hormone peptide YY (PYY), which decreases hunger. A long term study of protein intake in mice found that higher protein levels increased plasma PYY levels, decreased food intake, and reduced their body fat.⁴

Increased Lean Muscle Mass

Muscles are your best friend if you’re trying to lose fat. Roughly stated, the more muscle you have, the more energy you burn, and the more likely you are to dip into your fat cells for that energy. Muscles help you burn extra energy even when you’re not working out. The more lean body mass you have, the higher your resting energy expenditure. For example, every 10 kg (22lb) difference in lean body mass translates to a difference in energy expenditure of approximately 100 calories a day.⁵

In addition to weight loss benefits, increased protein and lean body mass may be good for overall health. The author of a review article on protein and health in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition states that,

“abundant evidence points to a key role of altered muscle metabolism in the genesis, and therefore prevention, of many common pathologic conditions and chronic diseases. […] increasing protein or amino acid intakes may optimize muscle strength and metabolism and thereby improve health.”⁶

Not all proteins are equally as effective though, and some have added weight-loss benefits on top of those already mentioned. Undenatured whey protein works in conjunction with several other key ingredients found in GSH Ignite to increase intracellular glutathione levels. This is important in weight loss because it allows cellular respiration to increase, which means that your cells are better able to produce energy and get rid of toxins that tend to build up.

Just as consuming more energy than you burn causes your fat cells to grow larger, they can also grow as a result of accumulated toxins. When your fat cells are full of toxins they get congested – they can expand to several times their original size, which has the consequence of making you fatter also. When your cells have sufficient glutathione levels, then they can ramp up their metabolism and expel waste more efficiently. This means both leaner cells and an overall higher resting metabolic rate in your body. GSH-Ignite is a high quality source of easily digestible protein and other thermogenic aids, helping you to increase lean body mass and overall cellular health.

References:

1. Halton TL, Hu FB. The effects of high protein diets on thermogenesis, satiety and weight loss: a critical review. J Am Coll Nutr. 2004 Oct;23(5):373-85.

2. Johnston CS, Day CS, Swan PD: Postprandial thermogenesis is increased 100% on a high protein, low fat diet versus a high carbohydrate low fat diet in healthy young women. J Am Coll Nut21 :55 –61,2002.

3. Skov AR, Toubro S, Ronn B, Holm L, Astrup A: Randomized trial on protein vs carbohydrate in ad libitum fat reduced diet for the treatment of obesity. Int J Obes23 :528 –536,1999.

4. Batterham, R.L. and Heffron, H. and Kapoor, S. and Chivers, J.E. and Chandarana, K. and Herzog, H. and Le Roux, C.W. and Thomas, E.L. and Bell, J.D. and Withers, D.J. (2006) Critical role for peptide YY in protein-mediated satiation and body-weight regulation. Cell Metabolism, 4 (3). pp. 223-233. ISSN 15504131

5. Robert R Wolfe. The under appreciated role of muscle in health and disease: review article. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 84, No. 3, 475-482, September 2006

6. ibid.

Copyright 2010 Elite Sports and Fitness

ATP energy is also required on occasion, such as for the contraction of muscle cells during exercise and athletic performance, and each of these activities, conscious or not, requires adenosine triphosphate to enable muscular contraction.  As will be discussed, ATP is the source of all of that energy and so the more that can be produced during athletic performance, then the better you will perform.

ATP, and thus energy from ATP, can be produced in a number of ways within your body, such as how it uses its emergency energy store of creatine phosphate to add a phosphate group to adenosine diphosphate to generate the triphosphate. However, that is only useful for a few seconds, and the two major ATP energy creating routes involve cellular respiration of glucose to pyruvate followed either by the aerobic or anaerobic breakdown of that to adenosine triphosphate.

Here is each of these explained in slightly more detail:

Aerobic Respiration

Aerobic respiration proceeds from cellular respiration by using oxygen and an ignition source to burn the fuel:  glycolysis initially converts glucose to pyruvate as the fuel, and then aerobic exercise provides oxygen, with cellular charge as the ignition source. Very similar to a regular fire:  fuel, oxygen and ignition source.  GSH Ignite promotes this ignition of oxygen and pyruvate to generate ATP energy under aerobic conditions.

The aerobic exercise you use to promote this includes jogging,  floor exercises, step-ups and circuit training:  anything that makes you breathe hard. You take in oxygen and use it to ignite the oxidation reaction of pyruvate to ATP, CO2 and water, using up ADP (adenosine diphosphate) in the process. The greater the cellular charge, then the more efficient is the cellular respiration, in the same way that the newer a lighter flint, the faster and for longer it will ignite the gas.

Aerobic respiration is the source of ATP energy for your everyday living and for non-explosive athletic events. It is the phosphate bonds in the unstable ATP molecule that generate energy when they are broken back down to ADP.  If you remove one of the three phosphate groups, then the molecule is much more stable, and in doing that you also liberate 7.3 Kcal/mol of energy¹.

GSH Ignite provides the ignition source that makes best use of the cellular electrical charge that enables your cellular respiration system to operate at maximum efficiency.  Protein Extreme Energy also helps by maximizing that cellular charge on each cell in your body.

Anaerobic Respiration

Anaerobic respiration is respiration without oxygen, and enables adenosine triphosphate to be generated without oxygen being present.  It is not as efficient a means of generating adenosine triphosphate as aerobic respiration, but it can enable rapid short-term ATP energy production for immediate explosive power.

In the absence of oxygen, the pyruvate mentioned above undergoes a form of fermentation that creates lactic acid and adenosine triphosphate. This is sufficient to offer you maximum athletic performance for a period of 2 -3 minutes, after which the lactic acid builds up and you can no longer function without anaerobic respiration. Sprinters use anaerobic conditions, and Usain Bolt can break a work 100m record with just one deep breath. That provides all the ATP needed before lactic acid kicks in.

The more you train, the more you are able to expend energy under low oxygen conditions, and that is why those that train more can run farther at higher speeds than those that train less:  their cellular respiration is more efficient at producing ATP energy from the available oxygen before anaerobic respiration has to make up the balance. Likewise, their muscles can work longer under anaerobic conditions before lactic acid seizes up their muscles, and more oxygen is needed.

GSH Ignite supports cellular respiration, and also destroys the free radicals that are by-products of respiration. Free radical damage results from small oxygenated molecules  that can destroy the membranes of the cells that generate adenosine triphosphate, and GSH Ignite offers the free radical killer glutathione and the enzyme superoxide dismutase that help maintain efficient cellular respiration  through preventing these free radicals from destroying the cells that provide your ATP energy source.

Normal ATP Requirement

Around 160Kg of adenosine triphosphate can be created and used in the human body each day²; although at any one time you will have no more than around 250 grams available for use. In other words, your body can turn over its own weight of this amazing ATP molecule every day and athletes turn over even more ATP.

In summary, cellular respiration is responsible for the production of ATP in the mitochondria of your body cells, and the more effective your cellular respiration in oxidizing glucose ultimately to adenosine triphosphate, then the more ATP energy will be available to you to enable maximum athletic performance.  It is therefore essential that your biochemistry is tuned to producing as much ATP as possible, and that is dependent on many factors, of which cellular respiration is the most important.

By maximizing your cellular charge and reducing the damaging effects of the free radicals that are a natural by-product of the process, you will maximize the production of adenosine triphosphate.

Protein Extreme Energy increases the cellular electrical charge that enables effective oxidation of glucose, and also enables more effective hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate to energy plus ADP, whereas GSH Ignite negates the effects of free radicals and enables maximum efficiency in the conversion of ATP to energy.

1.  Campbell, Neil. Biology, Third Edition. Benjamin Cummings, 1993: 97-101.

2. Törnroth-Horsefield S, Neutze R (December 2008). Opening and closing the metabolite gate. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.
105 (50): 19565–6.

Other reading:

Karp, Gerald (2008). Cell and Molecular Biology (5th edition). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.pp. 194.

ISBN 10-0-470-04217-6.

Copyright 2010 Elite Sports and Fitness

To understand how to improve athletic performance and recuperate faster and more completely, it helps to know what it is exactly your body needs to recuperate from after you exercise. The five main recuperation issues athletes face are:

• Repairing and limiting the effects of oxidative stress;
• Healing damaged muscles;
• Recovering from inflammation;
• Fortifying the immune system; and,
• Building back up energy.

While they are separated below for simplicity, in truth each of the problems facing an athlete are interrelated: for example, free radicals can cause inflammation and muscle damage, and inflammation is a response to muscle damage.

The Problem: Oxidative Stress

When you exercise, you produce more free radicals – harmful molecules that can damage cell function and muscle tissue, causing muscle loss and inflammation. Furthermore, high free radical levels can continue to damage your muscles even after you’ve stopped exercising, delaying recuperation time.

The Problem: Muscle Damage

When you exercise intensely, tiny tears appear in your muscle cell membranes – this is called cellular microtrauma, and basically means your muscle tissue becomes damaged. If your body doesn’t receive the nourishment it needs to repair your muscles, recuperation is delayed or remains incomplete.

The Problem: Inflammation

Inflammation occurs after intense exercise, and helps cause soreness, central nervous system fatigue, and a delay in the regeneration of muscle.

If inflammation isn’t properly treated and your body is subjected to repeated intense exercise, then you risk developing chronic inflammation, which can put you out of the game for a long period of time.

The Problem: Weakened Immune System

For several hours after you exercise intensely, your immune system is more vulnerable to attack than ever. This means an increased risk of getting sick, which can throw your training schedule out of whack for weeks.

The Problem: Lack of Energy

Recuperation and healing take energy, and as your body diverts its resources to repairing itself, you may experience an overall drop in daily energy.

Additionally, cellular wastes can build up and make you feel tired and irritable. These must be cleansed from your body for full recuperation.

Your Solutions

Oxidative Stress Relief:

The best way to counter oxidative stress is to take a natural supplement that provides anti-oxidants that will work to neutralize the damaging free radicals produced by exercise. Careful though, not all anti-oxidants are created equal.

For more information on oxidative stress relief.

Boost Your Immune System:

While adequate sleep and good nutrition will help boost your immune system in general, what you need is something to take right after exercising that will give your immune system immediate protection. For athletes, immunoglobulins (also called antibodies) are an ideal choice because they have a triple function: immunoglobulins are bioactive proteins, meaning that they provide both a source of quality amino acids to help repair muscles; are clinically proven to help your body fight against invading bacteria and viruses; and also promote a healthy inflammatory response.

For more information on boosting your immune system.

Promote a Healthy Inflammatory Response:

To reduce recuperation time, you need to fight the inflammatory cytokines that assemble in muscle tissue after exercise. TGF-ß is a potent anti-inflammatory peptide, and surprisingly perhaps, so is turmeric, a spice found in much Indian cooking.

For more information on how to promote a healthy inflammatory response.

Feed and Repair Your Muscles:

Your muscles need nourishment to rebuild and repair. This means finding a high-quality source of essential amino acids such as immunoglobulins which are also proven to increase the transport of amino acids into muscle cells throughout the body, reducing recuperation time. Egg albumin protein is also ideal, as it is a slow-release glycoprotein, providing your muscles with a steady source of highly recognizable essential amino acids. It also serves an important osmotic function, preventing the water in blood from moving into the interstitial fluid. Papain (from the papaya fruit) can also help with recuperation as it is a digestive enzyme that breaks protein down into amino acids that are easily assimilated into muscle tissue.

For more information on muscle repair.

Boost Your Energy Levels:

To get more energy for recuperation and performance, you need to recharge and cleanse your cells of metabolic wastes, allowing them to produce energy more efficiently. Drinking adequate water throughout your day helps to flush out the wastes, but can be insufficient on its own. Calcium D-glucarate helps the liver to detoxify the blood of impurities, including waste products produced during exercise. Cell function can also be enhanced by other means (this should link to article on cellular energy).

For more information on boosting your energy levels.

Other Tips to Speed Post-Workout Recuperation:

Get your sleep: your body repairs itself when you sleep, so get a good night ’s rest.
Drink enough water: water helps your cells cleanse themselves.
Always cool down for at least 10 minutes immediately after exercise, and stretch.
Replace depleted fluid, protein and glycogen stores within ½ an hour of training.

References

1. Dwivedi C, Heck WJ, Downie AA, et al. Effect of calcium glucarate on beta-glucuronidase activity and glucarate content of certain vegetables and fruits. Biochem Med Metab Biol 1990;43:83–92.

2. Tarnopolsky, M.A., Bosman, M., MacDonald, J.R., Vandeputte, D., Martin, J., & Roy, B.D. (1997). Post exercise protein-carbohydrate and carbohydrate supplements increase muscle glycogen in men and women. Journal of Applied Physiology, 83, 1877-1883

3. van Loon, L.J., Saris, W.H., Kruijshoop, M., & Wagenmakers, A.J. (2000).
Maximizing postexercise muscle glycogen synthesis: carbohydrate supplementation and the application of amino acid or protein hydrolysate mixtures. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 72, 106-111.

4. Nieman DC. (2000) Is infection risk linked to exercise workload? Med Sci Sports Exerc 32: S406 –S411, 2000.

Copyright 2010 Elite Sports and Fitness

To enhance your energy for recuperation and performance, you need to recharge and cleanse your cells of metabolic wastes, allowing for the boosting of your energy levels more efficiently and naturally.

Your body’s natural energy is produced through a process known as cellular respiration: this is where your cells use the nutrients you’ve ingested through food, along with the air you breathe, and transform them into adenosine triphosphate (ATP) – the fuel for cellular energy.  To enable your body to naturally boost energy levels, your cells need to ‘breathe’ at optimal levels, they require maximum oxygen.

Understanding the oxidative system will provide us the method for increasing your energy levels – to give you that energy boost that your body needs. For cellular respiration to occur, oxygen must be drawn into the cells, where it ’s used to produce energy (if you want to get specific, the mitochondria in our cells use it as a hydrogen acceptor during ATP production to produce water). How is oxygen drawn into the cell? Part of the solution is through the sodium potassium pump, which is what creates a cell’s ‘electrical charge ’. The electrons around the outer membrane and inner nucleus of the cell, going in opposite directions, draw in the oxygen by means of diffusion.  So, a cell’s electrical charge controls the amount of oxygen that can be drawn in, and is in part responsible for how much energy your cells can produce.

This provides us with a means of increasing cellular energy: increase a cell ’s electrical charge. Note that electrical charge is also responsible for the removal of metabolic waste from the cell. If a cell’s charge is low, then metabolic waste accumulates and hinders cellular respiration. If things slow down enough, edema or water retention occurs – the cell’s osmotic pressure become so weak that it loses the ability to expel waste and old body fluids. When a cell’s charge is strengthened, metabolic wastes can be properly disposed of and cellular respiration increased.

Protein Extreme Energy functions to increase cellular electron loads and therefore cellular charge – it adopts the method for increasing cellular energy, naturally. By enhancing cellular respiration, it leads to enhanced energy – it functions as a natural energy booster.
Copyright 2010 Elite Sports and Fitness

While many athletes take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) before or after training, this has been shown to actually increase inflammation when compared with those athletes who don’t take them. Use of NSAIDS by athletes has also been associated with mild kidney impairment and low-level endotoxemia (where bacteria from the colon leak into the bloodstream).

If taking NSAIDS is potentially harmful, what, then, is the best way to promote a healthy inflammatory response? The answer to a healthy inflammatory response is by working with your body’s natural systems. TGF-ß (transforming growth factor beta) is a naturally occurring anti-inflammatory peptide that stimulates the healing process and helps promote a healthy inflammatory response to muscle inflammation. It can be found in natural supplements such as Protein Extreme Energy, along with other effective and natural anti-inflammatory agents such as papain and turmeric. Still not convinced that the natural route to recovery from inflammation is effective?
Read the stories of these athletes who have managed to cut down their recuperation time using completely natural inflammatory response methods.

References:

1. JPEN J Parenter Enteral Nutr. 2008 Nov-Dec;32(6):656-9.
Inflammation: roles in aging and sarcopenia.
Jensen GL. PMID: 18974248

2. February 15, 1999 The Journal of Physiology, 515, 287-291.
Pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine balance in strenuous exercise in humans Kenneth Ostrowski*†, Thomas Rohde*, Sven Asp*, Peter Schjerling* and Bente Klarlund Pedersen*† doi:10.1111/j.1469-7793.1999.287ad.x

3. Brain Behav Immun. 2006 Nov;20(6):578-84. Epub 2006 Mar 22.
Ibuprofen use, endotoxemia, inflammation, and plasma cytokines during ultramarathon competition.
Nieman DC, Henson DA, Dumke CL, Oley K, McAnulty SR, Davis JM, Murphy EA, Utter AC, Lind RH, McAnulty LS, Morrow JD. PMID: 16554145

Copyright 2010 Elite Sports and Fitness

Still relatively new to the sports world, immunoglobulins are bioactive proteins that provide a wide range of benefits that traditional proteins don ’t. Not only do they help to build muscle, they also repair tissue at an accelerated pace, promote a healthy inflammatory response, and boost the immune system – all vital to successful athletic recuperation.

What are Immunoglobulins?

Immunoglobulins are also known as antibodies. They are plasma proteins used by our immune systems to seek out, identify and neutralize invading viruses and bacteria. They do this either by marking the offending invader, so other cells can come and destroy it, or by binding directly to it, effectively preventing it from causing infection. In other words, immunoglobulins are immune system boosters.

How Immunoglobulins Boost Our Immune System

Immunoglobulins are also a component of human breast-milk, helping to protect babies from illness and build a strong immune system for life. Clinical studies have shown immunoglobulin supplementation to help the body retain the protein it needs to build muscle, increase lean muscle mass, reduce the levels of inflammatory cytokines in the gut, reduce the number of sick days and even lower cholesterol. Immunoglobulins boost our immune systems and help strengthen an athlete’s body.

How to Boost Your Immune System

The main reason immunoglobulins have not been used as a protein supplement and as a supplement to boost our immune system until recently has been due to high cost and limited quality supply. Our favorite high-quality immunoglobulin-based protein that includes several other natural recovery-enhancing agents and is used by elite athletes is Protein Extreme Energy.

The benefits of immunoglobulins include:

• boosts and strengthens the immune system
• gets more amino acids into muscle cells throughout the body
• promotes muscle tissue growth, regeneration, and strengthening
• initiates the transport of nucleic acids into the cell nucleus, where the DNA resides
• provides the raw material needed to repair damage to the DNA and initiate cell division
• supports reduction of pro-inflammatory cytokines
• helps in post-exercise recovery
• beneficial in repairing extreme muscle rips

Feel the difference as to how a bioactive protein can help your performance and boost your immune system.

Copyright 2010 Elite Sports and Fitness

How can you, as a serious athlete, address muscle fatigue, sore muscles and muscles in need of repair?

Bioactive proteins, known as immunoglobulins, are scientifically known to help support muscle repair. These bioactive proteins, as found in Protein Extreme Energy, are fifteen times stronger than whey protein isolate, containing 45% Immunoglobulin G as opposed to whey protein isolate’s 3% level, is far more bio-available because it is the only protein source that does not require high temperatures for raw material to be made. This means the un-altered amino acid sequences found in are far more digestible than those found in whey protein isolate.

But what does all of this mean to muscle repair? All of this leads to a significant increase in your level of protein synthesis and nitrogen retention that allows your body to use more of the protein you eat and allows it to remain usable for a longer period of time. The more protein retained by and used by your body, the greater the level of muscle repair in your body.

This puts your body in the most anabolic state it has ever been in.

The only two times in your life that your body has had elevated levels of immunoglobulin was if you were breast fed as an infant and when your body transitioned from adolescence to adulthood. It takes a healthy adult approximately one full day for their body to produce the amount of immunoglobulin that is made available within just six hours of having a scoop of Protein Extreme Energy.

This bioactive proteins have been demonstrated to augment the transport of amino acids into muscle cells throughout the body, regenerating, strengthening, repairing and growing these tissues after working out. It is produced primarily in the liver through the conversion of Human Growth Hormone (HGH).  HGH, secreted by the pituitary gland, is essential for growth and optimal immune system performance. European researchers have established that this bioactive protein is responsible for initiating the transport of nucleic acids into the cell nucleus, where the DNA resides, thus providing the raw material needed to repair damage to the DNA and initiating cell division.

Transforming Growth factor-beta found in Protein Extreme Energy is anti-inflammatory, helps in post-exercise recovery, and is beneficial in repairing extreme muscle rips.

As a serious athlete you desire the ability to support faster muscle repair to enable faster recovery times.

Copyright 2010 Elite Sports and Fitness

This is where the importance of antioxidants to athletes comes in to help combat oxidative stress and to provide oxidative stress relief.

Antioxidants help protect your cells from free radicals and oxidative stress. Free radicals (atoms with at least one unpaired electron) can damage your cells and DNA, sometimes even to the point of causing cellular death. Your cells produce free radicals when they make energy, so heavy exercise usually increases their production, because your body needs more energy. Free radicals, and as a result, oxidative stress, can also be produced by things like environmental pollution, eating fried foods, being stressed out, and cigarette smoke.

Antioxidants scavenge these free radicals, stopping them from doing their damage (by providing a pair for the unpaired electrons) thus resulting in oxidative stress relief. But, not all antioxidants are created equal – some are stronger than others, meaning they’re able to neutralize far more free radicals and deal with oxidative stress more efficiently than their counterparts. The strongest anti-oxidants are actually produced by you, within your cells – they are SOD (super oxide dismutase) and GSH (glutathione in its reduced form). These are hundreds of times stronger than anything found in fruits or vegetables, but after about age 20, our bodies produce less and less. This means cells are more vulnerable to attack and destruction from oxidative stress. GSH-Ignite helps to increase both SOD and GSH levels naturally and efficiently support oxidative stress relief.

The other important factor in fighting free radicals is making sure that those antioxidants can move effectively through your body so they can do the work they were designed to do. Protein Extreme Energy does just this, providing not only a supplement rich in antioxidants, but also helping to establish a recognizable, transferable electron process.

Antioxidants and combating oxidative stress should be on the top of every serious athlete’s list to help support faster recovery times, and reduce muscle loss and inflammation.

Copyright 2010 Elite Sports and Fitness

Tara DiLuca Hurdles Training

Outdoor season is often a slow and difficult transition from indoor season. Spring season brings with it the 100 meter hurdles, which has ten hurdles, as opposed to indoor season, which is the 55 meters or 60 meters, and only five hurdles. Therefore, my training for outdoor season focuses on speed endurance and focusing on maintaining my rhythm over hurdles 7-10. My straight sprint workouts consist of interval training with 100s, 120s, and 150s, with short rest periods between each repetition. My hurdle workouts consist of training over more hurdles.

Sample workout week for outdoor season:

Hurdles Training DAY 1: Hurdle Rhythm Day

3 x (3 x 12 hurdles over the middle walk back rest) rest 5 minutes between each set.

Focus on:

Staying on balls of your feet
Keep knees in front of the body
Exhale as you drive knee towards the hurdle
Snap Leg down off the hurdle while simultaneously driving trail leg over and off the hurdle
Keep you eyes on the following hurdle

Hurdle Training DAY 2: Straight Sprint Day

4 X 150 meters
rest 3-4 in between each repetition
Focus on: maintaining form and running 19-20 seconds for each 150

Hurdles Training DAY 3: Weight Room

Spring season is lighter lifting alternate lower body and upper body.

Lower Body Workout

Squats rest 75 seconds
10 x 115
10 x 120
8 x 135
6 x 140
6 x 140

Swiss Ball Leg curl rest 75 seconds
x 6
x 6
x 6
x 6

Calve Raises rest 60 seconds
15 x 115
15 x 115
15 x 115
15 x 115

Leg Extensions rest 60 seconds
10 x 60
10 x 60
8 x 75
6 x 85
6 x 85

Leg curl rest 75 seconds
6 x 60
6 x 65
6 x 75
6 x 75

Pull-ups rest 30 seconds
X5
X5
X5
X5
X5

Push ups with claps rest 30 seconds
X5
X5
X5
X5
X5

Upper Body Workout

Push Press
5 x 3 reps rest 90 seconds start with 55lbs Dips 4 x 4-6 reps rest 90 seconds
Chin-Ups (Palms facing you) 4 x 5 rep rest 90 seconds

Flat Bench Press (barbell)
4 x 6 rest 75 seconds start with 65lbs

Bent over rows
4 x 6 rest 90 seconds start with 65lbs

Hurdle Training DAY 4: Hurdle Sprint Day

5 x (12 hurdles @ 30″) rest 6 – 8 minutes between sets
From blocks and discounted
Hurdle 1 is 1 step in
From hurdle 1 to hurdle 8 (each hurdle 8 meters apart, 28steps)
Focus on attacking each hurdle and keeping knees and feet in front of the body

Hurdle Training: Workout of the Day

Set up every other hurdle and do 4 x Hurdle 1-3-5-7 (discount steps, 1 step in, 3 steps in, 5 steps in, 7 steps in) rest 5 minutes between each rep. This workout will force you to run in between the hurdles.

Training Nutrition Supplements

Protein Extreme Energy in the morning
GSH Ignite about 1 hour before workout
Maxodin about one hour prior to race

Delicious Dish of the Day

High Energy Protein Oatmeal Pancakes

Ingredients:

• Liquid Egg Whites
• Quaker Oats
• Vanilla Extract
• Cinnamon
• 1/2 banana (optional)
• Protein powder Ignite Natural or Protein Extreme Energy)

Directions:

• 1/2 cup liquid egg whites
• 1/2 cup oats
• dash of vanilla extract
• few dashes of cinnamon
• 1/2 banana (optional)
• scoop or serving of protein powder
• Blend all ingredients in a blender (I use the Magic Bullet)
• Pour into a pan and cook over low heat for about one minute. Flip and cook other side.

Understanding the oxidative system will provide us with the first method for increasing our body’s energy level through cellular respiration. For cellular respiration to occur, oxygen must be drawn into our body’s cells, where it’s used to produce energy (if you want to get specific, the mitochondria in our cells use it as a hydrogen acceptor during adenosine triphosphate production to produce water). How is oxygen drawn into the cell? Partly through the sodium potassium pump, which is what creates a cell’s ‘electrical charge’. The electrons around the outer membrane and inner nucleus of the cell, going in opposite directions, draw in the oxygen by means of diffusion.  So, a cell’s electrical charge controls the amount of oxygen that can be drawn in, and is in part responsible for how much energy your cells can produce.

This provides us with the first method of increasing our body’s energy levels through cellular respiration: increase a cell’s electrical charge. Note that electrical charge is also responsible for the removal of metabolic waste from the cell. If a cell’s charge is low, then metabolic waste accumulates and hinders cellular respiration. If things slow down enough, edema or water retention occurs – the cell’s osmotic pressure become so weak that it loses the ability to expel waste and old body fluids. When a cell’s charge is strengthened, metabolic wastes can be properly disposed of and cellular respiration increased.

The second method for increasing cellular respiration and the level of our body’s energy can be understood through the reductive system. While oxygen is vital to cellular respiration, it also ‘oxidizes’ the cells, producing harmful free radicals that can damage cell respiration, function and DNA.  Reductive enzymes – with glutathione being the main SOD reductive enzyme – are what protect the cell from these free radicals. When a cell doesn’t have enough glutathione, it attempts to decrease adenosine triphosphate production so as to minimize the free radical damage. Therefore, increasing glutathione & SOD provides us with the second method to increase cellular respiration and our body’s energy. By increasing glutathione and SOD, you balance oxidation with reduction, and allow adenosine triphosphate to increase, thereby increasing your cellular respiration and your body’s energy.

A thorough understanding of these two approaches to increasing the levels of our body’s energy and cellular respiration leads to understanding how two of Life Health Secrets’ supplements work. Protein Extreme Energy functions to increase cellular electron loads and therefore cellular charge – it adopts the first method for increasing cellular respiration. GSH-Ignite adopts the second method – by encouraging healthy glutathione levels it allows adenosine triphosphate production to increase. As such, Protein Extreme Energy and GSH-Ignite take complementary routes to achieving the same goal – enhanced cellular respiration, leading to enhanced body energy in turn leading to enhanced performance.

Copyright 2010 LifeHealthSecrets