Some of my favourite core exercises
Friday 26 November 2010
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Week 1 Session 3
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Tuesday 12 October 2010
Monday 11 October 2010
Week 1 Session 1
Week 1 Session 1
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***NEW*** 3 Week Rugby Training Program
Going to Barbados in 3 weeks and need to get to single fig body fat, While still increasing fitness, power, and strength for 3 BIG and IMPORTANT games.
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( Video Quality is a bit shitty sorry, will sort it out for the next one )
Wednesday 28 July 2010
Rugby EA Fitness Test
Hard Core fitness test we do with our athletes.
Give it a go then go to our Facebook page and post your time by clicking on "COMMENT" below the video.
Also make sure you click on "SHARE" to share this video and challenge your team mates to see who us the most HARD CORE player in the team. GOOD LUCK !!!
Give it a go then go to our Facebook page and post your time by clicking on "COMMENT" below the video.
Also make sure you click on "SHARE" to share this video and challenge your team mates to see who us the most HARD CORE player in the team. GOOD LUCK !!!
Friday 9 July 2010
How much protein do you really NEED?
After a hard day of training rugger buggers, I’m finally getting the opportunity to write this article.
It's hard work bringing the best out of people and getting them in peak shape, and i'm so tired, but here I am, making it a point to deliver on my promise to you, my loyal subscriber, even before I go to sleep.
Alright, enough of that…moving on to what you really want to know: How much protein do you really NEED?
Ha! Trick question, because that’s actually not the question you should be asking anyway. You see, when you ask the question about “need”, one needs to examine the context of the question.
How much protein do you need for what?
To build muscle? To improve body composition? To improve performance? To enhance recovery? To live?
In most cases, people are asking how much protein should I intake to enhance my body composition and performance related goals.
And with that question, it’s important to take a look at things not from a “need” standpoint, but from an “optimization” standpoint.
And because my very good friend and nutritional biochemist and all around bad ass already covered this in another article, I’ll just quote him here:
“Asking ‘How much protein does an athlete need?’ is much like asking the question ‘How much does a student need to study for an exam?’ Since a student only needs to pass their exam to remain a student, the proper answer would be ‘however much it takes to score a 60%.’ However, very few students want to earn only a 60%. Therefore the best question would be ‘How much does a student need to study to get an A on their exam?’
Now, the truth is, there are MANY reasons beyond “need” to increase protein intake to boost body composition and performance related results, here are just a few:
Reason #1
Increased Thermic Effect of Feeding — While all macronutrients require metabolic processing for digestion, absorption, and storage or oxidation, the thermic effect of protein is significantly higher than that of carbohydrates and fat. In fact, protein requires 25-30% of the energy it provides just for digestion, absorption, and assimilation while carbs only require 6-8% and fat requires 2-3%. That means that eating protein is actually thermogenic and can lead to a higher metabolic rate. This means greater fat loss when dieting and less fat gain during hypercaloric diets.
Reason #2
Increased Glucagon — Protein consumption increases plasma concentrations of the hormone glucagon. Glucagon is responsible for antagonizing the effects of insulin in adipose tissue, leading to greater fat mobilization. In addition, glucagon also decreases the amounts and activities of the enzymes responsible for making and storing fat in adipose and liver cells. Again, this leads to greater fat loss during dieting and less fat gain during overfeeding.
Reason #3
Increased IGF-1 — Protein and amino-acid supplementation has been shown to increase the IGF-1 response to both exercise and feeding. Since IGF-1 is an anabolic hormone that’s related to muscle growth, another advantage associated with consuming more protein is more muscle growth when overfeeding and/or muscle sparing when dieting.
Reason #4
Reduction in Cardiovascular Risk — Several studies have shown that increasing the percentage of protein in the diet (from 11% to 23%) while decreasing the percentage of carbohydrate (from 63% to 48%) lowers LDL cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations with concomitant increases in HDL cholesterol concentrations.
Reason #5
Improved Weight-Loss Profile — Research from Layman and colleagues has demonstrated that reducing the carbohydrate ratio from 3.5 - 1 to 1.4 - 1 increases body fat loss, spares muscle mass, reduces triglyceride concentrations, improves satiety, and improves blood glucose management.
Reason #6
Increased Protein Turnover — All tissues of the body, including muscle, go through a regular program of turnover. Since the balance between protein breakdown and protein synthesis governs muscle protein turnover, you need to increase your protein turnover rates in order to best improve your muscle quality. A high protein diet does just this. By increasing both protein synthesis and protein breakdown, a high protein diet helps you get rid of the old muscle more quickly and build up new, more functional muscle to take its place.
Reason #7
Increased Nitrogen Status — Earlier I indicated that a positive nitrogen status means that more protein is entering the body than is leaving the body. High protein diets cause a strong positive protein status and when this increased protein availability is coupled with an exercise program that increases the body’s anabolic efficiency, the growth process may be accelerated.
Reason #8
Increased Provision of Auxiliary Nutrients — Although the benefits mentioned above have related specifically to protein and amino acids, it’s important to recognize that we don’t just eat protein and amino acids — we eat food. Therefore, high protein diets often provide auxiliary nutrients that could enhance performance and/or muscle growth. These nutrients include creatine, branched chain amino acids, conjugated linoleic acids, and/or additional nutrients that are important but remain to be discovered. This illustrates the need to get most of your protein from food, rather than supplements alone.
So, looking over this list of benefits, isn’t it clear that for many individuals, an increase in protein intake would be advantageous for most people’s training goals?”
Hmmmm, indeed it does, Johnny boy, indeed it does.
So rather than looking at “need”, when talking about protein intake, let’s talk optimization.
Based on my experiences (and many others), that level is around 1 g per pound of lean body mass in most cases.
In some situations, for very specific purposes (like the protein depletion day of the XFLD), higher protein intake may be warranted.
Regardless, the bottom line is this: protein is the most under-rated nutrient, or at least the nutrient that most people under-consume. If you’re looking to boost your body composition results, make sure you’re getting enough.
Comments? Post ‘em below!
But, only after you hit the facebook LIKE button below to share this with your friends.
Talk to you in the comments section!
It's hard work bringing the best out of people and getting them in peak shape, and i'm so tired, but here I am, making it a point to deliver on my promise to you, my loyal subscriber, even before I go to sleep.
Alright, enough of that…moving on to what you really want to know: How much protein do you really NEED?
Ha! Trick question, because that’s actually not the question you should be asking anyway. You see, when you ask the question about “need”, one needs to examine the context of the question.
How much protein do you need for what?
To build muscle? To improve body composition? To improve performance? To enhance recovery? To live?
In most cases, people are asking how much protein should I intake to enhance my body composition and performance related goals.
And with that question, it’s important to take a look at things not from a “need” standpoint, but from an “optimization” standpoint.
And because my very good friend and nutritional biochemist and all around bad ass already covered this in another article, I’ll just quote him here:
“Asking ‘How much protein does an athlete need?’ is much like asking the question ‘How much does a student need to study for an exam?’ Since a student only needs to pass their exam to remain a student, the proper answer would be ‘however much it takes to score a 60%.’ However, very few students want to earn only a 60%. Therefore the best question would be ‘How much does a student need to study to get an A on their exam?’
Now, the truth is, there are MANY reasons beyond “need” to increase protein intake to boost body composition and performance related results, here are just a few:
Reason #1
Increased Thermic Effect of Feeding — While all macronutrients require metabolic processing for digestion, absorption, and storage or oxidation, the thermic effect of protein is significantly higher than that of carbohydrates and fat. In fact, protein requires 25-30% of the energy it provides just for digestion, absorption, and assimilation while carbs only require 6-8% and fat requires 2-3%. That means that eating protein is actually thermogenic and can lead to a higher metabolic rate. This means greater fat loss when dieting and less fat gain during hypercaloric diets.
Reason #2
Increased Glucagon — Protein consumption increases plasma concentrations of the hormone glucagon. Glucagon is responsible for antagonizing the effects of insulin in adipose tissue, leading to greater fat mobilization. In addition, glucagon also decreases the amounts and activities of the enzymes responsible for making and storing fat in adipose and liver cells. Again, this leads to greater fat loss during dieting and less fat gain during overfeeding.
Reason #3
Increased IGF-1 — Protein and amino-acid supplementation has been shown to increase the IGF-1 response to both exercise and feeding. Since IGF-1 is an anabolic hormone that’s related to muscle growth, another advantage associated with consuming more protein is more muscle growth when overfeeding and/or muscle sparing when dieting.
Reason #4
Reduction in Cardiovascular Risk — Several studies have shown that increasing the percentage of protein in the diet (from 11% to 23%) while decreasing the percentage of carbohydrate (from 63% to 48%) lowers LDL cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations with concomitant increases in HDL cholesterol concentrations.
Reason #5
Improved Weight-Loss Profile — Research from Layman and colleagues has demonstrated that reducing the carbohydrate ratio from 3.5 - 1 to 1.4 - 1 increases body fat loss, spares muscle mass, reduces triglyceride concentrations, improves satiety, and improves blood glucose management.
Reason #6
Increased Protein Turnover — All tissues of the body, including muscle, go through a regular program of turnover. Since the balance between protein breakdown and protein synthesis governs muscle protein turnover, you need to increase your protein turnover rates in order to best improve your muscle quality. A high protein diet does just this. By increasing both protein synthesis and protein breakdown, a high protein diet helps you get rid of the old muscle more quickly and build up new, more functional muscle to take its place.
Reason #7
Increased Nitrogen Status — Earlier I indicated that a positive nitrogen status means that more protein is entering the body than is leaving the body. High protein diets cause a strong positive protein status and when this increased protein availability is coupled with an exercise program that increases the body’s anabolic efficiency, the growth process may be accelerated.
Reason #8
Increased Provision of Auxiliary Nutrients — Although the benefits mentioned above have related specifically to protein and amino acids, it’s important to recognize that we don’t just eat protein and amino acids — we eat food. Therefore, high protein diets often provide auxiliary nutrients that could enhance performance and/or muscle growth. These nutrients include creatine, branched chain amino acids, conjugated linoleic acids, and/or additional nutrients that are important but remain to be discovered. This illustrates the need to get most of your protein from food, rather than supplements alone.
So, looking over this list of benefits, isn’t it clear that for many individuals, an increase in protein intake would be advantageous for most people’s training goals?”
Hmmmm, indeed it does, Johnny boy, indeed it does.
So rather than looking at “need”, when talking about protein intake, let’s talk optimization.
Based on my experiences (and many others), that level is around 1 g per pound of lean body mass in most cases.
In some situations, for very specific purposes (like the protein depletion day of the XFLD), higher protein intake may be warranted.
Regardless, the bottom line is this: protein is the most under-rated nutrient, or at least the nutrient that most people under-consume. If you’re looking to boost your body composition results, make sure you’re getting enough.
Comments? Post ‘em below!
But, only after you hit the facebook LIKE button below to share this with your friends.
Talk to you in the comments section!
Tuesday 6 July 2010
How much protein can you digest in one sitting?
Research is good and research is bad.
Research is good because it can teach us a LOT.
Research is bad because most people don’t understand how to take the results of a study and analyze beyond the study to see how it fits in the big picture.
Fortunately, I will help do both with regards to the below study.
So, a team of researchers sought out to discover some stuff about protein:
J Am Diet Assoc. 2009 Sep;109(9):1582-6.
A moderate serving of high-quality protein maximally stimulates skeletal muscle protein synthesis in young and elderly subjects.
Basically, they wanted to see if a 90 gram serving of protein (about the equivalent of 12 oz of grilled chicken breast) would elicit a greater muscle building response when compared to a 30 gram serving (approximately 4 oz of grilled chicken, beef, etc).
The answer: No.
The conclusion: Your body can utilize approximately 30 grams of protein for muscle building purposes at a time. Elite athletes and bodybuilders, perhaps a bit more.
So, does this mean that you should only eat 30 grams of protein per meal regardless of your calorie needs?
No.
There are other factors that should be considered when determining your protein intake, independent of how much of that protein is able to fuel the muscle building process.
What we can, however, learn from this study is a very general rule:
It’s best to spread your protein intake out throughout the day, ala 6 meals with smaller protein portions than 3 meals with larger portions, because yes, there seems to be an upper limit to the amount of protein that the body can use toward rebuilding or building muscle at any one time.
Now, that number could certainly change based on whether the group was participating in regular, intense resistance training — I’m betting the amount would go up. Perhaps 40 grams on average…maybe more.
Either way, you’re probably going to get better results by splitting it up over the course of the day.
Later this week, I’ll be back to answer the question “How much protein do I actually need anyway?”
And I think you’ll be surprised by the answer.
If you’d like to see that article, do two things for me:
1) Go to the Rugby EA Facebook Page and hit the Facebook “Like” button, then…
2) Leave a comment in the comments section
At least 100 comments and I’ll be back later in the week with the “How much protein do I really need?” article.
Talk to you in the comments section!
Wednesday 30 June 2010
Monday 28 June 2010
Monday 21 June 2010
Sunday 20 June 2010
Friday 18 June 2010
Thursday 17 June 2010
Monday 17 May 2010
Best Proteins for Rugby
Being a conditioning coach I get asked by athletes and clients all the time about what is the best protein shake to take. But there is a little bit more to it that just which brand to buy.
So we all know about carbs and low and hi GI, but few people know that the same applies to proteins.
To make things simple we’ll just refer to proteins as slow release and fast release.
The two types of proteins my athletes and clients use to get great results are whey based and casein based.
Whey protein is fast release and should be consumed as soon as you wake and after a workout in the form of a whey protein shake. Shakes are great as they are obviously liquid and can be used straight away by the body with no breaking down needed for up to an hour.
Casein based protein is slow release. Having a casein based protein will ensure a steady release of protein into your system for up to 7 hours. Having the right amino acids constantly freely available in your system will ensure that your body always has the building blocks needed to repair and build muscle
Best sources of Casein:
Casein Protein Powder ( look for micellar casein )
Cheese
Cottage Cheese
Milk
Best sources of Whey:
Whey Protein Powders
So we all know about carbs and low and hi GI, but few people know that the same applies to proteins.
To make things simple we’ll just refer to proteins as slow release and fast release.
The two types of proteins my athletes and clients use to get great results are whey based and casein based.
Whey protein is fast release and should be consumed as soon as you wake and after a workout in the form of a whey protein shake. Shakes are great as they are obviously liquid and can be used straight away by the body with no breaking down needed for up to an hour.
Casein based protein is slow release. Having a casein based protein will ensure a steady release of protein into your system for up to 7 hours. Having the right amino acids constantly freely available in your system will ensure that your body always has the building blocks needed to repair and build muscle
Best sources of Casein:
Casein Protein Powder ( look for micellar casein )
Cheese
Cottage Cheese
Milk
Best sources of Whey:
Whey Protein Powders
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