Fuelling your workout is only necessary if you’re an elite athlete, right?Â
When it comes to exercise nutrition, it’s easy to get caught up in the belief that it’s only necessary if you’re an Olympic level athlete. In reality however, in order to achieve your fitness goals whether that be running a marathon or even simply a jog around your neighbourhood, the proper fuel can make all the difference to your performance.Â
Why is good nutrition around exercise important?Â
It’s simple – carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats provide the fuel to needed to maintain healthy energy levels both pre, during and post workout.
Carbohydrates regulate blood sugar and glycogen levels in your muscles. Protein helps to build new muscle tissue as well as being an energy source and fat provides essential fatty acids as well as energy.
Why do we need a pre-workout meal?
A pre-workout meal is designed to top up your carbohydrate stores as this is your body’s go to energy fuel. The perfect pre-workout meal is a combination of carbohydrates as well as fast absorbing protein such as whey protein. Protein helps to prevent your muscle mass from being broken down during your workout.
Our top pre-workout meals are:
When to eat? – Anywhere from 3 hours to 30 minutes before you hit the gym.
Why do we need a post- workout meal?
A post-workout meal is designed to replace the kilojoules or energy that you have used up as well as replenish your glycogen stores that you have just torn through during your workout.
Eating protein after a workout is a must for speedy recovery especially after weight training.
It’s important to eat soon after a workout, ideally around 30minutes to 1 hour after completion. This is ideal to get your energy stores back up. If you don’t eat a post-workout meal you can end up battling low blood sugar and fatigue.Â
Re-fuelling meals should have a mix of complex carbohydrates and protein.
Complex carbohydrates include:
Healthy proteins include:
Our top post-workout meals are:
So, no matter your fitness level fuelling your workouts can mean the difference in achieving 90 or 100% of your goals.
Whether you love or hate it, there’s no denying that physical activity has many benefits for your health – helping you to live longer and preventing or reduce the likelihood of disease and illness.
Physical health can be measured and defined in a variety of ways ranging from measures that you can see such as blood pressure, blood glucose levels and weight to name a few. But what about your mental health? How do we measure it and more importantly how do we improve our mental health?
Measuring mental health is quite complex, however we know that ‘how we feel’ can be influenced by the types of food we are eating, how much sleep we are getting and how active we are. Obesity and depression are two major causes of disease, disability and illness worldwide and each influences the other.
Research shows that physical activity is a key factor in improving our mental ability as well as our emotional wellbeing. Having a well-nourished and healthy brain is essential to helping you to achieve your best.Â
Getting active helps to improve our mental health by:
Some easy ways to be more active are:
Here at Athletic Sport we are big believers in self-care so that we can perform at our peak. Keeping healthy means taking care of our mind and body.
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Tired of battling the bloat? Have you tried what feels like every remedy under the sun but you still feel like you’re nursing a food baby after a meal. Then this blog is for you.Â
First up – What exactly is bloating?
Despite being a very common digestive complaint, the way bloating is described can vary greatly. The most common descriptions are ‘feeling puffy and swollen’ ‘A sensation of trapped gas or wind’ as well as ‘Increased pressure in your stomach’.
Bloating is caused by a variety of reasons ranging from conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), hormones, stress and even lifestyle factors. Food sensitivities can also cause bloating, these are also known as FODMAPS.
FODMAPS are found in the foods we eat and stand for:
Fermentable
Oligosaccharides
Disaccharides
Monosaccharides
And
Polyols
Essentially these are complex scientific terms for a collection of molecules in foods that can be poorly absorbed in the intestine. When this happens, these molecules continue their digestive journey arriving at the large intestine where they act as a food source for the bacteria that live there. This is when symptoms such as bloating start to occur as the resident bacteria ferment the molecules.
A low-FODMAP diet is designed as a temporary eating pattern that includes foods that contain very little amounts of these molecules so that any tummy upsets are alleviated and then reintroducing the FODMAPS to see which one or group is the trigger for your symptoms.
Fortunately, there are also a number of other ways to stop FODMAP’s wreaking havoc on your digestive system and improving your health overall. Dietary amino acids have also been recognised as a way to manage and improve digestive health. These amino acids help to prevent as well as treat inflammation along the intestinal wall For example, L-glutamine helps to build, strengthen and maintain a strong barrier along your digestive tract.
Our aminos are not solely designed as a product for fitness fanatics’, they are formulated so that anyone can benefit from the large range of essential and branched chain amino acids which have endless benefits for your health.
So what are you waiting for? Find out for yourself how Aminos can benefit you.
In the wide world of nutritional supplements, creatine has been hailed time and time again for its ability to help give a boost to your athletic performance. Among many of its benefits such as increasing muscle mass, endurance and strength, more recent study has indicated that creatine also has protective benefits. In particular slowing down the progression of neurological diseases. Â
Deciding whether to include supplements into your exercise regime can be tricky, and the opinion bag can be mixed. So here are 3 things you didn’t know about creatine.  Â
Creatine is in fact a naturally occurring substance in your body.  95% of your body’s natural supply is stored within our muscle cells in the form of phosphocreatine. The remaining 5% is found in other places such as kidney, liver and brain.
Many factors influence naturally occurring creatine stores such as hormones, meat intake, amount of muscle mass and how much exercise we get.
Supplementation of creatine helps to fill any voids, ultimately allowing your body to produce more ATP aka the bodies energy currency. The more ATP within your body, the better your performance in the gym will be.
Adding creatine helps to keep your endurance up so that your 10th rep, is just as easy as your first rep!Â
No matter if you’re a seasoned gym junkie or a ‘once in a while’ gym goer creatine can benefit you. Creatine helps to improve your bodies muscles mass providing both short and long-term muscle fibre growth. Increasing your muscle mass is beneficial for a variety of individuals from elite athletes to older sedentary adults. Â
Among other things, creatine helps to prevent muscle breakdown and improve signalling between cells so that muscle repair and growth is more effective.
Like every other muscle in the body, your brain requires ATP to function at its best. More research is needed in this area, but early research shows creatine helps to slow down the progression of neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease as well as improving memory and brain function in older adults.Â
When it comes down to it, creatine is a useful and effective supplement providing a range of health benefits for your athletic performance as well as your overall health.Â
You can find out more about our Athletic Sport Creatine here!Â
Have you ever been in this situation before?
‘Your wanting to lose a little bit of weight, you’ve set a start date and you set off on your mission only to succumb to defeat a few days later – It’s an all too common tale as old as time.’
But what if you had a framework to help you succeed with your health goals? Here at Athletic Sport, we believe that everyone should be able to reach their health goals whether that be weight loss, improved exercise endurance, or simply just feeling better overall.
We’ve outlined our top two tips for setting goals that are achievable!Â
First up it’s important to remember that whether you're setting new year, mid-year or even mid-week resolutions they have to be positive, realistic and specific.
For example, you might want to lose weight. Setting goals like ‘I am going to be a healthy weight’ by ‘eating a wholesome and varied diet, getting more active and watching my portion sizes’ rather than simply ‘I won’t gain any more weight’. Creating goals with specific achievements makes it easy to keep the momentum and your desire to stick it through up.
Celebrating little wins such as including an extra serve of veggies into your day are all a part of the journey to good health. So, if you’ve enjoyed a salad or some roast veggies today – good on you!
We also know that sometimes life happens so it’s important to not give up after a bad day. One pig out or cheat meal isn’t going to undo your progress, it’s when you start eating these meals for weeks on end that you’ll start to go backwards.
Learning to listen to your body and eat only when you’re hungry is a great way to practice what is known as ‘mindful eating’. This allows you to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you are feeling satisfied, not completely ‘stuffed or full’. Ways you can achieve this are by slowing down when eating and taking sips of water between bites, removing distractions such as your Instagram feed – sorry!
In the end setting health goals is all about eating better as well as getting more movement into your day. So, what are you waiting for? We know you can achieve your goals once you put your mind to it!
Pre-workout – it’s pretty self-explanatory right? Something you take before a workout. An instant wake-me up or perhaps a power fuel to get you through the busy working day until your late night gym sesh. You wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that all a pre-workout does is give you an energy boost before that 5am cycle class, we feel ya. Mention pre-workout to a friend, a colleague or even someone you just met and we guarantee it’s an instant conversation starter.
To arm you before your next hot debate let’s look at what actually is a pre-workout and how can it benefit you. *Spoiler Alert* Anyone can benefit from a pre-workout. No matter if you're new to the supplement world or perhaps you’re a seasoned pro.
So, let’s dive straight into the nitty gritty and explain what exactly a pre-workout is. By definition pre-workout is a dietary supplement designed to help athletes as well as weightlifters to reach their peak potential. It’s designed to increase focus, energy as well as endurance helping you to go that extra 10%. Essentially pre-workout can be the difference between a good and a great workout.Â
The Kamikaze by Athletic Sport pre-workout range has been formulated to enhance your training performance as well as provide a boost to your energy levels, power your brain and provide adrenal recovery which is so important in reaching your health and fitness goals.
Let’s look a little closely at the benefits:
To enhance your training performance kamikaze is enriched with amino acids (L Citruline, Beta Alanine,) and compounds to help increase your muscular performance (Beta Anhydrous) and enhance muscle growth (Epicatechin). Â To give you a mental boost Kamikaze is enriched with Alpha-GPC, to keep you sharp and focused.
For a boost to your energy levels caffeine as well as English walnut fruit extract, both natural stimulants help you to feel energetic as well as increases your feel good and mood boosting hormones (dopamine).Â
For adrenal recovery a variety of ingredients (Astragin, KSM66 and Shilajit Extract) help re-balance hormones as well as help deal with the stresses of everyday life. You can count on these ingredients to help you combat that post workout muscle soreness and help you power through your day.
So next time you want to tap into your inner karate kid and ‘wax on…. wax off’ start your workout right with a pre-workout that’s going to power you through your gym session as well as get you through your 9-5.
 
P.S. It’s always important to stick to the recommended dosage. Our tip if you know you are sensitive to the effects of caffeine, half the serving size to start off with.
