Passing Power

Strength Training!! Something that only a select few of us do but most would benefit from.

Strength training is the next step after hypertrophy. This type of training allows us to “wake up” the muscle fibers that may be new or never have been used as the body has never been challenged that much. The benefits of this are increased motor unit recruitment, increase hormone release, increase in bone density and increase in muscle mass at times too.

May powerlifters use this type of training but many of us will benefit by doing this type of training for several weeks during the year.

Hypertrophy is the step of working out that the majority of us are in, muscle building. If you’re rehabbing an injury, your aim is to grow that muscle, if you’re trying to get bigger as an athlete, just to look better or anything like that, your goal is to build muscle. This is the base for life and sporting performance.

To build muscle , you must be prepared to stress it enough and recover it enough for it to grow. Here’s some tips and the mechanisms behind how it works!

When we train, we have to know what we’re training for in order to get the most out of it. Here are 4 buckets that you can potentially fall in.

More posts will be upcoming to dive deeper into each one.

Sugar has been at the centre of many debates in recent years.

Sugar is something out body needs to function. Yet, It’s one of the most addicting substances on the planet and many food companies use this to their advantage by filling up their foods with an abundance of added sugar. This in turn leads to addiction to the product, weight gain and negative impacts on health.

But is there a difference between sugar and added sugar? No.

What’s different is what is considered ‘Natural Sugar’ in a nutrition label comes with the fibres that our body needs to digest it slowly.

When we see ‘added sugar’ , even though it’s the same compound, there’s no fibre that comes with it, meaning when the sugar hits out small intestine, it goes straight to our liver and floods it. This damages the liver and any excess sugar deposits itself as fat.

A big loophole that has been seen is in sugary drinks. An orange juice can have 4 times the sugar content of an orange (as 4 oranges are needed to make the amount of juice) but all the fibre gets removed in the making process, so now our body is taking in 4 times the amount of sugar we would be expecting and it floods the liver straight away. This is why sweet drinks are the leading cause of obesity in the US.

**New Episode Alert**

Episode 7 is now live! Caught up with this week, we go through the challenges of coming over from a country without knowing the language and then making the most of your connections to excel in later life as a collegiate athlete.

Link in bio, tune in!

Episode 6!

This week I caught up with . Me and Oscar first met playing against each other and then ended up on the same team at UMSL. Oscar talks about his experience of finding a job during his 1 year of OPT and the challenges that came with it. He also talks about options of how to extend that time line and make sure it benefits you and the companies you’re applying to!

Tune in by clicking the link in the bio!

We’re back!!!

Episode 5 is finally out, this week I catch up with as we chat about his experience being a student athlete in USA.

Magnus is now a Freight Forwarding (manager I think) in Copenhagen, Denmark!

We chat about how your attitude in the sport can impact the connections you make in the outside world! Magnus also touches on the struggles of graduating in the covid time.

Click the link in the bio to listen!

Wanting to start working out but have no idea where to start?

Easy. Start with 3 sets of 10 reps. This is a great beginners lay out. The multiple reps will allow you to master the movement but also, if the weight is heavy enough (>75% of 1RM), cause muscle growth.

As you progress through, the reps can be pushed higher in order to stress the muscles enough to see growth.

What’s great, is that rep scheme can be used for many other things. If you are sore, doing light weight (>60%)or body weight, will push blood flow to the muscles and remove waste that’s causing the soreness.

Moderately loading (~60%) the muscle group for that rep scheme and going the full range of motion, will help strengthen the whole range. Which can be used to increase flexibility.

Of course there are many other amazing rep schemes that can lead to improvement in these areas, but as a starting point, highly recommend!

*Creatine*

It’s use as a supplement is ever growing, many athletes and gym goers wonder if this is something they should start doing.

In the end it depends on your ‘why’. If you want to get better in your sport, research concludes that just creatine won’t help. When it comes to body development and weight room performance, it works. With an increased ability to do maximal movements, allows for greater hormonal response and muscle development. Muscle mass means we have the capacity to do more work, but we still have to train it.

To improve your physique or get a better 1RM, great choice. Apart from that, it is not an essential supplement.

Always remember, to get better at your sport, train your sport, no supplements needed apart from food.

**Why may you not be seeing the growth you’re expecting in your body**

Episode 4 time!

We’re back on the international hype. This week I’m joined by Masoud, not sure what’s more confusing his actual nationality or how to say his full name. But he does do a good podcast. Since graduating he has had a journey or many occupations where he finally found a home with his coffee company. We talk about his time as a student athlete playing soccer and the different path choices he could take after graduating with his bachelors.

Join in to learn about the coffee trading business, the many choices that internationals have when graduating from college and also to just listen to us talk s**t for half the time!

Link in Bio!