In the last week the sporting world has been hit with the revelation of Australia’s Cricket team being caught ball tampering. A team which had inspired many through their hard work and resolve to be caught cheating the sport, their fans and arguably themselves.
But here’s the thing more people are cheating than will ever get caught and sometimes it’s just about being smarter not necessarily being deceitful.
Athlete’s have been at the forefront of this for many years but the rest of us haven’t explored tampering with our physiology to improve our fitness, get leaner and build strength.
We’re going to take you through 3 completely clean fitness tampering secrets to help you amplify your results in the gym and on the athletic field!
Intra Workout Carbs… Fitter, Stronger and More Muscle
The whole fitness industry has become very carb sensitive over the past 10 years. What used to be promoted as the core of a healthy diet has now been labelled as equal to smoking (more so sugar, but sugar is the base of what a carbs are built upon.
One of our biggest problems is we tend to be an all in or all out kind of society. Instead of understanding when the right context is provided that something can be extremely valuable but in the wrong context it can be quite detrimental.
Carbs are one of those things, too much without enough energy turnover can do you alot of harm but in the right amount carbs become basically the most effective legal performance enhancement tool we have.
So how do we get the most out of our carbs?
Well ever felt like you start to hit a wall in your training and your energy levels tank?
One of our favourite ways to fix this is through intra-workout carb ingestion. A general guide is around 30-60g per hour of exercise to help keep blood sugar levels at appropriate levels.
Feel like you couldn’t stomach that while training? Yep I get you 100% but fortunately there’s a little physiology tampering trick we can do.
Just wash the carb drink around in your mouth and spit it out. The glucose receptors in your mouth tell your body you’re about to get more carbs in and your body begins to top up your blood sugar from the liver glycogen. Allowing you to keep intensity up a little longer without having the stomach discomfort of exercising on a full belly.
Quick tip – You will still need to refill this back after the workout so you can’t just get away with doing this non-stop on a low carb diet.
Pre-Cooling For Improved Fitness
A few years ago when the Rabbitohs won their first premiership in many years there was talk of some of the ‘secret’ sports science tactics they were using including cooling vests amongst some other training tools they had.
The idea behind the cooling vests essentially is that once the body overheats it provides limited blood supply to the working muscles and alot towards the skin to allow for heat management and thus a greater load is placed on the aerobic system to pump the limited blood flow around the body to keep output levels high.
Sports science research has shown consistently that by cooling the body prior to starting an aerobic based activity the body takes longer to hit the threshold in which it begins to overheat and reach exhaustion. This means you can maintain higher performance outputs for a longer period of time which over an extended training phase can mean greater fitness improvements.
Now you don’t need to have fancy cooling vests or jump into an ice bath prior to a session but as simple as using cold towels or ice bricks along the neck can quickly provide a cooling stimuli for the body.
More Weights Less Body Fat
This may not be as big of a secret but yet it’s something that stands true time and time again. Many of us train to get and stay leaner, which high intensity interval training sessions can be super effective for in the short term but when we look at the people who are able to maintain a lean physique year in and year out a large majority of them place their emphasis on building strength and muscle.
Why?
Simply put having more muscle burns more calories day in and day out. Not to mention that when you have more muscle and you perform some high intensity conditioning it instantly has a significantly more impactful result as the greater amount of muscle the bigger the metabolic disturbance can be created through intense training.
Plus having more muscle means you get away with eating more burgers and pizza. So if you’re like us and you enjoy a bit of that stuff and don’t want to be working it off for the next week, you better get working on getting strong and building muscle.
Gaining An Advantage Isn’t Always Cheating
As with the aussie cricket scandal it’s not always as clear cut. Although they got caught out this time I’m sure its probably a lot more common than people are making it out to be. If you can gain an advantage without going beyond your morals or being deceitful then go for it. Try out some of our tips here to get you going!