NUTRITION

Is Your Workout Caffeinated?

By Amanda Carlson-Phillips January 19, 2012

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Q: I’ve always followed standard workout nutrition guidelines, but will adding caffeine to my routine improve my performance?

A: Studies have shown that drinking caffeine about an hour before working out can help boost endurance, energy, and performance, but the findings are mixed as to whether caffeine has an effect on power or strength.

Some studies have shown that drinking 150-200 mg of caffeine (similar to a Starbucks grande vanilla latte), may boost performance, while others recommend increasing it to 2.5-5 mg per kg of bodyweight (about 200-400 mg of caffeine for a 180-pound guy). But people react differently to caffeine. For some, it’s a performance enhancer; for others, it can over-stimulate them and decrease performance. You may want to experiment with different amounts of caffeine during practice runs and workouts to see if it’s helpful to you.

Having caffeine on days when you feel tired or need an extra boost is a good strategy, but don’t rely on it as your main energy source. If you feel tired all the time, you’re probably not getting enough energy from real food. Also, caffeine shouldn’t replace your normal pre-workout snack, but should complement it. Stay away from energy drinks that have chemicals, colors, or high citric acid content. Stick to coffee or tea.

Bottom line: Caffeine can be helpful for some people, but you need to see what works for you.

Can touching your toes be helpful in maintaining better posture in golf?  Body Balance for Performance is constantly trying to improve our understanding of how certain body issues impact golf performance.  Check out this research study!

http://fitgolf.com/wp-content/uploads/Toe-Touch-and-Spine-Posture-Stability.pdf

Most of us can locate a few tight muscles in our body, but nobody can explain to us why they’re tight. Stretching is a temporary solution but understanding the underlying cause of muscle tightness will help you see a more holistic remedy.

The body loves balance. If there’s weakness in one muscle group, its opposing muscle group will often become tight as an adaptation and result of muscle weakness. Muscles like to balance each other. If one muscle is not doing enough, the other will actually do more on its own, without any intervention by you, in an attempt to maintain stability around the joint. Simply stretching the tight muscle is only half of the remedy. You need to identify the corresponding muscle weakness.

Here are a couple common examples of this:

1. Tightness across the front of the thigh or quadriceps muscle is often associated with hamstring weakness on the backside of the thigh. Reduced flexibility in the quadriceps and decreased strength in the hamstring is one of the leading causes of knee problems in young athletes. You can easily remedy this muscle imbalance with a flexibility program, core training, and a little focus on movements using the hamstrings.

2. Many active adults experience tightness in the low back and are always looking for things that stretch the low back, not realizing that there is a corresponding weakness throughout the entire anterior abdominal wall. Immediately following back stretches, abdominal strengthening will reinforce muscle balance and reduce the need for those back muscles to tighten down now that the muscle strength of the front and the back of the torso are equally balanced.

The next time that you are stretching or thinking about tight muscles, just remember that there is a lot more going on than just the muscle that feels tight. You may have an underlying weakness that’s contributing to pain and could be setting you up for injury.