Fit 172: Vitamins, Gratitude & Tempo Training
In this episode: Vitamins and your body, gratitude and tempo training for better results!
Nutrition
Vitamins and bright yellow urine. What’s the deal? You’ll often hear that the cause is your body not breaking down the vitamins or not “absorbing” them. But that’s not necessarily the case! Relatively high doses of Vitamin B2 (riboflavin)can turn the urine yellow.
Here’s why the normal response of “it’s not getting absorbed” isn’t always true:
1. If you don’t break it down (i.e. digest it), then it just ends up in the stool, not the urine.
2. To get to the urine items need to pass from your gastrointestinal tract into circulation. From there, nutrients would travel to the liver and kidneys and next, to the urine.
3. When people say “absorb” they usually mean that the vitamins get into the cells and do what is intended. Since water soluble vitamins like B2 are harmlessly excreted at levels above what is needed, it makes sense to have a little extra rather than not enough.
4. If you have dull, non-awesome bright yellow urine you might need a little more B2.
B vitamins are essential in fighting stress, aiding proper blood circulation, releasing energy from fats, and many more important functions. Your body does not produce B vitamins, it must get them from the foods we eat and supplements. These water soluble vitamins are extremely fragile and need to be replenished daily. When you become sick, tired, or stressed your urine will begin to run clear. At this time, your body needs more B vitamins. A good multi-vitamin or B-complex supplement is the way to go. Don’t worry if you have bright yellow urine. This is the sign that you have an adequate supply of B-vitamins to handle life’s stressful moments!
Motivation
Gratitude and positive reinforcement is key for constant motivation! At the end of each day, review your events and count your blessings. Write these down in a little note book. You might call this notebook your “Gratitude Book” or your “Glass Half Full” book. By doing this consistently, you’ll be retraining your mind to focus on the positive aspects of your life.
Why is this important? Because like attracts like. The more you focus on the positive in life, the more positive things will come your way. Keep a gratitude book for one week and see how your attitude and perspective change for the better!
Training
Tempo training is a great way to break through a plateau, or increase the intensity of your workouts.
Tempo training involves using the total amount of time it takes to complete an entire repetition as a factor in your workout protocol. Just as there is no one single, perfect, “best” workout or exercise, there isn’t a perfect speed-of-contraction protocol. When designing your workouts, include some tempo guides to increase the intensity and concentration of your workout. Treat tempo as a factor the same as number of sets or reps.
It’s important to know that tempo training is backed by sport science. Studies have shown that slow-speed weight training initiates more metabolic adaptations than high-speed lifting. Additionally, high-intensity, slow-speed training increases in muscle glycogen, ATP, ADP, creatine, and Krebs cycle enzyme activity. Training at faster speeds does not induce these changes and puts you at greater risk for injury. Slow reps build your mind-muscle connection. Next the next episode, we’ll cover advanced tempo training and how to use it in your program.
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