Science

February is National Heart Health Month.  Just like your biceps and quadriceps, the heart is a muscle too that needs to be worked and treated with love. Your heart may be in great shape, but are you feeding it the right foods to keep it healthy long term?  Below are ten heart healthy foods that you can incorporate into your current diet to keep your heart healthy and pumping strong for your workouts!  Five heart healthy recipes are provided that include most of these heart healthy food options. Try them out and let us know what you think! #swordrecipes  Eat...

Every quarter, a seasonal produce guide will be provided that includes common fruits and vegetables. Each one is colored to describe how it benefits the body.  As the saying goes, “eating the rainbow” is vital to how your body functions. To maximize your highest level of energy and efficiency, it is crucial to have a colorful plate everyday. Eating produce in season improves the flavor, increased nutrient density, and contains higher levels of antioxidants.  A main perk of seasonal foods is they are going to be cheaper because of simple supply and demand. Seasonal products will grow in abundance, therefore...

As training continues into late summer and school sport two-a-days begin, there is one element that we must not overlook: the heat. Sword Performance Co-Founder and Sports Medicine physician, Dr. Black lends some insight on how temperature affects our bodies, our training, and how we can stay safe while getting the most out of our summer. ________________________________________________________________________ What makes training in extreme heat & humidity dangerous? Anytime we do physical work (bike, run, play sports, labor jobs) our muscles produce a lot of heat.  That heat raises our body temperature.  In order for the body to lose heat, we need...

Going back to my previous post, when I say “aerobic metabolism”, I’m really talking about the process of oxidative phosphorylation.  This is the mechanism used to convert fuel (carbohydrates, fat, and to a lesser extent, protein) into ATP by using oxygen.  One important point I forgot to make in the last post is that aerobic metabolism can utilize any of the available fuel sources.  More specifically, fat can be “burned” through aerobic metabolism.  Anaerobic metabolism only utilizes carbohydrates.  Therefore, “fat burning” is not involved in anaerobic metabolism. Aerobic energy production is a little slower than anaerobic, but since it can...