Muscles and Protein Shakes.

Training in Karate will enhance the performance of your muscles. In Karate you do not need big muscles but you will need efficient muscles. Big muscles need lots of oxygen to keep them going and the bigger the muscle the more oxygen it needs and the faster it can grow tired. That is why the contestants of the World’s Strongest Man events tire very quickly, they simply cannot get enough oxygen to the huge size of the muscle.

However you may want to train and get bigger muscles as well. It is believed that f you exercise a muscle and you want it to grow you must feed it. Basically what happens when you build muscle is you very slightly tear it, this is what creates the “burn” feeling. The muscle then rebuilds and repairs itself and this gives some growth to the muscle – Without feeding it.

Now, it has always been assumed by Fitness Instructors that after you have exercised a muscle you need to help it repair itself. It is also assumed that you can help it in these repairs if you can hit it with some protein and that this will also help it to get bigger. To this end there are a load of protein shakes out there on the market. The cheapest form of getting protein into your system is through a small can of tuna after you have trained and/or skimmed Milk (skimmed to avoid the fat content). It is widely believed that you should try and get the protein shot within 15 minutes of training.

BUT! – on 6th January 2017 the BBC “Trust Me I’m A Doctor” programme showed the results of an experiment carried out on a group of people exercising. They were all tested prior to the experiment for muscle mass and strength and half the group used protein shakes after their Gym workout and the other half did not. They all did the same workout and after a few weeks they were tested again. THE HALF USING SHAKES HAD NOT INCREASED THEIR MUSCLE MASS OR STRENGTH OVER THOSE NOT USING SHAKES!

In other words, it was the actual exercise that was building the muscles and strength, and the protein shakes made no difference at all. Sorry Shake Sellers!

Sensei Bill.