Amino Acid L-Methionine

Your search for L-Methionine is most likely due to its relationship with Creatine - L-Methionine is one of three Amino Acids (the other two being L-Arginine and L-Glycine) required to produce energy-rich Creatine.

L-Methionine was first isolated from Casein (commonly called milk protein, as it accounts for 80% of milk protein, the other 20% being whey protein) and is synthesised by L-Aspartic Acid and synthesises into L-Cysteine to act on Gluthione (tri-peptide made up the Amino Acids L-Glutamic Acid,L-Cysteine, and L-Glycine) for liver detoxifying. L-Methionine also important for health of hair, nails and skin.

Contraindications: Diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, pregnancy.

Food sources include: Meat, Eggs, Dairy Products, Fish, Beans.

Diet

For many of you diet will mean losing weight, toning up and burning fat, rather than just your maintenance daily eating habits. There are many different diets out there - Atkins Diet, South Beach Diet, Zone Diet, Cabbage Soup Diet, Ketogenic Diet etc. - all of which have the simple aim of you consuming less calories (food energy), therefore, causing a negative energy balance & you losing weight.

Different diets present different problems, some more so than others, which we'll discuss within each subject matter. The fundamental flaw of most peoples diet plans (or rather, lack of plan) is both EFFICIENCY and SUSTAINABILITY. For example, if you did not alter your activity levels, but cut out a couple of meals a day (say 600 calories less a day), initially you'll lose weight through causing a negative energy balance, but before long this will become your maintenance calories (level energy balance), as your metabolism (body's processes) will slow. The reason, not having to work as hard to break down food as regularly and correcting its self to your new calorie intake - your body's very clever! Subsequently, if you were to resume what you considered normal eating, you're likely to put on more weight than you started with. Not quite what you wanted to read - there being no quick fix, but, if thought out properly, there's no reason you cannot achieve realistic diet & physique goals. Below are helpful pages and popular diet subjects.

Visit the Gym Professor web site to find out more about the following subjects:

How do I make my body more EFFICIENT?
How do I SUSTAIN weight loss throughout my diet?
Popular Diets
Healthy Eating
PERSONALISED DIET PLANS
Fat Burners & Metabolism Boosters
SAMPLE DIET PLAN

Amino Acid - L-Cysteine

Rather than recite the same information carried across many websites & quoting the same references, I (GP) will try and keep the information relevant to why you've probably searched the Gym Professor site - hair loss products (or better phrased: the promotion of hair growth)?

L-Cysteine can be found among the ingredients list of many hair growth formula's. The reason, growth (& health) of hair depends on adequate levels of L-Cysteine. Although L-Cysteine's a non-essential amino acid (can be made by the body), we've already touched on why consumption of "non-essential" (I'll encase "non-essential" in speech marks in this instance, considering it's a term ONLY!) amino acids are still important through your food intake (a healthy balanced diet will contain many sources of L-Cysteine - poultry, eggs, wheat, broccoli, onions, red peppers).

As regards L-Cysteine's supplementation in the matter of hair growth, having known a couple of people suffer slight hair loss & poor hair health through no apparent predisposition, which would now appear to be attributable to poor nutrition, in their instances (so they felt at least), a greater initial improvement ("jump start") was experienced by supplementing 1g of L-Cysteine daily (for only a couple of weeks) in conjunction with their improved (& continued) eating habits. Of course some people are more predisposed to hair loss than others. A healthy balanced diet may have a lessening effect (& will certainly be beneficial in many other ways), but don't expect miracles from hair growth formula's.

Contraindications: Diabetes and Cystinuria.

Tell me more about: Amino Acids

Amino Acid L-Aspartic Acid

Something (L-Aspartic Acid) that's cropped up a few times recently during the joyous explanation of the Krebs Cyle (Citric Acid Cycle), as oxidation of L-Aspartic Acid plays an intermediate role in the eventual production of ATP.

Fatigue can be experienced if levels of L-Aspartic Acid are too low. Again (as mentioned with other amino acids), your general sources of protein - dairy products, beef, poultry, eggs - are all sources of L-Aspartic Acid and should provide enough L-Aspartic Acid. L-Aspartic Acid's relationship (if too low) to fatigue means that it's often advertised in supplement form to reduce exercise induced fatigue and increase stamina. Again, L-Aspartic Acid's individual importance does not outweigh the recovery benefits of a varied and sufficient intake of protein.

For further information, please consult the Gym Professor website.

Plyometrics

For many, many, many years exercises such as bounding, hopping, & jumping, have been used with warm-up and fitness drills for various fitness disciplines and sports, often exercising muscles and mimicking movements involved in those sports or disciplines (so, sport-specific exercises). This distinct method of explosive training is nowadays generally termed "plyometrics" and plyometric drills are commonplace to help improve athletic performance.

Plyometrics is based on the theory that a muscle will contract more forcefully following a pre-stretch because, although much of the energy used to stretch the muscle is lost through heat, a certain amount of elasticity will remain, and so aid the force of the contraction, subsequently, in practice, this will enable someone having performed plyometric jumping drills for several weeks, to be able to jump higher or further than they may otherwise have done.

Unknowingly, you probably perform many plyometric exercises when training for your sport, but, as with all things, it certainly helps your development to understand what you're performing and why and, if you're not performing certain drills, perhaps your performance will improve with their inclusion into your training.

Below are examples of some plyometric exercises and drills, but, for further information, Donald Chu has written some very useful books, Jumping Into Plyometrics is a particularly easy to follow and useful handbook.

Visit GymProfessor.com to find out more about:

Jumps in Place;
Multiple Jumps;
Standing Jumps;
Depth Jumps;
Bounding;
Medicine Ball Drills;
Box Drills;
Sport-Specific Plyometrics;
Recovery from Plyometric Exercise.

Amino Acid L-Arginine

I (GP) thought I'd add a quick overview of L-Arginine, given its mention to me by a couple of people today in nutrition talks.

Firstly, in reference to supplementing (orally) and increased arousal and fertility. Notably though, the individual was supplementing L-Arginine in a stack (combined with Niacin, AKG, Vanadyl Sulphate). The increased blood flow (caused by the vaso-dilating properties of the other three main ingredients) could provide an answer as regards arousal (combined with the fact he's a rather horny individual) (NB: L-Arginine's often stacked with the aforementioned ingredients as it improves the bioavailability of nitric oxide). The above said, some older studies (a couple of decades ago) have purported increased fertility and sperm production (something of note: L-Arginine makes up approximately 80% of seminal fluid).

Secondly, wound healing and muscle tone. Initially, we'll consider wound healing. As it appears that L-Arginine plays an important part in the formation of collagen (main protein of connective tissue), it would therefore be sensible to assume that increased L-Arginine (perhaps through supplementation) may help improve our wound healing capability (coupled with L-Arginine's effect on the improved immune function of the Thymus Gland, which may also increase wound healing). Claims of increased "muscle tone" through supplementation is speculation only (to date) and the assumed correlation, I would presume (blimey, I'm assuming things now!), is borne from the role L-Arginine plays in stimulating the pituitary gland to release growth hormone. Most journal references to L-Arginine and "muscle tone" will advise that high levels of L-Arginine would need to be given intravenously for there to be any effect in this area.

Contraindications: Schizophrenics, Herpes sufferers.

Weight Training

Sad I know, but weight training is one of the loves of my life. No matter what your physique goal or sporting activity, weight training can help toward this endeavor. There are many widespread misconceptions about training with weights (or any type of resistance training for that matter), not helped by misleading advertising, but, hopefully the Gym Professor website, this blog, & my constant use of analogies will help to clarify things and set you on the right track in the gym.

Realising that many of you will be looking for guidance, the Gym Professor website (& eventually the Gym Professor blog) will include:

• Numerous exercise diagrams - providing basic instruction and detailing muscles exercised, what the exercise is for & who the exercise is for.
• Weight training & gym routines - relating to your physique goals & sports.
• Periodization strategies - for general gym & fitness training for sports.
• Fitness assessments - performing fitness tests & measuring hopefully positive trends.
• & Much more besides...
  

For successful weight training, I would suggest you have a basic understanding of nutrition and anatomy (in particular kinesiology). Information on both can be found on the Gym Professor website.

Incredibly helpful & thorough eBooks (mostly my own - time willing!) will be released in due course, with in-depth information and even more guidance on the above subject matters. So, if you find the Gym Professor website useful, please consider purchasing one of the eBooks.

In the meantime, to keep up to speed with all the latest updates, please follow the Gym Professor Blog and sign up to our FREE no spam Newsletter, which will (again, in time) offer a host of weight training, diet, & supplement advice etc. & some free related eBooks.

Best regards,

GP