Vegetables are loaded with vitamins and minerals that are crucial for bodily health and growth. The best multivitamins can't come close their overall nutritional power, and even if they could, your body would still make better use of the same nutrients in plant form.

This shopping list is good for all Architech Sports Athletes. Print this out and take it with you to refer to when you do your food shopping. When you are shopping you can use the (breakfast, lunch, dinner) as guidance for which foods fit with what meals.

The purpose of a quality strength-training program is to become stronger and more powerful. If you have a solid strength foundation that will allow you to develop your speed, power, endurance, and agility.

The first step in achieving optimal intake is to see how much you are taking in each day. Slowly increase your intake so you won’t feel bloated or have any stomach issues.

Exercise is a key factor of optimal health; it's particularly important for controlling your blood sugar and normalizing your insulin levels. We often recommend viewing exercise as a drug that needs to be properly prescribed and "taken" at a proper dosage.

Stretching is typically the most overlooked part of an exercise routine. Many people do not stretch because the results are not seen for some time. Increasing the muscle length takes time and stretching must be done on a regular basis.

Fear often stands between us and our ability to make decisions, take actions, ask for what we want – even to know what we really want. It is the gatekeeper of our comfort zone.

In our busy lives, it’s sometimes tempting to regard merely practicing as a success. We complete the hour and we are happy.... “Mission Accomplished”. But the real goal isn’t practice it is progress. As the legendary basketball coach from UCLA John Wooden said “Never mistake mere activity for accomplishment”.

Pressure has been defined as “any factor or combination of factors that increases the importance of performing well on a particular occasion”. This definition of pressure highlights the importance of athlete perception.

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail.

Whole foods are surprisingly easy and tasty. Here are some of my general ideas and food guidelines:

The timing of protein ingestion appears to be critical in maximizing the anabolic response from resistance exercise.

Did you know that what you eat directly after exercising – typically within two hours can have a significant impact on the health benefits you reap from exercise? Consuming sugar, fruit juices or refined carbohydrates within this post-exercise window will negatively affect both your insulin sensitivity and your human growth hormone (HGH).

Vitamin D deficiency is becoming an epidemic worldwide, not only in geographic regions where sun exposure is limited. Moreover, vitamin D increases the number of type II or fast twitch muscle cells urthermore, vitamin D supplementation in young males with low vitamin D levels increases the percentage of type IIA fibers in muscles, causing an increase in muscular high power output.

Plan ahead and stock up on homemade, healthy items that you can just grab and eat on busy mornings. Here are nine quick and healthy breakfast ideas that can help start the day off right.

Learn which “shortfall nutrients” you might not be getting enough of and how to get more of them. When the USDA came out with its Dietary Guidelines last year, it also published information on the socalled “shortfall nutrients” that Americans are not getting enough of.

It's just not fair: Fat got a bad rap decades ago because scientists assumed, based on the misinterpretation of a couple of large studies, that eating foods containing fat would lead directly to obesity and heart disease. Fatty foods were made out to be our sole dietary vice, responsible for raising our cholesterol levels, clogging our arteries, and causing us to get, well, fat.

Traditionally, athletes looking to build muscle have stayed laser-focused on protein. Meanwhile, runners and cyclists focus more on carbs or fat to keep them powered through their respective workouts, often fearing protein will make them bulky and slow. But new research is showing that not only can every athlete improve their performance by consuming protein, but also by consuming way more of it than is commonly recommended.

Just because you’re new to fitness doesn’t mean high-intensity interval training isn’t for you. Otherwise known as HIIT, these fast-paced workouts have been shown to burn calories in a short amount of time and develop more lean muscle mass— so you don’t need to spend hours in the gym.