Jason Cholewa
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Every year after high school my friends and I would organize a football game on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Every year I seemed to perform out of my mind. I've spoken with other athletes, and many have the same experience: they have awesome workouts for a few days after Thanksgiving. I always thought this was a result of the massive caloric intake around the Holidays; however, it appears there may be more to it than that. I dug deeper into the phenomenon, and started asking what people ate on Thanksgiving and the days afterwards, and how they felt they performed. The more I asked, the more a trend came to light, and a quite unexpected one at that. The people who felt they performed the best, were the ones eating the most pumpkin pie!
Is pumpkin pie really ergogenic? Sure, pumpkins contain a wealth of vitamins and minerals, such as calcium, phosphorus, zinc, magnesium, iron, carotenoids, and nicotinic acid, but can it really enhance performance? Well, it appears that pumpkin fruit extract may be beneficial for both endurance and strength performance, and may also improve recovery from exercise. What's more, the process to create a pumpkin extract is quite inexpensive, and may in the future (after more research is conducted) be an interesting sport supplement.
Click here to read more about the Powers of Pumpkin
