Post Thanksgiving Performance

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

Chili peppers for performance

By Jason Cholewa , Ph.D.

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If you’ve been around the health and fitness world for even a few days you have no doubt hear the term “superfood”.  In fact, nearly every internet guru and magazine has a list of their super foods.  Dave Palumbo notes salmon, Charles Poliquin has avocados and blueberries in his top 10, Strong Lifts has a list of 20 including whole eggs and dates, and it goes on from there. There is no doubt these foods are nutritious and offer health benefits, but are they superfoods? I regress and consult Wikipedia: “Superfood is an unscientific marketing term used in various contexts. For example, it is sometimes used to describe food with high nutrient or phytochemical content that may confer health benefits, with few properties considered to be negative…”.  

Given the benefits of eating a wide variety of food, from here on the word superfood be left out of our vocabulary; however, there is a food with some impressive health and fitness benefits that has not received its due press in the fitness media. Benefits such as increased energy expenditure, fat oxidation, aerobic endurance, reduced inflammation, and even the ability to treat headaches. 

Before we dive into the science of this food, let’s first look at some anecdotal evidence. The Cholewa clan has gathered and consumed these for the past 50 years. How dominant is the Cholewa clan? Our patriarch, Mitch Cholewa, was still dead lifting 200 pound random objects in his 70’s. Mike Cholewa cycles 100’s of miles a day, in his late 50’s, in cold New England winters. Finally, there is the complete dominance of the third generation physical specimens.

All this by eating a few chili peppers! What’s that, you don’t like spicy foods? Blasphemy! Did you know that people living in developed countries who eat a large quantity of spicy foods (> 9 jalapeno peppers per day) are leaner than those living in developed countries who don’t (Wahlqvist & Wattanapenpaiboon, 2001)?

Click here to find out why its time to start!!