The heat is on this summer as firebrand Wayne Rooney and the rest of the England squad try to follow the lead of the England rugby team and return from Portugal laden with silverware. They’ll certainly be tested to their limits in the endurance stakes, which is when Rooney will reach for his PowerAde, the official sports drink of the Euro 2004 Championships. This summer, for the first time in living memory, we’ll be relishing the prospect of penalties…

Take a swig

PowerAde is proven to improve your performance compared with drinking water in eight different ways, from improving your endurance and increasing your speed, to sustaining energy, maintaining co-ordination, quickening your reflexes, reducing your risk of error, retaining your focus and even helping maintain motivation (without a Premiership manager barking at you), Translation? More energy for longer, so your side can slot one in the back of the net when it really counts. Other great product that will help you sustain energy and definitely works as a health booster is the coconut oil. Check out pure coconut oil benefits.

Keep going

As effective as any super-sub, PowerAde is formulated to rejuvenate tired legs, sayou remain stronger and more focused for longer. “Consuming carbohydrates during exercise has been shown to improve exercise performance of moderate to long duration” says Dr Susan Shirreffs, exercise physiologist at the Loughborough University. In football this means that players  tire, passes go astray, their running speed may drop off and the power of their shot could diminish. In short, PowerAde is an essential part of your sports kit, whether you play five-a-side football or are hoping for an England call-up.

 

Feel the flow

PowerAde is isotonic, which means it’s in balance with your body’s fluids, optimizing the rate at which it moves from the stomach to the intestine — so it’s absorbed faster than water. “To put it scientifically, PowerAde is isotonic because it has the same osmolality or pressure level as blood, due to the precise concentration of sodium and glucose dissolved in it; says Dr Ian Beasley, who works with Arsenal FC and the Olympic Medical Institute. Both of these play a key role in assisting the absorption of the fluid from the intestine to the blood stream, where they’re transported to the muscles and liver, where it’s most needed.

Why you need an isotonic drink like PowerAde:

The two factors that contribute most to fatigue during exercise are the depletion of carbohydrate reserves and dehydration.

 

Because it is isotonic, PowerAde is absorbed faster than water to help rehydrate you and provide you with energy as quickly as possible.

FIST OF FURY, Bruce Lee

 

He lived to fight, constantly striving to improve his fitness and technique. Self-discipline was his watchword. To be more like the martial arts and movie icon, read on and find out how he trained, what he ate, and the rules he lived by.

On average, I think I probably have about three unexpected Bruce Lee conversations a year with the most unlikely people. For example, during an interview, Jonathan Ross mentioned to me that he wanted a replica made of Lee’s iconic yellow and black jumpsuit from Game of Death (1978) for his 40th and, if memory serves correctly, telly totty Donna Air still had a poster of him on her wall in 2000.

 

Admittedly, since both Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 (2003/4) revived the chop-stocky bar-room debate, the number of random Lee encounters has risen to about the same number a week. But even if the quantitative increase has marked a serious drop-off in quality, it never ceases to amaze me how many people know an awful lot about this Hong Kong actor who only ever starred in four films, none of which were made in Hollywood.

 

It’s not even as if there’s any particular type of Bruce Lee fan. A few are obviously martial arts buffs, while some are film geeks but, for the most part, if you grew up in the ’70s, everyone really was kung fu fighting. Everywhere. From the playground to the disco. And all because of the sheer will of one man, the original nine-stone weakling who kicked the world’s arse.

 

Lee spent his whole life fighting. From the Kowloon street gangs he grew up with in Hong Kong to the Hollywood boardrooms, every step was a battle against tradition, prejudice and damn near every martial artist that ever mattered. And he beat them all.

 

Acknowledged by everyone from Chuck Norris (six-time undefeated World Professional Middleweight Karate Champion) to his old sparring partner Jackie Chan as the greatest fighter the world has ever seen, Lee single-handedly popularized martial arts in the West, leaving a legacy of films and fighting techniques that have never been rivaled.

Although he never fought a championship bout, his fighting philosophy – jeet kune do – continues to be studied the world over, and when he died aged just 32, his doctors could only remark that he had the body of an 18-year-old. He was also the most sought-after star in the world. At his San Francisco funeral in 1973, both Steve McQueen and James Coburn acted as pall-bearers.

 

But then you probably knew all that. Even so, my favorite piece of Bruce Lee trivia, and perhaps the most illuminating when you consider Lee’s obsession with being the greatest fighter in the world, was told to me only recently by the wife of a friend and a hitherto unknown Lee fanatic. And because I’m a generous soul, I’m going to share this juicy little nugget of information with you…

 

Born 27 November 1940, Bruce Lee came into the world at the hour of the dragon (between 6 and 8am), in the year of the dragon at a hospital in San Francisco’s Chinatown. His father, Hoi Chuen, and mother, Grace Li, were on a US tour with the Hong Kong Cantonese Opera. But the auspicious portents of Lee’s birth were viewed with suspicion by his parents, who had already lost their first son in childbirth. To put off the evil spirits they feared would come too for Bruce, Grace pierced her son’s ears and gave him a girl’s name, Little Phoenix, as a disguise. Now it doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to figure that one out.