Matcha Tea: A Pre-Workout Booster
If you love the health benefits of tea, you'll know that matcha tea is one of the healthiest beverages on earth. But did you know that it's also an excellent natural pre-workout? Whether you're new to the gym or a pro in the sports field, a pre-workout can fuel a successful workout or help you up your game. Many pre-workout options are available, and most are not entirely natural.
This blog explores what matcha green tea and its super healthy natural compounds can do for you as a pre-workout drink and why you should consider using it instead of synthetic pre-workout brands.
Are You Searching For a Healthy Pre-Workout Drink?
If you enjoy regular workouts and feel your energy levels drop after just half an hour of exercise or struggle with muscle fatigue, you may be looking for a pre-workout supplement. You may have tried regular pre-workout brands and experienced side effects or been using coffee with mixed results.
The problem with pre-workout supplements
So many pre-workout options are packed with artificial ingredients that may give you more energy but have zero health benefits. Depending on the ingredients, synthetic pre-workouts can cause the following issues:
Tachycardia
Gastrointestinal issues
Increased blood pressure
Tingling feelings
Nausea
Insomnia
These products also often contain non-nutritive sweeteners that may cause health problems.
What about coffee?
Drinking coffee before workouts can increase energy levels and help you have a more effective cardio and resistance training session. Caffeine increases energy, endurance, and focus and can help you burn more calories... if only it lasted!
The problem with coffee is that a crash soon follows the energy boost that comes with it. Once you crash, you'll need to drink more coffee to feel energetic again until you crash again. Too much coffee can cause jitters, insomnia, anxiety, and other nasty side effects.
There's another option!
The good news is that you can choose a natural pre-workout drink that not only ramps up your energy levels but also increases focus and helps you to maximize every training session. Matcha green tea is a completely natural supplement. It is a powerhouse of antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins with a high natural amino acid content.
It can boost your energy and endurance while boosting metabolism and may even help with fat loss. It's the perfect pre-workout drink! Just one cup of matcha before your workout will give you all the benefits of a synthetic workout or coffee without the crash and the unhealthy ingredients. Let's jump into the reasons why matcha green tea is your best best for pre-workout energy.
#1. Matcha Improves Energy Levels
Matcha green tea contains caffeine but also the amino acid L-theanine. Together these natural compounds provide a slow release of energy, helping boost your stamina. L-theanine also promotes relaxation and reduces stress levels, so you can calmly power through your workout session without crashing. The anti-fatigue effect of green tea polyphenols will help sustain this energy boost even longer!
#2. You Can Expect Better Performance
Drinking matcha green tea before a workout can enhance your performance, increase endurance, reduce muscle soreness, and speed up recovery time. Scientific studies by the American College of Sports Medicine revealed that drinking matcha before workouts improved participants' performance by providing sustained energy throughout the session, promoting greater endurance.
#3. It Will Improve Alertness
Matcha green tea boosts mental clarity and improves focus. The unique combination of caffeine and the amino acid L-theanine work synergistically to increase alpha brain waves, which helps promote alertness. It makes it easier for athletes and sportspeople to stay on top of their game and allows people doing strength training to maintain proper posture and avoid injury.
#4. Drink Matcha to Keep Hydrated
If you need energy drinks for your workouts to stay hydrated, you may have noticed that you stay thirsty! Many synthetic energy drinks dehydrate your body instead of hydrating it. And if you're not hydrated, it won't be easy to have a successful workout. Drinking matcha will help keep you properly hydrated, and you'll feel more energetic and less prone to fatigue and dizziness. Matcha green tea is an excellent way to keep your body hydrated while replenishing nutrients.
#5. Matcha Tea Has Metabolism-Boosting Effects
One of the best things matcha green tea does for your body is its effect on your metabolism. Because matcha contains massive amounts of antioxidants, it naturally ramps up your metabolism.
When this happens, you will burn more calories while exercising and resting. A high metabolism means it's easier to maintain your weight. This study showed that green tea extract drastically boosted the body's natural calorie-burning rate.
Since matcha green tea has even more health benefits than green tea extract, imagine how many calories you can burn if you add this healthy drink to your workout regimen!
#6. It Helps With Fat Oxidation
When you exercise, matcha helps to convert body fat into fuel, so your body uses more of it. It's called fat oxidation. This study by the National Institute of Health revealed that regular green tea boosts the body's fat oxidation rate by as much as 17%! It proves that green tea increases the body's fat-burning process, helping it to utilize fat as an energy source.
Since matcha contains even more healthy natural compounds than green tea, imagine what drinking matcha can do! Besides the great fat-burning properties of matcha, it also contains catechins - powerful antioxidants that help drastically reduce visceral fat and helps you to lose weight.
#7. Lower Your Risk of Injury During Exercise With Matcha Tea
Matcha helps you when you exercise and when you're resting. The high antioxidant content of matcha green tea has natural anti-inflammatory properties, which help reduce the risk of injury when you exercise and helps prevent muscle damage from strenuous exercise.
The ECGC in matcha helps prevent or reduce the intensity of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) after your workout. With matcha, you could reduce your recovery time until your next workout, and help prevent or reduce stiffness or soreness, making it an ideal pre-workout supplement.
#8. It May Help With Muscle Gain
Green tea has an anabolic effect, which means it can help build muscles in those who regularly lift weights and in older people who are beginning to lose muscle mass. Since matcha is concentrated green tea, it has an even more powerful effect.
If you want to use matcha tea for muscle gain, add a teaspoon of matcha powder to your pre-workout protein shake. It will help fuel your workout and can assist with muscle gain and fat loss.
#9. Drink Matcha Tea to Detox
Achieving overall health as nature intended is not only about diet, weight loss, and exercise. A health regime should also include detoxification. A good detox can help you to have more energy, improve mental clarity, reduce cravings, minimize aches and pains, help restore sleep cycles, strengthen the immune system, rebalance hormones, and more!
Matcha powder has excellent detoxification properties - yet another reason it's one of the top pre-workout drinks available. When you drink green tea before your workout, it will help you to detox more effectively in a 100% natural way.
#10. Matcha Tea Makes You Healthier
Another thing that makes matcha green tea an excellent pre-workout drink is that it's not only good for improving physical endurance, losing weight, and boosting energy. When you drink just one cup of ceremonial-grade matcha tea per day, it will improve your overall health.
No matter how often you exercise, how fit you become, or how much weight you lose, the objective should be to achieve optimum health. Matcha tea has zero adverse side effects and massive health benefits, making it one of the best pre-workout drinks.
On top of energizing you, matcha tea will help you to be healthier. Who would have thought that something as simple as drinking tea could be so good for you?
Make Matcha Green Tea Your New Best Workout Buddy
Getting into a regular exercise routine (and sticking to it!) can be challenging, and pre-workout drinks can help. Drinking matcha tea as a pre-workout supplement can help you with the focus and energy you need to make it easier. And it's not just for those new to physical activity; matcha can assist athletes with reaching their fitness goals and help boost energy during games. Matcha is an excellent supplement to add to your workout regimen.
So many synthetic pre-workout supplements are on the market, and their claims range from simply boosting energy to weight loss. Unfortunately, many of them also have nasty side effects and can even cause health problems because of the artificial ingredients they contain.
Matcha is packed with antioxidants and other healthy compounds like L-theanine and chlorophyll. If you want to boost your performance and focus in the gym and on the sports field, this shade-grown superfood is the best pre-workout drink that will give you what you need naturally.
