BRAIN TRAINING

It turns out that mindfulness boosts your bulkbuilding hormones. Who’d have thought?

Meditation and musclebuilding are far from conventional training buddies: for most people, a serene, cross-legged headspace session sits at the opposite end of the spectrum to, say, Crossfit workouts Fran, Cindy and Murph. But new research suggests that, to amp up your training, you need to keep calm and carry om.

Researchers at the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa found that subjects who meditated for five minutes a day significantly lowered levels of stress hormone cortisol in their blood, helping to improve their

mood and mental health. However, they also had increased levels of testosterone and human growth hormone: crucial physiological ingredients in the recipe for muscle gain.

These naturally occurring anabolic hormones spike in the absence of cortisol. Testosterone helps your body build muscle by increasing your rate of protein synthesis and boosting the number of muscle fibre precursor cells. Meanwhile, human growth hormone does precisely what its name promises and delivers new muscle mass. So, consider five minutes of morning meditation your new pre-workout supp – harem pants strictly optional.