‘Athleteas’: Athletes and teas aren’t really incompatible

“Athleteas.”

It was absurd. As my soccer coach sat on the cedar stool, and as he moved his gaze away from the tea-filled styro cup that stood beside my right wrist, he uttered this obscure word.

“Athleteas?” I asked.

Image source: mensfitness.com

And he was talking about tea and athletes’ compatibility.

My soccer coach was a 44-year-old British bachelor—Nigel Poynter—who hated tea. For him its taste was just awfully bitter, unbefitting to any British meal. When her ex-girlfriend had sent her boxes of Earl Greys and Babingtons’, he just gave them to us as if tossing a used napkin into a trash can.

Image source: therefinementstudio.com

The moment that had been intended to be a typical rest day for the two of us was turned into a serious one. The dumbfounded and perplexed me who wore a golf shirt adorned by my ostentatiously stitched name on the back—David Fish—was forced to ask him about the real connection between tea and athletes, for I remembered my old boxing coach telling me that any kind of tea would weaken a boxer's legs and reflexes. Coach Poynter told me, as he signaled the waiter to approach us, that the myth and science behind the effects of tea in an athlete’s body missed the point by not proving whether those effects are beneficial or not.

I handed him my iPad and asked him to read this article. Then he was silent for minutes, perusing the online article with gusto.

Image source: cbc.ca

After reading, he smiled, handed the gadget back to me and said: “This has a point. But I've coached a lot of tea-drinking British sportsmen for more than 20 years and, fortunately, and perhaps because of hard work and dedication to the sport, we have managed to bring countless championship cups from different leagues outside London—leagues that let us compete with many non-tea drinking nations. Too much of everything is bad—I'm saying it loosely, but take it from the Spice Girls, American boy.”

Want more tips on how to be fit and healthy? Follow David Wayne Fish on Twitter.