RWB
Thanks for attending the RWB Cycling Camp! Below is an outline of the topics discussed with some useful links to supplement the Saturday morning session. You can also get more information by listening to the podcast and subscribing via iTunes or your favorite podcast app.
Intro
– About Tawnee
– Coaching
– Athletic career
– Sports nutrition and health expert for athletes
– Questions
– What is your experience/fitness level, type of training/racing, lifestyle, goals, what brought you here, etc?
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Section I: Diet & Nutrition
– Your diets: what do you eat before, during, after rides? How do you feel with that? What would you like to improve?
– Overlap with health and performance
What is the “best diet”?
– High carb? Paleo? Vegetarian? Vegan? LCHF (Low Carb High Fat)?
– Sugar burner: believe it or not, less energy for endurance. Plus less fat is used for energy means more likely to be stored in the body
* Hint: no such thing as “the best diet”
Goals:
1. Quality over quantity
2. Burn fat for fuel (and not be too much of a sugar burner)
3. Macronutrient & appropriate timing
4. Nutrition for quality training and racing
1. Quality Over Quantity
– Not about calories
– Avoid processed foods, refined carbs, convenience/fast food as much as possible
– How this affects energy, performance recovery
2. Macronutrients & timing
– What are macronutrients? Carbs, protein, fat
– When to eat what?
– Develop a better metabolism with timing
– Avoid heavy carbs before training in most cases, save for after
3. Fat For Fuel
– Science of fat adaptation, why bother?
– Do more on less
– Metabolic efficiency
– Don’t mistake this with LCHF (but sometimes similar)
– How do carbs fit in? (Be careful of Carbohydrate Intolerance: Check out Dr. Maffetone’s Two-Week Test and listen to Chris McDougal talk about how the test changed his life and his book “Natural Born Heroes“)
– Success stories, examples
4. Nutrition for Training and Racing
– Liquid vs. Solids
– UCAN Superstarch – carb that lets you stay in fat burning mode
– VESPA
– Other: Skratch Labs, Bonk Breaker, whole food/homemade nutrition (The Feed Zone Cookbook and Feed Zone Portables), grassfed butter (Kerrygold), honey, etc.
– When to resort to more sugar/carb-based fuels?
– Hydration & electrolytes
Supplements
– Where do supplements fit in?
– Don’t buy into gimmicks, take minimal and or what’s needed for you as individual – varies
– What I recommend:
5. Anything else depends on if you have deficiencies/extra needs
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Section II: Performance without sacrificing health
Many athletes are “fit but unhealthy”
– I’ve been there, I know
– Was really good until the decline (typical)
– I’ve turned my life around to find health + performance! (unique to each person)
Goals:
* Follow healthy diet and nutrition
* All about your aerobic base
* Intensity when appropriate
* Enough rest and recovery
* Minimize stress
* Test & retest – functional health tests, fitness tests
1. Aerobic base first
– Slow down to get fast (and stay healthy)
– Use HR, 180 Formula
– Use HR + watts (for those with power)
– Majority of endurance is all aerobic (more than 90%)
– This is also fat-burning zone
– How long? at least 3 months
– Get faster at a lower HR – efficiency!
– Health implications: lower injury rate, less fatigue, less inflammation*, fewer free radicals(avoid premature aging, disease, etc), more energy, illness infrequent, immune system stronger, avoid feeling sluggish and the crashes
* Chronic inflammation root of many diseases later in life
2. Intensity second
– Only after your base is there (measure via testing)
– Does not need to be a huge % of training
– Be specific to your event/goals
– Plan in your season (that’s next)
3. Rest & Recovery
– Listen to your body
– Avoid overtraining (hormonal, nutritional, mental/emotional, muscular, neurological and others imbalances. These, in turn, can cause fatigue, depression, injuries and poor performance)
– Rest day every 10-15 days?
– Use tests to gauge if you’re on track or need rest
4. Low Stress
– High stress inhibits fitness gains
– Adds weight or prevents weight loss
– Lifestyle
– Using HRV (and two podcasts on the subject: the beginner one and the more advanced one)
5. Functional Health Tests
– Best way is to look inside to see what’s really going on
– Where are you deficient; where are you ok?
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Section III: Training Periodization
Goals:
* Plan a year based on your events/races (TrainingPeaks is an option)
* Build aerobic base first
* Progress as needed (anaerobic)
* Taper/peaking
* Test and re-test
* Strength training
Testing:
MAF Test on the bike
– Long warmup
– 20-30min at MAF HR (with watts)
– Cooldown
Lactate Threshold (“LT”)/Functional Threshold Power (“FTP”) Test
– Long warmup (15-20′ easy, 5′ moderate build, 5′ easy)
– 30′ TT at threshold (just go hard); record final 20′ for test data
– Cooldown
** Compare your MAF vs LT/FTP performance, there should be a gap of 10-20 beats in HR.
** Use tests to measure progress, set zones (as a guideline, not be all end all) and planning for race day intensity (don’t wing it on race day)
– Triathlons: Half Ironman & Ironman as % of LT or MAF based. Will depend on athlete’s development.
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