If You're Not Moving....Get Moving!

This one is for all you office workers out there!  

Most of us aren't lucky enough to be full time athletes. Although, we dream about it, and sometimes think we are.  The truth is a lot of us are weekend warriors, or part time athletes. Our jobs are important, and allow us the privilege to be athletes on the side. 

As a result, some of us spend long hours sitting at a desk, or in other sedentary states. As athletes, we workout hard at night, or on the weekend. Then, we sit in a desk all day at work. Besides the possibility of poor posture and posterior chain issues, sitting at the desk also cuts off circulation and tightens up the muscles. This can inhibit proper recovery from workouts, contribute to loss of flexibility, and lead to injuries. 

So what do we do?  Try to sneak away for a minute or two every once in a while. Do something!  There are countless simple exercises you can do in an empty office, in a stair well, or on your cubicle floor while no one is looking. Personally, I try my best to get away once every hour and climb some stairs, do crunches, planks, Hindu squats, push-ups, etc.  

Honestly, it doesn't happen every hour. There are always meetings, or more pressing matters that come up, and 1 hour turns into 2 or 3!  But, if you try your best and get in these movements the best you can you will see a difference. You'll notice more flexibility, easier movement, and better recovery from workouts. You might even find yourself burning more calories during the day and getting leaner!  So make that commitment and get moving!

Coach Meulen

Www.tzcoaching.com

Quick and easy Salmon dinner

I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining this one because our lives are busy, and the instructions are on the package!  

Go pick yourself up some Kirkland Salmon at your local Costco. Bake according to instructions. Add some fresh spinach and a slice of lemon. (Thanks Honey!!!) 

Enjoy!

Race Day Nutrition

There are some exciting things happening here!  Including, getting my USA Cycling Coaching Certification. As a result I may switch direction of the blog posts relating to cycling and training. I'll still be doing some stuff related to nutrition as well though. Today, I want to make a smooth transition and talk about Race Day Nutrition. 

I get asked this question a lot. "How many calories should I take in during my race?"  There's no easy answer here. The best I can do is say "it depends". What it depends on is a lot of things. So I'll try to give a better answer, but bare in mind these things need to be practiced in training. Don't experiment with them on race day! Or just do what someone else said worked for them. 

Let's address the first important part of this answer. Your nutrition before the race is just as important as during and after.  You've all heard of carbo-loading before a race, and I'm pretty sure it's become widely known that it's a myth. So I won't go into that. What is important is your valuable glycogen stores, or carbohydrates. Your body stores around 90 minutes worth of carbs. Endurance athletes are always training and burning through these stores. So it's important, in your daily diet to replace these stores. One of the best ways is to use some sort of recovery drink or food/drink that contains the majic 4:1 carb to protein ration within 30-45 minutes after workouts. There are numerous drinks on the market, but chocolate milk and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches work too. The Protein is important too, as it helps repair muscle.  Make sure your getting some good whole grains in your daily diet also. Oatmeal, nuts, and fruit is a great combination. Other good foods are brown rice and whole wheat pastas. Be careful of overrating some of these things, and try to stay away from processed carbs. 

I have a theory of processed foods. They contain preservatives. My theory is that foods designed to be preserved outside the body are also preserved inside the body. If they are designed to "preserve" how can your body metabolize them efficiently?  I believe everyone is different when it comes to this, and some people can't metabolize these foods as well as clean wholesome foods. 

So now that you're eating properly daily, let's address the pre-race meal. Don't eat anything out if the ordinary!  Go back to the oatmeal recommendation in your daily diet. Eat 2-4 hours before the race. If you start feeling hungry between that time nibble on a whole wheat bagel with peanut butter or your favorite energy bar. I emphasize "nibble" because too much in your stomach as you start the race can lead to GI issues. 

During the race is the hard part. Everyone is a little different here. Again, I suggest experimenting with this in training so you know coming into the race what the best plan for you is. Speaking of plan, make one!  Pre plan all your nutrition, and make certain it is easily accessible as well as securely fastened!  Also, have a backup plan!  If something happens in a race that makes you take a lot more time be ready for that. If something, unexpectedly, makes your stomach upset be ready for that too. Know the course and what the venue will have to offer so you know how much you need to take with you, and how much you can depend on the course for nutrition. 

When it comes to the plan, you should take in somewhere between 120-240 calories per hour. Where you fall in that range depends on the kind of race and your own tolerance. One of the biggest mistakes new athletes make is to take in too much. You'll know you've taken too much when your having GI issues. Too little and you will get grumpy, tired, a little loopy and eventually bonk. Obviously, for shorter races this won't be an issue because you don't need much, if anything. However, for longer races, you need to nail this down ahead if time. Personally, I start around 200 calories an hour and work for there. Make sure you are hydrating, and be careful with your timing and mix of different products. For example, most people need to wash down gels with pure water. Mixing with sports drinks and gels can lead to GI issues. Also, consider the type of race you are doing. You may tolerate more solid food and more calories on the bike than you do running. You can't really take in any calories swimming. So in a triathlon, you may be able to take in more calories on the bike to prep for the run.  In a marathon you may take in less calories per hour than a road race because of the extra sloshing around things do in your stomach while running.  Once you nail all this down in training you can transfer it right over to race day. 

Don't forget your after race nutrition!  Remember that 30-60 minute window and replace that glycogen after the race so you can start the recovery process. 

Coach Meulen

Brian@tzcoaching.com

A Good Coach!

A good coach is priceless IMO!  Over my years of bike racing, running and triathlon I've really learned to enjoy having a professional coach. I tried to do it on my own at first. I even had some success on my own. But, I could never have learned as much about endurance sports as I have without Tony at www.tzcoaching.com !

Most coaches aren't registered nutritionist or dietitians, but they do get what it takes to fuel your body for endurance sports. Some of them have years of experience themselves, and may have even had their own struggles with weight management. They can point you in the right direction in getting your diet on track. (You should always check with your doctor if your coaches suggestions are ok for you)

This week I took the plunge myself, and applied to be a USA Cyclung coach. 

In the process, I learned that coaches take a lot of time learning about the science so you don't have to. Believe it or not, there's a lot more to it than just prescribing workouts and ramping up volume to prepare for races. There are so many reasons to hire a coach if you have the means. 

A coach will plan your "big picture". He/She will sit with you to plan your entire year. Whether you have ten races or one, your coach will plan the workouts to keep you injury free and get you to peak fitness for all your important races. 

Your coach will guide you through tough times. You may just need a little extra encouragement, or you may need to work through an illness or injury.  But, your coach will be there to guide you through. 

Coaches take a lot of time to plan your workouts so you don't have too!  Think of all the extra time you'll have to train if you don't have to research how to structure your own workouts. 

There's no more guessing!  If you have a question, you have someone to ask.  If your coach doesn't know chances are they know where to find out. Most coaches have been into endurance sports for a long time, and have a long list of people to tap for information. 

Coaches can see you from the outside!  Let's face it. You may think your rockin' the best form on your squats, or running with perfect form. But you never know unless you have someone to watch you. They can recognize those little things you'll miss or deny in your self assessments, and have the little fixes to put you on track. It could mean the difference between constant injury or pain free enjoyment in your training. 

Finally, your coach will be there to nurture and inspire your love for endurance sports. Mine has become a good friend, and inspired me to become a coach myself. You never know, sometimes, what get out of trying something new. 

Scale obsession

Man, I've sure spent some time being obsessed with my bathroom scale!  I've noticed others, as well, seem to develop an obsession when they jump on the diet bandwagon too. 

As with a lot of things pertaining to nutrition, I like to think the best policy with the scale is....it's ok in moderation. Don't run to the bathroom and jump on the scale every chance you get. I've seen a lot of people get disappointed that way. Maybe, they just did an epic workout and the number on the scale wasn't what they expected. Maybe, you've spent a week eating perfectly according to plan and didn't lose as much as you thought. 

Relax!  There are a lot of factors to your body weight at any given point in time. Your body weight can fluctuate during the course of the day as you eat, drink, excersize, sweat, etc..  So after that epic workout your weight may not be comparable to when you weighed in earlier in the day due to hydration or food storage. At the end of a pefect week you may not have the weight loss you wanted for many different reasons, but you may have set up for a very good surprise the week after. 

It's a good idea to pick a consistent time to weigh yourself in. It's not necessary to weigh in every day either. I like to think of the diet/weight correlation longer term.  So weighing in once a week or every two weeks is more than enough. You need to think of your mental health too!  Watching those daily fluctuations might drive you crazy, and might even lead to dissapointment and ultimate failure. 

During my own weight loss journey. These are the things that I noticed that made me think staring at the scale too much was a bad idea. 

1.  It takes a calorie deficit of 3500 to lose one pound of fat. So 500 deficit per day for a week equals a pound. A 1000 per day deficit will net you less a pound in 3 days. Any more than that is uncomfortable and normally not recommended for long term sustainable weight loss. So if it takes 3 days minimum to lose a pound, and with all the other fluctuations in body weight going on, it may be hard to see anything meaningful on the scale three times a day!  It may just be confusing!

2.  For me personally, and you may find this too, there seems to be a lag on weight loss. So, if I executed the perfect plan during week one, I usually don't see the results till the following week. I've theorized this is due what I've found to be true that all calories are not created equal. I believe all the processing and preservatives don't process through some if our bodies like clean foods do. So when I start a diet I think it takes a week to work through the contamination of bad foods I ate the week before and I won't see results that first week. 

3. Obsessing over the scale is a lot of work!  With diet and exercise we already log and obsess over a lot of numbers!  There's enough opportunity for dissapointment!

4. I could lose a couple pounds on a long workout only to gain them back again as I re-hydrate. So why run to the scale?  Just to see that lower number for a minute and dissapointment yourself again  in the morning?

5. Even during the day my weight can fluctate around 5 pounds. After a night of sleep you can be a little dehydrated. As you hydrate during the day and consume food that sits in your stomach your weight can go up by the end of the day. There's a lot of variables there. 

So what did I learn?  Consistency is key. Find that time you can weigh in and take a peak once a week at most!  It will save you some frustration and the headache of trying to compute all the variables. Don't be upset by small disappointments. Think more long term about diet success because it just takes time. 

What is "too skinny"?

There's been a lot of controversy lately about Rachel Fredrickson's 105lbs weight loss on tv's The Biggest Loser. People can't stop talking about it. The general consensus seems to be that she is "too skinny", and there's lots of speculation as far as the health of her weight loss. 

As endurance athletes, some of us are familiar with criticism of our weight. So I felt this was an important topic to address. 

Last season, before my destination race, and training camp in California, I got down to 165lbs. That was roughly 50lbs from my peak weight, and I'm a 6 foot tall man. It was around 175lbs where I started getting some criticism. My mom, especially, was concerned for my health and I even had a friend ask me if I had cancer. There's a popular saying in the world of triathlon about weight. 

"Lose weight till people start telling you you're too skinny, then lose 10 more LBS."

I don't know where that originated, but I've heard this a number of times from triathletes, and on numerous message boards on the topic. It seems to be a pretty good generalized measure, and a reference to the inflated view of acceptable weight in our society. 

Let's get back to Rachel Fredrickson though for a minute. I want to break this down for readers. What did people see when she stood there, weighed in, and we had a comparison photo of her previous self. 

What the media and general public saw:

1.  She's Too skinny. 

2.  She must of developed some kind of eating disorder. 

3.  That can't be healthy. 

4.  She must be obsessed!

Here's what I see:

1.  She had a huge smile!  Her new body must have been an incredibly happy moment. 

2.  What HUGE accomplishment!  It must have been a lot of work to get there. 

3. All that hard work!  She must be so fit and healthy now. 

4. Holy cow, the haters are going to be so jealous!

I'm not Rachel's trainer. So I can't possibly know if she's obsessed, or she lost weight in some unhealthy way. What I do know is that smile on her face tells me how happy she is. So where do we draw the line?  Where does weight loss stop being productive and start being unhealthy?

As endurance athletes we have different standards. The rest of the world doesn't see things the way we do. In our sports, extra body fat only inhibits our efforts.  Really, any visible body fat is worthless extra weight we carry through a race course and holds us back. However, we want the muscle!  So there is where the line is drawn. The point at which we are sacrificing muscle to lose weight is where weight loss starts to be inhibitive to our body. This can be challenging because when you are at optimal weight for endurance sports you are walking a fine line. 

Most of us, especially me!, struggle with getting to this point. I started to get close was last season when I reached 165lbs. 

If you take anything away from all this, let it be this.  The important question to keep asking yourself is "how do you feel?"  If your to the point where you're miserable and your progress is going backwards, in the big picture of things, that's when you've gone too far with weight loss. 

I don't think society understands this at all. The media is in attack mode on Rachel Fredrickson. I laughed the other night when they made a BIG deal about her admission to working out sometimes six hours a day, and limiting her calorie intake to 1600. I really don't see anything wrong with this!  To be honest, I've had 6 hour days myself, and it's extremely hard to net 1600 calories when you've burned so many in a six hour workout. That doesn't mean there's anything unhealthy about it. 

Let's not forget what body fat really is.  Fat is a bi-product of too much calorie intake. Our bodies are not designed to carry too much body fat. In fact, even if you have no visible body fat, your body has plenty of fat ready to burn for energy. Plenty of skinny people are healthy enough to complete Ironman, Leadville, marathons and ultras. 

Imagine if you were in prehistoric times. You had to hunt and gather your food. You couldn't drive to a grocery store down the street and come home to eat on the couch. Life was hard!  Getting nourishment was difficult. Only the strong survived. What people perceive as "average", in today's terms, would not get you your next meal in pre historic times. The fast, the lean, the strong were the best hunters!  Why are those people perceived as "too skinny" today?  It drives me crazy. We call Rachel Fredickson "too skinny" yet people who are supposed to be within "normal" weight standards today are riddled with health issues that are related to having too much body fat. Extra weight can take a toll on joints, and put extra strain on your heart. The Mayo Clinic has written pieces that say any belly fat on men puts them at extra risk for heart disease. Why then is it so unacceptable to be thin?

I think it really just comes down to jealousy, envy, and resentment. Our society has made it too easy to be overweight. Processed food, sugary drinks and fast food companies have replaced natural foods and eliminated the hunt.  So the bellies of society have expanded. When being overweight became the norm it alienated those fit, lean and strong people.  Society has made it easy to be overweight. Most animals in nature take the easiest path presented to them by instinct. It's hard not to. So society takes the easy path, but they still desire to look like they are that pre-historic ultimate hunter. It's obvious we idolize that body type. Hollywood has made a multi-billion dollar industry out of it. So what we are left is envy. That's why people criticize when someone like Rachel Fredrickson comes along and puts in the work, effort and dedication to do what it takes to look  like she could be a track star, Ironman, or the ultimate pre-historic hunter. It really is a shame. 

Shame on you society!

Nutrition and Injury

Typically, we don't think of these things mutually. But, in my experience, there is some kind of relation between nutrition and injury. 

If you knew me, and some of you do, you'd know that my triathlon and MTB racing career has been riddled with bumps, bruises, broken bones and over use injuries. So looking back at those injuries I can put some sort of pattern to them.  

One of the most frustrating times for me was when I first started with fitness after years of battering my body with terrible comsumption habits and a sedentary lifestyle. I found myself buying new clothes, year after year, as my waste line expanded. At some point I decided to put a stop to that. I decided to try and start running. Admittedly, I had some knee problems in my youth, however, running, this time around, proved very challenging. My knees were always swollen and sore when I finished a run, and I could forget about putting 2 days running back to back. Eventually, I got fed up, and quit running. I had to move to the bike for a while and concentrate on losing some weight so my body could take the pounding if running. So there is the first time I related nutrition and injury....

1. Solid nutrition will keep you at a healthy weight and make the pounding of certain exercises in your joints a lot less impactful and reduce the chances of injury. 

After a while I lost a considerable amount of weight. One of my MTB buddies was into triathlons, and he convinced me to give one a try. So I gave running a try once again. With the weight loss it was much less painful, and injury ridden. I was able to string back to back days. I stepped it up!  Running was more enjoyable for me, and eventually, I ran a marathon. 

Through all that I still struggled with injuries. So, I looked back to see some commonality. While I can't say for sure some bike crashes or missed steps were due to loose rocks, other riders, or just stupid moves.  I can see some commonality in the timing of injuries. The majority are deep into long days when the body is tired and the mind is struggling to stay focused. There was the second relation between nutrition and injury.

2. While fitness, and the general rules of working out within your endurance limits applies, solid nutrition around and during workouts and races keeps your energy levels higher, and your focus up.  Allowing for better decision making and less mistakes!

Another thing I've observed was getting injuries during the recovery process. After my first marathon I ended up with some foot issues. I had more than likely stress fractured a bone in my foot training for it, and ran through that during the race. So my recovery from it was crucial to continue my plan for other races. I'm pretty sure it was then when I developed a dreaded issue that continues to haunt me today, planter faciitis. I'm not positive proper nutrition would have helped me avoid that injury, but again, it comes back to focus energy and partially the nutrition to sustain that.  At that time I tended to reward myself with food after big races or accomplishments. I was more than likely eating garbage and had no regard for proper recovery nutrition. I remember it taking me much longer than it should have to feel like I was 100% right again after that race. So just maybe, proper nutrition could have helped me recover better from that race, and keep me injury free as I recovered and started training for my next race. There was my last link between nutrition injury. 

3. Proper nutrition will help you in the process of recovery, stave off injury during your recoveries, and help get you ready for that next race safely. 

Obviously, nutrition isn't the only factor in keeping you injury free as you train. But, I can't help observe some of these links. So in addition to my three points above I'll leave you with some other things that I've found, and my coach has given me to help keep the injuries to a minimum. 

   -Proper warmup and cool downs from workouts

   -incorporating adequate rest days

   -staying within your limits, and especially running, respect proper volume building 

   -staying on top of old injuries with stretching and keeping up with therapy exercises

   -a good recovery day routine like the one found here  http://www.personaltrainerscincinnati.com/2012/01/recovery-day-workout.html

   -a good bike fit! I happen to know a good bike fitter that is also my coach, you can find info here  http://www.tzcoaching.com/service/bike-fit/

   -properly fitting running shoes with appropriate support and keeping them cycled out between 300-400 miles

   -listening to your body and knowing when and how to back off