When setting out in the endurance world, you often hear many athletes say “ I can eat whatever I want because I train so much”. While this is true in a snapshot of time, it simply isn’t true for long term success. Over the course of this blog, I’ll touch on different reasons why you still need solid nutrition to become an overall healthy individual while training. More importantly, I hope you leave here understanding you need good nutrition for optimal performance.
Disclaimer: I am not a registered dietician and my views are purely from experience as an athlete and coach. I hope you don’t drastically change anything because of this post, but rather I hope it gives you the interest to study these issues for yourself.
Eating Whatever You Want
From a pure weight loss standpoint, yes, you can probably have those 5 slices of pizza and extra brownie after your week of continuous 1500 calorie workouts. To be completely honest, this can be a positive thing on your “cheat days” which allows you the freedom to keep motivation going throughout the process. However, eating this way all the time will have many negative affects to your training. One of those areas is the lack of recovery you will start to have.
Food is Your Energy, Your Recovery, and Your Key to Long-Term Success
When training 8-14 hours a week you are burning between 5000-10000 calories a week. With this amount of workload, you need to be eating plenty of food for your energy and recovery. However, what you’re eating has an effect on all of this.
The reason you can’t simply eat pizza every day or crush drinks all the time is because it doesn’t allow the body to recover from hard workouts in an efficient manner. Again, I am not a registered dietician, but the cheese on pizza along with the alcohol from drinks can cause inflammation or thin blood which doesn’t allow your muscles to recover for the next days training. Any time you aren’t recovering as an athlete, your next days workout is going to suffer and that is where we feel optimal nutrition comes into play.
What does optimal nutrition mean? That is different for everyone and this is where we hope you will do some research for yourself. Some individuals perform great on a vegan diet while others really do well on a high protein diet. We aren’t here to tell you what to eat, we are simply here to tell you that eating better foods does make a difference in the long term success of your training.
What the Body Does Need
The basic needs for your body after a training day are protein and carbohydrates. Your body needs the protein in order to help your muscles grow and recover and you need the carbohydrates to help restore your muscle glycogen levels for energy. How you want to go about getting these nutrients in is up to you. Some people will do a protein shake while others will simply make a chicken salad, turkey sandwich, spaghetti dinner, etc. It isn’t so much what you’re having for a meal, its just that it contains your protein and carbohydrate needs.
Fasting Serves One Purpose
Sometimes you’ll hear of athletes going into training sets fasted. The sole purpose of this is to target fat utilization for energy. This can be effective for some longer distance athletes, but it shouldn’t be the main focus of their training. Again, Dalzell Coaching is focused on performance and while this may help your body become more efficient at burning fat for fuel, you will never be able to do any serious sustained threshold training in this state. As the intensity of exercise increases, your body pulls on more and more glycogen (carbs/sugars) for energy. If your muscle glycogen stores are depleted, then you simply will be pedaling at a slow rate of speed and utilizing mostly fat for your energy. If you do this wrong you can also be pulling from your protein sources for energy which will actually break down your muscles for energy. In my years of coaching, I have never specifically programmed a fasted workout because I feel more passionate about building someones speed and endurance vs focusing on fat utilization. This is a tricky subject that you will get both sides of the spectrum on. Again, I urge you to do your own research if you are training yourself.
Well Balanced for Long-Term Success
The long-term success of your training is focused around proper training, proper recovery, and properly fueling to ensure you are ready to train. Below is an example of a strong diet and the training stress is allows along with a poor diet and where individuals start to fall off.
Example of Strong Diet vs Poor Diet Weekly Training
Strong week (cycling example);
This is based on a strong diet rich in protein/carbs and focus on recovery
Monday: Threshold workout (100 TSS)
Tuesday: Base with Sprints (140 TSS)
Wed: Freedom ride (80 TSS)
Thurs: Sweetspot Set (75 TSS)
Fri: Easy spin (30 TSS)
Sat: Long Endurance (180 TSS)
Sun: Base with Attacks (110 TSS)
Note: Best day to cheat meal here is Friday night. This is because you’ve had a full day to recover from the mid-week and a cheat meal often has a ton of carbs which will fuel you for the long endurance day.
Poor week (cycling example);
This is the same week as above, but your body won’t be able to sustain training load (see tss)
Monday: Threshold workout (100 TSS)
Tuesday: Base with Sprints (140 TSS)
Wed: Freedom ride (80 TSS) << legs will feel cracked, may only get 60 TSS in
Thurs: Sweetspot Set (75 TSS) << may not be able to get quality here. 55 TSS
Fri: Easy spin (30 TSS)
Sat: Long Endurance (180 TSS)
Sun: Base with Attacks (110 TSS) << body will be done.. might take today off
Note: without proper recovery and nutrition, this week is now 150 TSS short of the optimal training week. While 150 TSS isn’t a huge deal if only done 1 week, as you add up weeks and months, 150 TSS/week is the difference between a strong peak performance and not meeting your full potential. This is why you need strong nutrition along with strong training. It allows your body to recover and keep making progress toward your potential.
Conclusion
Training will not overcome poor nutrition because as poor nutrition continues, you’ll neglect to fuel your body in a way that allows proper training. If you are training between 8-14 hours or more a week, don’t get sucked into any of these fad diets. With the amount of training per week you are doing, you are burning between 5000-10000 calories a week which will result in weight loss. At this point what you need to be focused on is properly recovering so you can continue to make progress as an athlete. While weight does start to become important to performance, we would much rather see your weight drop because of proper training and diet vs having a sole focus on weight loss. If you are focused on training and being recovered for your next days workout, then you’ll start to have a better diet and you’ll soon start working towards your potential as an athlete.
Disclaimer: I am not a registered dietician and my views are purely from experience as an athlete and coach. I hope you don’t drastically change anything because of this post, but rather I hope it gives you the interest to study these issues for yourself.
Eating Whatever You Want
From a pure weight loss standpoint, yes, you can probably have those 5 slices of pizza and extra brownie after your week of continuous 1500 calorie workouts. To be completely honest, this can be a positive thing on your “cheat days” which allows you the freedom to keep motivation going throughout the process. However, eating this way all the time will have many negative affects to your training. One of those areas is the lack of recovery you will start to have.
Food is Your Energy, Your Recovery, and Your Key to Long-Term Success
When training 8-14 hours a week you are burning between 5000-10000 calories a week. With this amount of workload, you need to be eating plenty of food for your energy and recovery. However, what you’re eating has an effect on all of this.
The reason you can’t simply eat pizza every day or crush drinks all the time is because it doesn’t allow the body to recover from hard workouts in an efficient manner. Again, I am not a registered dietician, but the cheese on pizza along with the alcohol from drinks can cause inflammation or thin blood which doesn’t allow your muscles to recover for the next days training. Any time you aren’t recovering as an athlete, your next days workout is going to suffer and that is where we feel optimal nutrition comes into play.
What does optimal nutrition mean? That is different for everyone and this is where we hope you will do some research for yourself. Some individuals perform great on a vegan diet while others really do well on a high protein diet. We aren’t here to tell you what to eat, we are simply here to tell you that eating better foods does make a difference in the long term success of your training.
What the Body Does Need
The basic needs for your body after a training day are protein and carbohydrates. Your body needs the protein in order to help your muscles grow and recover and you need the carbohydrates to help restore your muscle glycogen levels for energy. How you want to go about getting these nutrients in is up to you. Some people will do a protein shake while others will simply make a chicken salad, turkey sandwich, spaghetti dinner, etc. It isn’t so much what you’re having for a meal, its just that it contains your protein and carbohydrate needs.
Fasting Serves One Purpose
Sometimes you’ll hear of athletes going into training sets fasted. The sole purpose of this is to target fat utilization for energy. This can be effective for some longer distance athletes, but it shouldn’t be the main focus of their training. Again, Dalzell Coaching is focused on performance and while this may help your body become more efficient at burning fat for fuel, you will never be able to do any serious sustained threshold training in this state. As the intensity of exercise increases, your body pulls on more and more glycogen (carbs/sugars) for energy. If your muscle glycogen stores are depleted, then you simply will be pedaling at a slow rate of speed and utilizing mostly fat for your energy. If you do this wrong you can also be pulling from your protein sources for energy which will actually break down your muscles for energy. In my years of coaching, I have never specifically programmed a fasted workout because I feel more passionate about building someones speed and endurance vs focusing on fat utilization. This is a tricky subject that you will get both sides of the spectrum on. Again, I urge you to do your own research if you are training yourself.
Well Balanced for Long-Term Success
The long-term success of your training is focused around proper training, proper recovery, and properly fueling to ensure you are ready to train. Below is an example of a strong diet and the training stress is allows along with a poor diet and where individuals start to fall off.
Example of Strong Diet vs Poor Diet Weekly Training
Strong week (cycling example);
This is based on a strong diet rich in protein/carbs and focus on recovery
Monday: Threshold workout (100 TSS)
Tuesday: Base with Sprints (140 TSS)
Wed: Freedom ride (80 TSS)
Thurs: Sweetspot Set (75 TSS)
Fri: Easy spin (30 TSS)
Sat: Long Endurance (180 TSS)
Sun: Base with Attacks (110 TSS)
Note: Best day to cheat meal here is Friday night. This is because you’ve had a full day to recover from the mid-week and a cheat meal often has a ton of carbs which will fuel you for the long endurance day.
Poor week (cycling example);
This is the same week as above, but your body won’t be able to sustain training load (see tss)
Monday: Threshold workout (100 TSS)
Tuesday: Base with Sprints (140 TSS)
Wed: Freedom ride (80 TSS) << legs will feel cracked, may only get 60 TSS in
Thurs: Sweetspot Set (75 TSS) << may not be able to get quality here. 55 TSS
Fri: Easy spin (30 TSS)
Sat: Long Endurance (180 TSS)
Sun: Base with Attacks (110 TSS) << body will be done.. might take today off
Note: without proper recovery and nutrition, this week is now 150 TSS short of the optimal training week. While 150 TSS isn’t a huge deal if only done 1 week, as you add up weeks and months, 150 TSS/week is the difference between a strong peak performance and not meeting your full potential. This is why you need strong nutrition along with strong training. It allows your body to recover and keep making progress toward your potential.
Conclusion
Training will not overcome poor nutrition because as poor nutrition continues, you’ll neglect to fuel your body in a way that allows proper training. If you are training between 8-14 hours or more a week, don’t get sucked into any of these fad diets. With the amount of training per week you are doing, you are burning between 5000-10000 calories a week which will result in weight loss. At this point what you need to be focused on is properly recovering so you can continue to make progress as an athlete. While weight does start to become important to performance, we would much rather see your weight drop because of proper training and diet vs having a sole focus on weight loss. If you are focused on training and being recovered for your next days workout, then you’ll start to have a better diet and you’ll soon start working towards your potential as an athlete.
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