Nutrition for performance

As soon as we bring up the subject of nutrition, many of us instantly think about supplements. Nutrition is food first and supplements second. The purpose of supplements is to work with the best diet you can manage to help make that diet the best it can be.

The mentality of eating whatever you can get your hands on, then fixing it up by taking a handful of pills every morning and night is flawed.

I personally believe anyone training for Ironman distance triathlon, in fact anyone even training for a marathon should be supplementing their diets with at least a multi vitamin and an oil supplement to assure enough essential fatty acids.

Dietry supplements will not get you the best training/racing performance unless your basic diet is as good as you can get it.

Most athletes starting on my training plan have not been including enough protein in their diets. I always start a training plan with a three day review of the athletes diet. This review often shows why the athlete struggles to stay well, or is tired all of the time. Tidying up the diet is often the first positive step on the road to massive PBs.

I’ll mention no names, a young lady who started training with me a couple of years ago was training on a diet based on muffins and coffee. She goes a lot better now on a higher protein intake and a lot of fresh vegetables.

In order to become a good fat burner (have the endurance to race an Ironman well), doing long runs and/or long bikes first thing in the morning without breakfast will encourage the body to search for fuel. This doesn’t feel as good as training with a high glycogen level but it does teach you to burn fat for energy. We wake up each morning with enough fat on board to run/walk for sixty kms, if we had to. This is even when we’re at race weight. Some of the people we see out at the shopping mall have enough fuel stored to hibernate all winter or run/walk for hundreds of kms but their ankles and knees just wouldn’t go the distance.

So doing endurance training on an empty stomach will help train your fuel efficiency for the longer races. Carry a few dollars in case you need a coke to get home.

Now the opposite is the case on the days which you want to train the higher range of your fitness (top end)

On the days when you run a track session, do bike intervals or swim speed work, you need to have a high blood sugar level. Start the day with your planned pre-race meal. A liquid meal drink is good. Have an energy replacement drink with you at the track or on the bike. Sip it between efforts.

This strategy will help give you the energy to train harder when you need to train hard. Interval work is of little benefit if you are unable to go hard enough because of low fuel levels. Every workout makes a difference, every good one that is.  

Now refuelling after training is probably the greatest chance an athlete has to to use nutrition to affect his/her race day performance. Right after training, your body is hungry for sugar. This is when high glycemic carbohydrates are your friend. A soft drink is both refreshing and full of sugar to refuel your muscles.

Don’t stop there. After the soft drink, within 40-50min of training, have a balanced meal. Balanced means, include protein, carbs and fat. The emphasis should be on carbs (rice, pasta, veges, bread)  protein next (lean beef, chicken, eggs, fish, nuts) and the best fats to include are from vegetables (olive oil, flax seed oil, avocado, nuts)

Health World produce the best recovery drink I have found on the market. Endura Optimiser is the right balance of carbs and protein to be absorbed quickly and help rebuild energy stores and muscles. Follow this with a balanced meal.

If the goal with every meal eaten is, to be high in fresh vegetables (cooked or salad), include fish 3-4 times per week (canned is OK), include rice often (not only is it cheap, it is the basis of the asian diets which are the healthiest on earth)

Supplements are then to fill in the gaps. If you owned an expensive racehorse, you’d feed him nothing but the best.