HEAD FOR THE POOL

If you think pool running is weird, boring, and wouldn't do much for your fitness, we're guessing you've never tried it. That's too bad, because it's hands-down the best cross-training activity for runners (and a lot more fun than it looks).

Training and recovery are both important to an athlete's improvement.  There is a fine balance between both that will achieve the desired

results.  This is best accomplished by recovery techniques such as sleep,nutrition, stretching and therapy.

Sleep and rest are one of the most over-looked requirements to achieving peak performance. Sleep is a dynamic time for healing and growth. You could say that without rest there is no training. You can improve the amount of recovery by increasing sleep by one hour per night. This can be done by going to bed one hour earlier or sleeping in one hour later.You can increase the time your have available for training by less trick or treating in the evening or if you have the luxury of sleeping in fora later morning training group. Extra sleep on weekends could help combat a busy week of work/training and reduced sleep.

Naps are also important for rejuvenating the body. Many experts advice is to keep the nap between 15 and 30 minutes, as sleeping longer gets you into deeper stages of sleep, from which it's more difficult to awaken. Moreover, longer naps can make it more difficult to fall a sleep at night, especially if your sleep deficit is relatively small.

Having proper nutrition also enhances the athlete's recover. Having a proper balanced diet including protein, complex carbohydrates, good fats and water in proper proportions to the athlete's requirements will optimize recovery. Avoiding sugar, alcohol and simple carbohydrates can decrease recovery time because these foods don't have the prope r nutrients. The window of opportunity is 45 mins post-workout. It's important to have a 2:1 ratio of carbohydrate to protein immediately after the workout. A good example could be the Clifbar recovery drink containing 13 grams of amino- acid rich protein. A less high tech version is a tuna sandwich - add vegetables and lite on the mayo.

Stretching after a workout may enhance recovery and does help retain muscle length. After exercise, the body is warm and muscle tissue is more pliable encouraging the length of muscle tissue to restore to its original length. 20-30 minutes of stretching post-workouts especially the hips, low back, back and hamstrings, key areas for cyclists. Yoga is ideal but you should also treat a yoga session as another workout. It is beneficial for reducing stress and developing mental focus and relaxation. The jury is out at the moment on whether stretching is beneficial for injury prevention, but it is useful for increasing the range of motion around a joint and helps the athlete be suppler and may promote relaxation.

Therapies such as icing are critical after long or hard workouts. The contrast of ice and heat is good for promoting a "flush" of blood through the treated area and for red blood cells carrying reparative oxygen and nutrients to the muscles. You can do this by alternating 90seconds cold, 2 minutes hot. Always finish with the cold treatment. The cooling effect decreases inflammation resulting in you being less stiff and sore the following day.

Massage is an excellent therapy to promote removal of waste products from muscles and helps to break up scar tissue. Having regular massage with a therapist you trust can greatly enhance recovery and prevent injuries. I would recommend a light massage the evening before a rest or active recovery day for most athletes. A recovery week may be an ideal to schedule massage. Athletes respond to massage like training, so it's best not to schedule treatments randomly or only on race week.

Recovery from training is critical to an athlete's adaptation to stresses caused by those efforts. It is Important to make them a priority because without regular recovery as part of your routine it can lead to injury and over training. The most important point is the timing of the recovery. Keeping the order of eating, showering, and then stretching is time-efficient and effective for most busy student athletes.

John

It’s no secret that nutrition is important for athletic performance. However, what is not well known is that the body can be very inefficient in using its stored nutrients.  The human body has an almost endless storage of fat that can provide energy for many,  many hours of training. Sounds promising, doesn’t it? However, what many athletes don’t  understand is that eating certain foods and following a well-planned training program that  emphasizes aerobic training can teach the body to become more efficient at using fat as  energy. Tapping into your abundant fat stores will mean that you have to rely less on your body’s carbohydrate stores. This in itself may increase your time to exhaustion and prolonging fatigue by protecting your valuable glycogen stores. Without proper carbohydrate supplementation, you can deplete your glycogen stores in about 2-3 hours of moderately intense exercise.

Interestingly, some research indicates that at lower intensities, carbohydrate supplementation decreases gene regulation for fat oxidation. In other words, taking in more carbohydrates during your race may actually decrease your body’s ability to use fat as energy. Don’t get me wrong, carbohydrates are very important but we can’t depend on them to provide all of the energy we need during longer or higher intensity training sessions or competitions because it’s impossible to completely replenish the calories that are being expended. This is why it is important to become more metabolically efficient and teach your body to use more of its stored fat.  Let me introduce the crossover concept. This physiological term describes the relationship of fat and carbohydrate oxidation with the intensity of exercise. As exercise intensity increases, the body prefers to use carbohydrate for energy. The crossover concept can be manipulated with proper training that focuses on low heart rate zone training that specificallytrains the aerobic energy system.

What many athletes do not know is that the crossover concept can be further manipulated through proper nutrition training. Employing the concept of nutrition periodization can improve your body’s ability to use fat.  That’s correct. Eating the right balance of macronutrients at the right times of the year will elicit positive physiological adaptations on a cellular level that will favor more fat oxidation during exercise.

Science tells us that eating a higher carbohydrate diet will lead to an increased amount of carbohydrates being burned. It is a common misconception that a high carbohydrate diet must be followed during the competition season and in fact, this can be detrimental from a metabolic efficiency standpoint because the body is taught to oxidize more carbohydrates and not fat.  It is extremely important to Periodize your nutrition to match energy expenditure throughout your training year. At some points you will need less carbohydrates and calories throughout the day and training and the opposite is also true to a certain point. What should be first and foremost in your nutrition goals is to develop your body into a metabolically efficient “machine” so you can best use the 80,000+ calories stored as fat and preserve the <2,000 calories stored as carbohydrate.

Here are two easy ways to accomplish this as the off-season is approaching:

#1: Periodize your nutrition.

Don’t use sports nutritional supplements now. They are not necessary. Shift your nutrients so you have ample protein, healthy fats and fruits and vegetables.  Significantly reduce your whole grain and starch intake. You do not need them if your energy expenditure is low.

#2: Train aerobically.

If you are in fact in your off-season, have fun with your exercise program and stay aerobic. Keep the heart rate low to moderate as it is aerobic training that helps to induce the positive metabolic efficiency changes at the cellular level.  Laying your metabolic foundation by combining proper aerobic training at the right time of your training year combined with matching your nutrient needs to your training load will teach your body to become more fat efficient.

John Royson

No races until spring. How do I do two things, rest between seasons and maintain fitness?

For the athletes who contend with all four seasons, getting in your aerobic base bike training in the winter months can be challenging. Of course, there are many tools that can help get in the miles, such as trainers, rollers and computrainers, but they all seem to depend upon the selection of movies at the local video rental store to help you get through the session.

Traditional periodization of your year suggests that you take an off-period (at the end of the competitive phase) of at least 2-4 weeks. Only then would you start to re-build back into aerobic base training in the general preparatory phase, which could last anywhere from 12-24 weeks. Next, comes the specific prep phase which would include a lot of upper-end aerobic system development and then finally your pre-competition and competition phases.

It can definitely be challenging to follow this traditional periodization through our wet winters. The following tips will help you understand why a base phase is important and what methods are most effective for this development.

What are we trying to achieve?

Aerobic base training will produce a wide range of positive adaptations that optimize your cardiovascular system and improve your ability to produce energy aerobically.

Aerobic base training will increase the number of capillaries. Capillaries transport oxygen and fuels to your muscles and move waste products (mainly carbon dioxide) out. By increasing the number of capillaries per muscle fiber, base training improves the ability to provide oxygen to the individual muscle fibers.

Aerobic base training will increase the ability of your muscle fibers to use oxygen and to produce energy aerobically. Base training increases the number and size of the mitochondria in your muscle fibers and also improves the efficiency of the mitochondria by increasing the activity of aerobic enzymes

All these adaptations reduce your lactate levels and allow your muscles to use more fat and less carbohydrate to bike at a given speed.

Lastly, a large aerobic base helps improve your ability to recover from training and enables you to handle more high-intensity training such as tempo aerobic intervals and races.

Here are some options:

This includes aerobic intervals and tempo training that are all completed at intensities and workloads that are predominantly aerobic and sub-threshold.

For example, if your lactate threshold is around 175-180 bpm, doing tempo training or aerobic intervals just below this heart rate zone (about 10-20 bpm below) can be extremely beneficial for aerobic energy system development.

This type of training is great for those athletes that are in the thick of winter and can’t get outside to put in those big miles on the bike.

In addition to keeping the main content of your trainer sessions to your upper aerobic heart rate zones, one can develop some strength and leg speed components once to twice a week without risk of “peaking too early”. Big gear work on the trainer is fantastic for developing sport specific strength while also reinforcing a good pedal stroke. Cadence accelerations are great for improving cycling efficiency, as well as keeping some leg speed during the base phase.

You could really optimize this with the addition of a mini training camp.

One of the most important things to do in the off-season is get a good idea of some of your heart rate training zones; whether it is through an exercise science lab or just a standard step test on the bike trainer at home. Quality aerobic base training on the trainer with intervals is very time efficient and a great way to get strong aerobically. Remember that you have to be realistic with your efforts and do not do all-out intervals, as you will become race ready a bit early. If you train with a group for your trainer session just remember the race season is still a few months away for the majority of us!

John Royson