Thursday, December 29, 2011
F4 Coach Steve Gibson offers some hearty food for thought for the New Year...
It all begins, of course, with your goals. Your goals are your own. Whatever they are, they're yours... and that's what matters. As coaches, what matters to us is helping your reach your goals. But for athletes -- and their coaches -- all too often goals and physical reality are at a mismatch.
If your goals entail maintaining your fitness while enjoying the outdoors and the fellowship of your fellow F4 athletes while, as one very insightful and self-aware athlete put it to me last season, "feeling as good at the end of a run as I do at the beginning,” then your goals should reflect that. Indeed, your goals can easily be accomplished without need of (if still benefiting from) what we'll discuss in the rest of this posting. If, however, you have goals that include words like "faster" or "PR" or "finally beat my lousy brother-in-law" and, at the same time, your commitment to those goals is high, then read on, and I'd encourage you to reflect on your training and plans.
First, an observation: Improving your strength-to-weight ratio is likely the best least pursued opportunity for everyday Joe/Jane triathletes to improve performance. You can do the workouts, you can be disciplined, you can manage your races well and you might still not meet your aspirations if your weight is substantially above your optimum race weight.
Here's why: For every percent improvement (in other words, one percent lighter but no strength loss, or one percent stronger with no weight gain) in your strength-to-weight ratio, you can anticipate going about the same percent faster on the bike and run. Let me be specific, and personal. I currently weigh about 170. At my target Ironman race weight of right around 152, assuming no loss of muscle mass, I'd be 10% faster. That's going from, say, 6:00 on the bike to 5:24. And taking run splits from 10 minutes per mile to 9, and total time from 4:22 to 3:56. In other words, just over an hour, in total.
That having been said, what is “race weight”, anyway? While I’m sure there are some formulas and even tests out there, I think we can begin with common sense. Do you feel like you want to lose some weight? Can you feel your belly when you’re down on your aero bars? Do you weigh 10, 15, however-many pounds more than you did a few years ago? You’re probably not at your ideal race weight. Likewise, if you’re planning to do a longer race with a lot of climbing, then less is definitely still more.
The big question is, of course, how to lose the weight. If there were one answer to this question, then there wouldn’t be several thousand books available on the topic. That having been said (and having received nutrition insights from The Human Performance Institute, which trains a ton of professional athletes and other high-performing folks), I’d suggest (1) that radical or “special” diets just for triathletes are not really needed, and perhaps more important, that (2) the most common mistake we see is people over-compensating for their workouts by adding too many post-workout calories. The fact is, if you maintain a healthy diet, with moderation, that weight generally tends to come off as you add workout volume.
In case it needs saying, none of us get paid to race, and the last thing we want or need as recreational athletes is to get anywhere near food/eating issues. Like our training, the key is balance. But balance recognizing we’re competing in a sport where, all else being equal, lighter is faster.
The great thing is that you can tackle the ratio from either direction (strength, or weight) with similar results. Even better, it tends to reinforce itself. By that I mean, as you get stronger, you'll be able to work out with greater intensity and duration, which often leads to weight loss. Likewise, most athletes I know who started to lose weight just feel so much better they tend to workout with greater confidence and effort and, as a result, get stronger. And so on.
Think of it as a virtuous circle. And a great way to start your new year.