Motivation

It’s no coincidence; given Triathlon is essentially a summer sport that the ‘off season’ occurs over the colder and darker months.  A time when people’s moods are often lower due to lower levels of Vitamin D compounded by less daylight hours. Many people comment that they lack motivation over this time.  Indeed there is a ‘syndrome’ called P.I.S.S - Post Ironman Sadness Syndrome based on people training hard for an event for many months culminating in a good or bad performance and then that feeling of having to ‘start again’ for their next event.

Here are some tips or suggestions for maintaining or even building motivation in the offseason.

Take a Break.

People in full time work are given four weeks annual leave.  Most companies will insist that you take this.  Annual leave gives you a chance to take a mental and physical break from work and to (hopefully) come back refreshed. From the corporate world it was not uncommon for people to resign after taking leave as the break allowed them to “see the forest for the trees” in terms of motivation.  So why not take a break from training? This doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing - there is a difference between physical activity and training.  Spend four weeks not worrying about structure, not worrying about doing ‘x’ runs or swims a week.  If you wake up and it’s a nice day and you feel like going for a ride then do it.  If you feel like going for a walk or surf then do it.  If you feel like staying in bed and reading a book then do that. If you feel like trying something new like Yoga or a dance class then give it a try.  The point is to avoid the pressure of structure and do what you feel like. Four or six weeks isn’t going to massively impact your fitness especially if you are doing some fun aerobic activities. I often say the best time to start again is when you start to miss it - and then wait one more week..

Define your Motive.

This is something that you can and should do during your break.  One of my favorite quotes is “You can’t have Motivation without Motive”. The suffix -ation means creating the action of.  Motivation is the action associated with YOUR motives.  In other words define YOUR reason for doing this. YOUR is highlighted because it needs to be YOUR reason - not someone else’s.  It may be something that might sound silly, trivial or even narcissistic when said out loud but that doesn’t matter.

“I do this because I love the company of my friends"

“I do this because it provides an escape"

“I do this because I want to prove I can"

“I do this because my ex partner/friend said I was too xxx to do this"

“I do this because I want to make my friends jealous"

“I do this because I like to look good"

“I do this to set an example to my children"

The key is the reasons have to be your reasons.  For me it is a desire to prove people wrong.  To prove unhealthy beliefs such as you can’t do endurance sports without sugary gels and you can’t do well in triathlons without training 20+ hours a week wrong.  These may sound silly to some people but they are MY reasons.

Sit down with a pad and pen and write down why you are doing this.  What you may find is that the motive no longer exists.  For example if you wanted to prove to your couch potato friends that you could do an Ironman - and you have done that - that the motivation no longer exists.  If that is the case, and a new motivation that is important to you doesn’t exists then it may be worth acknowledging this and not forcing yourself to continue.  The key is to be very honest with yourself as to why you are doing this and whether that reason still exists.

I use this in races too.  When things get tough (and they will) or things go wrong (and they do) then it is this ‘reason’ that keeps you pushing on and remaining focused.

Set some short-term goals - and link them.

I am not a fan of goals as they often define limitations.  Set a goal of going sub 11 hour in an ironman and you may achieve it and finish in 10:59.  Commit to every day going harder, faster or heavier at the gym and you may do 10:30.  But there is no denying short terms goals help support motivation. Using the SMART systems (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) set a goal of, for example, improving your Critical Power on the bike by at least 5% over the next 6 weeks.  THEN define and, more importantly, link your training sessions to this goal.  Weights, indoor trainer sets - even diet in terms of watts/kg can be linked.  Then understand that by NOT completing a session you are directly impacting that goal.  If you miss a session you compromise your chances of succeeding.  A more important way to think about it is that you will fail. For many fear of failure is a more powerful motivator than success

Phone a Friend.

Having a training buddy is important but triathletes are typically competitive people so recruiting a frienpetitor is more valuable.  Create a competition with a friend based around either a short-term goal like the Critical Power or a race.  Define a wager to create more pressure. Then ask yourself, if you wake up and don’t feel like doing something, whether your frienpetitor is out there doing it..

Many coaches will say that you should enter off-season events.  There are, for example, plenty of running races during the triathlon off-season.  Whilst these can be great ‘goals’ to use they don’t necessarily provide motivation especially if, for example, you know you can cover the distance already.  A focus on defining your motive as the root of motivation and then creating some pressure (called eustress) provides a far better impetus to be accountable and to get out of bed when it is cold and dark.

The No Fuel Triathlon

“In theory, everything works in Practice”

Yogi Berra

First of all I understand there will be a lot of nay-sayers or people trying to dismiss or disprove this and I’ll admit some of it is a work in progress. Probably cause it goes against everything that you have been led to believe in books, magazines, seminars or what you have tried for yourself.

Second of all I can’t fully explain the mechanism of action of all of these products or techniques. I reflect back on the study that a Swiss professor did in the 1930’s on how bumblebees fly and showed that, in fact, bumblebees can’t fly (this study is often incorrectly accredited to NASA). Just because the theory isn’t clear doesn’t mean you should discount the fact the outcome worked.

Thirdly I studied and am certified in Sports Nutrition and know what you ‘should’ do.

And therein lay the issue.

Sports nutrition, especially for endurance events such as triathlon, focuses on inputs and specifically max inputs. Things like the maximum amount of glucose or fructose that can be absorbed by specific receptors such as the Glut II (Fructose / Glucose / Galactose) and Glut IV (Glucose) receptor. They focused on managing gut issues based on maximum inputs and how to manage that by looking at things like combining minerals to enhance absorption, balancing osmolarity etc. etc. They focus on managing the bi-products or damage from burning sugar. In short trying to overcome some of the issues of trying to take in large amounts of sugar based fuel. There are also issues around the impact of heat on digestion of sugars and generalisations on what the brain and muscles need. 

Too many athletes have their day ruined by gut issues due to having to consume large amounts of gels etc.

As an ageing athlete who was working to regain health I was also concerned with the long terms dangers of high sugar diets and the impact of glycation end products both for my clients and myself. Everything from tooth decay to Type II diabetes - even cancer. This created a contradiction as to how to live sugar free but train the stomach to utilise gels and sports drinks when competing. This is a very common dichotomy for athletes balancing long term health with athletic performance.

So overall, as Albert Einstein said, you can’t solve a problem using the same thinking that created it.

As a coach I read a great amount of articles and studies and a number of articles had attracted my attention. One in particular talked about how different fibre types used different fuels. That is, that fast twitch fibres burnt exclusively glycogen whereas slow twitch fibres burnt fat. A separate, but related study, which formed the basis of my article here talked about how higher cadence used predominantly slow twitch fibres which mean by utilising a higher cadence I could spare the biggest limiter to aerobic performance - glycogen.

Glycogen is stored in our muscles and liver and typically provides around 1200 calories worth of energy. The issue is that once this store is exhausted then it takes time to reload - around 24 hours. In the past I have experienced ‘dead-legs’ on rides. Looking at these studies showed that these dead legs were caused by:

a) Relying on fast twitch fibres

b) Running out of fuel (glycogen) to power them.

So if I could do the ride using a higher cadence I could spare glycogen for the run.

The second article(s) were from people like Tim Noakes around the Central Governor theory and how fatigue comes from the brain before the muscles. Many studies such as this one had shown, for example, increased time to fatigue in cyclist using BCAA’s. I extrapolated that into a theory namely: -

The brain is focused on self-preservation. If it is breaking down its support system (the muscles) then a self-protection mechanism kicks in to slow the body down - fatigue. BUT - the body uses protein (amino acids) to rebuild so by providing these it would placate the brain. That is, the brain would think “Well I am breaking down my vessel but I’m getting the building blocks I need therefore it’s all good” Or thoughts to that effect...

So putting these things together meant that by focusing on slow twitch muscles I could manage glycogen and by placating the brain with amino acids I could mitigate fatigue.

So where does sugar come into this?  What about fueling the muscles with gels etc. that we all know is mandatory. Short answer is that gels and sugar doesn’t play a part in this strategy. Muscles can be fuelled by fat as part of the standard Kreb cycle by converting fat into Acetyl CoA and even as a lean athlete (more about that later) I still knew I had about 63,000 calories available as stored fat including about 3000 stored in inter muscular fat. Far more than the 1200 calories in glycogen. If people think that fat isn’t stored in the muscle go have a look at a sirloin steak at your local butcher..

This is not something I decided on race day (and I would strongly suggest that you DON’T just try this). This formed the basis of a two-month plan that was incorporated as part of a training, nutrition and supplement strategy. I should mention that prior to starting this I basically hadn’t trained for ten months due to an Achilles operation and excess cortisol from stress that had created related issue around blood sugar (and weight gain)

Training.

Training was focused on two things.

1. Recruiting more slow twitch fibres

2. Emptying the glycogen tank to make the body more efficient at using fat to reload it and to fuel performance.

Therefore my training incorporated heavy, supersetted weights. This meant that I was burning glycogen but also that the fast twitch fibres were fatigued. Then, and this part was NOT fun, I would go ride long steady hills on the bike. Without fast twitch fibres I forced my body to recruit more slow twitch (or fall over). This was definitely a case of check the ego at the door. Similar with the run my focus was on functional strength rather than volumes. As mentioned I had been recovering from an Achilles op

Prior to the event, my longest ride in training was 30km. My longest continual run was 4km. The race distance was a 90km ride and a 21km run.

Nutrition.

Nutrition was based primarily on hormones. Insulin is quite an anti social hormone. Hormones and enzymes like Hormone Sensitive Lipase, Lepton, Testosterone, HGH are all happier when insulin (or elevated blood sugar) isn’t present. So my diet wasn’t Paleo, ketogenic or anything like that - it was purely focused on keeping my blood sugar down and therefore insulin down so the hormones and enzymes I wanted would come out to play. Keeping my blood sugar down also helped with making my brain less reliant on glucose for mood. I also used a high amount of protein. Firstly to help build muscle/strength post weights and strength sessions but also to make the body more efficient at gluconeogenesis - producing the blood glucose it does need from protein.

I also incorporated intermittent fasting again to drain glycogen and enhance fat utilisation but also to balance hormones, enzymes and inflammation. Ironically the fasting day (Monday) was also my hardest training day including the hilly bike ride, a weights session and also a short power swim.

Supplements

I used three supplements.

Carnitine. Shown in some studies to increase fat utilisation. In my reading I saw articles dismissing it based on the fact there were ‘No long terms studies proving its effectiveness’. But there weren’t any disproving it and it makes sense that a relatively new (for endurance sports) product won’t have any long terms studies.

Branch Chain Amino Acids.

To test the theory/effect on fatigue and make sure they didn’t cause any gut issues. I used these during my weights sessions and also during bike ride. The difference in my strength during weights was immediate. I knew, metabolically and physically I wasn’t suddenly stronger (unlike creatine etc.) so knew this was an increase in ‘brain’ strength.

Apple Cider Vinegar

This has become a new super food for me. Assisting digestion, lowering blood sugar and providing additional aminos all made this a ‘no-brainer’ for me. Even when I had a cheat meal with my friends like a pizza (we all need to live..) I would accompany with a glass of diluted apple cider vinegar to blunt the blood sugar response.

I followed this plan for 9 weeks. Was I 100% compliant?  No. Like I said we have to live (not to mentioned Christmas and New Years Eve in that time..) but was pretty close. What I found interesting was that I dropped 10kg of body weight over that time BUT virtually all of that was body fat. I only lost about 1kg of power producing muscle. I normally don’t recommend trying to lose weight so close to an event as most people drop muscle and end up weaker but this high protein, high fat strategy teamed with the listed supplements seemed to work well !

Come race day my strategy was simple. I never recommend using speed on the bike as you never know what the conditions are going to be like. And the conditions couldn’t be worse !  30-50km winds on the bike. I’d made the mistake of only driving over (the race was 700km from where I live) with a disc wheel that messed with my head a bit but a short ride the previous day in the same wind settled those nerves. On my Garmin 510 I had two metrics displayed. My cadence and what gear I was in. I love the way the Garmin 510 can display gears from the Shimano DI2 system. My strategy was simple. When my cadence dropped below ninety (which I knew meant glycogen) I changed to an easier gear. When my cadence went above 100 (neural fatigue) I changed to a harder gear. In my water bottles (two) I had 6000mg of Branch Chain Aminos mixed in 750ml of water. Every ten minutes I had a big swig of the mixture. My average cadence ended up being 94 but with very little deviation.

The one thing I noticed after riding the 90km on the bike was how fresh my legs felt. I believe this is due to exclusively using slow twitch fibres and never muscling the bike plus the brain placating BCCA's. I had recently switched to shorter cranks using 165mm cranks which meant less load on my hip flexors and quads.

When I got off the bike I looked at the clock and worked out if I ran my ‘normal’ run I could go sub 5 hours but that wasn’t the point of the test (but it will be the point of my NEXT race). Again focusing on leg turn over rather than speed and the same water BCCA mixture. But in hindsight I realised that if I still had a ‘full’ glycogen tank then running a sub 100min half marathon was realistic.

After completing the race I noticed two things. My stomach felt perfect - no bloating or compelling need to hit the port loo from excess sugar. No muscle soreness or fatigue. I put this down to the fact that burning fat produces very different bi-products than sugar so I had less oxidisation and glycation of cells.

Forty-eight hours post race I felt full recovered with no muscle soreness.

As mentioned this was a case study of one and I am sure people will pick holes in my theories but the one thing I have taken away from this is how good I felt during the event (despite the worst conditions I have ever experienced) and how good I feel afterwards. The next step is to use this strategy to hit a top 10 age group finish.

I don’t expect this strategy will necessarily lead to faster times - although people tend to run better when they don’t have gut issues, but if it means less long term damage to the body then maybe it is worth exploring further ?

Maybe it is time we started to look at sports nutrition based on what our particular cells (muscle and brain) need rather than trying to solve the problem of what is the maximum amount of sugar and other damaging products we can put into it ?

Reticular Activation System and How You Look at Life.

Ever heard of the Reticular Activation System (RAS) ?

Before you start making cuckoo sounds the Reticular Activation System is basically the brains filter to stimulii.  For the geeks it is the Extrathalamic control module system consisting of the Midbrain, Memencephalic Nucleus, Thalmic Intralaminar Nucelues, Dorsal Hypothalamus and Tegmentum.

For the not so geeky...  Neurons provide stimulus from all of our sensors as well as the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.  They transmit literally billions of messages a second to the brain. The RAS filters these so that only the important message or, what we want to focus on, gets though.  The RAS changes and we can control what does and doesnt get through which is the point of this post.

Want a simple example of how we change the RAS ?  Have you ever decided to buy a new car - for example a Volkswagen ?  Have you noticed how you now notice so many more Volkswagens on the road now ?  Have people suddenly all gone out and bought Volkswagens ?  No - they were always there.  The difference is you have now changed what 'messages' pass through the RAS so suddenly you can 'see' all of those Volkswagens.

In fact I often call this the "Red Volkwagen' filter

Thinking about this for racing.

1.  Racing.  The RAS filters through ALL messages - what you see, what you hear and what you feel.  You need to think of pain as an email from your body to your brain - it is a message.  Like email do you choose to believe all emails you receive ?  If you do I have a relative in Nigeria that wants to wire you a lot of money.  Start classifying messages as to whether they are legitimate or spam.  If you step on a nail the message is real - if you feel like you cant keep going or are 'about to' cramp should you give the message all your bank details or send it to the junk folder.  A lot of times when racing and I felt like the going was tough I would ask myself specifically WHY it was tough and 99% of the time it was my brain telling the body not the other way round.  A common message I see is when people say that they couldnt hold their current pace for another 10km.  What this thought is doing is opening up the RAS to these types of messages - essentially removing the filter.  Creating this junk mail folder teaches the RAS to automatically filter out these messages - if they aren't being 'seen' they become like the volkswagen was before you chose to get one and are automatically filtered out.

2.  Life. If you choose to have a negative outlook then you are literally opening up the RAS to only see negative things.  Forest for the trees, glass half empty etc are all 'views' of the world which means how you have set up your RAS.  Like the volkswagen if you program your RAS to see positives and opportunities that is what you will see.  For those that studied electronics energy flows from a positive charge to a negative one - life is the same.  Positive people give off energy, negative people suck it in from others.

Treat physical feelings and thoughts as emails and decide what should get through your junk filter and what should get sent directly to trash.

Training with Your Friend

No ladies  - I am not talking about going for a bike ride with your BFF.  I’m talking about your other ‘friend’ - you know the one that visits you once a month.  You know….

The Painters and Decorators are in.

Aunt Flo is visiting

Clean Up at Aisle One.

Come on - it could be worse.  I could be making puns about PERIODization Training..

But from a training and racing perspective does it make any difference ?

Here’s why it does.

Your typical cycle is 28 days long and so your first day of menses would be considered day 1. You typically complete that by about day 5-7 and then the mucosal lining of your uterus begins to rebuild and proliferate in preparation for the potential of an egg implantation. From day 1 all the way up to ovulation, which is usually about day 14-15, is called your follicular phase and then you move in to what’s called the luteal phase

You’ve got your follicular phase; you’ve got your luteal phase. During these phases you have different levels of hormones based off the need or the lack thereof to repair the endometrial lining in the uterus. As a lot of women know, there are different symptoms that can accompany this cycles and some women don’t get any of those symptoms, some women get lots of these, some women get some pretty significant discomfort.  From a training and racing perspective however it’s just not changes in your mood or the way that you feel. There are also some pretty significant changes in exercise performance and also the way that you respond to fats and proteins and carbohydrates based off of where you’re at in your menstrual cycle. 

In simple terms we’ve got our low hormone phase, which occurs early in the cycle, and a high hormone phase, which occurs later on. In the High hormone phase women produce a lot of estrogen and estrogen will decrease how much you rely on your liver’s storage carbohydrate, your muscle storage carbohydrate and increase your use of fat. This means that when you’re producing a lot of estrogen, you have a bigger capacity for burning fat and for sparing muscle and liver carbohydrate or what’s called your storage glycogen. When you want to go up to a very high intensity during exercise such as for HIIT sets, swim sprints, TABATA etc., when you’re in that high hormone phase you might need a little bit more carbohydrate. During the low hormone phase, when you are producing less estrogen, you can ingest less carbohydrate because you’re going to tap into your liver and into your muscle carbohydrate a little bit more efficiently.

During the high hormone phase (day 14 - 28) you may need more carbohydrate in order to support HARD interval sets.

It is also why you might feel flatter doing exactly the same set later in the cycle (high hormone) than earlier (low hormone) as you are less efficient at tapping into the 'fast' energy source - glycogen.

The other really interesting thing that happens is that during that high estrogen phase you’re using more fatty acids. This means you return to your pre-exercise metabolic rate much more quickly with the impact on training being that your post exercise feeding window when insulin sensitive is high is much shorter.  You should prioritise your post workout meal to get it in right after you finish your workout when you’re in that latter phase of your cycle if you want to optimize restoration of things like your storage glycogen or restoration of amino acids. Whereas men might be able to wait a good 2 or 3 hours because their metabolic rate is still elevated and they’re still able to restore a lot of those metabolites, Women, especially during their latter phase when in their high hormone phase, have a much smaller window and should aim to refuel as soon as possible after the session.

Whilst I’ve spoken about Estrogen and its impact on glycogen usage there are actually other hormones that cycle through the time frame. During the high hormone phase you not only have high amounts of estrogen but you have a high amount of progesterone as well. Progesterone increases how much protein is used during exercise which means if you’re going to use amino acids you'll most sensitive to them during the High Hormone phase.

What does this mean? 

During days 1-14 (Low Hormone Phase) you might do better with higher intensity or harder workouts as you are better able to tap into storage glycogen, less reliant upon amino acids and less efficient at burning fat as a fuel. Once you shift into days 14-28 you might do better during longer workouts where you’re actually got more estrogen to be able to tap into fat more efficiently, you’ve got more progesterone and you’re able to utilize amino acids more efficiently and that might be a better time to do your longer slower workouts. 

Hydration is also important here.  When you have elevated level of progesterone you’re baseline body temperature is increased significantly and when your baseline body temperature goes up not only you’re going to sweat more but you’re also going to need more fluid typically to maintain body temperature. Now when you get high estrogen AND high progesterone you get a reduction in your plasma volume and that’s why you get a lot of swelling a lot of times during the latter phases of your cycle. A lot of the volume from blood plasma goes between cells instead and causes bloating that you typically experience. Because of this blood volume drop, you might need a little bit more water and a little bit more electrolytes when you are in that phase of elevated progesterone and elevated oestrogen (High Hormone phase)

Due to this reduction in blood volume during the High Hormone phase you might find that you tolerate hot exercise a little bit less and when you go for a run or a ride you need a little bit of extra fuel, you might do better with a little bit more electrolyte intake like salting a little bit more of your food during that part of your cycle. 

Finally, when you’re producing more progesterone and more estrogen, you are also going to get increased production of specific hormone called relaxin and relaxin is something that pregnant women are gonna produce in high amounts but also that you’re gonna produce towards the latter phase of your cycle in higher amounts and this is responsible for softening and relaxation of ligaments especially the pubic symphysis (hips). When you have a high amount of relaxin circulating in your bloodstream, it can do things like weaken your spine a little bit so you’re unable to withstand impact and twisting forces quite as much. You might get increase propensity for knee injuries or hip injuries or ankle injuries so once again during the high hormone phase you MAY want to drop the weight slightly or, more importantly, be super careful with technique knowing that your body is a bit ‘looser’ and less able to protect itself.

In summary

Days 1-14.  Better suited to high intensity exercises, weights

Days 14-28.  Better suited to longer sessions but be conscious of lower blood volume (heat sensitivity) and shorter refueling window.