7 Nutrition Fails You Don't Know You're Making!

nutrition is often referred to as the fourth discipline within Triathlon particularly long distance Triathlon I mean you can't do a triathlon without this stuff but if you get it wrong well you could find yourself unable to complete your Triathlon at all so today with the help of our friends over Precision Fuel and hydration we're going to be running through some of the common nutrition fails and how to prevent them [Music] okay mistake number one too much carb yeah it happens so these days we hear lots of stories about Elite triathletes taking in well over 100 grams of carbohydrate an hour when they're racing in Long Distance events it's kind of portrayed that this is routine and while we definitely know that some Elite athletes are doing that and racing very fast not necessarily just because of it but with that in their system it started this sort of trend towards people thinking more is better when it comes to carbohydrates we've worked with some athletes in the last year or two just in matsular Pro Iron Man being one of them who have aimed for some really really high carbohydrate amounts he took over 170 grams of carbohydrate on the bike at Iron Man's and George as World Championships still around he is he lived to tell the tale but he didn't perform at his best and Justin has subsequently found that actually diving it back down to to more around sort of 90 to 100 grams an hour has worked really well for him in other races GI distress is a big issue if you consume that amount of carbohydrate obviously you know it's you're putting a lot into your system it wasn't that long ago that Sports Science was sort of telling us that you could only absorb about 60 grams an hour so really kind of going to those high levels you've got to ask yourself the question a am I going fast enough to current that level of energy intake and B have I trained myself to take it in and deal with it and have I practiced with that because for the average amateur triathlete even in a long distance race taking in between 60 90 grams of carbohydrate an hour whilst those numbers no longer sound super impressive actually when we analyze the data from races that's compatible with a really high level of performance for most people okay mistake number two conversely not enough carb yeah absolutely and typically is a problem we see quite a lot with with amateur athletes that perhaps you know haven't got the resource to access Sports Nutrition so they're maybe having like one gel on their three hour long ride and wondering why they're bonking so to speak towards the end where they run out of energy and start to feel really really low so um you know it's the carbohydrates that you take in during exercise are really important because when you're operating a really high intensity and for long periods of time that's the predominant fuel source that your body uses so you only have a finite store within your body pre-exercise that you can draw upon and once those sources start to run out after sort of 90 minutes two hours then it's important to be topping up on the go if you imagine you know you're you're setting out to to try and ride for three hours and you've only got enough fuel for two hours then you're gonna have to stop and fill up at some point what we're aiming to do with with during exercise and triathlons is to spread out that fuel all intakes that you never get to a point where you fall off a cliff so to speak and now mistake number three too much fluid yeah over drinking is definitely a problem with athletes a big reason for this is that back in the day I studied Sports Science in the late 90s early 2000s we were told all the time dehydration is a leading cause of underperformance in Endurance Sports and that could be true to the extent that we sweat a lot especially triathlons often go on in hot environments and sweat rates are really high so dehydration is a risk but the problem with the advice that was pushed out in the early days was it was like drink as much as is tolerable drink as much as you can there was no ceiling put on or no inference that more was not better so what we saw was a lot of athletes you know drinking drinking drinking ahead of thirst because we're also told thirst is not a reliable indicator of how how dehydrated you are and all of that combined that we started to see cases of over drinking and now when people over drink they drink more than they're sweating out or are too high proportion of what they're sweating out and they don't take enough electrolytes you can get a condition called hyponatremia which is very dangerous hyponatremia is where you dilute the sodium levels in the blood it causes a Cascade of physiological consequences and has even killed some triathletes there's a famous case in Frankfurt in about 2016 which is I think one of the last recorded instances where someone's died from drinking too much water so you know I was guilty of it as an athlete myself particularly in the build up to hot races yeah we all get told didn't we you've got to have a bottle with you you've got to be topping up you've got to be drinking loads of fluid in the days before but actually you're not a camel you can't store loads and loads of water and now mistake number four not enough fluid yeah now uh typically dehydration is quite a common cause of of poor performance in endurance events and but sort of understanding what dehydration means for different people can be potentially quite problematic and so understanding quite how much fluid you need to take on during an event can be important and a lot of people sort of can't find that balance they're undertaking some some sweat loss testing where you're understanding how much you're you're sweating out during exercise in different conditions can help you prepare to drink enough during exercise now commonly dehydration has been sort of thrown around in the literature that it's that it's bad for you everybody can tolerate a certain degree of dehydration without it affecting performance and in a recent Iron Man finisher study saw that between the top finishes two and six percent body weight losses was was normal and and wasn't affecting their performance of the the top Odin finishes so we know that there is a range of what you can tolerate and what works for you um and so replacing 100 of your sweat losses isn't necessary but also ensuring that you are replacing enough so it doesn't start negatively impacting your performance is going to be super important five wrong breakfast or dinner prior to a race yeah we've all done it I roast in Laguna Phuket in I think it was 2004 the triathlon out there fantastic event and I was wanted to make the most of most of my trip and experience the local culture so I had a really hot curry on the beach the Night Before the Race and didn't wake up feeling so good in the morning so you know trying new things the Night Before the Race when it comes to breakfast and and dinner sorry dinners and breakfast not a great idea yeah before a French Grand Prix uh the team took us out to a crepe restaurant crep starter Maine and dessert which I thought was fantastic at the time uh didn't feel great the next day very sluggish yeah definitely there's you've got to go with you know things that are tried and tested High carbohydrate low fiber we sometimes see people like putting in a bit too much you know fibrous food two high fat foods so actually kind of the type of things you want to be eating the night before in the morning of a race go against the General Health advice rather than going for like Granary whole grain bread with lots of fiber in it you're going to want to go for simple plain white bread you want to have things that are going to be easily digestible whilst the broccoli salad is going to be a low lovely thing to eat a lot of the time it's probably not what you need the night before a race you want simple white rice and pasta and those sort of things how about Dairy dairy's a bit individual I think most people tolerate Dairy pretty well you probably know if you don't tolerate lactose which is the sugar in Dairy that causes some people issues but high levels of dairy doesn't contain a lot of carbohydrate in general it's quite high fat it's probably something to keep on the you know to minimize rather than I would make my porridge on Race morning with more water than with milk for instance Dedication that is and now for mistake number six trying something new on race day absolutely and we've all walked around the Expo and thought oh that looks nice I might give that a go or whatever and it can be really really tempting or you see friends that are doing it or you know you you try someone else's pre-race nutrition you think oh that tastes nice I'll give it a go and also to add to that a lot of races will provide nutrition on course that you maybe haven't used before absolutely and that's why you know getting uh getting a hold of the race schedule and finding out what's going to be on course if that's going to be your primary you know for your Source or something that you're even considering it can be part of a plan that can be flexible but just understanding exactly what is involved in you know each gel that's on course each electrolyte that's on course Etc can be really important to you know helping your gut make sure that it's prepared for anything you're about to give it and so yeah the the pre-raised breakfast of you know seeing something on the menu and thinking well I fancy that but I've never had it before a race today we'd certainly recommend steering away from that and mistake number seven too much caffeine yeah we all know that caffeine is potentially quite performance enhancing there's a bit of individual variance on how people respond to it but if you're someone who drinks you know caffeinated drinks on a daily basis and get on well with them there's a very good chance that this stimulating effect of caffeine and this fatigue suppressing effects of it are useful when you're doing an endurance event as with most things if you tell an athlete that taking a bit of something will let them go faster they're going to take five times that amount and the problem with caffeine is that you know there's a very strong dose response and there's also a ceiling to how much of a positive response you can get the guidelines suggest that roughly three to six milligrams per kilogram of body weight is kind of like the performance dose we've seen athletes kind of blow through that a little bit going up to nine or ten milligrams in longer events because caffeine does degrade in the body and you're kind of keeping it topped up but where you see our food so go crazy with caffeine it can increase anxiety and Jitters Before the Race it's definitely it's a stimulant for your gastrointestinal system as well so it can lead you to having diarrhea and that sort of thing which is obviously not what you want during the middle of a triathlon and it can definitely have you know kind of problems associated with even things like heart palpitations and make you feel quite anxious if you if you overdo it so so using caffeine sensibly in a dose that that is compatible with performance and one that you've tried and tested is really important okay so now we've run through some of these common problems and issues that people might face now understandably there's going to be a bit of crossover in the solutions to these so I'd like to run through that we'll start with too much carbs but I imagine we're gonna run on to some of the others yeah for sure I think you're right there's there is a lot of commonality in the solutions to this because having for instance if we take too much carb or too little carb what that comes down to fundamentally is like not having a plan for how much carbohydrate to take in and it's surprisingly common I know embarrassingly looking back at my career as an athlete I had only the very Vegas idea going into an Iron Man of what I was really aiming for in terms of energy per hour that would change from race to race because I'd talk to someone and they they tell me they're not eating very much and I dialed down what I was doing and I'd talk to someone else and they're reading loads and I'd be trying to increase it it was also down to what was available on course and that sort of thing what what we've found with the the more successful athletes that we've worked with in recent years is they go into every single race with a really kind of especially in the carbohydrates are actually a pretty rigid idea of what they're going to try and hit now it doesn't mean it remains completely rigid throughout the race but now if they're aiming for 90 grams an hour we'd expect them to be within you know plus minus 10 or 15 grams of that and they're keeping a mental tally of that as the race is going on they know what's in their bottles they know what's in the things they're picking up and it's all about that sort of pre-planning knowing what zone you need to hit we know it's not too little we know it's not too much we've tested it in training and got comfortable with it but then critically we're also able to adjust it a bit on the day well now um sort of answered both the too much card too little um how about the fluids touched on it but let's dive into that a little bit more fluids fluid is more fluid a little bit that's because sweat rates sodium loss vary between individuals and even vary for you as an individual in different climates you know you're going to lose way more in Kona than you would in the Norseman for example so planning fluid consumption needs a little bit more trial and error you know some people essentially though are the rule of thumb if you're a big sweater if you lose a lot of sweat you're going to need to replace a lot more fluid and a lot more sodium than someone who sweats a little bit there's the range for that is pretty huge when we look at our case studies in Iron Man for example we see athletes in Kona some will drink as little as half a liter an hour which in those conditions is really really light amount of fluid and only a few hundred milligrams of sodium others will take you know well in excess of a liter an hour maybe heading towards one and a half liters now which is an incredible amount of fluid to take in and so it's it's a case of with with sweat and hydration it's like understanding your body's needs doing some lab testing and awesome field testing in the right environment to get a sense for what that level of replacement would be then very much as it is with carbohydrate as you're on the bike you're keeping like a mental inventory how many bottles have I gone through how many bottles have I picked up how much sodium have I taken how much fluid have I taken and if you've got in your head what those numbers and ratios should be it becomes a lot more straightforward to stay in the right Zone the thing with fluid consumption is I would say even more than carbohydrate consumption you do need to really be prepared to adjust it on the Fly because your sweat rate can vary quite a lot and what you thought was going to work you know in Kona we saw it in this year with some of the elite athletes take picking up way more bottles of water on the bike than they suspected they would part of that was just with some of them was lack of experience of those conditions because Kona is next level when it comes to sweat loss so rather than picking up you know a bottle of water at every other age station they were picking one up at every aid station and then taking a lot more in but that's a good thing because they're listening to their bodies and they're responding to thirst at the same time if you're feeling bloated starting to pee or just feeling like you've got fluids slashing around in your stomach you don't just plow on taking the exact level of fluid that you plan to regardless because your body's telling you this is too much another thing that's worth mentioning anytime you talk about nutrition fails in races is pacing because the two go hand in hand we all know that you know even pacing or accurate pacing is a key a key that underpins a good performance and if you go out too hard you present yourself with nutritional and hydration challenges in two Dimensions one is you're probably going to sweat more and you're going to burn energy faster than you expected to so you whatever plan you have may not account for that and secondly you're going to do things like divert less blood flow to the gut you're you're also going to be less inclined to eat and drink because you're putting yourself under stress and duress so you can end up in this like really nasty vicious cycle where you go too hard you sweat more you burn more energy you drink less you eat less and you fall off the cliff even worse and we've seen that so many times where people have put their they've put their race failure down to a nutritional issue and it kind of is but actually the roots of it the more in pacing so whenever you're talking about getting your nutrition right you've got to think that's on the basis of executing a good pacing plan as well sounds like not only do you need to be attracted you need to be a mathematician as well yeah yeah engineers make the best triathletes that's why Leon's doing so well it could well be yeah okay and then breakfast or dinner prior to the race and what can we do to solve some of the issues there it's all about planning you know light you plan your race nutrition you're going to plan what you're going to have you know for me it would be pretty much all of the day before and to the morning of the race can I just jump in there though because when you're traveling abroad you don't always have the opportunity to plan perfectly no you don't um and that's I learned that the hard way when I traveled to Poland for race in 1998 and the food there was kind of these questionable meat stews and things that I know I had no idea and I made the mistake there I've not taken any food with me I didn't even take you know I was I was big on malt life for fueling my training back in the day and I didn't even take my trusty supply of malt life and I learned the hard way there that you've got to take stuff with you and you you may not everyone wants to go to the level that some pro athletes do but I know a lot of pro athletes sort of travel with rice and rice cookers and that sort of stuff so they can make their own food the day before I think when you're traveling to a a race venue that's in a kind of modern westernized type place you can probably make a decent prediction on what type of foods are going to be available in the week before I would be scoping out the restaurants if you're eating out that where you want to eat making reservations even better than that going to the supermarkets if you're self-catering and stocking up and it's just part of that that process of being organized you know we've all heard stories about people who've in in in sport you know Usain Bolt eating his chicken nuggets you know from McDonald's the night before the race or whatever but I think in reality it's you you increase the odds of success by controlling the controllables with your pre-race meals okay and then finally too much caffeine again this is just this is mainly an education Point like three to six milligrams per kilo workout work that out from your body weight you know that's a sensible dose for most people to aim for remember that with caffeine as well taking it you want to take it before a long distance race probably immediately before and during the race and not save it right to the end because caffeine takes an hour or so to Peak in your bloodstream and then like all these other points try it out in training try it out in minor races so that you actually you know build up a database of experience of how it works for you we've spoken about this more before but do you need a caffeine gel prior to an Iron Man race I would say in the in the athletes that we're working with it's probably about 50 50. okay some do some it's part of their ritual others and I would put myself in this Camp to an extent if you if you do get quite hyped before a race anyway it might be something that you use once the race gets underway I'd normally still have a coffee or something with my breakfast before because that's part of my usual daily routine but the idea for me of throwing in a caffeine gel 15 minutes when before when my heart rate's already going to be Sky High and that sort of thing that that's not so appealing you know Leon as an example Leon Chevalier always has a caffeine job 10 minutes out from the start it just works for him sort of kicks in Midway through the swim then yeah exactly and then how would you space them out would you sort of alternate if you are someone that performs well on caffeine would you sort of alternate caffeine non-caffeine gels say if you're taking it on through jail form yeah it takes it depends a lot on the doses so different gels will have you know you get gels with as little as 20 or 25 milligrams of caffeine which is really low amount and you get some which was Punchy as a hundred so it depends on the dose that you're aiming for and the and therefore it might be like one in every three or one in every five or something like that but yeah I think different people have different opinions on the efficacy of timing some I've heard some nutritionists talk about hitting a 200 milligram dose a couple of times through the race to give you kind of a big influx now for me I'm I'm less worried about you know how how you stagger it out as long as it's spread out and that you don't just sort of rely on it with 10K to go in the marathon because at that point you're going to be fueling the after party rather than the race itself I used to do that foreign thank you ever so much to Andy and Chris over at Precision Fuel and hydration they really are a Fountain of Knowledge in fact I do suggest heading on over to their website because there is a whole resource of information there talking of which also do try out their nutrition plan on their website if you're heading into a race on which note I mean one of the big takeaways from today is have a plan and stick to it I know that I've certainly been guilty of well falling away from that plan at times when I've gone into a race well I hope you enjoyed today's video if you relate to any of those nutrition fails then get involved in the comment section down below and if you enjoyed today's video give it a thumbs up give it a like and don't forget to subscribe

Channel: Global Triathlon Network

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Keywords: nutrition, fuelling, plans, pro, carbs, carbohydrate, food, race, coffee, caffeine, gels, energy, diet, nutrition mistakes, nutrition strategy, eating, drinking, fuel, race nutrition, water, before a race, what not to eat, foods to avoid, nutrition tips, GTN, Global Triathlon Network, triathlon, Triathlon (Sport), tri, ironman, Sports, swimbikerun, triathlon training, triathlon skills, iron man, tri bike, triathlete, swimming, cycling, running, training, skills, coaching, ӱ, 4884, Վ, Ꮽ, Ᏹ, ꖧ, ꔨ, ᠫ, К, ೊ, ཙ, 𑃔, की, ፕ15, bonk

Id: 1EpxhwHOxLo

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2022