Training Articles
January 7th, 2009 Nutrition before/During/After training I will assume that the reader is like most athletes, always wondering if they ate enough, not too much, the right or wrong food before, during and after workouts. What an athlete eats, and more importantly when you eat it can have a significant effect on recovery and ability to perform multiple back to back hard workouts. It is often said that the athlete who can train the hardest and recover the best will excel.This time of year most of my athletes are doing high tempo and threshold work, often times on the rollers or trainer. These workouts are short, but demanding and often elicit 1000KJ or more burned per hour. The other important factor here is that these workouts burn up most if not all of the available muscle glycogen, even for workouts less than 90 minutes. This creates an interesting nutritional challenge and one that is different from a long, but less intense ride.
Let's say you do your interval workout first thing in the morning, like many working folks choose to do for a variety of reasons. I typically have a strong cup of coffee and get ready to ride so I'm on the bike w/in 30 min of waking. Now the decision to eat before the ride depends on a few things - did I wake up hungry? Really hungry? If so I'll have an energy bar, maybe a small scoop of almond butter - something like that. Whatever it is, try to keep it under 400kcals so you don't feel "full" when trying to do your ride. If I'm not hungry - then I won't take any food before the ride.
So now you are on your bike - getting warmed up, getting ready to crank out some good intervals. I highly recommend having energy drink on board, I typically use cytomax with a strength of about 150Kcals per big water bottle. Use whatever you like, but don't make it too strong. As an example gatorade out of the bottle is about twice as strong as you'd want it. You want blood in your legs, not diverted to digestion. Make sure you drink enough, something on the order of 1-2 big bottles per hour if you are really sweating a lot.
Usually just having the energy drink will provide plenty of hydration and calories for the workout, especially if it's in the 60 to 90 min range. If a longer workout is in order such as a 3x20:00 set or a total workout time longer than 90 minutes, energy gel becomes important. I would recommend taking 1-2 gels during the workout to maintain blood glucose levels, especially as the workout wears on. It can be really amazing how just a single gel can really improve how you feel and affect your ability to complete a workout.
Lastly - recovery. This is the most important aspect of nutrition for an athlete. When performing back to back hard training days one of the biggest limiters to performance becomes muscle glycogen resynthesis. The athlete's body is primed to do this optimally in the 30 minutes post-workout. What typically happens after a workout usually goes like this - cooldown period, maybe 15 minutes. The athlete may stretch, sit on the floor with a dazed look for a bit, do some core work, change clothes, etc etc. You get the picture - it can quickly be more than 30 minutes since the athlete was working hard on the bike. For this reason I highly recommend taking a gel or bar DURING the cooldown period on the bike. That way you have a jumpstart on recovery and don't have to rush into the kitchen dripping sweat to get the blender going. After stretching, changing and maybe even a quick shower it's time for a recovery shake or even some real food - high in carbohydrates with a little protein (avoid fats for now) in a 4:1 ratio. I love sweet potatoes post workout. Keep in mind there is nothing magical about recovery shakes and I actually prefer real food. Recovery shakes are great when traveling or when access to proper nutrition is limited. Also keep in mind this is not the time to woof down 1000s of calories - keep the meal reasonable and let hunger be your guide for the rest of the day.
If you follow this nutritional strategy recovery will be optimized and the athlete can perform higher overall workloads than if nutrition is not optimized.
← Back to article index
