Become a Better Athlete During Post Season, I

What can you do during the post season? First, collect your thoughts and reflect upon your training year and the races you have done. Here are some critical components to take into consideration:

Diet Periodization

Training periodization is designed to break your training down into small portions to better specify and customize your goals. This is a common term for many athletes. As training schedules are being built in their varying macro cycles throughout the year, the periodization of our nutrition is oftentimes being disregarded. This next several paragraphs will discuss diet periodization and the impact of training on our body’s substrate utilization and the change from one training block or event to the next.

The Busy Athlete - An Oxymoron?

The busy athlete, wait a moment…we are all busy and the word “busy” is more of an oxymoron nowadays. We challenge you to find someone that claims they’re “not busy” and doubt that you will be able to come across such an individual.  Add some training sessions into your schedule like the familiar “swim/bike/run” workouts and many athletes are juggling a pretty hectic schedule. In addition, most would like to improve their performance without compromising health, family, friends and work. How do you do it without feeling guilty when you missed a workout, cut it short for other commitments, or did not read the fine print in the description because you were in a hurry? How do you best direct these conversations in your head?

Pacing

Pacing is one critical part in a triathlon. This blog will focus on pacing during the bike section. The approach varies based on the race distance, terrain, time of the year, weather/race conditions, experience level, and mental toughness/readiness/approach. As mentioned in the first sentence, we are referring to a triathlon, indicating that this is not a standalone event. When pacing the bike, you must keep the entire race in mind and not the bike by itself.

Lavaman 2017

The Lavaman Olympic Distance Triathlon 2017 in the books. Racing together with my husband is one of my favorite circumstances in our endurance coaching business and seeing him placing 5th and me 2nd in our respective Age-Groups was a nice bonus. A few hours after the race I said to my husband: Aligning mental toughness and indoor training goes a long way in creating fitness and speed. Let me explain why those two considerations went through my mind.

Three Common And Reoccurring Challenges Athletes Face

Most athletes dedicate valuable time, energy, and money on their goal of crossing the finish line faster than the previous time. You hope that the odds are stacked in your favor, especially with a light bike, aerodynamic helmet, tight kit, power meter and other techno-gadgets, a training and nutrition/hydration plan.  You think with this level of attention to detail you got it down, but…Yes, there is a but, because without proper recovery, sleep and healthy daily eating habits your “devotion” is for not & even the best laid plans for a great race can simply disappear.

Boosting Your Immune System

During the months when days are shorter and temperatures are cooler athletes oftentimes complete their swims indoors, participate in indoor cycling sessions, and utilize treadmills… indoors. The combination of reduced sunlight exposure and increased germ contacts can be a recipe for disaster for a potentially weakened immune system. Kinney Multisport had several athletes the past several months that repeatedly got sick and challenges to abandon those symptoms. We thought we provide you with a short post and simple recommendations on possible improvements to overcome the germ warriors.

The Couple That Races Together.

“Trish crushes me on the swim!”

     There’s nothing like a little marital rivalry to fuel performance improvements and Northern California couple, Trish and Al Hart, have been enjoying some friendly competition since they began participating in triathlon 10 years ago with Team-In-Training (TNT)

Staying Fit While Traveling

Kinney Multisport has many athletes that travel frequently for work which can have an impact on training and recovery ability due to a physical, emotional and hormonal effects that throws you off guard. Regular exercise habits get interrupted and you might tend to overindulge on business dinners, overall poor food choices and receptions resulting in extra pounds coming back from the trip.

What Makes For A Successful Season?

Goals are essential for any athlete and help to direct energy and focus, increase motivation, lift confidence, and ultimately improve performance. But what is the best approach to successfully accomplish these goals throughout a single season and beyond? Is there a secret to it?

Post Season Progression

   As an endurance coach I see the following scenario take place about this time of year. From late October through the end of November an athlete’s race season comes to a close and they descend into a few month period of rest, recovery, relaxation, eating, sleeping and weekend’s full of couch surfing. They say to themselves “THIS is the Off-Season!”

Nutrition Science and Practice

Effective endurance performance is not just determined by how fast you can go; it is equally important how successful you are at delaying fatigue. Getting your hydration and nutrition right is a key component in endurance sports. As discussed in the August blog even minimal dehydration can hinder an athlete’s performance caused by reduced blood volume and reduced amount of oxygenated blood pumped to working muscles. Common difficulties endurance athletes face is to consume adequate calories including key nutrients such as iron, protein, calcium. Timing of food intake around the exercise is another shared challenge

Power to weight ratio - Faster without the fluff…

Not only an aircraft needs a good power to weight ratio to fly. Pretty much any Tour de France winner, Ironman champion, you name it, agonized days, weeks, months over their personal ratio.

Hydration

Our thirst gives us important cues on hydration by just listening to our body.  Why do we sweat? Sweat keeps us cool and blood vessels open up so that the heat we produce can radiate off. Our bodies consist of 60-75% water (more muscles = more water) accompanied with minerals, like sodium, potassium, and chloride. As we sweat (made up of 90% of electrolytes) and water from the sweat evaporates, it takes heat with it and what is left behind is the salt that came out of the skin (the white marks on your jersey). Even though all electrolytes are important to our body’s function and performance, sodium is the most important one.  

Indoor Cycling: Maximizing Your Training Time

Even with the days getting longer and the weather turning warm and dry there are still major benefits to training indoors. From recreational and age group athletes to the elite levels of cycling and triathlon, the indoor cycling workout is a key component to an effective training program. In the winter months, some elite athletes complete 100% of their cycling workouts indoors. Even in the height of summer these same athletes harness the power of training indoors by doing a majority of their intense interval sessions on the stationary bike. I’ll share with you several reasons why attending a quality spin class, or dusting off the stationary trainer at home, can be beneficial to your fitness gains this year, and beyond.

How To Push Yourself During Hard Efforts

Your heart pumps, your legs are on fire, and your sweat drops down your face. While you have hydration, nutrition, fitness, training under control there is one more component…your mindset. Whether you are swimming in choppy water, climbing a steep hill, closing a gap on the bike, or running towards the finish line, there will be times you need to go harder, and dig deeper, than you ever thought possible – How do you it? By controlling your expectations, focus, thoughts, motivation and body.

Nutrition and How It Applies to Fitness vs. Weight Loss

Over the past 15 years I have been constantly asked about how to maximize weight loss while still managing to train for a goal endurance event. This short post serves to clear up some of the misconceptions with losing unwanted weight while still trying to improve fitness. In addition, can we discount the potentially devastating affects that diets have on our long-term health? The weight you gained did not come on overnight. Why would you think it would come off overnight without negative ramifications?

The Power of Pacing: It’s not just for sport.

In the Wild Kingdom it is the fast, muscular predator that mostly draws attention. Pace though is more difficult to appreciate. For some animals, pacing is innate. For humans, however, this is not the case. We have to concentrate and develop a sense for the power of pacing, usually longer than most people can focus on a single task.