In the battle to secure marginal gains, don't overlook the importance of nutrition as a means to recovering more quickly and getting stronger.
Cyclists who work are often short on time to recover from training. But eating the right foods can decrease the negative stresses on our bodies and significantly aid recovery, writes Anthony Walsh of www.a1coaching.net
Often the major influence on performance is not talent, but available training hours. It is not outside the realm of possibility for a motivated full-time worker to log twenty hours per week training time.
The real problem is that quality of the recovery differs vastly from full-time athlete to full-time worker.
Long training hours allow for the possibility of increased fitness levels. But that improvement is only realised when accompanied with proper recovery.
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Although recovery is important for all athletes, full time workers need to place an increased emphasis on it.
There are a number of recovery strategies - stretching, foam rolling, and massage - that can yield marginal recovery benefits. But an important area of any rider’s focus should be nutrition.
Cortisol is a hormone produced by the body in response to stress. Our brain is unable to distinguish between different forms of stress.
Physical stress (training), mental stress (work) and dietary stress (nutrition) combine to form our weekly stress allowance.
If we exceed this allowance our bodies react to slow us down through sickness and injury. The goal for any athlete is to effectively manage this weekly stress volume.
Nutritional stress compromises our recovery by affecting sleep quality. For optimum recovery, a deep sleep known as the ‘delta phase’ must be achieved. When our cortisol level is elevated, delta is more difficult to accomplish.
The emergence of coffee shops and fast food outlets and subsequent dependence on sugar and caffeine as stimulants are all directly related to poor sleep quality.
We should prioritise sustainable energy over stimulation.
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Some stresses are necessary - positive stressors. We need physical stress in order to progress our fitness levels and we need to work (mental stress) to provide for our families.
However, other stressors can be labeled as ‘negative’. They bring us closer to our weekly stress allowance without any appreciable benefit - nutritional stress is one of these.
It is estimated that 40 per cent of our total stress comes in the form of nutritional stress.
Foods that stress our body can be labeled as ‘low net gain foods’. These are foods which take huge digestive energy to breakdown and offer little nutritional benefit.
High net gain foods include: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes and whole grains.
Low net gain foods include: milk, cheese, cakes, biscuits, bread, processed foods and synthetic supplements/vitamins.
Although a calorie is a unit of energy, all calories are not created equal. The classic example is the sluggish feeling one may experience after a heavy meal. Despite ingesting 2,000 calories we are left with no energy.
The goal is to transition from low to high-net gain foods. These take less energy to digest/assimilate and return more nutrition. Making the switch from one to the other will also ‘turn off’ the hunger signal to the brain. The brain craves nutrition - vitamins and minerals – rather than calories.
Refined, processed foods are high in calories but nutritionally void. This is the reason why after we eat at McDonalds we are hungry only a couple of hours later despite ingesting our daily caloric intake. Weight gain is common when eating low-net gain foods.
Big businesses such as Google are realising the benefits of healthy eating. The expense for Google of providing high quality, nutrient dense food to their workforce is more than offset by the increase they are seeing in productivity levels in workers.
It’s important to be mindful of what we are putting into our bodies. A glance at the label of any commercial recovery drink or sports bar reveals a list you will hardly be able to pronounce. These are not real foods.
It’s possible to get all the benefits associated with these products for a fraction of the cost and without ingesting an array of unknown substances into our bodies.
Look to utilise home-made fruit smoothies with nuts and hemp as a recovery drink. And substitute sports bars with dates, bananas or similar high glycemic index fruits while on the bike.
We should be cautious not to get lost pursuing ‘marginal gains’ and ignore the huge performance benefits attainable through nutrition. By focusing on including more high-net gain foods in our diet, we will lower our weekly nutritional stress, thus giving us greater scope to train harder and recover faster.
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