Cyclists need to look at their nutrition and food quantity rather than become preoccupied with supplements.
Cyclists looking to improve should focus more on eating the right foods and varying their quantities from day to day rather than searching for the answers in the mostly false promises of supplements, writes former international rider Beth McCluskey, now a nutritionist and coach with www.peakendurancecoaching.com
Nutrition and politics have a lot in common – most people have an opinion and the debate usually involves many armchair pundits armed with just a little bit of information.
Nutrition is a very compelling subject and most people, especially cyclists, have some level of interest in food science. Nutrition related searches are a top topic in Google and books on the subject are among Amazon’s best sellers.
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However, it’s important to understand the difference between opinion and fact. Misinformation and misinterpretation are positively viral. Erroneous assumptions are made with depressing regularity despite little or no basis in reliable science.
Some creative pseudoscience – or false science - intertwined with cutting edge ‘actual’ science inevitably leads to confusion for coaches and athletes seeking a competitive advantage.
It’s a seductive alchemy for athletes who are already training as hard and as cleverly as they believe they can.
The entire sports supplement industry is based on the idea that ‘extra’ can be gained by using a particular supplement or product, which is often ‘scientifically formulated’ or ‘evidence based’, ‘clinically proven’ or ‘precisely engineered’ to suit the unique needs of the athlete.
That is not to say that supplements are a bad thing; there are some very useful and scientifically proven products that offer definite benefits. But not all supplements are created equal.
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Terms are often cobbled together to try to create the pretence of scientific merit or to misrepresent valid scientific concepts.
Some wonderfully creative and depressingly confusing advertising material on the subject I’ve come across lately includes the following gems: ‘ensures optimal muscular energy charge’, ‘increases myocellular regeneration and functioning’, ‘enhances metabolic recovery rate’, ‘precisely engineered tri-micellular protein’, ‘unique peptide delivery system’ and ‘trillions of stable perfectly balanced redox signalling molecules’ [sic].
These superbly crafted phrases all sound plausible and very exciting to the athlete seeking that extra edge.
But here’s the rub.
In my experience of working with Irish athletes over the last seven years, most of them will make considerable gains simply by paying more attention to their daily nutrition.
It’s possible to manipulate complex nutritional strategies precisely to closely maximise training adaptation, an area I am particularly interested in. But this is useless if basic nutrition needs are not being met.
Some of the frequent issues I encounter when analysing athletes nutritional and training practices are simple to fix and can result in huge performance gains without any increase in training. Over the next few weeks I will cover some of these issues individually on stickybottle but, briefly, they include:
- Energy availability – how energy availability and energy deficit can impact your performance, recovery, training adaptation, health, and body composition. How eating less on your rest days and more on your training days can improve your performance. Most riders do the opposite without realising it.
- Misguided perceptions that eating lots of ‘healthy’ food translates into a healthy balanced diet.
- The quality and quantity of pre and post training nutrition.
- Getting caught up in fads of high carb/low carb/high fat/low fat/high protein/zero sugar/dairy free/gluten free in the hope of magically improved performance.
- Using vitamin & mineral supplements as ‘insurance’, some synthetic vitamins and minerals are toxic in excessive amounts when taken in supplemental form.
- Lack of knowledge & interest in food, cooking, shopping & meal planning leading to an over reliance on convenience foods, processed foods, sports foods and canteen foods. All riders should cook their own food from basics and eat only unprocessed natural foods where possible. This requires preparation, planning and time management.
Thanks for reading
Beth
