We know that nutrition is important to our endurance sport journey, but I’ve found that for some reason it can be the last thing we really focus on. The gains from a good nutrition plan aren’t always as drastic as doing a hard run or bike where the sweat rolling off your chin makes you feel like you’re working in the right direction, towards your goals. But what I have found for myself and many of my athletes is the nutrition can make or break your training and performance more than any structured training plan.
Metabolic Efficiency: How to Get There
Improving Metabolic Efficiency Series (PART 2) In my last post, part 1 of this series Metabolic Efficiency: Why You Should Care, I talked about what metabolic efficiency is, its benefits, how it’s related to our metabolism and how our body makes energy. Personally I’ve used metabolic efficiency to help me achieve my goals and perform well many times over – …
How to Train for a Half or Iron Distance Triathlon
As we start preparing for a new season of racing, I thought it would be a good idea to put together some thoughts on how to train for half and full distance triathlons. This should give you an idea of what is expected, what’s reasonable, and what’s necessary to get through your first half or full distance event.
Metabolic Efficiency: Why You Should Care
Improving Metabolic Efficiency Series (PART 1) I began talking about the importance of metabolic efficiency more than 5 years ago (back in 2017). At the time I held a number of workshops on the topic and planned to offer an online course that went into detail on how to become more metabolically efficient. Over the next few years, I went …
Sleep and Athletic Performance
Sleep is an essential component of our health and well-being. There are significant impacts on physical development, emotional regulation, cognitive performance, and quality of life when we don’t sleep well. Sleep is also an integral part of the recovery and adaptive process between training sessions. We work so hard during training so shouldn’t we put that same effort into sleeping as well?
Nutrition, Cognitive Sports Training and Performance
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that cognitive sports training can also play a role in sports performance enhancement. Cognitive sports training encompasses a broad range of mental tasks designed to improve various aspects of athletic performance. We’ve all had those moments when you didn’t think you could run one more step or lift one more rep but somehow you almost always area able to do so. So much of our sport performance is psychological, so it makes sense to support that aspect of your training as well.
Using Your Cycle as a Guide for Sport Performance
Have you noticed that your menstrual cycle affects your workouts, your hunger levels, and your sleep? I sure have, and as an athlete and sports nutritionist, I wanted to understand how best to train and nourish my body during each phase to achieve optimal training results. Understanding your cycle will allow you to adapt your training and eating to support your sport and athletic performance. In this week’s blog post, I will discuss how to do this based on the role of each hormone and when it is dominant.
Fighting Rapids: My Journey Through a Running Injury
I contemplated quite a bit about how to begin this blog post. Speaking about injuries can be a sensitive subject for many runners, myself included. So, I decided to set for a long run a few weekends ago, and let my thoughts come to me organically. I was running along a beautiful river, here in Colorado, and noticed the movement …
Nourishing Performance Through Perimenopause and Beyond – Part 3
With the decline of estrogen overall during perimenopause, we also have reduced anabolic stimulus for building lean muscle mass and bone density. So along with increase visceral fat deposition there is less hormonal drive to build and maintain lean muscle mass. But luckily, we already know that we have strength training methods and strategies to help with building and maintaining lean muscle mass and bone density. To set ourselves up well for the decline in our hormones and to have a plan to support our bodies once those hormones flatline, we need to look at how to use nutrition and nutrition timing in conjunction with strength training.
Strength Training for Performance Through Perimenopause and Beyond – Part 2
No matter where you are in your menopause journey, we can look at strength training in the same way. If you still have some hormones, even though they are fluctuating and declining [or perhaps you have chosen to use menopausal hormone therapy (MTH)] it is important to remember that you still need exercise stress and a protein to actually stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Let’s discuss how to utilize different training modalities to build and maintain lean muscle mass and bone density during perimenopause and beyond.