EverymanTri.com

Are You An Endurance Athlete With Overtraining or Adrenal Fatigue?

Recently, a very "beat up" triathlete showed me the results of his saliva testing for hormones.

They were really low. Even cortisol was low. Cortisol is the stress-release hormone we churn out when exercising and living, and when that drops low, it's a real warning sign that you're so beat up that your adrenal glands simply can't keep up with your extreme endurance lifestyle anymore!

So what did I recommend to this triathlete to "take care of his body" and bounce back from overtraining and adrenal fatigue?

How to Run like an Olympian: Top 10 excercises to make you Run Faster (Part 7)

In this part 7 video we show you how to run like an Olympian by teaching how to do well Belly Button Touch. Joanna Zeiger is a former professional triathlete, Olympian and Ironman 70.3 World Champion.

In other words, she's not only crazy fast but she's spent countless hours training and running.

In this seventh video JZ along with her training partner Brandon discuss and demonstrate the Top five exercises for runners and triathletes who want to run faster like an Olympian.

Check it out below.

Nutrition and recovery are important keys to triathlon training and racing

Sure you have may have heard of the three sports that make up a triathlon; swim, bike and run.  But, did you know there are more to it than those 3?  They may not be as apparent on race day, but if you ignore them, they can come back to bite you in the butt on race day.

There are many other aspects to a triathlon than the swim, bike and run, but for the sake of this post, we’re going to focus on the two additional most important disciplines of triathlon; nutrition and recovery.

Nutrition is nothing new.  Any triathlete that’s be “in country” for a while knows that once you get past the sprint distance, nutrition is a key role between a good day and a DNF.  After racing long course endurance events for a length of time, one comes to slowly realize the importance of nutrition during a race and how to apply those lessons.

How To Finish Ironman Triathlon Without Losing Muscle

Even though triathlon is the fastest growing sport on the planet, and the 1.2 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run Ironman races sell out thousands of slots in just a few minutes, it can be a bit depressing when you realize that conventional triathlon training doesn’t really give you a nice body – and instead just makes you really skinny or skinny-fat.

Apprehension about having that emaciated, marathoner-like appearance is a legitimate concern if maintaining muscle mass important to you. Having personally come from a bodybuilding background to compete in Ironman triathlon, this was a major concern for me– I didn’t want to watch in the mirror as my hard-earned muscle wasted away and I ended up looking like a skinny weakling.

But the truth is that to do Ironman triathlon successfully, you don’t actually have to lose precious muscle, get extremely skinny, or become a scrawny endurance athlete. You can still swim, bike and run fast while maintaining high amounts of functional muscle.
Here are three keys:

How To Test Your Lactic Acid Levels Without A Fancy Lab

Editor's Note: Ben Greenfield recently attended the Team Timex Training Camp and had his Lactic Acid Threshold tested. But that doesn't mean you can't test your own threshold as well. In this story Ben show's you his test and explains you how you can test yourself without a lab.

Lactic Acid Threshold (LT) is the highest highest intensity at which the body can recycle lactic acid as quickly as it is produced. Anaerobic metabolism, or the burning of sugar by the process of glycolysis, is slow enough that lactic acid, the substance that makes muscles burn during hard exercise, does not accumulate faster than it can be removed. At this intensity, you are working very hard, but can still maintain exercise because lactic acid levels in the blood and muscles are steady, not increasing.

How to Run like an Olympian: Top 5 excercises to make you Run Faster (Part 6)

In this bonus part 6 video we show you how to run like an Olympian by teaching how to do well Belly Button Touch. Joanna Zeiger is a former professional triathlete, Olympian and Ironman 70.3 World Champion.

In other words, she's not only crazy fast but she's spent countless hours training and running. In this fifth video JZ along with her training partner Brandon discuss and demonstrate the Top five exercises for runners and triathletes who want to run faster like an Olympian.

How to Run like an Olympian: Top 5 excercises to make you Run Faster (Part 5)

In this part 5 video we show you how to run like an Olympian by teaching how to do well wall quad stretch. Joanna Zeiger is a former professional triathlete, Olympian and Ironman 70.3 World Champion. In other words, she's not only crazy fast but she's spent countless hours training and running.

In this fifth video JZ along with her training partner Brandon discuss and demonstrate the Top five exercises for runners and triathletes who want to run faster like an Olympian.

How to Run like an Olympian: Top 5 excercises to make you Run Faster (Part 3)

In this part 3 video we show you how to run like an Olympian by teaching how to do the assisted runner stretch. Joanna Zeiger is a former professional triathlete, Olympian and Ironman 70.3 World Champion.

In other words, she's not only crazy fast but she's spent countless hours training and running. In this third video JZ along with her training partner Brandon discuss and demonstrate the Top five exercises for runners and triathletes who want to run faster like an Olympian.

Exercise Metabolic Testing: More Than Just Bragging Rights – Part 3

Let’s take a look at an example of how the EMT can be successfully utilized in a triathlon program:

JoAnn is a 35 year old age group triathlete with a goal to complete an Ironman triathlon in June. At the beginning of the year, she decides to undergo an EMT on her bicycle. Since she will be training with a heart rate monitor, she wants training and racing recommendations based on heartbeats per minute. She also wants to know how many calories she should be consuming during the race, and what type of caloric deficits she is creating during her training sessions.

At the lab, an exercise physiologist straps a heart rate monitor to JoAnn’s chest and attaches a neoprene mask to her face. After a 10 minute light warm-up on a the lab indoor  bicycle trainer, the EMT begins.

How to Run like an Olympian: Top 5 excercises to make you Run Faster (Part 2)

In this video we show you how to run like an Olympian by teaching how to do the Cross-Crawl Exercise. Joanna Zeiger is a former professional triathlete, Olympian and Ironman 70.3 World Champion. In other words, she's not only crazy fast but she's spent countless hours training and running. In this first video JZ along with her training partner Brandon discuss and demonstrate the Top five exercises for runners and triathletes who want to run faster like an Olympian.

How to Run like an Olympian: Top 5 excercises to make you Run Faster (Part 1)

Joanna Zeiger is a former professional triathlete, Olympian and Ironman 70.3 World Champion. In other words, she's not only crazy fast but she's spent countless hours training and running. In this first video JZ along with her training partner Brandon discuss and demonstrate the Top five exorcises for runners and triathletes who want to run faster like an Olympian.

Exercise Metabolic Testing: More Than Just Bragging Rights – Part 1

A triathlete’s“VO2max” number lends itself to strong leverage for bragging rights in the endurance sports arena. If you know this number, which defines your maximum aerobic capacity, you can talk trash while hanging at the pool edge, chatting in spin class warm-up, or stretching on the track. Conveniently, your true athletic superiority can be answered not by race results, lap splits, or age-group rankings, but instead by a simple number that easily defines aerobic dominance. How close is your VO2max to Greg Lemond, Steve PreFontaine, or that obscure Norwegian cross-country skier whose name nobody can remember?

Top 6 Cross-Training Sports For The Triathlon Off-Season (part 2)

Basketball:
 
Similar to soccer, basketball improves muscular endurance with explosive efforts followed by active recovery, and can also improve stride turnover and length. However, the arm jostling and pushing, shooting and passing in basketball are good upper body training, while the frequent jumping and landing are perfect lower body plyometrics, which have been shown to improve running economy in distance runners.
 
Like soccer, basketball requires minimal equipment: shoes and a ball. You’ll be able to find pick-up games on the schedule of your local health club or gym. If you find yourself on a busy court, the weakness of basketball for exercise-obsessed triathletes is the requirement to stand around between games as you wait your turn to play. But by jumping rope, shooting or jogging and dribbling between games, you can turn an hour of basketball into pure fitness.
 
Summary: Improve muscular endurance, stride turnover and length, lateral movement ability and plyometric training.
 

Top 6 Cross-Training Sports For The Triathlon Off-Season (part 1)

In some ways, we triathletes are like a hamster on a wheel. We finish a season of training and racing, then realize that we don’t really know how to do much more than stare at the bottom of a pool, spend hours in a bike saddle, or pound the pavement in our running shoes. We become accustomed and addicted to the wheels of swimming, cycling and running, and whenever physical activity beckons we begin turning those wheels.
 
And so, from October through March, many triathletes in cold climates spend the majority of their training time staring at the underwater lane lines, hunched over the aerobars of an indoor training bike, and wearing away the surface of a treadmill belt. At the same time, triathletes in warm climates just keep on swimming, cycling and running outdoors. The result is often a feeling of being stuck in an exercise rut, and being mentally and physically burnt out when the next race season finally arrives.

What To Say When Your Friends Tell You That You Need To Eat Carbohydrates For Proper Endurance Fueling (Part 2)

Objection #2: Isn’t all that fat you’ll be eating as a substitute for carbohydrate dangerous because of high cholesterol, heart disease, and weight gain?

Not only can a high fat, low carbohydrate diet perform better for weight loss compared to a low fat, high carbohydrate diet, but there is no evidence that a high fat derived from healthy, natural fat sources increases risk of heart disease – unless fat consumption is paired with high amounts of fructose and a moderate to high intake of starchy, sugary carbohydrate sources. It is at the point when high fat consumption is combined with high carbohydrate consumption that cholesterol in the bloodstream can become oxidized and lead to risk of heart disease.

As a matter of fact, the whole idea that high cholesterol causes heart disease is a flawed hypothesis, and entire books have been written on it. A very good place to start your journey into learning about the positive and healthy properties of fats would be THIS website.

Objection #3: Don’t you need to load with carbohydrate before a race? If you don’t carbo load you’re going to bonk.

What To Say When Your Friends Tell You That You Need To Eat Carbohydrates For Proper Endurance Fueling (Part 1)

Let’s say you decide you want to join the growing list of individuals who have decided to limit intake of starches, bread, pasta, sugars, gels, sports drinks, bars and other traditional endurance foods.

Once your training partners, family or other friends learn that you’re eating fewer carbohydrates, you’re probably going to hear several objections, along with some scoffing and raised eyebrows.

And usually, the criticism of a low carbohydrate diet for triathletes falls into three categories of objections or questions. Here is what people are going to say, and what you need to know to respond properly.

Objection #1: Isn’t glucose and carbohydrate necessary for energy during exercise? You’re going to bonk if you don’t eat carbohydrates.