Time to pull out some crazy long syllables.
Yes, that's right, it's time to talk about nutrition periodization. When addressing nutrition, the word "periodization" refers to dividing your yearly nutritional plan into several distinct segments that apply to daily, weekly, or monthly cycles of training.
While there are many different ways to put together your annual training plan, the basic idea behind nutrition periodization is that your dietary habits should match your training habits, which involves a bit more than a bigger bowl of ice cream after the really hard workout.
Unfortunately, fueling your body for multi-sport training is not as simple as fueling a car. With a car, you simply put fuel in the gas tank when you're running low or when you're prepping for high mileage days. With triathlon, however, you not only have several different physiological systems, or "engines", that you're fueling, but you also have three different types of fuel: fat, protein, and carbs. The key to nutrition periodization is to match the amount and timing of these three fuel types with the volume and intensity of your training (which affect which "engine" you're using).
So you are essentially optimizing carbohydrate intake for glucose and glycogen (my fancy name for "sugar") derived energy systems, optimizing protein intake for lean muscle mass and immune system recovery systems, and optimizing fat intake for long fuel source systems, physiological balance of hormones and other fat dependent functions, like developing your brain (that's right, fat makes you smart).
The final key is to manage your body weight (which ultimately affects your power:weight ratio) by adjusting your total caloric intake on days or periods of physical inactivity. Sound complicated? A little bit, but it can't be any worse than dissembling and cleaning your chain ring.
Let's look at a few examples of NP (notice that I'm getting burnt out on syllables and have quit typing the full words), using general terms to describe each period of the multi-sport season.
Base/Foundation training
This is the time of the season when you are laying down the groundwork of aerobic conditioning. Workouts are typically long and intensity fairly low, meaning that you're using quite a bit of fat for fuel, and a good portion of carbohydrates as well. Remember, the lower the intensity, the more fat is used as a fuel for your "low-intensity engine", and the harder you work, the more you turn to carbs as a fuel for your "high-intensity engine".
Not a huge amount of speed and force work is taking place, and with this decreased muscle repair demand, protein needs are lower (protein will be used to fuel your "muscle-building engine"). A sample carbohydrate/protein/fat percentage ratio might be about 50% carbs, 20% protein, and 30% fat. We're not talking about dragging a scale into the kitchen - just closing your eyes and imaging no more than half of your day's total intake coming from carbs.
* Please come back tomorrow for part 2 : Build/Intensity/Preparation
Ben Greenfield is the Renaissance man of the sport of triathlon.
He's a fast triathlete, a coach, a personal trainer, and much more more.
We recommend that you surf on over to
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com, where he's just released a very
valuable podcast that talks about critters living in your gut. Yes, you
heard right. Check it out, you don't want to miss this one...