A brick workout is any workout that combines swimming, biking and/or running into a single session. The most common example is the bike to run brick, where you go for a run immediately after finishing a bike ride.
38 g (carbs/hour) x 2.75 (2 hours 45 minutes) = 105 grams of carbs required. 2 protein bars + Cliff energy chews = 100 C 21 F 28 P 660 calories
Hydration
TheGOAL: prevent loosing more than 2% (1.5 kg) of body weight in fluids.
What do I need? Sweat Rate: 1500 mL x 2.75 = 4125 mL Sodium: 0.5 x 4125 = 2062 mg Carbs: (X / 4125) x 100 = 5% -> X=0.05 x 4125= 206 g of carbs!?
What I got:
G2 Gatorade: 6 bottles (591 mL) + own solution (580 mL)= 4126 mL Carbs: 12×6 = 72 g Sodium: 270×6 + 330 = 1970 mg Additional Sodium: AminoPro 2 scoops 230 mg + Vega hydrator 100 mg = 330 mg in 580 mL of water💦 Calories: 300
Total Calories: 960 calories: 350 calories/hour Using the Cooling Fan.
Results
Pre-weight: 69.3 kg Post-weight: 69.3 kg Liquids consumed: 3930 mL Sweat Rate: 1430 mL/hour (confirmed previous calculations)
Total fluid loss: 3930 kg (2% body weight)
I am satisfied with this numbers and consider my calculations right on point. It’s a win!
BIKE
What do you know about “bonking”?
The first 40-50 minutes felt strong, pedaling without too much of an effort (RPE 3-4). Wasn’t fueling until 30 minutes into the ride. Approximately at minute 50 my power began going down increasing RPE.
Since then it was a total suffer fest. No matter how much I ate or drank, my power kept going down and down. I hit the wall or how cyclists call it “bonked”. Glycogen in my muscles and liver got depleted making my body fatigue and bonk. It felt incredibly hard to keep pushing 190 watts and I had to slow down multiple times for 10-15 seconds, because I just couldn’t keep going. My mind began playing tricks on me, but no matter what I did, I just couldn’t physically spin my legs. Even knowing my legs were hurting, it wasn’t about pain. I simply couldn’t force my body to push the pedals. Multiple times I had thoughts to quit and stop this suffering as I couldn’t keep up with workout.
Here is how bonking looks like on a graph:
While heart rate is going up, speed and power falls down.
RUN
Immediately after the ride I put my running gear on and went out for a 15 minutes run. My legs felt like jelly, running at 5:28 /km pace RPE felt like 6-7. Didn’t try to push, making the emphasis on keeping the form.
Severe diarrhea hit me 5 minutes into the run. I honestly thought I would shit my pants… In addition to that had minor stomach cramps. Had to finish the cool down part short… at the restroom.
Lessons Learned:
3,000 calories / day with 400 grams of carbohydrates I currently eat on my diet is not enough to fulfill the energy demands. I went glycogen depleted into the training and payed the price.
100 grams of carbs from pre-meal burned in 40 minutes.
Confirmed my Sweat Rate calculations. Approximately 1500 mL/hour.
Learned what the bonking is and how it feels.
If you drain your glycogen tanks, there is no way to refuel it on the fly, while keeping the power & speed.
Cooling fan didn’t make significant change in my sweat rate.
I don’t like energy chews. They get stuck in teeth.
What will I do different?
Increase my carbohydrate consumption to 600 grams/day. Total daily calorie intake: 3,900 calories
Always have a big, carbohydrate-rich meal at least 90 minutes before workout.
Try consuming liquid calories. See how that feels on stomach and absorption.
There are six things we are trying to achieve with of proper pre-exercise nutrition:
Restore muscle glycogen (especially important for morning training). A lot of athletes ignore food first thing in the morning. Don’t be like most! Going into training fasted or under-fueled will catch your up later with what cyclists call “bonking” or runners call “hitting the wall”. You simply run off the gas (glycogen) and your body refuse to deal with you any longer. You are forced to stop, you lost!
Satisfy hunger. Realizing that you’re hungry in the last hour before exercise or race is too late. Eating so close to start will only harm you.
Boost motivation
Delay fatigue
Optimize performance. This is a biggie! This is why you continue reading this chapter. Other than simply restocking your glycogen stores and fluid levels, proper pre-training nutrition has direct correlation with your performance.
Improve post-exercise recovery. If you start with your fuel tank on empty, even if you eat and hydrate during training, your recovery will be compromised. The better fueled and hydrated you are going into the training, the faster you will recover from it afterwards.
WHAT?
Salads are bad for you! This is the only time you hear me say it – right before training or racing. We are not talking here about eating for health and longevity, we are fueling up our carb tanks for performance. Understanding that, we stay away from fiber, high fat and protein foods. Those foods are slow to digest, may cause bloating and diarrhea during high intensity trainings.
Here is your general guidelines to follow, when deciding on how you are going to fill up your body for upcoming training:
Eat mostlycarbohydrates. The more time you have before exercise, the lower GI of your food choices should be.
Stay away from fiber.
Include protein, especially BCAAs. The 2018 Researchsponsored by Western University in Canada have shown that taking in BCAAs before aerobic exercise improves endurance and stimulates protein synthesis.
No foods or snacks in one hour prior to event or training. Is to prevent hypoglycemia (rapid insulin spike, followed by drop in blood sugar level).
The following are examples foods to eat prior the event:
Fruits with Eggs. Fruits (Low in fiber: bananas, peaches, cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon) + Eggs (Easy to digest and is a great source of BCAAs)
Applesauce (Unsweetened) + Protein Powder. Applesauce is easy to digest and is low in fiber. Add egg or whey protein powder to slow the glycemic reaction and to add BCAAs
Baby Food (easily digested by anyone) + Animal Protein (Turkey, Chicken or Fish)
Liquid Meals. Stress reduces our abilities to digest food and I’ve had a nervous stomach prior to events before. Blending foods makes it easier to digest
Sports Bars with Protein. My least favorite option. Whenever possible, stay away from engineered foods
Fluids, especially WATER. In addition, a strong brewed coffee has been shown to improve endurance performance. Downsides of caffeine: upset stomach and nervousness
Of course, eating moderate-high GI foods will cause the insulin spike and shut down fat oxidation and your body will shift to burning carbs for fuel. This is concerning for many athletes that try to loose weight and train in fasted state to improve fax oxidation.
You got to pick one or another:
You burn fat and loose wight
You train and race at you peak performance, stimulating fitness gains.
Those two are not compatible. If you chose the option #2, continue reading as I’ll get more in depth on how to fuel up for performance. If your goal is to loose fat, you chubby panda, I suggest you read on some of my postshere.
HOW MUCH & WHEN?
To boost your performance, carbohydrate-rich easy-to-digest foods should be consumed no less than 1-2 hours before the exercise or race.
Everybody is different and the amount is determined by body size and gender. You should listen to your body, however here is some general guidelines:
3-4 hours before – Large meal (500-800 calories)
1-3 hours before – Medium-size meal (250-500 calories)
30 min – 1.5 hour before – Small meal, snack (100-500 calories)
10 minutes before start – Sports drink or Gel (100-200 calories), followed by 180-240 ml of water.
Race Week Diet
Typically a week before competition, athletes go into a “tapering” stage, where training volume and intensity is reduced to ensure the athlete is well rested before the event. Since they don’t train as much, it makes some athletes confused with their food choices. Let’t keep it simple: this is not the time to make changes in your day-to-day diet. You should continue to eat the same diet as while you was training, but with slightly reduces amount of calories consumed.
Skip the pasta party! The day before the race slightly add more carbohydrates to ensure your glycogen tanks are full. It’s a great time to treat yourself to some: bananas, peaches, watermelon, dried fruits, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams. To keep your blood sugar levels in check from such high GI foods, add protein and fat with each meal. In addition, reduce the fiber and eat at your usual times.
A tip: The order in which you eat carbs and proteins matter. Simply by switch the order you eat your food you can control you glucose and insulin levels. Eat protein and vegetables first and carbohydrates at the end. Never eat carbohydrates alone. Read more on Food Order.
References:
Lemon, Peter. “Effect of Branched-Chain Amino Acid Supplementation on Muscle Damage – Full Text View.” Search of: Spain – List Results – ClinicalTrials.gov, Western University, Canada, 2018, clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03766815.
The closer I get to my first IRONMAN, the more race specific my training gets. On today’s agenda is the “BRICK”:
2 hour 15 minutes Endurance Bike Ride (180w) immediately followed by10 minutes run of the bike
Fueling Before:
2 cups of coffee
Essential Amino acids
Whole Grapefruit 360g (40 carbs)
Hydration
Considering my previous Sweat Rate calculations: ~1500 mL/hour * Workout: 2 hr 15 min = 3000 mL of fluids (4xG2 bottles (2840 ml))
Today I experiment with hydration solution G2 from Gatorade. A bottle (710 mL) is a 5% solution with 330 mg of sodium. (240 cal/64 carbs)
It’s important to mention that the calories in hydration solution are not meant to deliver energy to the muscles, but to improve the fluid absorption.
Fueling
The formula I use to calculate carbohydrate needs:
0.25 x 150 lbs = 38 g/hour
2.15 x 38 = 82 grams of carbs
2 Protein Bars + banana = 585 cal (86c/23f/15p)
Total Calorie Intake (hydration+fueling): 825 cal (150c/23f/15p) / 2.15 hours = 384 cal/hour
Results:
Had 3 bottles of G2, left one unopened. Found it difficult to drink this much. Couldn’t say the same about eating part. Sugars are always fun. So here is what I’ve got:
Pre-Weight: 68.4 kg
Post-Weight: 66.9 kg
Fluids Consumed: 2130 mL (710 mL less than suggested)
Total Fluid Loss: 3630 mL
Sweat Rate: 1613 mL/hour
Energy Expanded: 1630 calories / 2:30 hours = 652 calories/hour
Felt strong on the bike physically and mentally. Was able to hold ~180w for 2 hours straight. The ride ended up at 100 kilometers, averaging at 44.5 km/h. Running off the bike, my legs felt literally like jelly. Ran 2 kilometers at 4:56 /km pace.
Overall I am impressed by the power output on the bike and how good I felt.
Do you want to get the taste of every shade of pain? I’ve got a perfect recipe for you – get yourself dehydrated. All you need is to lose just 1%-2% worth of your body’s weight through the fluid loss. Here is how you do it: wake up early in the morning to get that 90 minutes bike ride done, before work or school. Have nothing besides a cup or two of coffee and jump straight on the trainer. I guarantee that your heart rate won’t go higher than zone 3-4, no matter how hard you push yourself. RPE of 3-4 will feel like 7-8, making every second of your workout count as you courageously suffer through it. Besides that, you might experience some of the following symptoms, but they most likely have nothing to do with you being dehydrated. Push harder!
Headache (wether changes)
Fatigue (don’t be lazy!)
Dizziness (thats ok, just don’t close your eyes)
Increased thirst (resist! less water = higher RPE)
Tachycardia (you won’t even feel it)
Weak pulse (don’t worry about that)
Chills/cold hands (put on an extra jacket)
Organ failure (people live even with one kidney)
Shrunken brain (less weight to carry)
Heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heatstroke – those are the things that will add more flavor to your experience of riding the paintrain. There are few tips on how to access those add on features and amplify your suffering:
Do some interval training outside, including extreme spikes in intensity or volume
Try exercising when sick. Disease and fewer is not an excuse to skip a workout
Put on as many clothes as you have. Let’s see how many cycling jerseys you’ve got in your closet
Neglect all the clues and heat-related illness signals your body sends you
Few more workouts like this and you begin questioning your abilities as an athlete and your existence on this planet overall. A little shit-talking voice in your head gets louder and louder, yelling at you to stop this suffer fest and quit the sport all together. Perfect! There are many other ways to get on the paintrain with a first-class seat, but I will not discuss all of them just yet. If it’s something that you’re specifically looking for, let me know and I will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to obtain the ticket to the suffer-land for free.
Let’s get serious
Performance Hydration
Let’s talk first about why exactly is hydration so important?
I bet you heard a million times that making sure you are well hydrated with clean water is essential to your well-being. I’ll just refresh a few things in your memory in regards to why you need to drink water.
About 40 liters of water contains a 150 pounds human body. Every day you loose 2-3 liters of fluids. Your body doesn’t produce water and heavily rely on external sources. Without proper amount of water, your body fails to:
Transport fuel to your working muscles
Eliminate the byproducts of your trainings from your cells
Keeping you alive and not let you dies from overheating by cooling itself down.
Digest the foods you eat and convert them into the fuel for your next training sessions.
Keep your brain functioning, making you a bit smarter than your dog. Concentration is compromised.
Maintain the blood volume. The sweat that you loose during exercise comes out of your blood plasma. Loose too much sweat -> blood volume goes down -> performance decreases.
The list goes on and on, but the main point here is that WATER IS LIFE.
Dehydration
When endurance athlete “hits the wall” or getting “bonked”, running out of energy, he can grab a gel or coke and rapidly put that necessary calories into the engine. Up to a certain point dehydration is manageable and there no performance decline. However, if the athlete is getting dehydrated, there is no fast way to restore hydration status. When is too late? Over 2% of body’s mass lost through the fluids links to a low performance. Your main task as an athlete is to stay above 2% or 3% off for fluids lost during exercise. Its easy to miss the point of not coming back and once you’re in the hole of dehydration, you’re not coming out of it in a course of the event. Game is over! Or it for the least your performance is highly compromised.
A symptom of dehydration is often expressed as hunger. That sound weird, but it’s true. When people reach for carbohydrate rich foods, because they’re hungry in the pm its often the fact that they simply dehydrated. By retaining hydration status during the day, it get easier to manage portion control and quality of food consumed.
Hyponatremia
On the flip side is over-hydration problem – hyponatremia. A lot of athletes are over-hydrating lowering the body sodium levels to dangerously low levels. Your blood becomes thicker and saltier and you feel thirsty. If you drink a lot of water or a lot of low-sodium fluids you actually diluting your blood down. You hold about 32 oz (950 mL) of fluids in your stomach. Depending on your body size and exercise intensity it empties at a rate about 30-42 oz (890-1242 mL) per hour. If you drink too much, too fast, your stomach gets overfilled, having no choice, but make you vomit to remove the excess. Overdrinking can cause nausea.
Electrolytes
You noticed in the past that your sweat leaves white marks on your clothing. Sometimes less, sometimes more. With sweat you never loose just the water, but also electrolytes. Without those positively and negatively charged ions you won’t be able to contract your muscles properly, making your running form seem more like a butt injured bear running away from the hunter. Potassium, calcium, magnesium and sodium are the micronutrients that in proper combination allow your body to remain in homeostasis by maintaining the fluid balance. Sodium is predominant electrolyte so you mainly loose this important nutrient with your sweat.
Five main electrolytes inside your body
If you don’t replace the fluids and electrolytes lost, it will essentially pull a cascade of negative events that will make you a dehydrated bitch. Luckily for you, mother nature provided your body with reliable fluid level management feature – a thirst. When too much water leaves your cells – they shrink and your brain gets notified immediately. If you feel thirsty, you’re on your way to a suffer-land, sponsored by dehydration. Listen to your body and drink enough to satisfy thirst, not more or less.
Better Hydration = Better Performance
You may not feel thirsty during exercise, but you absolutely need to hydrate while you exercise. Plain water is the best! There are three kinds you are safe to go with:
Purified water. This water is free of contaminants and produced by deionization, distillation, reverse osmosis and carbon filtration.
Spring water. Spring water is the “natural” version of purified water. may have been disinfected, but most impurities and contaminants remain. In terms of quality, spring water is much closer to tap water than purified water.
Alkaline water. It’s less acidic than tap water, however there is little evidence that its healthier than regular tap water.
“Taste and temperature have no perceptible effect on fluid absorption”
Karel, L
Sports drinks
Hypertonics. They are the high-calorie sports drinks or simply soda. Drinking these is notoptimal way to hydrate as your body has to move water out of the bloodstream into the gut to absorb the calories within the drink.
Isotonics or Hypotonics. This types of drinks are formulated to a concentration that is similar to your blood, which makes them a good hydration tools.
Coffee & Tea
Coffee is considered as probably harmless and possibly healthy. Just keep in mind that it’s a central nervous system stimulant so try not to over drink it.Commonly accepted safe dose of it is no more than 32 oz (946 ml) a day.
Tea also has caffeine in it, but way less than coffee. It is often praised for its health benefits and can help to fight free radicals, reduce the risk of heart related disease and even cancer. Herbal teas increase immunity, support weight loss, control appetite, promote better sleep and lower stress levels. It’s not a magic bullet, but if you get to pick between tea and coffee, I would go with the first one.
Juice, Energy drinks and Alcohol
Liquid produce is not healthier than whole, solid produce. Real juice, even with no added sugars is a very easy way to over-consume the calories, compared with eating whole foods. However it may come in handy after the intense workout, assisting in rehydration and delivering vitamins with minerals. To make it even a better post-workout option, add a tea spoon of pink Himalayan salt to make it more similar to rehydration sports drinks.
Energy drinks is a no-no! 5-hour Energy, NOS, Monster Energy, Red Bull, Rockstar etc. is a poison straight from a can. Sugar, enormous amount of calories and caffeine along with other stimulants will put you at risk of cardiac arrest. Save your heart and opt from such drinks, especially during the exercise.
There are no benefits to alcohol consumption. Sorry. The use of alcohol even in small amounts can negatively affect your hydration status, sleep, recovery, motivation and overall performance.Not to mention, it causes weight gain and weakens your immune system. If you are an athlete, especially during a competition season, do yourself a favor – stay away from alcohol.
Know your Sweat Rate
Everyone looses fluids differently, therefore to better understand how much you are sweating it’s important to calculate your sweat rate. Right before your next big workout, jump on scales and record your weight. When finished, re-weight yourself and calculate your sweat rate using the example of how to estimate the sweat rate for 150 lbs athlete after a 2 hour 30 minutes bike ride:
Pre-exercise weight: 150 lbs (68 kg)
Post-exercise weight: 148.5 lbs (67.3 kg)
Weight (fluids) loss: 1.5 lbs (0.7 kg) or 24.7 oz (700 mL)
Water consumed during exercise: 3 liters (100 oz)
Total Sweat Loss: 24.7 oz + 100 oz = 124.7 oz (3688 mL)
HEALTHY PEE CHART [Digital image]. (2017, January 30). Retrieved February 3, 2019, from https://hydratem8.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/healthy-pee-chart_03.png
Unlike professional athletes, a lot of people manage to balance full-time jobs, family commitments and relationships with training. Training and competing, tight deadlines at work, travel across time zones, misunderstandings with people you care about, illnesses, dealing with difficult kids – all accumulate and add to psychological and physiological stress. Add on top of problems at work one or two hard training sessions, sprinkle it with sleep deprivation and you are well on your way to burnout and injury.
Mood swings, food cravings, inconsistency and unpredictability in athletic performance, lack of motivation, low energy levels are only the symptoms of system overload. You feel drained and totally destroyed. At 3 pm you fall asleep on the toilet at work, or worse, while driving back home. Total load is the term proposed by International Olympic Committee. In addition to your training and competing stress, it takes into account the daily life stressors.
Faster, better, stronger, harder! Sleep less, work more! Sleep for the weak! No pain – no gain! Chasing “gains” in our sports, we totally neglect psychological stressors and daily life hassles. We are so good at pushing ourselves, but so bad at recovering. Do you really think you can keep on abusing and pushing you body this way forever without any consequences? How long do you think you can last until it breaks? The question is not IF, the question is WHEN? Understanding the implications of total load and how to manage it – is critical to achieving your goals.
Modern technologies allow people to monitor so many body metrics: Heart rate during exercise; Resting heart rate (RHR); Sleep duration; Sleep stages; Caloric consumption and expenditure; Glucose and Ketone levels, you name it. We have access to data, that only a few decades ago was available to scientists in research labs. So many metrics at your hand and inability to make sense of it leads to information overload and analysis paralysis.
Information is gold. You will learn what the HRV is, and can it help you to improve your health, well-being and sports performance. I will teach you how to track and interpret your HRV data and show you real life examples of how daily life events and trainings impact your performance and recovery.
By default, Mother Nature has programmed your autonomic nervous system (ANS) with two operation systems: Sympathetic OS and Parasympathetic OS. They both work simultaneously, however performing totally different tasks.
Sympathetic Operation System
This is the system that has direct access to the “red button” which in situations threatening survival will prime your body for action.
Muscles contract, and begin to convert glycogen into glucose.
Heart rate ramps up.
Bronchial tubes dilate to facilitate better gas exchange.
Pupils dilate to enhance visual input, even in low light.
Hearing shuts down (auditory exclusion – loss of hearing).
You feel almost like rocket fuel has been poured into your system. Nitrous oxide is fueling your engine. You are READY TO EXPLODE at any second now. Flames are shooting down your exhaust pipes. Go get them!
This system saved your great-great-great-…-great father’s life, when saber-toothed tiger decided to have some homosapien for dinner. It is the reason why you are being alive. It was developed from necessity as a survival mechanism to prepare your body respond with everything it got in a matter of milliseconds. This system is awesome.
Parasympathetic Operation System
Manual NHRA top fuel driver Brittany Force (right) deploys her parachutes alongside Pat Dakin during round one eliminations for the US Nationals.
Unlike SO system, Parasympathetic OS is designed to slow you dow. This system is responsible to deploy the parachutes when the race is over. It maintains both mental and physical health by helping your body to calm down from stress reaction you’ve had and divert energy from other body processes to “rest and digest”. It’s a pit stop, where you get repaired, refueled and prepared for the next race.
Turns on digestion system, sending you to use the restroom
Relaxes muscles
Makes you horny
Puts brakes on the heart rate and lowers the blood pressure after the sympathetic nervous system has activated the fight or flight response
Now that everything is behind, it’s time to chill and restore the energy you expanded.
HRV, What are you?
Heart Rate Variability – is the physiological phenomenon of variation in the time interval between heartbeats.
Unlike the car’s engine, your heart doesn’t beat with exact same frequency each moment. The pauses between beats are not equal and can range from 0.85 and 1.35 seconds.
Note: The longest intervals between beats occur when you exhale, and the shortest intervals when you inhale.
HRV is simply a measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat which is controlled by autonomic nervous system (ANS).
Is it Worth the Hype?
For the past 4 months, every single morning I measured my HRV using HRV4Training IOS app. It costed me $10 for the app which promised to provide data analytics on the relation between physiological parameters, training and performance. It does not require any extra sensors and use iPhones flashlight with camera to measure your heart rate (technique is called photoplethysmography). The process of measuring is really easy:
Place your fingertip exactly on the camera. Touch the camera gently
Try not to move for the duration of the whole test, and breathe freely, without forcing any unnatural breathing pattern
Stay still for 1 minute
After each measurement the app will output the HRV Score. Higher score (or greater variability between heart beats) usually means that the body has a strong ability to tolerate stress or is strongly recovering from prior accumulated stress. At rest, a high HRV is generally favorable and a low HRV is unfavorable.
I also been journaling my emotional conditions, energy levels and training performances during that time period. I collected a lot of data to see if there are any patterns or corrections between HRV and my athletic performances , as well as overall feeling.
Traveling & Racing
Ukraine, Euro-tour, Marathon, Half-Marathon
From December 29th to January 19th I put A LOT of stress on my body and mind. I flew to Kiev, Ukraine from Toronto changing 8 time zones. I visited 5 countries during the road trip through the Europe. I drove over 5,000 km. I ran a marathon on January 5th in Paris and a half-marathon week later. Below is the data I got from the app during that crazy trip:
Left picture shows the recovery points and the right one shows the heart rate. To my surprise, app measurements show that cross-continental flight to another part of the world didn’t harm my body too much, neither the marathon did. Almost throughout the entire time of travel, training and competing my recovery points stayed nice and high, even higher then when I was back home. Same story with heart rate. It stayed low during the entire time, showing the positive trend even after the marathon.
Looking at this graphs it seems that my body handled travel, training and racing very well. In fact the scores are better than I had, while back home in Canada.
Back Home
This is where it gets really interesting! Immediately right after returning back home, everything went down. My recovery pointsfell straight down, continuing this negative trend for 7 days! We can also see direct correlation to heart rate readings. For a week it continued to creep up indicating that my body is having a really hard time.
My theory is that during the time spent traveling and in Ukraine, my body was under some sort of adrenaline or in defense mode to absorb the stress. Shortly after I returned back home and touched my bed, my body switched off the defense mode and literally fell apart.
Not to mention that despite downward trends Ifelt good mentally and emotionally.
Can HRV predict good and bad performances?
Let’s put travel and stress associated to the side and evaluate the data during regular training under normal conditions. Consistent journaling allows me to go back and see when I felt particularly good or bad, strength or weakness. I used my post-workout comments to compare them with HVR scores on that particular day.
Below Average / Bad Performances
In contrast to low HRV scores, let’s review some more recent data with higher scores. Did I feel and perform better with high HRV scores?
Great performances / Breakthroughs
Conclusions
“Information is only useful if it’s actionable“
Now that we reviewed the data, lets bring the elephant into the room and answer the main question:
Does HRV4Training provide data analytics on the relation between physiological parameters, training and performance?
In my case it DOES NOT.
During the 4 months of recording and comparing HRV data to my overall feeling I did not find direct relationship between HRV scores and athletic performances. It addition HRV score does not reflect mental or emotional state, neither it was promised by developers it would.
I am sure there are people who found this tool useful and will disagree with me. However everyone is different and what works for one, does not work for another. $10 for this particular app will not break your budget and I encourage you to give it a shot and see if you benefit from it. I am opened for discussion on the topic and I might change my mind, but for now I will stop measuring my morning HRV using the app for the reasons I stated above. Instead I will work to recognize the signs my body tell me, when something’s not quite right. I will also listen more to my emotional state to access my condition and predict the readiness to perform on a given day.
Stay STRONG!
References:
Soligard, T., Martin Schwellnus, J. A., Bahr, R., Clarsen, B., Dijkstra, P., Gabbett, T., . . . Engebretsen, L. (2016, September 01). How much is too much? (Part 1) International Olympic Committee consensus statement on load in sport and risk of injury. Retrieved March 7, 2019, from https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/50/17/1030
Schwellnus M, Soligard T, Alonso J, et al(2016, September 01). How much is too much? (Part 2) International Olympic Committee consensus statement on load in sport and risk of illness. Br J Sports Med2016;50:1043-1052. Retrieved March 7, 2019, from https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/50/17/1043
Simon Wegerif
What is Heart Rate Variability (HRV)? And how it can enhance your training. (n.d.). Retrieved March 7, 2019, from https://www.myithlete.com/what-is-hrv/
The venue took place at the sports complex with hot drinks and even live music. I got my bib and started to prepare for the race. Standing at the front line of the start line I got a good vision of the road ahead of me. 3…2…1 and we all set our bodies into motion. The time has come to kick some French ass. As always I’ve come with a plan.
PACING:
13 miles at pace 7:50-8:00 /mi.
9 miles at 7:45 /mi.
4.6 miles as fast as I can, depending on conditions.
In fact I felt really strong during the first 13 miles, running at 7:30-7:33 /mi, 20 seconds faster than planned😬. I was constantly reminding myself to slow down, however 30 minutes into the race I stopped resisting and made a decision to continue with a faster pace. Bad decision.
NUTRITION
I will begin from saying that I totally failed it, not just on the race day, but a week leading to the race. For breakfast I had approximately 200g of brown rice, 1.5 scoops of whey protein shake, 1 grapefruit and banana. On the course I brought 3 hummer gels (~ 70g of carbs in 300 calories), and two 200 ml bottles with BCAA mixed with creatine (no calories here). Throughout the course there were 7 fueling stations, serving !potato chips!, dark chocolate, oranges, pure cubed table sugar, orange juice, coke and water. My body is familiar only with bananas and coke, therefore I decided not to experiment and ate approximately 1 banana, flushing it down with 2 gulps of coke (~40-50g of carbs). Shortly after I passed the halfway point, I realized it wasn’t nearly enough to keep up with a faster pace I chose to stick with. Poor nutrition, undereating few day prior to the race, sleep deprivation did it’s nasty job. It’s an “F” Sasha. Lessons learned.
PERFORMANCE
Remaining 13.6 miles I felt pain in the liver and excruciating pain throughout my legs, making it more and more difficult to keep up with the pacing strategy. Right leg T-band and quadriceps on the left one, became sources of burning pain making the race more fun than I could handle. The second half was a 100% mental race. I became the main actor of my own movie called “50 Shades of Pain”, battling rapidly raising fatigue and exhaustion. It was really painful experience, maybe the most painful I ever had. Instead of running a negative split, as I usually do, I found myself getting slower and slower with a creeping thought of not finishing.
“It’s all good mental training” as mantra I kept on repeat in my head. I did not walk. I finished running! In just two months of hard training I broke my PR by 15 minutes since Toronto Waterfront Marathon.
I really enjoyed French nature while running through wide opened fields and forests. I am grateful for the warm and dry weather and appropriate choice of clothing I did for the race. I am grateful for the mind and body that allow me to take on this not only physical, but for the most part mental challenge. Thank you for not failing on me.
I am grateful for people that supported and believed in me.
Renee, thank you for smart, structured and personalized training plan and the words of wisdom I got from you. You are not only my coach, but a mentor to me.
Alysa I am grateful for your support. You know me better than anyone else. You have the power to ground me in times of deep crisis. You find the right words and approaches to break my armor and get me out of the mental prison I put myself into.
Mom, thank you for accepting my decision and cheering up for me from Ukraine. This is not how I imagined our vacation. Knowing that you had no hard feelings, took a huge weight of my chest and let me focus on the race.
Dad, thank you for always being honest WITH me, FOR me. I highly value your advices regards my physical and mental health. Thank you for giving me freedom to make my own mistakes.
Stepan, I am grateful for having you by my side, cheering up for me and forgiving my unpatience and short fuse. At the start line, you was worried for me more than I was for myself. You didn’t judge my decision to continue with a trip, pursuing my personal goals.
Another goal of mine got achieved setting me up for the next, greater challenges. I hit the PAUSE button for marathons and shift my focus to something greater. New 2019 year is going to be challenging and exciting year as I’ll spend it under the IRONMAN flags around the world 🌎
For the past 5 years that I spent living in USA, I got accustomed to its cost of living at different cities and pricing politics at the grocery stores. I love shopping at the farmers markets and would always give preference towards fresh, organic produce over it’s cheaper alternatives. Moving to Canada made me reassess my spending behaviors, as the cost of healthy foods seemed to be more expensive, compared to where I’m coming from. Out of curiosity and the will to save some money I made a little experiment. I was wondering of how much do I have to spend to continue eat as clean and healthy as I’m used to. Particularly I was interested to see the costs of meats, as they tend to be the most expensive item on the receipt.
While doing my calculations I also converted prices from CAD (canadian dollars) to ukrainian hryvnia for my Ukrainian friends.
According to Dr. Google ₴1 = $21
With my level of physical activity I stick around with 1 gram of protein per pound oflean weight, or approximately 2 grams per 1 kg of body weight. When it comes to the source of protein, I typically give preference to fish, chicken and beef. I stay away from eggs, dairy or “engineered” sources, aka protein bars etc. From time to time I would supplement with organ meats and protein shakes, but only as an addition to my daily meals. Based on my meat preferences, and the fact that I’m pretty lean, I calculated weekly protein requirements off my weight of 68-70 kg:
One week (7 days) worth of protein: 150 g/day (1 g * 1 lb of lean body mass).
If we translate it into the cooked foods, it will look like this:
Cooked:
Wild Salmon: 4.5 kg (10 lb) * 150 = 600 g/day
Chicken Breast: 3.3 kg (7.3 lb) * 150 = 500 g/day
Angus Beef: 5 kg (11 lb) * 150 = 700 g/day
Raw:
Different factors can play a role in how much your meat shrinks. The cut of meat and cooking methods are the main factors. Dry-cooking methods like roasting yield the most shrinkage.
Using 25% shrinkage as the guideline I calculated the amount of raw product I will need to buy in order to get the needed amount of protein after cooking.
Wild Salmon: (4.5 kg (10 lb) * 25%) + 4.5 kg (10 lb) = 5.6 kg (12.3 lb)
Chicken Breast: (3.3 kg (7.3 lb) * 25%) +3.3 kg (7.3 lb) = 4.1 kg (9 lb)
Angus Beef: (5 kg (11 lb) * 25%) + 5 kg (11 lb) = 6.3 kg (14 lb)
With these numbers in mind I went to the grocery store…
Wild Atlantic Salmon
12.49 lb (5.66 kg) = $82.31 (₴1728.5)
$82.31 / 7 days = $11.7 /day (₴245.7)
Cooked in the oven at 425 F for 20-30 minutes, with no oils.
Raw: 12.49 lb (5.66 kg)
Cooked: 10.4 lb (4.7 kg)
I LOVE SALMON. This is my most favorite source of protein, but unfortunately the most expensive among three. It’s a great source of Omega-3 fats that are so essential to counterbalance the Omega-6 ones that are so prevalent in modern foods. Too much of this fish may cause bloating and gas.
Chicken Breast
9.33 lb (4.2 kg) = $37.05 (₴778.05)
$37.05 / 7 days = $5.30 /day (₴111.3)
Raw: 8.7 lb (3.95 kg) (after removing from packaging and re-weighting myself. Delta: 0.63 lb (300g))
Grilled: 2.85 kg. Delta: 2.42 lb (1.1 kg) lost in cooking.
My preference towards chicken is somewhere between fish and beef. It’s still a bit hard on digestive system, but I like it because of it’s price accessibility and “purity” of protein.
Angus Beef
10.78 lb (4.9 kg) = $53.82 (₴1130.2)
$53.82 / 7 days = $7.7 /day (₴161.7)
Raw: 10.78 lb (4.9 kg)
Grilled: 6.72 lb (3.05 kg)
Delta is minimal.
Beef is not my favorite among three meats for the following reasons: it’s hard on digestion system; cooking of it takes more time and leaves a lot of mess to clean; it’s hard to chew on and it always stuck in your teeth. The main reason why I still implement beef into my diet is because of its fats. I never shy away from buying the fattest pieces of meat, as the animal fat it contains is essential for hormonal productions in our bodies.
Conclusions:
As expected, salmon is the most expensive source of protein. It costs about $12 (₴252) a day to cover my protein needs with fish. Choosing chicken instead would drop price by half, only $5.30 (₴111.3) a day. Beef lays in between, with its moderate price of $7.7 (₴161.7) a day, and on the last place due to my personal preference.
Eating only salmon for a month would cost me about $329.2 (₴6913.2). Chicken: $148.2 (₴3112.2). Beef: $215.3 (₴4521.3).
I can save money the following ways:
Alternate fish and chicken on a weekly or bi-weekly basis
I am a strong believer in the power of mind. Strong mind is what makes elite the elite, either in sport, business or life in general. To achieve great results, to brake out of the comfort zone requires at least 101% of effort. Nothing great in the world were achieved without struggle, paint, tears and sweat. Dare to struggle, dare to win.
I will share with you the simple technique that will improve your mental toughness, will make you healthier and will boost you with the energy so you rock your day.
Few facts about your body:
Your body is tuned to optimally operate within 20-21°C (68-71°F)
125,000 km (77,671 mi) of blood vessels running through your body. It’s enough to go around the world 3 times! Just think about that for a sec.
There are two types of fat in your body: White fat and Brown fat. Brown fat is keeping your body warm by utilizing glucose and fat. Newborn babies don’t shiver as they have a lot of brown fat to keep them warm. People who live in the colder climates have more brown fat than those that are not. By exposing to cold, overweight people loose weight by fueling brown fat with the white one.
When I take ice baths:
My body closes blood flow to less important parts of my body to remain in homeostasis by keeping the core temperature above 35°C (95°F). Blood rushes from the skin and muscles into the organs to keep the body temperature within healthy range. The more cold your body gets, the more blood vessels in my my arms and legs contract to ensure that the heart, liver, kidneys get enough blood to continue working. This is why you may feel burning or tingling sensations in your toes and fingers. By taking a cold shower or ice bath you essentially train your blood vessels to open and close, just like training your muscles.
Known health benefits from exposing your body to cold:
Improves blood circulation
Activates brown fat
Trains you heart and cardiovascular system
Improves immune system by increasing the amount of leukocytes, which helps fighting against viruses, parasites, bacteria and foreign substances
Clears your skin and making it soft
Charges you with energy. Adrenaline and dopamine levels rise instantly, giving you the “energy boost”
Improves your mood
What do I get from it?
Besides the health benefits outlines above, there are additional reasons I personally found for myself:
Its a good mental training
It raises my self-confidence and gives me the sense of accomplishment. A mini-win over my mind
Speeds up the recovery after training session
It helps me to clear the mind and fight negative feelings
I get the sense of stillness and connection of my mind and body
It’s not all just about the cold!
There are two parts of the exercise: breathing and cold. The breathing part is not intended to relax you. It is there to enable you to control your mind and body.
It’s not all just about getting cold!
Ice bath, or cold shower is only the tool that allows you train your mind. Think of it as a mental gym. Just as if I would go to the gym to train my body, I dive into the ice to train my mind.
Step 1. Take contrast showers:
A contrast shower is simple. You just alternate between hot and cold water. The hot water opens your blood vessels and increases blood circulation, and the cold water contracts your blood vessels and decreases blood flow. While on the beginning you wont be able to stay long under the cold water, with time you will get more used to it and will even start to like it. When you open up the cold water, naturally you will start breathing fast. The trick here is to calm your breath by breathing in deeply and exhaling slowly. Control your breathing. Week by week slowly increase the time under the cold shower, and remember the main thing – breathe slowly and deeply. With time the ratio between hot:cold will decrease and you will be able to stay under the cold shower much longer and it won’t shock you as much as it did on the beginning. Practice it in the morning or first part of the day.
Step 2. Take ONLY cold showers:
Now that you’ve been playing with contrast showers for a while, cold water doesn’t feel as cold and you significantly increased the time you spend in the blue zone. It’s time to level up. In the morning, right after you woke up, jump into the cold shower right away. Remember: the trick here is to calm your breath – breathe slowly and deeply. Begin from 60-90 seconds, then step out of the shower and dry your body with a towel as fast as you can. Day by day slowly increase the time under the cold water.
Step 3. Superman Level:
Fill your tub with a cold water. Add the ice. Don’t think, just jump in! The more you think, the less likely you will do it. When you’re in, focus on your breath. As I already mentioned before, deep breathing is the key. If your breathing is fast and shallow, you will start panicking and your reflexes will take over, forcing you out of the ice water. Breathe slowly and deeply, watch your breath. The second you noticed your mind started wandering, come back to your breathing. Don’t sit in the ice for too long. I would say a minute would be a good start, and then slowly progress.
Your breathing is the link between the physical, material world and the spiritual, non-tangible world.
It’s all Good Mental Training
It’s been almost a year since I started taking cold showers. There wasn’t a single day that I missed a cold shower or an ice bath. When people hear that I dive into the ice they usually say: It’s just not so cold for you anymore, or, You’re from Ukraine, You’re used to it. It brings up the smile on my face to hear those excuses people find for themselves why not to do it. I took the cold shower approximately 365 time and let me tell you, there wasn’t a single time that I felt like taking it. Every time I left my warm bed and came up to the shower, my mind would give me million legitimate reasons why I shouldn’t do it. 365 time I forced myself to open the cold water. 365 times I won the internal battle between ME and MY MIND. 365 times I stepped out of the shower as a winner. 365 times I trained my mental muscle and strengthen it. The cold showers are still as cold for me as they were a year ago, but now my mind is much stronger. The ability to control the mind doesn’t stop in the tub of ice, it impacts all the areas of my life. I put the reins on the crazy “monkey mind” of mine. It allows me to step back and take control over the impulsive behaviors, I wasn’t even aware of before. It allows me to do the right things when I don’t want to, when I’m being lazy or tired. It allows me to push through discomfort and pain. It opens up the whole new, previously unreachable world.
A few useful tips:
Don’t think about taking the cold shower. Don’t think how cold and uncomfortable it will get. Don’t let your mind talk you out of it.
Focus just on stepping into the shower. Period. Just step in, the rest will follow.
When in cold, focus on what follows. Think of how good the warm water will feel afterwards and how good you will feel about yourself.
Remember, the cold shower won’t lats forever, but the mental strength will.
Obesity is a huge deal in US and many other developed countries. People are obsessed with the quality and quantity of food they eat, without monitoring their schedule of food intake. Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about Time-Restricted Eating and Intermittent Fasting as it gains popularity around North America. Different “health guru” bring up the relationship between temporal eating and obesity. I don’t believe everything I hear, so I pulled up some scholar literature from the field, to see what the science says and share my findings with you.
“Time-restricted eating(TRE)” or “time-restricted feeding (TRF)” is the approach to eating which limits the time for food intake, typically 6-8 hours a day (24 hours). People who follow this protocol consume all their food for the day in an 8-hour window, such as from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The rest of your day (16 hours) is the fasting period, meaning no calories are consumed.
Circadian rhythms dictate our bodies not just when to sleep and wake up, but they also play a huge role in regulating hormones responsible for metabolism, including Ghrelin (hunger hormone) and Leptin (fat storage hormone). Energy metabolism in our bodies has evolved to be cyclical, meaning it speeds up at certain times during the day, and slows dow when we fall asleep. This particular study got my attention as it tested whether obesity and metabolic illnesses result from bad diet or disruption of metabolic cycles (circadian rhythms). The study was published in Cell Metabolism Journal in May 17, 2012.
Lab test was done on mice, where they were subjected to time-restricted eating (ate for 8 hours, fasted for 16) and free feeding, where they were fed the same amount calories evenly throughout the day. Both groups were on a bad diet (high-fat diet) for 6 weeks. Now let’s see what happened:
The lab test showed that TRE resulted in:
Decreased predisposition to get fat (Adiposity and Leptin Resistance);
Decreased inflammation (body’s response to injury);
Improved motor coordination.
FA – free feeding FT – time-restricted feeding
Despite equal energy intake from the same bad diet, FT mice didn’t gain extra body weight. The study suggests that time-restricted eating reprograms the way our bodies metabolize energy received from food and improve body weight regulation.
In addition, TRE will help you to:
Give you body and digestion some rest and stimulates cellular repair processes, by removing toxic materials from cells;
Increase metabolism;
Decrease such brain illnesses like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s;
TRE affects endurance sport athletes:
Mice eating an unhealthy diet on TRE showed greater sports performance than mice with the same diet and no time restrictions on eating.
Conclusion:
Simply by modifying our feeding schedules without changing the amount of food we eat, we can improve our overall health and protect ourselves from illnesses associated with excessive body fat. Each human is unique and it’s difficult to suggest what is the best schedule of TRE for you. Discover for yourself through trial and error. The healthiest approach to incorporating TRE is to have a breakfast later in the day and finish dinner earlier.
You don’t want to be that FAT RAT on the left!
References:
Hatori, M., Vollmers, C., Zarrinpar, A., DiTacchio, L., Bushong, E. A., Gill, S., Leblanc, M., Chaix, A., Joens, M., Fitzpatrick, J. A., Ellisman, M. H., … Panda, S. (2012). Time-restricted feeding without reducing caloric intake prevents metabolic diseases in mice fed a high-fat diet. Cell metabolism, 15(6), 848-60.
Modern “trendy” diets, aka Keto, Paleo, Carnivor, Vegan etc., made us perceive carbohydrates as evil. There are so many things that impact the way our bodies absorb and process foods. Every person is unique, with his set of hormones, digestive microflora, physical and mental stress loads etc… When it comes to developing a healthy individual diet a lot of variables need to be taken to the account: macronutrient content, caloric load, glycemic index, meal timing and a lot more.
For a while I’ve been wondering if the order we consume nutrients during the meal impact glucose response. I’ve been thinking, will it change anything if we eat proteins first and carbs later or in reverse order. Eventually everything mixes in the stomach anyways, so is there is a difference to the order we eat? I found the answer and I am excited to share my finding with you.
After searching for a while I found this recent research made by Dr. Alpana P. Shukla that brings up the term – food order. The term “food order” refers to the sequence of the nutrients consumed during the meal. Turns out that timing of carbohydrates consumption during a meal has significant impact on the blood glucose level response. The research shown that when the carbohydrate component of the meal is consumed at the end of the meal or last, the effect on the glucose level will be way smaller that if the carbs would be consumed on the beginning of the meal. In other words, if you start your meal from eating proteins and vegetables first and save the carbs for the end, it wont cause the blood sugar level go up high. The table below shows that carbs eaten last resulted in 37% less of a blood sugar spike and 49,6% less of insulin response:
This is fascinating! Simply by switching the order you eat your food you can control you glucose and insulin levels in control and loose or maintain your weight. I am also fascinated to see how it can help people with diabetes and other insulin related deceases.
Protein pre-loading. Another, related study showed that taking whey protein drink shortly before a high-glycaemic-index meal (your favorite pancakes or pasta), lowered the insulin response by 28%:
“The results showed that over the whole 180 min post-meal period, glucose levels were reduced by 28% after whey pre-load with a uniform reduction during both early and late phases”, (Jakubowicz, D, July 10, 2014).
The study published by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in July 2005 proved the previous one:
“Whey proteins have insulinotropic effects and reduce the postprandial glycemia in healthy subjects. The mechanism is not known, but insulinogenic amino acids and the incretin hormones seem to be involved”, (Anders H Frid, July 1, 2005).
I like how they put “the mechanism is not known” in a study, but it doesn’t matter. What matters to us that is it works. Simply have a whey protein before your carb loaded meal and you won’t skyrocket your blood glucose levels up. When choosing whey protein, I suggest looking at isolate as it usually has the least amount of added sugars. Make sure you check the label for sugars content as you don’t need more than 3-5 g of sugars per scoop.
Does eating this way impact satiety? Yes it does. The research showed that protein consumed first, suppressed the ghrelin hormone level. Ghrelin is the “hunger hormone” because it stimulates appetite, increases food intake and promotes fat storage. Good news, keeping your food in order will make you feel more full and you will eat less.
Here is the study published by Diabetes Care journal. The experiment was done in 3 ways:
Carbohydrate-first meal: carbohydrate (bread and orange juice), followed 10 min later by protein (chicken) and vegetables;
Carbohydrate-last meal: protein and vegetables, followed 10 min later by carbohydrate;
Sandwich: all meal components together, each half consumed over 10 min with a 10-min interval in between.
Below are the results:
Main takeaways:
The order in which you eat carbs and proteins matter. It is not only “how much” and “what not to eat”. Optimal timing of carbohydrate consumption during a meal have a big impact on blood glucose levels and as result on your health and body composition;
You can loose weight by simply eating protein and vegetables first and carbohydrates at the end;
Never eat carbohydrates alone. They should be consumed as a part of the meal, followed by protein intake;
Taking a whey protein drink before meal reduces blood glucose spike;
Eating proteins first make you feel more full for longer;
References:
Shukla AP, Dickison M, Coughlin N, et al. The impact of food order on postprandial glycaemic excursions in prediabetes. Diabetes Obes Metab. 2018;1–5. https://doi.org/10.1111/dom.13503
Aronne, L. J. (2018, February 23). Effect of Food Order on Ghrelin Suppression. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2018/02/22/dc17-2244
Shukla, A. P., Iliescu, R. G., Thomas, C. E., & Aronne, L. J. (2015, July 01). Food Order Has a Significant Impact on Postprandial Glucose and Insulin Levels. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/38/7/e98
Jakubowicz, D., Froy, O., Ahrén, B., Boaz, M., Landau, Z., Bar-Dayan, Y., . . . Wainstein, J. (2014, July 10). Incretin, insulinotropic and glucose-lowering effects of whey protein pre-load in type 2 diabetes: A randomised clinical trial. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00125-014-3305-x?TB_iframe=true&width=921.6&height=921.6
Anders H Frid, Mikael Nilsson, Jens Juul Holst, Inger ME Björck; Effect of whey on blood glucose and insulin responses to composite breakfast and lunch meals in type 2 diabetic subjects, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 82, Issue 1, 1 July 2005, Pages 69–75, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/82.1.69
