Cold weather indoor training

This is the view out of our backyard gate a couple of hours ago. IT has been here for a while now (IT = cold weather indoor training) and IT can be hard. Cold weather training isn’t quite as nice as warm weather training, unless you are a penguin. If you don’t like being outdoors when it drops below zero there are still lots of ways to get an effective training session in and even make it sport specific.

For cycling it’s pretty easy, you have an indoor trainer or a set of rollers. With these an athlete can train to the specifics of their goal events by setting up the training sessions with an eye towards micro and macro blocks. You can guide your training session using wattage targets, kilojoules, heart rate targets, or perceived exertion; of course my preference is training by wattage due to its precise, repeatable, recordable and trendable abilities. As the saying goes ‘Watts don’t lie’ and that’s why I like them, they accurately record exactly what you are doing. Heart rate and perceived exertion on the other hand are notoriously incorrect for a variety of reasons.

Using targets within a training session typically has some form of interval work applied, part of the interval work may be something like this:

’2 x 20min intervals at a target wattage of CP20 minus 10% with 5min recovery between each interval’

This form of training session is perfect for indoor training as it is short and to the point and in this case could be beneficial in raising Functional Threshold Power (FTP). Of course there are hundreds of ways to put training sessions together indoors and the decision on which one to do is most commonly dictated by the athlete’s needs and that can be drawn from their specific goal events, their state of recovery, their surrounding training sessions and several other things.

But what if you are dreading jumping on the stationary bike? As the cold weather sets in an athlete can also start to incorporate cross-training which can be complimentary to their specific goal events. Two perfect examples of cross-training for a racer who is surrounded by deep snow is snowshoeing and cross-country skiing; both of these sports are aerobically challenging and a refreshing break from indoor training.

If getting in the snow isn’t your thing and you need a break from the ‘normal’ stationary bike routines there are loads of ways to create challenging and beneficial routines that aren’t just mindless slog-fests. I use dozens of non-traditional sessions with Forward Momentum Coaching athletes to help break up the indoor weeks.

At some point, nearly all athletes will find themselves training indoors, how you do it will determine how your Spring season looks. Next Spring is too late for regrets, sort out your training strategy now and your Spring season will be a great start to the year.

Calories in versus calories out.

We had some friends over for dinner this evening, always a good time. At some point just after dinner someone stated they had heard a statistic that went kind of like this – in the last three months of the year it’s estimated the N. American population sees an average weight gain of 11 pounds. Disturbing, as that is pretty much a extra 1lb of fat gain per week, or in caloric terms an additional 3500 calories per week. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Athletes at this time of year (non-racing time of year) don’t always keep a close track of what they are eating, or their portion sizes based on the various holiday gatherings that start to occur. And since some of their event goals are far off on the time horizon the nutrition discipline may not be in place as ‘the event is months away’. Personally I think a lot of nutritional mistakes occur because of the combined ‘off-season’ and ‘lot’s of time to get my act together’ mentality.

I know some athletes approach the nutrition side of the house as a simple calories in versus calories out. In other words, if your Basal Metabolic Rate is 1400 calories per day and you are expending 600 calories per day due to exercise then your total calories burned is 2000, if you eat 2400 calories that day you are showing a positive 400 calories and you are well on your way to an additional 1lb of fat for the week. Yes I know I simplified the entire caloric equation but it will suffice for my main point which is this, I don’t like to look at nutrition as simply as calories in versus calories out…

A calorie is a unit of measure but it isn’t a unit of quality. Case in point, McDonald’s versus a quality home-cooked meal. If you eat a greasy Big Mac hamburger from McDonald’s along with their even greasier fries and wash it down with a soda you are looking at approx 1350 calories and 1500mg of sodium. 1350 cals that’s the equivalent of 20 apples. If you are paying attention to your daily nutrition and you eat that meal at McDonald’s that leaves you with only 650 calories for the rest of the day (from the time you wake up until you go to bed) if you want to stay calorically neutral. If you decide to skip that days exercise (600 calories) you now have 50 calories left for the entire day, 50 calories. Your McDonald’s trip blew your entire day’s calorie budget.

But like I said calories only measure quantity they don’t measure quality and I am firm on my stance that a Big Mac, fries and soda are pretty much the opposite of what an athlete should be eating. I like to call it clean food versus dirty food. Clean food would be things like lean protein from farms that demonstrate a high level of quality through their feed source and animal husbandry, or quality fruit and vegetables from quality farms that show care in their fertilizer and pesticide protocols. Clean food is clean fuel and after several weeks of clean fuel you think faster, move better, recover quicker, and feel healthier. Dirty food brings with it all the sludge you get from overly processed poor quality ingredients, beef raised on corn feed, vegetables grown in dead soil with a lot of chemical fertilizer, etc; Big Mac, fries and soda make my dirty food list. Your entire day’s caloric consumption in one dirty meal at McDonald’s? Why do people eat McDonald’s? Really, I have no idea.

Is it the perceived time convenience of lining up in your car behind six other cars, waiting to get dirty food and then eating it on the drive home? The time would have been better spent cooking real food (quality food) in your own kitchen. Is it laziness because you don’t want to boil water on a stove? Then go home and don’t go near the stove just make an almond butter, banana and strawberry jam sandwich. And I hear from somewhere out in the crowd, “But that kind of sandwich isn’t a proper meal for supper” my only reply is “And McDonald’s is a proper meal?”.

Calories in versus calories out… it’s so simple but it’s incorrectly focused. Quality in versus calories out is just as simple but a far better way to look at things. Clean fuel is a healthy lifestyle choice that pays dividends for athletes and non-athletes alike, try it, shop and eat clean for the next 30 days and I’m sure you will notice a difference.

Welcome to the Forward Momentum Coaching blog

In the blog you will find updated information regarding coaching, training, racing and my thoughts on a variety of topics. As this is the first post I will keep it brief as I shake out the new website.

Drop back in again to see if anything catches your eye.