Home > Work > Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance
1 " But for endurance athletes, doing so is a little different because macronutrient balance also has a major impact on training performance and many athletes do not consume enough carbohydrate in particular to maximize that performance. Any measure that boosts your training performance will also tend to make you leaner. "
― Matt Fitzgerald , Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance
2 " While it pays to be light and lean in all endurance sports, there is thankfully no single, ideal body type for any specific endurance sport. The variety you see in the physiques of world-class cyclists, runners, and other endurance athletes can be surprising. "
3 " For many, the road to becoming an endurance athlete began with a diet. Maybe this is your story. The guy who once had regularly ordered the bacon burger was suddenly rolling out special requests at a restaurant—keep the toast dry, hold the dressing, boil the egg, steam the vegetables. For most successful athletes, somewhere along the way a new lifestyle emerged and the focus shifted from dieting to performance. Performance "
4 " Lack of time is the most commonly cited excuse for not exercising. But surveys suggest that those who exercise regularly are just as busy with their jobs, families, and other responsibilities as those who don’t work out. So the time excuse is just that: an excuse. We’re all pressed for time, yet we all have time for our highest priorities. If exercise is important to you, you will find the time to do it. Consider the case of David Morken, an age-group triathlete whom "
5 " Body weight was found to have a statistically moderate effect on total race time, while body-fat percentage had a large effect on total race time and a moderate effect (bordering on large) on swim, bike, and run splits. Both body weight and body-fat percentage were more strongly correlated with split times and total race time than are training variables such as average weekly training time. "
6 " The six steps that the highest-performing athletes most often take to attain their racing weight are by definition the most effective weight-management methods for endurance athletes because the objective of weight management in endurance sports is better performance "
7 " The practice of nutrient timing, or consuming the right nutrients at the right times throughout the day, will enable you to partition your energy more effectively and achieve your racing weight. "
8 " Many weight-loss diets have been based on the idea that to lose weight, a dieter has to maintain the perfect balance of these three “macronutrients” in daily eating. That none of these diets can agree on the magical macronutrient ratio is not the only evidence that it does not exist. "
9 " Concentrating your protein intake in the latter part of the day will maximize muscle regeneration in the evening and through the night. "
10 " The common methods of performance weight management work—they improve performance—and are therefore more or less required for sustained success in endurance sports. Dieting, in contrast, tends to sabotage performance, making sustained competitive success difficult or impossible. "
11 " Beets are a flavorful, versatile vegetable with a very high concentration of a class of antioxidants known as betalains. Research has shown that betalains have uniquely powerful anti-inflammatory properties, so they help athletes with postworkout recovery. "
12 " The most effective way to prevent off-season weight gain from getting out of hand is to set a specific weight-gain limit. I suggest you try to limit your off-season weight gain to no more than 8 percent of your optimal performance weight. "
13 " FASTING WORKOUTS. A fasting workout is a long, moderate-intensity workout undertaken in a fasting state—that is, without a meal beforehand and without carbohydrate consumption on the bike. When you deprive your muscles of carbohydrate in a long workout, they burn a lot more fat. Such workouts also boost general fat-burning capacity. I suggest that you perform one fasting workout per week during a quick start. "
14 " the Harvard School of Public Health study found that yogurt attenuated long-term weight gain better than any other food, including fruits and vegetables. "
15 " Where do such numbers come from? I’ll tell you where they don’t come from: They don’t come from the body-weight tables and formulas created by health experts. These tables and formulas, which include height-weight charts used by life insurance companies and body-mass index guidelines used widely by doctors, are far too general to help individual men and women determine an ideal body weight. "
16 " The benefits of weight lifting on running performance were demonstrated in a 2008 study by Norwegian researchers (Støren et al. 2008). Seventeen well-trained runners were divided into two groups. Members of one group continued with their normal run training, while members of the other group added to their routine three weekly strength sessions consisting of four, four-repetition sets of half-squats using their four-repetition maximal load (i.e., the heaviest weight they could lift four times). After eight weeks, members of the strength group exhibited not only the expected gains in maximal strength and rate of force development, but also significant improvements in running economy (5 percent) and in time to exhaustion at maximal aerobic running speed (21.3 percent). The control group showed no improvement in any of the measured parameters. "
17 " WHEN THE MUSCLES BURN MORE CARBOHYDRATE DURING A WORKOUT, THEY TEND TO BURN MORE FAT AFTER THE WORKOUT. "
18 " The problem for these individuals was that, while they did lose a significant amount of weight through dietary restriction, this very restriction seemed to prevent them from gaining any power through sprint interval training. More specifically, Lunn suggested, inadequate protein intake kept their muscles from adapting to the stress imposed by the sprints. "
19 " How does lifting weights enhance running economy and endurance? Other studies have shown that it works by increasing the stiffness of the leg when the foot hits the ground (Dumke et al. 2010). The legs function as springs during running. Physics teaches us that a stiffer spring loses less energy when it lands and bounces higher. Your legs will do the same thing if you strengthen them in the gym. "
20 " Even as low-carb diets were validated as a means to lose weight, however, their theoretical underpinnings were dismantled by other research. Careful studies revealed that the weight loss that resulted from low-carb diets had little to do with ketones, insulin, and cravings. The real reason people lost weight on the Atkins diet and other low-carb diets was that they ate fewer calories. Scientists were able to show that when calories were held equal, low-carb and low-fat diets yielded equal amounts of weight loss. "
