THREE on fueling your workout and recovery
“THREE is a new lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE’s mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?”
• DINNER AT HOME In this week’s YouTube video, THREE’s resident Olympic triathlete and editor-at-large Joe Maloy shares a simple ‘taco night’ dinner that goes heavy on the fish, fats and veggies with limited carbs. While nutrition is ultimately a personal decision, Joe explains why he tends to frontload his carbs earlier in the day and focuses mostly on protein and fats in the evenings.
• HIP EXERCISES TO IMPROVE RUNNING By now, many of you have probably decided to transition into the off-season with the hope of a return to racing in 2021. The off-season allows us to focus on making changes to our form and improvements to our technique that might get less attention when we’re focused on training for a race. One often-overlooked component of running is the role the hips play when it comes to running mechanics and stride. For the article To Improve Your Running, Try These Six Hip Exercises, The Wall Street Journal interviewed a physical therapist with USA Track & Field who detailed how to strengthen the most crucial—and often overlooked—area of the body for runners: the hips. “The hips are the linchpin of every runner’s body, says Jerrica Thomas, an Orlando, Fla.-based physical therapist with USA Track & Field.”
“‘You can lose a lot of power if you have weak hips,’ says the 31-year-old former University of Louisiana-Monroe track star. When you run, your legs aren’t only moving forward and back. The thigh bone, or femur, rotates and tilts in the hip socket. Any weaknesses make the joint unstable and can contribute to poor running mechanics and a restricted stride.”
• RUNNING VS ROWING As we head into fall and the season leaves us with fewer outdoor training days, you might be inclined to shift toward indoor cycling or treadmill running. But there’s an open question as to whether indoor rowing can provide a more effective workout than running in a shorter amount of time. Well+Good compares and contrasts the benefits in this month’s column Rowing vs Running: Which One Gives You the Best Workout. Like most debates, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve. “Both rowing and running can provide an extremely beneficial workout in many different ways,” writes Well+Good’s senior writer and health coach.
• BIKE HARD FOR BETTER MEMORY New research suggests that a 15-minute bike ride could be all it takes to kickstart better brain health. Bicycling.com sums up research published in the journal Scientific Reports that concludes that “hopping on your bike—even if you have a limited amount of time in your schedule—can result in some pretty solid benefits for your brain.” First, the caveats: the study was done on a small number of relatively-inactive men in a short time frame. Now, the takeaway: cycling at a high intensity for a short period of time resulted in better memory performance, according to the study’s lead author.
“Because researchers also did blood tests and functional MRI scans, they were able to determine that the hippocampus and the caudate nucleus—parts of the brain associated with memory and motor processes—were fired up after the more intense cycling session.”
• 2020’s UNEXPECTED BRAIN BENEFIT If you’re ready to push fast-forward on 2020, don’t give up just yet. Health and wellness publication Elemental suggests that All This 2020 Tumult Could Make Your Brain Sharper. The publication interviewed Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman, who also hosts PBS’s The Brain and serves as a scientific adviser on HBO’s Westworld. Eagleman says there is a potential silver lining to this year that has tested all of our adaptive abilities: It knocks us all off our hamster wheels.
“All of us have spent our lives optimizing our function in the world. And what this year has done is force us all off the path of least resistance. And that’s what the brain needs all the time. Challenges force it to rewire itself and push what it can do.”
• ICONIC POOLS AROUND THE WORLD Who doesn’t appreciate a picture-perfect pool? While our local gym and community pools keep us in shape on a day-to-day basis, it’s always inspiring to check out architectural pools in exotic locations. Arch Daily has published a collection of a dozen prized pools that go beyond an aquatic center’s typical form and function. “These structures explore ideas of light and space spanning millennia, from Pakistan's "Great Bath" at the site of Mohenjo-Daro and Ancient Greek palaestras to contemporary swimming complexes.”
• ODE TO THE REST DAY This week marked USA Triathlon’s National Athlete Recovery Day — encouraging triathletes “to take recovery as seriously as their training — not only after a season-culminating race, but as a key element of their overall training cycle.” To mark the occasion, longtime triathlon coach and endurance-training writer Will Kirousis penned a blog post for USAT’s Multisport Lab. In the post, Kirousis writes that athletes should honor the rest day just as they would a training day.
“Do NOT turn the rest day into the ‘I missed a session, so I’ll move it there day’! If you have a long bike-run or a tough interval run, would you slide a missed workout to that day and just jam it in there? NO! Do NOT treat rest as less valuable than work – doing so always leads to problems.”
FOOD = FUEL
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Nutrition can be a polarizing topic. This week’s newsletter addresses diet and nutrition, but we will never tell you what you should or shouldn’t put into your body. Food should be both enjoyable and functional, but society’s messaging is mostly focused on food’s enjoyment. As athletes, we need to start by recognizing that messaging and saying, “I need more than enjoyment from my meals. I need to know how this food is going to work for me!” There is solid research surrounding carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Even if we all can’t agree on how something tastes, knowing how these macronutrients work will inform your decisions on which foods to “hire” in order to meet your individual energy demands.
Hunger is only one cue that triggers an individual’s decision to eat. Taste, smell, emotions, availability, affordability, advertising, and habit play a much greater role in one’s food selection process than most realize. These additional influences make us more likely to make nutritional decisions based on information other than a certain food’s nutritional profile.
My experience as an elite athlete has taught me to think of food in the same way that most people think of drugs—something ingested to create an intended effect. Knowing a food’s caloric value is central to this process. Calories get a bad rap because they hang out on hips, bellies, and butts when they’re not put to use, but we'd be powerless without them. Calories fuel daily functions like breathing, pumping the heart, moving around, and even thinking. Obviously, athletes move around more than the average individual, so we need to consume more calories.
Calories are provided through the macronutrients carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Now here is where things get interesting! Carbohydrates and proteins each provide 4 calories per gram, while fat offers 9 calories per gram. Our bodies use that energy differently depending which macronutrient provides the calorie. Imagine for a moment that there is no more COVID and you’re attending a big party:
Carbohydrates: These are the partiers on the dance floor. You go to them when you need an injection of energy. They come and go. Carbohydrates will jump to action shortly after being consumed, giving an energy boost, and then wear themselves out until they’re exhausted. But if you don’t wear them out, they’ll convert to fat, chilling until the songs start playing again. Make sure the DJ keeps them dancing!
Proteins: Imagine proteins as you would drinks during your night of revelry. The human body can’t efficiently digest more than about 20g of protein in a single serving, so it’s best to spread protein intake throughout your day. You wouldn’t order all your drinks for the night on your first trip to the bar, so remember that the next time you see 40+g in a protein shake. Proteins drive physical changes within your body, and their primary function is to build and repair tissue, especially muscle tissue.
Fats: These are the staff at the event. They help everything run smoothly and hang around long after everyone else is gone, making sure the venue is ready for the next party. At 9 calories per gram, fats contain the most energy per gram, take the longest to pass through our system, and you don’t usually notice them until there are either too many or too few around. Fats are crucially important to keep endurance athletes healthy and consistently training since they provide energy reserve, and work to support both organs and connective tissue. They also help us feel “full” after a meal and work to help our brains sustain focus.
Research on nutrition in athletics has evolved over the years, and it would be naive to think we’ve finally got it all “figured out.” Begin to recognize the variables that are influencing your nutritional decisions, and pay a little bit more attention to how a given food’s nutritional profile impacts your work. You may work better on a diet that is slightly higher in fat, and another athlete might work better off a diet that is higher in carbs. That’s fine. Trust your experience.
This is complex stuff, and I’ve only fed you an introduction. While there are plenty of dieticians, nutritionists, and gurus out there ready to sell you the “next big thing,” at the end of the day, you are the expert on your own body. Awareness, experimentation, and enjoyment should drive this process. Nutrition is a lifelong journey.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
Here are three of Joe Maloy’s favorite food rules:
• Refuel from a workout within 30 minutes
• Target approximately 4g carbohydrate: 1g protein for post-workout recovery meals, limit the fat during this meal (click here for the recipe to Joe's 5-ingredient post-workout recovery shake)
• Consume 150-400 calories per hour during exercise, adjusting to the higher end for more intense activity and to the lower end for aerobic workouts
Of course, as the saying goes, consult a professional or your doctor before starting any nutritional or training regimen. Enjoy the fuel. We hope to see you on a starting line soon.
