Month: March 2010

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Dietary Supplements for Athletes

If there is a chronically recurring topic/question I get or see it involves the issue of dietary supplements.  Both athletes and the general public are endlessly fascinated by them with unscrupulous marketing companies taking advantage of that fascination.  To address the issue, I’m presenting more or less the entirety of  Chapter 11 from my Applied Nutrition for Mixed Sports Book/DVD Bundle.  This list is not meant to be comprehensive and there are always newer products that may show promise down the road.

Chapter 11: Dietary Supplements for Athletes

If there is a single area of sports nutrition that is constantly changing (in terms of the products being marketed) and which athletes are always interested in it’s dietary supplements. As I mentioned in Chapter 2 of this book, I consider supplementation to be the third tier of the pyramid (after overall daily nutrition and around workout nutrition) in terms of what athletes should concern themselves with.… Keep Reading

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How We Get Fat

A while back, I did a Q&A about excess dietary protein and whether or not it could lead to fat storage.  The short answer was that, while the biochemical pathway exists, the likelihood of it ever happening are roughly zero.   For some reason, despite my answer being written in what I felt was a clear way, many people seemed confused.  Among other silly inferences, people somehow heard me saying that overeating carbs or protein can’t make someone fat.  And that was not true.  So to clear it up, let me look at the simple issue of how we get fat.

Energy Balance

.At a fundamental level, fat storage occurs when caloric intake exceeds caloric output and there is a surplus energy balance.  Now, I know that a lot of people claim that basic thermodynamics don’t hold for humans. Simply, they are wrong.  Invariably, the studies used to support this position are based on a faulty data set: to whit, they are drawing poor conclusions about what people SAY that they are eating.… Keep Reading

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No Regrets Part 8

In No Regrets: Part 7 I talked about that final year.  The ups of summer training, the downs of the ice and the final realization that I couldn’t reach my goal.  I had overtrained and had to examine what I wanted to do.  And I had decided I was going back to inline.

Ice to Inline: Part 1

There is little to no tradition of ice speedskaters switching to inline since there’s really no point.  Ice speedskating is an Olympic sport, inline has failed to get into the games for years and that probably won’t change.  Rex had told me that ice speedskaters who do switch find inline easy.  They can do straightaways forever.  Corners are what’s hard on the ice.  Without those, it’s just a matter of having an engine and dealing with the tedium of skating in a straight line for an hour or more staring at someones butt.… Keep Reading

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No Regrets Part 7

Continuing from No Regrets: Part 6, it’s the start of my final season on the ice.  What would happen?

Summer Training 2009

We got straight into summer training and it was on almost immediately.   We were on inline once per week, short-track twice weekly, drylanding, biking and doing weights.  And everything was clicking.  I was starting to get comfortable on the short-track and inline workouts were going well.  Dryland had always gone well and I was getting stronger on the bike.  My technique was finally catching up with my fitness which was at a lifetime peak.

I was literally on the beginner performance improvement curve again with nearly every workout a PR on both inline and short-track.  Either I’d skate a faster average lap time or the same speed for more laps or whatever.   After years of frustration it was a very nice place to be again.

For example, the previous year my best sprint lap on short-track was 14.5 seconds. … Keep Reading

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No Regrets Part 6

I described speed skating training a bit in No Regrets Part 5.  But ultimately you don’t train to train.  You train to race.

Ice Speedskating Racing: An Overview

People used to ask me all the time when racing season started and in this regard, ice speed skating is that much stranger.  Outside of a few events that nobody cares about, there really isn’t a racing series except for the top skaters at least not in the United States.  They skate World Cup and World Championships (both the overall and individual distances) and there are a handful of other events at most.

For everybody else, here’s how it works:

You train your brains out to skate practice time trials.  Once these started they were usually held at least twice per month from about October to March.  Typically you sign up for two distances (you really can’t physically do more than that) and go race to post a time butt-early on Saturday.… Keep Reading