I'm Sam Impey and I'm the nutritionist for the Team Wiggins cycling team
I'm Scott Davies and I ride for Team Wiggins
I think it's important to state early on that there's probably no one
optimum race weight. Depending on what your event is and what type of rider you
are they'll change the optimum race weight that you race at
What you really want to do is to maximize the functional mass so it doesn't
necessarily have to be about losing weight, it can often be about shifting
where the mass in the body is, so you don't want to be using rapid weight loss
strategies because you'll compromise your ability to train and potentially
impact on health as well
It can be a fine balance between trying to lose weight and also training effectively
I think you've got to pay a bit of attention to making sure you're well fueled
If you're trying to do high quality efforts you know you can only store so
much fuel and then when you eventually hit the wall it's not a nice feeling
The bulk of my sessions will be harder ones – bread and butter sessions
your intervals and your efforts – that in itself is going to help you achieve
your race weight and burn more calories. I'll occasionally do some
fasted rides or some low carb rides essentially just out riding my bike
I'm not making a conscious effort to hold a certain power or anything
Quite often what we do is advocate that you do a mixture
of fasted and fueled rides and it's important not just to think about fasted
rides as as a weight-loss strategy, it's also training the body to be able to
burn fat as a fuel source. Incorporating fasting rides into a training program
it's essential also to manage that and balance that with doing fuelled rides
as well because of course when you're racing you know you're going to be well fuelled
What you want to do is maintain that metabolic flexibility and your
ability to use fat as a fuel source and use carbohydrate as a fuel source
The recovery process is where adaptation takes place and so the training is what
causes the adaptation, and the recovery is what allows it to build in and take
hold, and that is what increases your performance
It's one thing training hard
but I think the recovery processes is equally as important
Carbohydrate is the predominant fuel source for most of the training rides that
people will do. It's also the key determining factor in fatigue so
avoiding... people often speak about bonking or hitting a wall
that actually occurs when you run out of carbohydrates so it's the
predominant driving factor in what regulates your ability to train and perform
If you're doing rides of up to an hour or less then you
probably don't need to take on any carbohydrates for that type of
training, so we'd recommend just water or something like the
five electrolytes, and then going beyond that to hours two or even hour three
you look to get somewhere in the region of forty to sixty grams of
carbohydrate per hour. Going into the longer rides, your three hour plus type
rides, then we probably look to recommendations in the region of
60 to 90 grams per hour of carbohydrate
Essentially what you want to do during
training as well as fueling the training that you're doing is to train the gut to be
able to handle and digest and make the macronutrients in the food that you've
eaten available to the muscles
Using a variety of different products that
replicate the types of foods you're going to use during racing is the best
way to fuel the training rides
So when I'm on the bike I'll tend to take a
mixture of solid food and gels, stuff like the hydro gels,
the natural energy bars, maybe a couple of rice cakes, mix it up a bit because when
you're on the bike for say four or five hours the last thing you want is for it
to become a bit monotonous
The benefits of using gels or purpose-built, custom-designed sport nutrition products
is that they're designed in a way that they provide what is shown in
research to be the optimal mix of different types of carbohydrates and
that can translate into a benefit for performance when you increase that
over a longer period of time. When you're looking at the kind of composition of
fluids that you should drink when you're on the bike, obviously it's important to
drink to thirst so we would advocate that you follow your body
It's a pretty well adapted piece of kit
From a hydration perspective what you're looking to do is to create what we call the greatest osmotic pressure
Just water alone is good for hydrating but actually adding some
minerals and some salts to that, so adding electrolytes to a solution, can
increase the rate at which you can rehydrate or stay hydrated during exercise
Normally when I'm doing low carb or fasted I'll get up, have a cup of coffee
maybe 500 mil or so with an electrolyte tab in it and then on the
bike with me I'll take maybe two bottles, one with an electrolyte tab in it
and the other with some whey powder just to make sure I've topped up on protein
The purpose of those rides is to try and burn as much fat as possible and then you
want to try and avoid the body eating into your muscle
In terms of what do we eat around training, when you're off the bike
just day-to-day, with all the guys on the team we advocate a food first
approach so it's essential that you base all your dietary intake
around good meals and well structured meals. We tend to promote a lot
of fruits and vegetables of different colours and different textures as well
Obviously different colours have different active ingredients
Different textures provide more or less fibre in the diet. We combine that with
unprocessed and as natural as possible types of carbohydrates so rice, legumes,
beans that kind of stuff just for an easily digestible and palatable source of carbohydrates
White meats and fish are the predominant sources of protein so things like chicken and
turkey, cod, haddock. Oily fish maybe once or twice a week just to provide some kind
of omega fatty acids... The great thing about kind of having well-structured
meals is that you can incorporate good healthy snacks in between them
The kind of things that we'd recommend are yoghurts with fruits and nuts or
wraps, fresh fruits on their own, generally speaking in a smaller quantity
so it really is a snack as opposed to a a small meal if that makes sense
I think as a pro cyclist it's a bit of a misconception that you can get
away with eating what you want. Of course when you're training hard and
racing hard your calorie intake tends to be quite high
If you do pay close attention to what you're eating and your overall diet
I think it does filter through your overall performance, whether it
be improved recovery or better power-to-weight... it's certainly going to help you
A pre bed snack... again this tends to be protein focused just to sort
of really drive that recovery aspect throughout the night as well
Yes, I do use quite a lot of the protein products whether it be in powder or bar format
The convenience of them is great
If I'm ever pushed for time a Jaffa Cake is quite good, and then another flavour is vanilla coconut
which tastes quite nice as well
In summary when you're looking to achieve your optimum race weight
you're looking to maximize that functional mass and get into the best shape possible
I think it's essential to plan and to structure the way that you want to achieve those goals
and build a nutrition and training plan that's appropriate
Incorporating fasted or sleep-low rides into your your training as well as doing
the fueled rides, sustaining a healthy diet or a balanced diet
predominantly from natural foods and eating regularly throughout
the day, incorporating snacks in between meals so that you can sustain that
healthy balance of food across the day to replenish and recover from
training and to fuel the next ride as required
Yeah I mean in terms of getting
down to race weight I never say it's easy as such, but I think
with a bit of discipline and a bit of hard work it is certainly achievable and
you've just got to keep it sensible, keep your eye on the end goal, and you will get there