Despite the not-so-pleasant title, “Slow Fat Triathlete” offers some great info on “How to live your athletic dreams in the body you have now.”

Click here to view more info on this book: Slow Fat Triathlete: Live Your Athletic Dreams in the Body You Have Now

One of the great thing about the triathlon community is all the great people you meet. Paul at F2R is one of those people, and has decided to share this great article with you guys!

What Is The Ultimate Freestyle Stroke?

This has been a lifelong pursuit. It must’ve been around the year 1975, I saw on the cover of Swimming World a picture of a guy in a pool and the caption read “fastest man in a swimsuit.” Since that day I have been swimming, training, reading, talking, teaching, videotaping, coaching and lecturing on what it would take to have the stroke that would win a person that title. I wouldn’t call myself a fanatic, just passionate.

The other day my wife, who is a physical therapist and also a swimmer, brought to my attention that we haven’t done a lecture on the biomechanics of swimming in a long time. Then she made a comment there is a big change in freestyle and coaches are now only teaching front quadrant swimming. I had to laugh because she made it sound as if nothing else in the stroke mattered. Of course she knows this isn’t true, but it sounded as if since the last time I combed the internet researching swimming, the laws of physics have changed and the human body has evolved into a more fish-like structure. You would think something like this would at the very least make the news. I guess I missed it.

The good news is she stoked my smoldering fire enough to tap the old noggin and share some light on the almost mystical quest for the ultimate freestyle stroke. There is a not-so-small niche of people who strongly desire to swim freestyle faster and at the very least more effectively. I have witnessed those I refer to as “swimmers with great potential,” hoping to improve, pay large amounts of money to instructors who tend to mystify the stroke and sometimes turn the teaching into a near fanatical religious pursuit. So I want to do what I have been meaning to do for a long time. I am going to write a series of essays, all defining elements of what I believe make the ultimate freestyle stroke. Oh, and it’s free of charge you just have to suffer through my writings at the cost of time.

Where do I begin? The first question: what makes a swimmer the fastest swimmer in a swimsuit? Genetics plays a major role, but genetics is certainly not the end of the story. Technique is huge, I mean huge, but not everything and certainly not as simple as “if I do it right I will swim faster.” There is a mystery to doing it right because doing it right involves a chain of elements that cannot be simplified into the new and latest fad of teaching fast swimming. As an instructor or coach, the very first thing I look at is the body position of the swimmer. So my first essay/article is body balance and from there I will continue with more elements and hopefully the process will demystify freestyle. I am sure I will contradict some instructor or coach who has packaged the technique into an ideology that states any other way of teaching is wrong. I’m at peace with that and when it comes to swimming I certainly don’t think I walk on water. I have been around the pool deck to know there are many ways to teach and say the same thing. I just happen to believe my way is effective. Oh, and this is not my own knowledge but integrates a collective collaboration of wisdom from coaches who have thought much longer and harder than I have on the subject. I am just excited to share my understanding as I see it works.

I hope you enjoy and if you would like to ask or discuss any of the ideas in more detail feel free to drop me an e-mail at Paul@f2r.com.

© 2007 Paul Lundgren of F2R - Manufacturer of Triathlon Wetsuits
Al rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the copyright owners.

For more information about F2R Triathlon Wetsuits and Paul’s other projects, please click here

Here’s another kick-butt article from Trismarter.com. I Hope you enjoy!

During each triathlon season there is always one nutrition topic that really grips me. This year has been no exception and it hit me early: Fat loading. Yes, that’s right, fat loading. A couple of weeks ago, a client of mine was getting ready for a very long cycling session and he asked me to develop a pre-race nutrition plan for him to trial. We dialed in his hydration and fuel regimen and I detailed a carbohydrate loading schedule for him to follow to the gram. Later that day he emailed me the following question: What about fat loading?

In the past, I had approached fat loading with a high degree of skepticism. This time I took a different angle. Could fat loading actually work? Could it somehow improve performance? Under what circumstances would it make sense to fat load? With fervor, I began a quest to review the current research on record to see if I could find even partial answers to these questions.

Could fat loading actually work?

Trained muscles have higher levels of enzymes that promote the potential use of fat as a part of the energy mix during exercise than do untrained muscles. This enzymatic difference is particularly enhanced in the endurance athlete. Intramuscular triacylglycerol (IMTG), or stored fat, in working muscle is a critical energy supply during endurance exercise lasting greater than 90 minutes at a sustained intensity of 70% V02 max or less. Trained muscles of the endurance athlete have more stored fat. This is an adaptive mechanism in order to conserve the limited supply of carbohydrate stores. Perhaps increasing dietary fat could promote a greater carbohydrate sparing effect! It could actually work if there was a “fat adaptation” to the fat loading diet regimen.

In the initial studies on this topic, researchers compared a high fat diet to a high carbohydrate diet. Both diets were equal in calories and the subjects consumed the respective diets for 5 days. On Day 6, subjects consumed a high carbohydrate diet and fasted overnight. The next day, the subjects cycled for two hours at 70% V02 max and then completed an exhaustive 30-minute time trial. Only water was consumed during the exercise session. The researchers found that the fat loading diet had a glycogen sparing effect. Although there was not a statistically significant difference in the time trial performances between the two diets, there was a trend toward improved performance on the fat loading diet.

To further examine the topic, the same group of researchers did a similar study, but the only difference was that they had subjects consume a high carbohydrate pre-exercise meal and gave subjects a carbohydrate/electrolyte drink every 20 minutes during the exercise session. Relative to the first study, the amount of fat burned during exercise was less, but still more than when compared to the carbohydrate-loaded diet. Other studies evaluating the effect of short-term fat loading came to the same conclusion: there is a relative fat adaptation that produces a greater utilization of fat as a fuel during endurance exercise.

Could fat loading improve performance?

It seems as though the difference in the effect on performance is dependent on the duration and intensity of activity. The majority of research studies to date on fat loading conclude that it does not translate into a performance advantage when compared to carbohydrate-loading regimens. Again, what the research literature consistently found was that fat loading failed to provide an improvement in performance. In fact, it had a negative effect on performance, and subjects had increased ratings of perceived exertion for exercise at high intensities for shorter time periods when compared to carbohydrate loading regimens. However, and of greater interest to triathletes, the performance results for exercise bouts at submaximal efforts greater than 2 hours showed a similar result to the carbohydrate loading regimens. In other words, it did not hinder performance. To me, this is noteworthy and worthy of further research efforts.

Under what circumstances would it make sense to fat load?

Perhaps during certain endurance events such as an Ironman distance triathlon and ultra-endurance events; I say “perhaps” because the research is limited in this area. Nonetheless, it is quite intriguing.

For example, a recent case study of 2 trained rowers competing in an ultra-endurance event (40-90 day event covering 3,000 nautical miles) found an improvement in performance when the subjects followed a high-fat diet compared to a high carbohydrate diet. A similar result was found on subjects cycling for 5 hours at 65-79% V02 max. This result is particularly interesting as it relates to the Ironman cycling distance at similar intensities.

Conclusion

Giving specific recommendations on how to fat load is too premature at this time. Fat loading appears to have promise for certain endurance events (i.e. Ironman distance) and ultra-endurance events. Further research is needed to better define the optimal parameters of fat loading for improved, sport-specific performance. I believe the early research on fat loading has shown that, as a practice, it could hold potential. Stay tuned as additional research will shed more light on this very exciting sports nutrition topic.

References:
Vogt M, et al. Effects of dietary fat on muscle substrates, metabolism, and performance in athletes. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2003 Jun;35(6):952-60

Burke LM, et al. Carbohydrates and fat for training and recovery. J Sports Sci. 2004 Jan;22(1):15-30

Stepto NK, et al. Effect of short-term fat adaptation on high-intensity training. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2002 Mar;34(3):449-55

Carey AL et al. Effects of fat adaptation and carbohydrate restoration on prolonged endurance exercise. J Appl Physiol. 2001 Jul;91(1):115-22

Hawley JA, et al. Effect of altering substrate availability on metabolism and performance during intense exercise. Br J Nutr. 2000 Dec;84(6):829-38

Rowlands DS, Hopkins WG. Effects of high-fat and high-carbohydrate diets on metabolism and performance in cycling. Metabolism 2002 Jun;51(6):678-90

Robins AL, et al. The effect of nutritional manipulation on ultra-endurance performance: a case study. Res Sports Med. 2005 Jul-Sep;13(3):199-215
Marcus A. Garand, RD is the Director of Sports Nutrition for Trismarter.com. He received a B.Sc. in Nutritional Sciences and Dietetics at the University of Vermont in 1998 and completed a one year Didactic Internship at Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Affairs Hospital in Chicago in 1999. Marcus has developed thousands of personalized nutrition plans in the areas of sports nutrition, weight management and for various disease states. He specializes in providing clients with cutting edge nutrition information and education based on current scientific research.

You know - if you want to be an elite triathlete - then you need to get elite coaching. I’d say that wining Lake Placid makes Alex pretty elite! Here’s the press release:

(New York, NY) Trismarter.com Triathlon Coach Alex Mroszczyk-McDonald of Burlington, VT. was the top male finisher in the 2007 Ford Ironman USA in Lake Placid. Mroszczyk-McDonald finished the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and 26.2-mile run in 9 hours, 16 minutes and two seconds, and boasted the only sub-three hour marathon to beat out the field of nearly 2,500 age-group competitors.

Mroszczyk-McDonald is currently a fourth-year medical student at the University of Vermont. After he completes his final year of medical school, he plans to race as a professional. View the complete results here.