Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

For several decades, extensive scientific research has focused on what and when to eat before, during, and immediately after exercise to enhance the adaptive response to exercise. For example, prolonged exercise depletes muscle glycogen storage and breaks down muscle tissue, which increases the risk for fatigue and immunosuppression (greater risk for sickness). Consuming carbohydrates and protein within ~30-minutes after a workout can help you build muscle, store energy, and minimize tissue damage. Unfortunately, nutrient timing is a confusing nutrition topic because most strategies conflict with the “healthy” nutrition advice given by experts regarding weight loss and management. As an example, a fitness enthusiast may be told to restrict dietary carbohydrates around exercise to lower insulin levels. This can help with fat loss. However, insulin is a powerful anabolic hormone and with the help of carbs, it plays a vital role in transporting amino acids, fatty acids or glucose from the...

Over the past few years, carbohydrates have endured an extreme amount of backlash. Labeled as unhealthy due to a link to obesity (and contributing to many other metabolic diseases and health issues), it's understandable why so many endurance athletes fear carbohydrates. With so much negative attention placed on this one macronutrient, it's easy to assume that carbohydrates are the enemy and will negatively affect body composition, health and performance. To help clear up the confusion, endurance athletes have two different styles of eating: -Sport nutrition -Daily nutrition Your daily diet provides the foundation to optimize health. This diet is rich in wholesome (real) foods, fiber, quality proteins, heart-healthy fats, and slow-digesting carbohydrates and contains a large amount of fruits and vegetables. Your daily diet is the vehicle to help you maintain a healthy (realistic) body weight, reduce the risk for disease/illness and optimize quality (and longevity of life). An op...

I didn't think that I would be writing a blog post about race day nutrition in 2020 but here we are, just two sleeps away from our first triathlon race of the season. Although it's September (which would be viewed as late season racing in years past), it's surreal to think that this will be our first triathlon race in 11 months!  While not every race day nutrition mistake is a limiter to performance, athletes are quick to place the blame on nutrition when a race day performance doesn't go as planned.  Here are some common race day nutrition mistakes that may compromise your race day performance (and health):  Overfueling - With pressure to perform at your best, it's understandable that you want to optimize performance. With this comes a need to fuel - a lot - in an effort to offset a slow down. Overfueling before and during the race can leave the belly uncomfortably full and cause lethargy. It's understandable to fear running out of energy during the race but o...

There will come a point in your athletic journey when your daily diet will no longer provide all the energy that you need to support your workouts. Failure to nutritionally adjust your caloric/macro intake to an increase in training volume and/or intensity increases the risk for injury, sickness and burnout. Sport nutrition recommendations can be confusing as most tips conflict with healthy-eating advice. For example, many athletes workout with a goal of losing weight. Asking an individual to eat before a morning run may conflict with the belief that a fasted workout will burn more body fat. Additionally, nearly all sport nutrition products – like gels, energy chews and sport drink powders – are rich with added sugar. And as we all know, our society already has a problem with over-consuming sugar-sweetened beverages. However, the nutrition consumed before, during and after specific training sessions is designed to fuel your training sessions, whereas your daily diet supports yo...

In case you missed it, check out my previous two blogs discussing: Cycling nutrition: keep is simple Debunk the myth: Do you need sport nutrition? EASY FUELING TIPS HYDRATION For triathletes, I recommend 1 water bottle cage for every  hour of training, up to 4 cages. Your hydration set-up should be on your bike at all times but certainly this will come in handy for your longer rides. If your bike does not hold 4 cages, you can alter the set-up with a bottle on your aero bars, two rear cages, set up an additional hydration system (ex. bladder if built in on the bike) or have, at minimum, 3 cages and plan to stop in training after 3 hours. I have 4 cages on my bike (2 in the frame, 2 in the rear) and I am very comfortable grabbing the rear bottles and moving around bottles as I am riding. As you can see from Karel's picture below that he has his bottle on his aerobars with computer attached on top of the cage. He only has three cages on his bike.  GELS Rat...