Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

The Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii consistently highlights the significant impact of heat and humidity on human performance. Despite being prepared with your hydration and cooling methods, ALL athletes are at risk for a heat-related illness. As an athlete, it's critical to understand thermoregulation, the impact of heat on the body during exercise, heat related symptoms, risk factors, what to do if you suffer from it and how to reduce your risk. Stay smart, stay hydrated, stay cool and stay aware. Your health depends on it. Thermoregulation Thermoregulation is the maintenance of internal core body temperature by balancing heat generation with heat loss. 98.6 F (37 C) is the accepted norm for human body temperature. Hyperthermia occurs when your body absorbs or generates more heat than it can release. Your body is always adjusting to keep your body in homeostasis. Muscle contractions product heat as a by-product of metabolic processes. Because the body is very inefficien...

Tomorrow is the 2024 Men's Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. The females showed us great resiliency, strength and courage on/by the mountains of Nice, France and tomorrow the men will battle it out on an island. The heat and humidity in Kona is something that you have to feel to understand. The human body can do incredible things - like race for 140.6 miles - but it thrives within a limited range of body temperatures. Muscle contractions keep the body moving but a substantial amount of energy is converted into heat. As a result, the body generates a large amount of heat which significantly raises the body temperature. To help keep the body temperature somewhat stable and to prevent overheating, the body must dissipate heat through sweating, increased blood flow to the skin and increased respiration. For the body to do what it needs to do to help you maintain a stable core temperature, you have a responsibility to keep your body hydrated. And hydration doesn't m...

  As the weather gets warmer, I often get emails from athletes asking me about my recommendations for sweat testing or if I can review sweat test analysis. Interestingly, almost every time I speak with an athlete in regards to sweat rate and sodium loss, they give a lot of focus to sodium. While sodium is important and plays a role in sport drinks (and in your daily diet), you can't load your body with sodium and expect your body to perform well if you are exercising in a dehydrated state. The   sweating response is a thermoregulatory mechanism designed to help cool down the body. Dehydration increases in hot conditions. Dehydration occurs from sweat loss. When you sweat you lose fluids. If you don't replenish these fluids as you are exercising, your blood volume drops, which causes your blood to get thicker. This makes it harder for your heart to supply blood to your muscles. As a result, your heart has to work even harder to pump that blood. Additionally, when fluid lev...

  There's a good chance that you don't drink nearly as much water as you should in the cooler months. During the summer, it's easy to tell when you are dehydrated. In the winter, you may not actively recognize your current hydration status. But there is still a need for water. Don't let the cooler temps fool you in thinking you are hydrated when you are really dehydrated.  As mentioned in my book  Essential Sports Nutrition :  Water plays a vital in many important roles within your body and you simply can’t survive without it. Water transports glucose, oxygen, and fatty acids through your blood to working muscles. Water eliminates metabolic waste products such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid in the form of urine. Water absorbs heat from your muscles, during exercise, and dissipates it through sweat via the skin, ultimately regulating body temperature.  Water helps digest food through saliva and gastric secretions. Water lubricates joints and cushions organs an...

I never run without my hydration belt.  It's part of my running attire and I feel naked without it.  It doesn't matter the duration or intensity of the workout or the weather, I always have a sport drink with me in my hydration belt.  If you are a long distance athlete, you've likely experiences several pronounced and uncomfortable symptoms related to unsuccessful fueling/hydration methods. Headache, dehydration, swelling, bloating, sleepiness, lethargy, lack of appetite, nausea, chills, fatigue, deep muscle aches, moodiness and dizziness are not just performance limiting but they are also extremely risky for your overall health. Proper fueling during intense or long duration exercise can help you sustain a desirable effort to maximize training adaptations. Proper fueling/hydration also minimizes the stress load to help keep your body in better health. Proper fueling/hydration in training also helps you practice fueling strategies for competition as you can train the gut ...

If you are a long distance athlete, you've likely experiences several pronounced and uncomfortable symptoms related to unsuccessful fueling/hydration methods. Headache, dehydration, swelling, bloating, sleepiness, lethargy, lack of appetite, nausea, chills, fatigue, deep muscle aches, moodiness and dizziness are not just performance limiting but they are also extremely risky for your overall health.  Proper fueling during intense or long duration exercise can help you sustain a desirable effort to maximize training adaptations.  Proper fueling/hydration also minimizes the stress load to help keep your body in better health. Proper fueling/hydration in training also helps you practice fueling strategies for competition as you can train the gut to tolerate nutrition while exercise at various intensities. Contrary to the opinion of other nutrition experts, I'm a huge proponent of prioritizing sport drinks during training. I've also had great success prioritizing liquid calorie...

"Drink as much as you can and take lots of salt tabs!" This is what I've been reading a lot of lately on social media as it relates to the advice that triathletes are receiving in route to their upcoming hot long distance race.  Racing in the heat is extremely taxing on the body. The biggest consequences include heat stress/exhaustion/stroke and dehydration. Anytime the weather is above 86-degrees F, there will be some type of stress to your cardiovascular system. For the athlete with a hot weather race on the schedule, you must be smart, flexible, attentive and safe when exercising in the heat. Times will be slow(er) than normal and you can't chase metrics. Your primary goal is racing smart and doing the little things well. It probably won't be your fastest race and on paper, the race results may not showcase your current level of fitness but in such extreme conditions, your only goal is to reach the finish line without compromising your health. Most athletes wil...

  Although water has no caloric value, it’s the most essential nutrient required in your diet on a daily basis. Your body is made of water. It’s part of your blood, brain, heart, lungs and bones. As it relates to exercise, water maintains blood volume, reduces the risk of heat stress, regulates body temperature and is involved in muscle contractions. To optimize your hydration status, you must be an active participant in your hydration regime by consuming adequate fluids and electrolytes on a daily basis - as well as before, during and after exercise. Leaving hydration to chance or ignoring dehydration symptoms can be hazardous to health and performance. Sadly, once you are dehydrated, you can't 'make-up' for fluids lost. Going into a workout dehydrated and/or not replenishing fluids and electrolytes lost during exercise can cause great strain on your cardiovascular system. As dehydration reduces plasma volume, blood becomes thicker and retains more sodium. This makes blood...

Remember that time when you were wishing for warmer temps? Well, that time has come. I always run with hydration and fuel in my Naked running belt (all year long) but no surprise - I go through my fluids much quicker when it's hot and steamy outside. Although it can be misearble (and sometimes dangerous) to train in the heat, there are a few ways to help mitigate the physiological response to exercising in hot and humid temps. First off, it's important to understand why exercise feels so difficult in the heat. Blood that would normally go to the working muscles in a cooler environment is now going to the skin for cooling (so heat can be released into the air). Your body is trying to maintain a safe body temperature (homeostasis). If body temp increases beyond a safe level, normal bodily functions can't be maintained and your body will shut/slow down. With a greater risk for dehydration and loss of electrolytes in the heat, your body can not maintain normal phys...

You may be able to get away with haphazard fueling and hydration strategies in the cold winter months but if you are experiencing warmer temps, now is not the time to "wing it" when it comes to utilizing sport nutrition during your long workouts. If you've ever struggled with understanding your carbohydrate, sodium and fluid needs during a long workout, you've likely experiences several pronounced, uncomfortable and performance-limiting symptoms related to underfueling, overfueling, dehydration and overhydration such as headache, no urge to urinate, sleepiness, lack of appetite, nausea, bloating, fatigue, muscle aches, moodiness and dizziness. Proper fueling during intense or long duration exercise helps you sustain a desirable effort to maximize training adaptations. You can also practice fueling strategies for competition and train the gut to tolerate nutrition while exercise at various intensities. Contrary to the opinion of other nutrition experts, I...

The first step to optimizing performance is mastering your daily hydration needs to maintain proper body functions. Fluids are critical to optimal health. They replenish what has been lost through normal physiological processes, such as respiration, sweating and urination. To optimize cardiovascular and thermoregulatory functions, it's important to subscribe to a comprehensive fluid-replacement program. Identify the best beverages to consume and plan your fluid intake - frequency and volume - around and during exercise.  To help simplify this confusing topic, I highly suggest to listen to the  Purple Patch Fitness Podcast  with Andy Blow from Precision Hydration.   Matt and Andy go into the specifics of hydration and why athletes should pay more attention to hydration needs on a daily basis and during training.  If you are like most athletes and desire specific guidelines and strategies for optimizing hydration intake, I feel you'll rea...

As an athlete, if your diet and hydration meets the training demands placed on your body, you will perform at your best, reduce risk for injury and illness and improve longevity in your sport. If you suffer from flat training sessions, subpar race performances, inconsistent training efforts, fatigue, injuries, chronic niggles, digestive issues, sleep disturbances and a reasonable amount of cold symptoms, you probably lack the essentials of a training diet that will boost your immune system and encourage optimal training enhancements. In my book, Essential Sports Nutrition ,  I start the first chapter discussing the topic of hydration. Why hydration? Despite not providing the body with energy (in the form of calories), water is the most essential nutrient in a healthy, performance-focused diet. Every tissue, organ, cell and body system requires it. Whereas you can survive for over a month without food, you can only survive but a few days without drinking water. Because yo...

Triathletes and endurance athletes are very susceptible to dehydration and even more so, a heat-related injury at this time of the year.  Whereas in the cold/cooler months of the year, athletes can get away with haphazard fueling and hydration strategies, now is the time in the year when a poorly planned (or early-season) fueling/hydration regime will negatively affect training sessions, racing potential and health.    Let it be known that training in the heat is incredibly stressful for the body. Seeing that training (in any environment) already creates difficulty for the body to adequately digest and absorb nutrients and fluids, you can imagine why so many athletes experience harmful health issues, GI struggles, extreme fatigue and so many more issues during the summer months when training for an event. If you think about those who succeed well in endurance events, every athlete is getting tired from glycogen depletion and dehydration and central nervous syst...