Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

In my last blog post , I talked about the importance of meal planning for athletes with a few of my helpful meal prep tips. It's important that you do not overwhelm yourself with food prep and meal planning but instead, make the effort to plan ahead instead of always making it an afterthought. Sometimes good intentions backfire when you try to do too much at once or have this vision of "healthy eating" that isn't practical for you right now in your nutritional journey. Every athlete is going to have a unique starting point when it comes to meal prepping. Perhaps you are trying to move away from always having an English muffin, egg, piece of ham and chips for dinner or you trying to break a habit of always having pasta or fast food, or eating out or a frozen meal for dinner most nights per week. Or maybe you are in a meal prep rut and need to challenge yourself with a more complicated meal or recipe as you have been resorting to quick and easy, despite having the tim...

Sitting down to a home-cooked meal in the evening is not an everyday occurrence for many people in our society for a variety of reasons; being too tired or hungry, wanting something easy, needing something quick and convenient, feeling too busy, not knowing what to eat or not liking to cook. As an athlete, you already have so much to squeeze into the day that it’s easy to see why dinner may be an afterthought, especially if you have been up since 5am or you are finishing an evening workout around 6:30 or 7pm.  But, that's not a good excuse.  Let's get serious... You aren't too busy to train so it's all about priorities when you say you are too busy to cook.  As an athlete myself, I can empathize with how overwhelming it can be to plan nutritious meals, every day of the week and still squeeze in workouts. And this is in addition to work, family and everything else on a never-ending to-do list.  I realize that I do not share many of my meal creation...

Tips for improving mobility 1)        Make dynamic stretching part of your DAILY routine. Dedicate up to 15-20 minutes before  every  swim, bike and run workout to warming up your body, before you “warm-up” and an additional mobility session before bed (or after long periods of sitting). This means before you jump into the pool, get on your bike or start a run, you need to perform dynamic stretching. Do not neglect this important habit of being a mobile athlete. With our coaching, we are always looking for ways to help our athletes train smarter with the least amount of training stress possible. Improving mobility can help! Dynamically stretching moves your body through different movement patterns to actively stimulate muscles, tendons, ligaments, fibers, tissues and joints. You will also notice that dynamic warm-ups increases blood flow to the working muscles which gives you energy  before  you start working out. This will ...

Good mobility and great performances are closely tied to one another. As it relates to performance declines and/or injuries, lack of mobility can be a culprit. I'm a huge proponent of mobility work and I often spend up to 15 minutes before a swim, bike or run workout slowly working my body through a range of dynamic and mobility exercises to warm-up, before I warm-up. Going on almost 3 years without an injury, routine mobility work (I never stretch, trigger point or foam roll) is one of a few key improvements that I have made in my training regime to help reduce the risk for injury. Why is mobility important? If you cannot move your muscles, limbs and joints through their full range of motion and you are limited to one plane of movement, your body is not being used to its full potential. When mobility suffers, performance suffers because you can no longer generate the power and speed that you are capable of producing. What happens with poor mobility? Aside fro...

It takes a lot of food to fuel an endurance athlete. But not every food is well tolerated before and after a long workout. I'm constantly aware of the food that I eat around long workouts for two reasons. First off, food is my fuel. I do not use food as reward or to control emotions. Seeing that long distance training is very stressful on the human body, I do not want to self-sabotage myself by under on my longest workout days nor do I want to throw away a great workout by eating (or not eating) food that will not help me recover and refuel.  Secondly, I know what foods work and do not work for my body.  This has little to do with body image and a lot to do with performance. Ironically, my body stays in good health, despite not counting calories, eating carbohydrates at every meal, every day of the week, using sport nutrition during workouts, eating before all workouts and not having a "bad" food list. This isn't because I'm lucky, this is because I...

After almost two years of living in Greenville, SC., I've learned that there are no "easy" days for cycling when you ride near the mountains. After another strong week of swim, bike, run and strength training, my legs felt a bit trashed this morning. Well, we all know that you can't get much done if you only work on the days that you feel good. With our new Alto cycling race wheels arriving last week, we couldn't wait to take them for a test ride. With legs that were not interested in pushing hard, I found myself with a few different conversations in my head... "I feel so slow." "I wish I could ride stronger." "This is so  hard." "This is not fun." "I should be faster." Every time a negative thought came inside my head, I looked at the mountains and stopped my negative thinking. With 4 hours of riding and over 5000 feet of climbing, I had plenty of opportunities to enjoy the views with Karel as my cycling gu...

                                  Wouldn't it be nice if you always had a meal ready for you immediately after your workouts? Think about it. No more processed food because you are too hungry to cook. No more fast food/take-out because you can't find time to cook. No more incomplete meals because your food options are limitless. No more snacking your way to a meal because you are too starving to wait for a meal. No more sabotaging workouts from not eating the right foods at the right time to repair and recover.  Sadly, athletes are busy and ironically, food is an afterthought. Well, not so much food being the afterthought (as athletes do eat) but food prep isn't always a priority. With every minute of the day planned and occupied, many athletes don't put meal prep on the hierarchy of "things to do" each day. This often backfires as athletes will find themselves not meeting energy needs, not r...