- Morning, Trainiacs!
Since getting back from Challenge Roth,
where at a,
I would call it,
a successful race, going 9:41 in my first
Iron Man distance event ever,
I've been getting a pile of questions
about the nutrition plan that I used leading up to it.
How should triathletes do
a low-carb triathlon training program
that is going to still allow them to be fast,
not cause them to be injured, sick, feel dumpy,
and not risk a lot of the issues
that come with Keto dieting
while also trying to perform at a high level.
How can you get all of the benefits
of low-carb triathlon training without all of the drawbacks?
We're gonna talk about the complete
start-to-finish process that you can use right now.
(upbeat music)
- So I want to start off by saying
a lot of what I learned and went through
was guided by Dr. Dan Plews.
You've heard me talk about him a lot.
We're going to talk about that process
and a lot of what I did that you might have heard before,
but I want to put everything together
into one guide for you right now.
Dan Plews is a PhD sports scientist in New Zealand.
He is published dozens and dozens of times
in things like heart rate variability,
low carb triathlon training,
things that affect us endurance athletes.
In addition to that,
he coaches pro triathletes like Torenzo Bozzone,
and he's coached three pros to sub-8 hour Iron Mans.
He, himself, is also an amazing triathlete,
having won Kona in 2018 as an amateur.
The overall amateur winner was Dan Plews,
setting the all-time amateur course record in 8:24.
So the man doesn't just walk the walk,
he talks the talk,
and he knows what he's talking about,
and he's who guided me throughout this entire
low-carb Iron Man training process.
Now, if you want to learn more about the specifics,
Dan has a company called endureiq.com,
where he has online courses that train you
in how to use a lot of the methods
that we are going to talk about
and that I went through.
He doesn't have that open all the time,
but he is going to open up a limited amount of spots
just to Trainiacs over the next couple of weeks.
And if you want to make sure that you get in
on those limited amount of spots
go to triathlontaren.com/theplews
where you'll get the starter pack
that Dan and I put together
of how to get started low-carb triathlon training,
and when Dan opens up those spots for his course
that's where we are going to announce it.
So you have to be subscribed to that
triathlonteran.com/theplews.
Let's do this.
For starters,
why consider low-carb triathlon training?
It's not a fad.
It's not to turn you into a fat burning machine
and be able to get by on nut butters or nothing
during a race because you're metabolically flexible.
Well, you are metabolically flexible,
but it's really just physiology.
And I'm gonna tell you an example where,
over here we have traditional training;
over here we will have low-carb triathlon training.
And what happens over the course of,
we're just gonna use a 10-hour race for example.
In both races,
you are going to burn about a thousand calories an hour,
you're going to burn about 10 thousand total calories,
and that is how much energy you are going to need
for that race.
In both races,
you're going to start off with
stored muscle and liver glycogen of around 2,000 calories.
In both races,
you're going to be able to consume
up to about 60 grams of carbs per hour,
which then totals 24 hundred calories.
But here's where it's different.
In the traditional higher carb training approach,
people tend to burn, on average,
around 0.5 grams of body fat for that missing energy
every minute,
which then results in 27 hundred additional calories.
Over here,
you have a total of 71 hundred calories
and a shortfall of 29 hundred calories.
What ends up happening with that shortfall
is your body has to get that energy from somewhere,
so what happens is it tends to break down
your muscle tissues.
That's why you start seeing people
on the side of the run
or on the side of the road losing power,
losing their pace,
really having a big hitch in their stride.
It's because their muscles aren't functioning well anymore
because that 29 hundred calories
has to come from something.
Now let's look at the low-carb approach.
If we are able to increase
the amount of fat that you can burn over here,
up to around 1.2 grams of carbs every single minute,
you're going to end up getting from that fat
in our body that's stored,
around 6,480 calories throughout the course of the race.
This then, over here,
results in total available calories of 10,880.
And what I experienced in Challenge Roth
is that never did I feel hungry.
Never did I feel muscular breakdown.
Never did I feel functional breakdown.
My muscles were a little bit sore the next day,
but overall the race kind of felt easy
until the last 15K when,
we're doing an Iron Man,
it's gonna get tough.
But I was still able to function
and hold the five minute kilometers
and running without stopping for 42.2K.
That's what you can accomplish
with low-carb triathlon training.
Now, it's not as simple as just saying,
"I'm gonna lower my carbs."
There's a process that you need to do.
So here is the low-carb, high-fat progression
that I went through.
We started off with three weeks
of not monitoring fat,
not monitoring protein,
not monitoring carbs.
It was three weeks of a Whole30 diet,
which you can get through that
triathlonteran.com/theplews.
And during this three weeks,
on the Senza app,
I started tracking what I was eating
to start getting a sense of what had carbs,
what didn't,
how much did I need to eat based off of
how many calories I wanted to have.
This was also a time that,
because I was eating whole foods,
the sugar levels were coming down,
so my blood glucose in that period starts coming down,
making it easier to burn a little bit of fat as fuel.
After those three weeks,
we then did a three week Keto period.
And this was the only time
that we did anything resembling Keto.
And the reason that it's only three weeks
is because it's not sustainable
to perform at a high level for endurance athletes
while eating a Keto diet strictly.
So it's a three week tool
where we restrict carbs down to 50 grams of carbs or less
every single day from Whole30 food sources
and that is like forcing your body to say,
"Alright, look."
We are going to continue working out,
albeit at this time it's at a very low intensity,
doing pretty much every single workout
in just zones one or two,
besides one workout that is a high intensity interval bike,
but that's it.
We continue working out largely at low intensity,
restrict the carbs,
and it's going to force the body to (snaps)
start accessing fat as fuel
because there's nothing else.
Then after that was the bulk of the training period.
After that Keto period,
we brought the carbs back up to around 130 grams of carbs
every single day on average.
But the timing of the carbs was different,
depending on the day.
And that's where we'll get into the next phase.
Like I say,
it's not just about lowering your carbs,
you have to use those carbs specifically.
So this is where we get into
low-carb, high-fat triathlon training.
So as I mentioned,
the average amount of carbs
that I was taking during this time
was 130 grams of carbs.
If you're a much, much bigger athlete,
would go up to about 150.
If you are a very small, light athlete, females,
down around 100.
But somewhere in that 130 has been found to be
kind of the sweet spot.
So that's what you target every single day.
But what you change throughout the week
is dependent on your workouts.
Before your long endurance bike,
your low intensity, long, really long ride,
followed by a brick run,
you don't have any carbs before or during.
So you have things like nut butters, S fuels,
keeping the carbs basically at zero.
You also do the exact same before your long run.
And what that's going to do
is it's just going to increase your body's ability
to burn fat as fuel at the low end,
the low energy aerobic intensities.
There's a third workout, however,
where you do the same thing.
Where you don't have any carbs before or during,
and that's a race simulation day.
So in my case,
this was 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hour bike,
followed by about a 40 minute run,
and this is at race intensity or higher,
so this is a higher intensity,
more of a hard workout.
And what we're doing here is the same thing,
we're restricting the carbs before and during,
having the same types of things,
nut butters, fat-based coffees, S fuels,
things like that,
so that we can not just increase our body's
ability to burn fat at a low intensity,
we want to be able to increase the body's ability
to burn fat at a higher intensity as well.
And then all of the other workouts,
I still had carbs.
I would have oatmeal
before some high intensity interval workouts.
I would have fruit after workouts.
I would have that 130 grams of carbs per day
spread more evenly during all of the other workouts
throughout the week.
So what this is doing
it it's allowing my body to burn fat at a low intensity,
burn fat at a high intensity,
but also perform at a high intensity really well
when we start doing high intensity VO2 max training,
so we're hitting all aspects
and not succumbing to that issue that many people go through
when they start lowering their carbs,
that they lose their top end,
that they feel dumpy,
or that they can really only go
at very low intensities all of the time.
This way,
you end up becoming a well-rounded athlete
and you can access all different kinds of fuel.
Then that comes to the last thing.
How do you actually end up racing?
Am I throwing avocados in my jersey?
Not at all.
That's where we get to the final thing
that I want to talk about,
and that is train low, race high.
The concept of training low and racing high
is that you train on lower carbs.
You allow your body to learn how to function
with a slightly restricted carb state.
Then, because carbs are so easy to access as fuel,
you can (snaps) turn them into energy immediately.
Your best performance is going to come
if you end up racing on carbs.
So when I raced in Challenge Roth,
I had five to six hundred grams of carbs
throughout that race,
and I did it exactly the same way
that I would do a half Iron Man.
Now, if you don't know yet how to do your nutrition,
you can go to traithlonteran.com/triathlonnutritionguide,
and that will calculate for you
exactly how many calories you need to take during
a sprint, an Olympic, a half Iron Man,
an Iron Man distance race.
You take that,
you use the schedule that we lay out in that free guide,
and you just take that from carbs.
And what ended up happening is I had
very, very minor stomach issues
in the race at Challenge Roth
that was just alleviated
by having a little bit of water
to dilute whatever was going on in my stomach.
Simple as that.
I had no fade at the end of the bike.
I held even power throughout the entire 180K.
I had no fade in my pace throughout the entire marathon;
did not walk one bit;
and held five minute kilometers (snaps twice)
like clockwork throughout the entire race;
and, I don't think I've really said this,
because I think it sounds kind of bragging,
boastful, almost like a little bit of a jerk,
like I'm not respecting the distance,
but right up until the last 15K of the marathon,
it felt easy.
I remember at 25K actually thinking
that I didn't deserve to feel that way
because it's an Iron Man that I was doing.
Now, of course,
it got very hard for that last 15K,
but it wasn't so hard that I was in the bushes;
that I was walking;
that I was having stomach issues.
All the people that I was passing
and seeing the struggle on their face,
I wasn't going through that
because my muscles hadn't broken down so badly
because I was just getting my fuel from fat.
And in the days leading up to the race
I increased my calories in the two days out
and the day before
to about 200 grams of carbs,
and the morning of the race
I had a small little bit of oatmeal
with UCAN SuperStarch as a very complex carbohydrate
that is going to provide energy
for tens of hours in that race.
And with all that,
it wasn't a terribly restricted diet.
A lot of people are saying,
"Well, are you gonna go back to high carb?
"Are you going to stick with Keto, low-carb?"
Frankly, it doesn't feel like Keto.
It doesn't feel like low-carb.
It just feels like we're manipulating
certain workouts here and there very easily;
changing some of the sports nutrition that I had
from say Gatorade and a sugary drink
to something more like an S fuels;
changing bread and pasta to have carbs before a workout
to either a fat-based coffee
or a complex carbohydrate like a UCAN SuperStarch.
So it's just changing small, little things
that allowed me to have
a performance that is better than I've ever had
in any race.
I have never once in a race
had the run be the strongest part of the race,
and I did this time
because I ran strong the entire way through.
So, now, like I say,
if you are interested in learning more about this,
go to triathlonteran.com/theplews.
Now that is not Dan Plews' course,
but that's a mini course,
a free download that we've put together with Dan,
and everyone that who is signed up to get that free download
will be notified of when Dan opens up
his actual course on endureiq.com.
So go check that out.
I'm sold.
I'm sticking with it.
Total game changer.
Now before I say, "Later,"
I want to say, "What's up!"
to Glen and Claire Ward,
who said, "Hi," to me at the pool.
Now, Claire, these swim lasers are for you.
(laser sounds)
- And on that note,
if you aren't already subscribed,
and you like things like this,
low-carb training,
hit that subscribe button below.
Later, Trainiacs!
Swim lasers!
(laser sounds)