- Being as light as possible,
as well as getting stronger and fitter
are things that most cyclists strive to achieve,
yet, what most professional cyclists are able to attain.
But, how do they do it?
Well to find out, we've come to speak to James Morton,
head of nutrition at Team Sky,
to find out those very secrets.
Now James, we all know the importance of getting
your nutrition right when training,
but let's assume that you've got your training dialled,
that remains the same,
how could you manipulate your nutrition
to better improve the effectiveness of your training?
- This is a great question.
It's one of my favourite areas of sport nutrition naturally
because for many years,
we've all thought about the intensity
and the duration of training sessions,
as in that's the most important thing.
But actually, we've been involved in
Liverpool John Moore University for many years now,
looking at that very question actually.
How can you maximise the response of muscle to training?
Simply by changing what you've eaten before,
during, and after the session itself.
And actually, you can perform
exactly the same amount of work done on the bike,
but you change one of those three things
and you can totally change
how your muscle responds to exercise.
It's remarkable, really.
We've pulled out over 1000 muscle biopsies
in the last decade.
Usually our studies are focusing on high carbohydrate
versus carbohydrate restriction, if you like.
So, restricted carbohydrate before, during, and after,
and we consistently see at the level
of gene expression in muscle.
So cells and molecules,
that you restrict the carbohydrate
and the muscle seems to amplify all of these
regulatory processes that essentially all depends
how much mitochondria you make.
And this is filtering into elite sport now.
- So this is the kind of
fasted training side of things, isn't it?
- Yeah, there's many ways to restrict carbohydrates.
I guess the simplest way would be a fasted exercise session.
So, you simply have your breakfast after training,
rather than before training.
Or you restrict carbohydrate after training.
So, rather than recovering straight away,
you deliberately withhold it for a few hours
or maybe you just don't have sport drinks during training.
Another way to do it is to split your session,
so you have a session in the morning time
to strip your muscle of carbohydrate.
You don't feed any carbohydrate
and then you perform a session in the afternoon again.
So, you deliberately commence that session
with low muscle glycogen
or in fact, maybe you should just amalgamate
all those strategies together
and kind of get the best of everything
and we call that an amalgamation of train-low paradigms
and that's under the umbrella of fueling
for the work required.
- What about, are there any specific other food groups
that you think are important?
That people should perhaps look at and consider,
that could give benefits or improve our riders training
or at least their recovery from training?
- Well the obvious one is protein really, isn't it?
I think endurance athletes in general, not just cyclists,
but across the board, probably under consume protein.
Although, I think the research
and the use of good sport nutrition,
partners like Science in Sport, for instance,
are now communicating the importance of protein
to endurance athletes.
- It is quite a controversial subject, isn't it as well?
There's a lot people think you can just eat carbs.
I mean full stop without protein at all,
which is quite an interesting point of view.
- The reality is, muscle is made of protein
and when you perform hard exercise sessions,
you're essentially degrading
all of those muscle protein stores.
To recondition that muscle and rebuild that muscle,
you have to put protein back into the system.
So that's where you need high quality amino acids.
So, I guess when it comes to protein feeding,
one of the key ingredients or key amino acids is leucine.
- I think that's one of Dan Lloyd's
favourite amino acids, leucine, apparently.
- It's interesting because what leucine does
is kind of act as the switch to almost
instruct the muscle to start building new protein.
So, supplements like whey protein, for instance,
is naturally high in leucine,
but it also contains all of the other essential amino acids,
so leucine kind of activates the muscle
and instructs the muscle to make new protein.
But of course, then you supply all the other
essential amino acids in the post exercise recovery period
and over time, the muscle kind of remodels itself.
Makes itself stronger and more functional.
- What about the involvement of other food groups?
So like your vitamins and your minerals,
that we see in fruit and vegetables,
that clearly has an important part to play as well.
What would be the detrimental effect
if you didn't get that balance right?
- Well that's more from an immune perspective really.
So, vitamins and minerals
certainly don't improve performance.
They're not really going to enhance training adaptations
unless you're deficient.
But the reason why vitamins and minerals
are important from a nutritional perspective
is obviously the immune system itself.
But they're also involved in the regulation
of energy production.
So unless you're really deficient in them,
then there's probably not a real big need
to enhance training adaptations by consuming
vitamins and minerals but certainly during
heavy periods of competition and training,
then we would advise that
because you want to keep a healthy immune system.
You want to stay on the bike.
- Absolutely, fascinating stuff, James Morton,
been a pleasure, thanks very much.
So, low carb, high protein
and really steady weight reduction
seem to be the way forward.
But as ever, we'd love to hear what you think.
Leave your comments down below.
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Now, for a couple more nutrition videos,
you can click here and here.
So click up here for pro cycling nutrition tips
and just down here for when to eat while cycling.