Isolation – kitchen station!
Athletes often schedule their training, their races, their training holidays…well, pretty much every aspect of their life. However, all too often they forget to schedule their nutrition with their training. Here coach Diogo makes the point that now is the best time ever to ensure you have a sound understanding and knowledge to set up your pre and post-session routine. Also, hear about our #tricookingharder social media fun!
This period we are facing is hard for almost every one of us, we have been accustomed to doing what we like to do with the freedom we have. However, we all can agree this can be a very good learning experience.
As a coach, I’m asked quite often on what to do in terms of nutrition habits, what to eat, when to eat and why eat it.
When it’s about nutrition I always prefer to consult a professional. As coaches may know a lot about nutrition but we are not subject matter experts. We do have one thing in common: we all like to know what we you’re eating, when and why.
This is something you, as an athlete, can take responsibility for: learn about what you put in your body, create your routine of food ingestion and learn the when and the why. We know it’s hard for our athletes to focus in many things about their preparation, mostly because of the lack of time they usually have in their weekly routine. We know you have a lot to think about and that’s why you count on us to help you but why not taking this time of isolation to start focusing on your nutrition habits too?
Some of you are working from home and you still have a very busy schedule. However, the fact you don’t have to commute gives you more free time to do other ‘stuff’ and now is a great opportunity for you to learn about your nutrition.
How many times you had a bad breakfast or you had a poor diet or routine which meant you hit sessions under or over fuelled? The excuse is regularly that you never have time to think about those things so you just eat what is readily available.
Now you have the time, you have the tools and hopefully, you have the will, why not take this opportunity and learn about what your body needs and when?
Athletes love habits and routines, it’s a fact, you love to know when you have to swim, ride your bike, run or when you have to go to the gym to do your workouts, you have your week all scheduled and your coach plays a huge roll on that too, so our advice is, why not start to build the routine of the plan and cooking your meals, thinking on what your body needs. You can say you don’t know how to cook properly, that can be a good excuse but do you still remember when you didn’t know how to ride a bike? We all can learn, this is also a good activity to do with your family and if you have kids it’s also a good learning chance for them. Now you have such a golden opportunity to ensure you can go forwards and hit every session at 100%.
Take this time to think, plan and learn, make this part of your normal routine, you can find a lot of great recipes on the internet, healthy ones and delicious, give it a try, you won’t regret it but always think about what you’re doing and why.
If you give it a try, why not send us a video of yourself making your favourite dish, shake or snack and why is it so good for you, we would love to learn the recipe from you too! Send it in to our Social Media accounts and tag us with #tricookingharder!
We’re here to help
Tri Training Harder are one of the leading Triathlon coaching providers in the UK, using our wealth of experience to unite scientific and technological research with already well-established and successful best practices, to create a formula for triathlon and endurance coaching that works.
The result is an honest, dynamic, yet simple new way of constructing an athlete’s training to allow them to reach their potential.
If you’re planning your next season, just starting out in the sport or are looking for extra guidance at the very top end of the field, we are here to help, and our coaches would be delighted to hear from you. You can contact us via the website, and one of the team will be in touch.