IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio

Timing

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:30:00 +0000

In sport and in life, it has been said that timing is everything. Today I'd like to talk about the timing of baseline and subsequent follow up Vo2 Metabolic Assessments.

The one question I get about testing more than any other is "when?" A common misconception among those who have never gone through the process is that they need to be "fit" before taking the test. There's a problem with that assumption though. If you've never had your fitness subjectively evaluated before, then how can you truly know what "fit" is?

A baseline test is exactly that. A baseline measurement of your current level of fitness that is used to tailor a training program specific to that level of fitness. That baseline is then used to gauge the effectiveness of your training by comparing it to a follow up assessment after a block of training has been accomplished.

I want to take a moment and focus on a statement above... "measurement of your current level of fitness to tailor a training program specific to that level of fitness". For any training plan to be successful the intensity of your effort must match what your current level of fitness is capable of handling. This is as important for a new athlete as it is for an experienced one.

For the new athlete, there is no past history to go by. No "volume of work" to provide a sense of what the perception of effort should feel like. No sense of what too hard is, and just as importantly no sense of what too easy is. Training intensity is a guess, a shot in the dark. Sure there are formulae out there based on max heart rate that can get you started but in my experience a very small percentage of people actually align with those mathematically calculated zones. For the newbie especially, the old wives tale of 220-age can be wildly misleading and start your entire training journey on the wrong path. A path that can lead to burn out or injury.

For the newbie's reading this I'm going to pause here and launch into a very brief Physiology 101 primer on heart rate and it's response to training. The heart beats in a response to the oxygen demand placed on it by the body. At rest, there is very little demand for oxygen so heart rate tends to be low. As our activity level increases and we use our muscles, they require more and more oxygen to fuel the energy requirement for the activity we are doing. This causes the heart to beat faster in order to supply more oxygen to the working muscles. The current state of strength or fitness of the muscles being used comes to bear here as well. A weak, seldom used or poorly trained muscle will not be able to do as much work as a strong, often used, well trained muscle and therefore will also require less oxygen to fuel it's activity. In simple terms, a bicep that is lifting 20lbs isn't working as hard as one lifting 50lbs and therefore won't require as much oxygen which will keep the heart from beating as fast. As we train and build up muscle fibres and increase the mytochondria within the muscle, we increase that muscles requirement for oxygen and therefore increase the rate at which our heart must beat to provide that oxygen.

For the newbie then, a baseline test at the outset of a new training venture is incredibly important. It allows that athlete to get a subjective measurement of current sport specific fitness and understand exactly what the optimal intensity or heart rate is to improve fitness within that sport.

For the experienced athlete, fitness is a living, breathing entity all its own. As the experienced athlete moves through a season, fitness will build and improve as long as training remains focussed on optimal intensities for the desired outcome. Typically an experienced athlete will have a flow to their season, building to a specific race, tapering off after and then possibly re-building to a secondary goal before taking time off at the end of the season and then starting the whole process over again. If executed properly, fitness will improve through the build phase, drop slightly during the down time, and then usually drop sharply if proper down time is taken when the season is over. Experience athletes can also experience a "loss" of fitness due to life getting in the way. Prolonged illness, injury or travel for work can all have a temporary impact on current fitness level and thus impact the appropriate intensity to be training at.

So with all that knowledge we come back to the original question. When?

For the newbie, ASAP is the best and simplest answer I can give. Get a baseline right at the outset so that there is no time wasted due to working at an inappropriate and ineffective intensity. If you're a newbie who has already started but aren't seeing the results you think you should be, everything I've said above is why your results aren't matching your effort. If this rings a bell with you, then I look forward to hearing from you for your baseline appointment soon!

For the experienced athlete, it's a little more complicated. At this particular time of year, many of you are probably enjoying some down time after a long season. But, you're probably also starting to think about what the plan is for next year. For you, your baseline test should occur just before you are ready to start your base prep for next season. From there, tests should be scheduled roughly every three months or so to insure that your fitness is improving along the arch that it should be and that you are building effectively towards your goal event. There should be a test about 3-4 weeks out from your A race so that you have time for some minor fine tuning before the big day. After your A race, take some down time and then get a new "baseline" for the next build. If you are being coached, your coach should be monitoring your progress and can help you with the timing of your follow up tests.
If you are doing the "coaching" on your own then pay attention to your output. If you suddenly notice that you need to run faster or put out more power to sustain your prescribed intensity, then there has been a shift in your fitness and it's time for a new baseline. Conversely, if you see consistent improvement for a time and then notice that improvement stop or plateau, then it's definitely time for a new baseline.

Getting the most out of a Vo2 Metabolic Assessment requires proper timing. Hopefully this little primer has helped you better understand the benefits of a properly timed baseline assessment.

Thanks for reading and happy training!

Mindful Practice

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 17:20:00 +0000

Hello on a rainy Tuesday.
Since there's not much to be done outside right now I figured I'd sit down and put some thoughts down that have been percolating for some time. I want to talk today about being mindful in your practice.

I've touched on this subject before but recent events have made me think it's time to come back and have another look at things.

Anyone who's ever taken yoga before has probably heard the term "mindful practice". It ultimately has as many meanings as people who practice it but I thought this definition from good ol' wikipedia would be a good start.

Mindfulness is moment-by-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, characterized mainly by acceptance - attention to thoughts and feelings without judging whether they are right or wrong. Mindfulness focuses the brain on what is being sensed at each moment, instead of on its normal rumination on the past or on the future.

Sounds like a good way to approach life, yes? Well, I would like you as an athlete to be more, well, mindful of how you can be more mindful in the practice of your chosen sport(s).

Ask yourself if these sound familiar...
I forgot to drink
I forgot to eat what I brought with me
I got to the race and realized I didn't pack my...
I lost focus halfway through and my pace really dropped off
I forgot to eat between breakfast and race start
I didn't realize my cadence was so low

Sadly I've heard every one of the above scenario's and a few others this season. All due to a lack of mindful practice in the execution of a training session, a race or in the pre-race preparation. As a coach, I'd pull my hair out at these (if I had hair to pull out). "I forgot" is inexcusable in my books. With all the time and effort that goes into preparing for an event, the sacrifices that are made to life balance, you should never arrive at THE day only to blow it through a lack of mindful practice and preparation.

Mindfulness isn't something we should be turning on and off. If we think of it as a switch, then it's quite likely that at some crucial point in our lives we're simply going to forget to flip the switch to on, and then something like the above instances will happen. Mindful practice should be a 24/7, always on way of life.

Be mindful during training, be mindful of what you are eating, when you are eating and how it's going to affect recovery from your recent session and impact your next session.
Be mindful of the temperature and humidity and how much you are hydrating.
Be mindful of wind direction on a ride so as to not go too hard in one direction only to be hit by a brick wall on the way back.
Be mindful during your preparation and packing. Do you have everything. What's the weather going to be like? What has the weather been like in the past. Are you truly prepared for all eventualities on the day. I can't count the number of races I've been to where athletes were totally ill prepared with clothing for the elements that day. Pay special note those of you doing IM Tremblant this year. I've been there in August five years in a row, for four of those years, it's hit single digits over night and been single digits on race day morning.
Be mindful of your surroundings. Where are the cars, the other athletes.In a race where placing is a likely outcome, where are the others in your category.
Be mindful of target intensity and training metrics and most importantly be mindful of how your body is responding to that intensity and those metrics every single time. Both in training and on race day.

Be mindful so that you don't have to deal with surprises. The more mindful you are during training and during preparation, the less likely you'll be surprised by something on the big day.

Be mindful so that you don't risk letting yourself down at a pivotal moment.

Practice mindful awareness at all times so that you don't have to look back at a performance and think "what if.."

Practice mindful awareness so that you can always say that you truly did your best every single day of your life.

A Healthier "Fat Tuesday"

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 16:29:00 +0000

Anyone who knows me knows that I love everything that has to do with the great musical feast that is New Orleans. Mardi Gras is about to get underway and it all begins with the celebration of Fat Tuesday which this year is March 4. Fat Tuesday is also known as Pancake Tuesday and for those of you who want to take part but like to forego the wheat and dairy I thought I'd remind you all of my famous Buckwheat Groat Pancake recipe...

First, you need raw Buckwheat Groats. You can find them at most health food stores, and Whole Foods carries them in the bulk section. Sadly, Bulk Barn hasn't gotten on board with this one yet, but I bug my local store every time I go in.

So, take your Buckwheat Groats, about 2 cups, put them in a large bowl and fill it with water and set aside to soak overnight. Yes, this recipe requires a little planning!

In the morning, drain the water and rinse the groats thoroughly. Place them in the blender or food processor and add a banana, about 2tbsp of flax seed and about a cup of coconut water. Add the water in slowly and blend until you've arrived at a pancake batter like consistency.

Cook these over medium heat in a skillet with a little coconut butter and serve with fresh fruit and real maple syrup.

Bon appetit!

Not All Bikes are Sized Equally

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 16:05:00 +0000

An overview of the differences in size and geometry between different brands and models...

I'm back with another digital whiteboard presentation for your education. As I state at the beginning of this one, if you ever walk into a store to buy a bike and the salesperson simply eyes you up and down and says they are going to put you on X size, turn around and walk away. If you want to understand why, have a look...

Everything I Need to Know about Rest, I Learned From my Dog

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 16:04:00 +0000

An interesting thing happened last week. My dog got hurt. We still don't know what actually happened. My wife came home from walking him and said that he started limping halfway through. It looked to be his front left leg and after a thorough squeeze test I was pretty sure it was a soft tissue issue and not a broken bone. I supposed I should qualify my opening comment. It wasn't the fact that he got hurt that I find interesting, rather his reaction to it, and what that reaction can teach the rest of us "higher intelligence" beings.

First off, he let me touch his paw. He hates having his paws and lower legs touched, especially on the front but this time not only did he let me, he layed there quietly while I massaged the muscles for him. That alone told me something was definitely up and he knew it. The massage must have felt good or brought relief for him to tolerate it. I figured a vet couldn't really do much for a soft tissue injury on a dog-pretty sure they don't have doggie MRI or ultrasound-so I decided to give it a few days and see what came of it.

So, did Charlie suck it up, HTFU, push through the pain? Nope! He slept. A lot. We have a little routine mid day and mid evening of rough housing, fetch, running around the yard like a nut...if you have a dog, you know what I mean. He's mostly a pretty laid back, quiet guy but a couple of times a day he needs to get out and blow off some steam, kind of like puppy recess. Well, for three days straight he wanted none of it. The first nigh before I realized what was up, we tried to get him into play mode with zero success. He just layed there on the couch looking at us. Same thing the following day. He was good for his usual walk, but he was limping and he was moving slow. As soon as we got back, up on the couch to sleep all day. He was like this for three days. Walk, sleep, eat, sleep, walk, sleep...no play, no fun. Eat and rest.

And then come day four, the limp was gone, he was a giant bundle of energy on our walk and he wanted to play all day long (pent up energy I suppose). That was last week, he's been fine ever since.

So what can us humans take away from this? Dogs are "dumb" in that they don't have the rational thought process we do. They don't "think", they react on instinct and learned behaviour. His instinct when he felt that pain or discomfort was to rest the leg until it went away. We can definitely learn from this behaviour.

How many of you out there have felt a pain and sucked it up, HTFU'd, pushed through it? Probably most of you at some point. How many of you have popped a pain killer to get through a workout or a race? How many of you have then found out that the thing your pain was pointing to was actually pretty serious, and could have been much less serious if you had just rested it when it first showed up?

The kind of pain my dog experienced is a frustrating one for the over-achieving athlete to deal with. The "aha moment" acute pain-stepped on rock, foot rolls on rock, hear popping sound in ankle, feel intense pain shooting from ankle-is easy for us to work with. That kind of acute pain tells us that we most definitely broke, tore or strained something and we'd better at least rest if not head to the emergency room.

The slow to build, no obvious reason, seemingly out of nowhere pain is harder to understand. One day it's there, the next it's not, then it's back. Sometimes it moves around a bit. This type of pain though is almost always the distant early warning signs of a potential chronic issue with a joint or piece of soft tissue, often a result of poor bio-mechanics, flexibility or imbalance. When we push through these kinds of pain we run a serious risk of doing major, long lasting damage to the area in question. Too often I've seen things that could have been resolved with a couple of days rest and some stretching/massage turn into multiple weeks off because the warning signs were ignored and rest protocols were not put in place.

So, next time you feel a new pain during a workout, explore it. Go see your physio, get it addressed and get on a protocol to rest it and fix the underlying issue that caused it. Be more like man's best friend. Let your intelligence take a break and let your instinct take over. Instinctually we don't like pain and will avoid it at all costs. That's why you only touched a hot stove once when you were a kid. So when the body knows something is up, it sends up a warning shot of pain to get you to stop doing the thing that is bad. The next time this happens, trust your instinct and let it rest. Your body will thank you for it later.

Tracking Form and Function to Improve Bike Fit

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 16:02:00 +0000

A quick webinar of one of the key parameters an I.M.Fit 3D Fit Analysis can track and improve.

Today I wanted to talk about knee tracking and how a full I.M.Fit 3D Fit Analysis can help diagnose potential issues with knee bio-mechanics and how changes in fit can improve upon those poor bio-mechanics. You can find the webinar here.

Thanks for checking in and happy training.

2013 Season Recap

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 15:32:00 +0000

It's been a great season for IMFIT Athletes. Here are a few of the highlights...

On the triathlon side of things the big news comes from the Ironman world. I had the pleasure of coaching four individuals to Personal Bests this season and the honour of assissting in not one but two Kona qualifying races. Congrats to everyone, and thanks for your support and trust.

On the mountain bike side it's been an equally excellent season. Heading into Provincials this weekend, out of the seven categories that IMFIT athletes represent in, four of those categories have one of our athletes sitting in the top 5 overall. The other three are all well within the top 20. Thanks to all of you as well for a great season. Definitely looking forward to Provincials at Horseshoe this coming weekend.

Muskoka 70.3 Course Discussion

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 16:30:00 +0000

A quick webinar discussion of the differences between the Muskoka and Mont Tremblant bike courses.

You can head on over here for a quick discussion using real rider data of how the Mont Tremblant and Muskoka courses vary in difficulty...in this coach's opinion anyway!

Calculating Caloric Intake

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 16:20:00 +0000

Good morning!

New blog post is up with a lesson on how to properly utilize your Vo2 assessment results to calculate your own unique caloric requirements.

Good day!

Well, summer is pretty much gone and it's back to school for many, back to the regular routine for me! You may have noticed over the years that my writing tends to tail off in the summer. This is due to a variety of reasons. It's race season, so I'm kept pretty busy travelling around the province and abroad supporting my athletes and for the last few summers, I've tended to take a bit of extra personal time to enjoy summer with my wife who is a teacher. Now that she's back to school, it's back to business for me!

Today I'd like to talk about how to take the results of your Vo2 assessment and use them to create a clear picture of how many calories you are burning at a given intensity.

And when I say talk, I really do mean talk. There is this great website my wife put me onto that allows users to create short, illustrated lessons on any topic they choose. I'm definitely going to be using this more now that I've found it and figured out how to use it. This one is my first full effort so I apologize if it's a little rough. Feedback will most certainly be appreciated though!

So, without further adieu, you can head on over here to listen to my lesson.

As always, thanks for checking in and happy training!

Intent and the Jerk

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 16:16:00 +0000

“Reap what you sow”.

“You get out what you put in”

There are myriad variations on this theme, but they all boil down to the same thing. Intent and focus. Regardless of what you are doing, whether it’s spinning on the trainer, putting together a cost proposal at work, teaching your kid how to throw a ball, just doing it won’t always lead to the results you are expecting (sorry Nike).

You must do it with intent. Understand what it is you are trying to achieve with the activity you are taking part in and focus on that end result for the entirety of that activity. In short, give your absolute best effort possible on that day, at that time.

This means shutting off the phone, closing the lap top, hiding the tablet, telling the kids to leave you alone and devoting 100% of your attention to the task at hand. Let’s face it, we’re all busy people. If you’ve decided that riding your bike, hitting the pool or taking off for a run is important enough to you that you’re willing to take time away from work, friends or family to get it done then you not only owe it to yourself to devote 100% of your attention to it, but you also owe it to those things you have chosen to put aside for that time. Not giving 100% focus to your training when it is time to train is disrespectful to whomever or whatever you have put aside to make room in your day for training time.

Intent means not half-assing it. It means sticking to whatever plan you had for that session, not letting your attention drift, keeping to the performance and intensity targets that have been set out. If you’re doing an interval session, it means giving 100% effort not only to the intervals themselves but to the recovery between. Don’t immediately slack off and go for email check when the interval is over. Stay in the moment, focus on your breathing, work at the recovery as “hard” as you worked at the interval. Some of you may find it odd that I’m asking you to rest and recover with intent. I’m betting you don’t have a dog or cat. If you did, you’d know what I’m talking about. Whatever my guy is doing, he does it with 100% intent and focus. When he’s on, he’s on. When he’s off, he’s off. There is no middle ground. He rests like a pro and you should too!

That’s intent. If you aren’t getting the results you’ve been wanting, ask yourself this. Are you fully in the moment from start to finish for each training session? Are you focussed on the task at hand and did you go into that session with the intent to give every second your absolute best effort? If the answer to any of the above is no, then there’s a good chance this is why your results have been slower to come than expected.

Now. The Jerk.

We all have one. He’s that little nagging voice that pops up from time to time to lay waste to our intent and focus. He’s the “too tired-too cold-too wet-don’t want to do this-such and such hurts-just put it off till tomorrow” voice that resides in your head and pops up at the most inopportune times. And when the Jerks voice gets a foot hold, intent and focus haven’t got a hope.

So what do we do about him? Well, the first thing you must understand is you aren’t the only one who has to deal with him. I can promise you with 100% certainty that we all have one. Unfortunately, the way we’ve been wired he’s an inevitability for us all.

How to stop him then. First step, accept that you can’t stop him. That’s right, accept that he is a part of you and you will always have to listen to his voice at certain points throughout your life. I remember reading a meditation guide book a number of years ago. Not much of it stuck with me but I do remember one point very vividly. The author was discussing how to relax your mind and your thoughts in order to drift into a meditative state. His suggestion was to not try and stop the thoughts that are going to pop into your mind. The mind is created to think, thoughts are always going to be popping up. Even when we’re sleeping, our mind is working away. You can’t stop thoughts any more than you can stand on the shore and stop the waves from coming onto the beach. In fact, the wave analogy is a very apt one. Think about what happens when a break wall is installed on a shore line, or an underwater reef is disrupting the flow of water to the shore. The waves are large, they are loud and they are often violent. Now think of a wide open beach with no impediments to the current. The waves are small and gentle. They wash into shore and wash back out again, leaving very little trace of their existence mere moments after they have gone.

Thoughts can be treated the same way. Especially those negative and defeatist thoughts formed by the Jerk in us all. When you try to stop a thought, you turn your attention to it. The harder you try to stop it, the more of your focus gets turned to it. Thoughts are very much like plants. Give a plant water and fertilizer and it will grow. For a thought, attention is its water and fertilizer. Giving a thought attention, even if that attention is in the form of trying to stop it, gives that thought energy. It gives that thought a foothold in your mind, a place to grow and to flourish. When those negative and self-doubting thoughts flourish you can kiss your intent and focus good bye. The Jerk will have talked you out of them.

So instead, accept your inner Jerk. Make peace with him and then simply ignore him. Accept that he’s going to try to “get in your head”(pun intended) and disrupt your focus and intent. Let him try. Learn to recognize those thoughts for what they are…a distraction. Let them wash gently over your mind the way a gentle tide washes in to shore. Negative thought in, negative thought out. With no focus or attention given.

Do everything you do with intent and focus. Before starting a task, make a commitment to yourself that you will do the absolute best you can at that moment in time. If you make that conscious commitment before you start, make that agreement with yourself at the onset, when the Jerk pops up and starts to whisper you will find it very easy to turn your attention back to your commitment and let his words pass through your mind with no affect whatsoever.

All right, I hope that wasn’t too New Age for any of you! As always, thanks for stopping by and happy training.

What's in a name...

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 16:06:00 +0000

So I've been around for close to ten years now. Wow, that's crazy. I've managed to take my passion and turn into a modest living for almost a decade. Well. Done. Me!

Anyway, people often look at the name of my studio with a questioning look on their faces so I thought I'd take a bit of time to set the record straight on it's multiple meanings and branding.

To start with, pronunciation. It's not imfit, prounounced as one word with a "short" I sound. The proper pronunciation is I.M.Fit. The obvious meaning is that the I and the M are my initials. Ian MacLean. Simple. The Fit has a double meaning as it refers to both bike fit and physical fitness.

But it goes deeper than that and I'm starting to re-brand my services with that deeper meaning in mind. From a bike fit standpoint much has been happening with what I refer to as the commodification of fit by the major manufacturers in order to maximize sales of bikes and product. It's getting to the point where you can't, as a bike fit customer, walk into a retail bike store and wholly trust the motivations behind their given fit protocol, philosophy and tools. I digress a bit, and I'll have a full blog on that in the coming days, but I needed to mention this in order to highlight the difference you can expect at my studio.

As it pertains to bike fit, the I and the M have a meaning. I is first and foremost about Independent. I have no retail agenda here. I have nothing to sell you. My only purpose is to fit you to your bike. My opinion, my protocols, my philosophy and my tools are all entirely Independent of the pressures a retail environment creates and as such my recommendations about parts and bikes is both Independent and unbiased.

I is also about Individual. You, the bike fit customer. You are an individual, unique in every way. Your fit requirements are also individual and unique to your own needs and circumstances.

Which brings me to the M. (bio)Mechanical. Your circumstances and needs are dictated in large part by your own Individual bioMechanics. Your range of motion, flexibility, old or current injuries. All of that is taken into account during the fit process to optimize your position for your current needs.

That is the I.M.Fit philosophy as it pertains to bike fit and you'll notice a slight re-branding of the fitting services on the website to better reflect this.

From a fitness standpoint it's all about Individual Metabolic Fit(ness). I've never believed in cookie-cutter/one size fits all training plans. In fact it was in response to the prevalence of those that I got into this business in the first place. Each athlete has a unique, individual level of metabolic fitness that must be taken into account when a training plan is devised. That's where the I.M.Fit Metabolic Assessments come into play (yes, more re-branding). We figure out where you are at, determine where we want to get you and then create a road map of training based on your individual metabolic needs.

And as my most recent webinar shows, when that is done properly, the results can be phenomenal.

So there you have it. That's what is in this particular name. IMFit. If you remember nothing else, remember that the I is the most important. Independent. Individualized. The I is the foundation of all that happens here.

Thanks for reading and happy training!

Training Benefits from Applying Vo2 Metabolic Assessment Results

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 15:09:00 +0000

Greetings! I'd like to continue on the theme of Vo2 Metabolic Analysis results and show you today what can happen to your fitness when you apply the results to your training.

Again, I'll be using that awesome digital "whiteboard" website to present this in more of a webinar form. You can find today's lecture here.

As I say at the end of my talk, these results are typical. I've been doing these tests for almost ten years now and I see this time and again when the results are taken to heart and applied properly to the training phase. It's especially true when I'm the one creating the training plan based on the test results but it can just as easily happen with a self coached athlete who has the discipline to stay true to the intensity they are supposed to be at. In this gentleman's case it meant running slower than he was used to for that three month cylce, but he trusted the results and trusted my interpretation and I'd say the end results speak for themselves.

Like I said, training isn't rocket science, but it is science and when you have that science on your side, the results will be a stronger, fitter, faster you.

Thanks for checking in and happy training!

Utilizing Vo2 results to determine caloric requirements

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 14:45:00 +0000

Good day!
Well, summer is pretty much gone and it's back to school for many, back to the regular routine for me! You may have noticed over the years that my writing tends to tail off in the summer. This is due to a variety of reasons. It's race season, so I'm kept pretty busy travelling around the province and abroad supporting my athletes and for the last few summers, I've tended to take a bit of extra personal time to enjoy summer with my wife who is a teacher. Now that she's back to school, it's back to business for me!

Today I'd like to talk about how to take the results of your Vo2 assessment and use them to create a clear picture of how many calories you are burning at a given intensity.

And when I say talk, I really do mean talk. There is this great website my wife put me onto that allows users to create short, illustrated lessons on any topic they choose. I'm definitely going to be using this more now that I've found it and figured out how to use it. This one is my first full effort so I apologize if it's a little rough. Feedback will most certainly be appreciated though!

So, without further adieu, you can head on over here to listen to my lesson.

As always, thanks for checking in and happy training!

Fit Bikes, what are they good for?

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:01:00 +0000

A lot has happened in the world of bike fit in the last few months and in many ways I have to say it's about time. I, and a few others like me have been taking bike fit seriously for over twelve years. Personally that would be four years in a shop and eight years as an independent bike fit professional. I find it equal parts rewarding, frustrating and interesting that it's taken until this year for the major manufacturers to start taking bike fit as seriously as those of us doing the fitting.

As of this fall Dorel, parent company of Cannondale has purchased Guru Bicycles for the sole purpose of gaining access to their Dynamic Fit Unit fit bike, Specialized bought Retul in order to control their proprietary fit bike and Shimano has acquired Bike Fitting BV out of the Netherlands. I don't doubt that fit bike announcements will be made in the coming months from the other major players, most notably Trek and Giant. In an odd way it kind of reminds me of the cold war mentality of mutually assured destruction...we've got a fit bike, you've got a fit bike, don't do anything funny and everybody's fine.

So with all this new found attention on bike fit and fit bikes in particular, I felt it was time for me to weigh in with my thoughts on where the industry is headed and where I'm positioning my services in light of all this focus.

I'll get right to the point. Fit bikes are not bike "fit" tools. They are bike "sales" tools. I've always believed this which is why I've never brought one into my studio. I've just never said it out loud. But now with Specialized and Cannondale buying up what are arguably the best two units on the market I feel pretty comfortable putting forth this argument.

Let's face it, bike manufacturing companies are in the business of making bikes for the sole purpose of being sold to a retail market. Everything that they do, every little "value added" service they bring on board is done with the sole purpose of selling more bikes than they did last year and more bikes than their competitors did.
As an extension of that, bike shops are also primarily in the business of selling bikes, in fact the real onus is on the shops to move as much inventory as they can as quickly as they can. To their credit, Specialized and Cannondale are providing their shops with another tool to help move that inventory but that's really all it is. A tool to help move inventory.

How you ask? Allow me to explain.

As I sit here writing this in early December, bike shops across the country are already receiving shipments of 2013 model year bicycles. These are bicycles that they had to pre-book and commit to back as early as the summer, when they hadn't yet sold through their 2012 inventory. The nature of the bicycle industry asks retailers to gaze into a magical crystal ball every summer and take their best educated guess as to what their inventory level needs to be for next year. The manufacturer "helps" with this crystal ball gazing by requiring a minimum booking dollar value to remain as a dealer in good standing. Some of the bigger manufacturers can demand booking minimums of $750,000-$1 million for the privilege of being a dealer. And with competition so tight in many markets, dealers have to capitulate for fear of having the line pulled and handed to the shop down the street who will be more than willing to mortgage their entire future on one years booking just to get a particular line away from a competitor. Add to that the fact that many shops carry multiple A line brands and you are talking upwards of $3 million in inventory being committed to six to eight months prior to the season.

So that's part one of being a dealer in good standing taken care of. Part two is the really hard part. Paying for everything you've committed to selling. Come January 1, 2013 terms kick in for all these bikes, typically something in the 30-60-90 range. Which means that come March it's time to pay the piper. For some of the lucky shops those terms don't kick in until the season starts which is around March in this part of the world so for them they have until June to pay up. But either way, bike retailers are under the gun to sell through as much inventory as they can as quickly as they can. The more bikes they sell at MSRP early season the better their profit margin at the end of the year.

This is where store level bike fit and in particular fit bikes come into play. I've been through the bike fit seminars and training sessions and every last one of them includes a bit on how to turn bike fit into sales. Until recently those sales have been limited to parts and accessories. New saddles, new stems, new bars etc. It's really not that complicated. The hardest thing for any retailer to do is to get people through the door. Once you have them in your store, regardless of why they came in, a good salesperson can turn that visit into dollars by asking questions, listening and steering the conversation. Offering bike fit makes good sense for retailers now. Bike fit has become a big thing in the last few years and by offering this service you get people in your door. Once you have them on the bike and going through the fit process it becomes very easy to suggest different parts for their bike. X saddle will be more comfortable, Y handlebar will get you more aero etc...Bike fit schools, especially those created by bicycle manufacturers include this type of sales training in their fit seminars.

Until recently however, unless the bike was just blatantly not the right size or style for the rider, it was difficult to turn a bike fit into a new bike sale. That's where fit bikes come into play. And here's how it's going to work...or at least how it would work if I ran a full bike shop and were forced to care more about inventory turnover than the integrity of the fit process.

The bike fit client comes in, the fitter takes his existing bike and takes all the pertinent dimensions off of it. He then transfers these dimensions to the fit bike to replicate the clients current position. Then the fit process begins and changes are made. If they are truly serious about good fit, then hard data like power output and pedal efficiency are tracked during the fit to insure that the changes being made are of net benefit to the client. When the fit is complete the fitter will take the new dimensions from the fit bike and attempt to transfer them to the clients current ride. This is where things get interesting. Lo and behold, the new dimensions you've arrived at "together" on the fit bike can't be replicated effectively on the current bicycle. But wait, Brand Y that we carry here in the store in size X will set up exactly like we have you on the fit bike.But don't worry, if you buy this new bike, you won't have to pay for the fit, we'll just take it off the cost of the bike. Amazing how that works. How often will this scenario play out in fit bike equipped stores? That I can't say, but I can say with near certainty that part of the staff's fit training will incorporate a segment on how to turn a fit into a new bike sale. It's a matter of economics. Bike fits, at least good bike fits, are time consuming. Even at the high end of the scale, $250-$300 for up to two hours of a staff members time is not a good return on investment for a shop when no inventory has moved during the process. When I was working in a shop I could easily turn out a half dozen bike sales in the two hours it would take to do a good fit session.

All the above is reason number one why you'll never find a fit bike in my studio. I'm not selling anything. I take great pride in my neutrality. It's one of the main features of my services that sets me apart from all the other bike fitters in my market. I have no hidden agenda, I have no product to move. If I tell you that you need a new saddle, bar or even bike then you can rest assured that you really do need it. Everything I do during a bike fit is geared towards maximizing comfort and optimizing performance on a clients current ride with as few parts changes as necessary. Most of the time this is possible. Maybe a new stem, sometimes a new bar or saddle but most often all that is needed is a fresh, educated and independent look at the fit interface between cyclist and bike. And on the few occasions where the bike itself just isn't right, I stop the fit and have a discussion about why the bike is wrong and offer to assist the client in finding a bike that is right.

The other issue I have with fit bikes is that they have absolutely nothing to do with the real world or real bikes. They create an artificial X/Y coordinate based fit that, in the wrong hands, can lead to a horrible outcome once those coordinates are translated to an actual bike. If you haven't seen them yet, here's the Guru, and here's the Retul.

The easy part of doing a fit on these contraptions is the finding of the X/Y coordinates. And for those of you who aren't quite familiar with what that means I'm talking about a fit school of thought pioneered by Dan Empfield that relates everything in bike fit back to a pair of measurements called Stack and Reach. I've already written about my bike fit philosophy in regards to bike fit being about more than X/Y, so rather than waste space here rehashing, if you haven't read it you can pop on over here for a quick peek. The danger I see with fit bikes is when they end up in the hands of inexperienced shop staff who don't understand the subtle nuances of bike geometry and handling. By arriving at those X/Y coordinates on a device that has nothing to do with a real bike on the road there is huge room for error in putting those coordinates onto a bike geometry that is actually going to be functional and safe for the rider. Think I'm exaggerating? There are still shops out there who think proper road bike sizing consists of having the client stand over the top tube to check for clearance. How well do you think these shops are going to do jumping from that to a fit bike?

I don't toot my own horn nearly often enough as a business owner but this requires a little tooting. I'll put my non-fit bike methodology against a fit bike equipped shop for determining proper bike size any day.

So no, you'll never find a fit bike in my studio. They are a fit tool with a basis more in selling bikes than in creating good fits. I mean, let's face it. Fit bikes have existed for well over twenty years. They were originated by custom bicycle manufacturers who wanted to give their dealers an easy way to sell more custom. It's akin to taking the puppy dog home. Put them in a great feeling position on the fit bike that you can't quite replicate on a stock frame and custom virtually sells itself. Only now the stock manufacturers are getting in on the same game.

And for those out there who may be questioning my motives and suggest that I just don't want to spend the money, allow me to point out that over the last eight years I've spent over $20,000 on Vo2 testing equipment and upwards of $15,000 on bike fit tools. I was the first to bring the Retul to Canada. When I see a new tool that I truly believe will provide a net benefit to my customers I don't hesitate to bring it in. Since I have no interest in selling bikes, I see no need to have a fit bike.

True, competition is going to heat up in the bike fit market soon, but I prefer to position myself above the mutually assured destruction mentality I noted above. My independence, my neutrality and my skill as a fitter will continue to set me apart from others, regardless of the shiny new toys they may have.

"just finish" or "compete"

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:07:00 +0000

So I sat down for a coffee with an old client of mine yesterday. He was almost one of the originals actually. It was a good catch up session. At one point he related a story about a friend of his who has also been to see me. His friend had come to me for a custom Guru back in the days when I was doing retail and is now being coached by another coaching group in the Toronto area. And during that conversation an interesting distinction became clear. It turns out they have very different goals with their respective athletic endeavours. My old client is all about going as fast as he can and challenging for podium finishes whenever possible. His friend was simply interested in having fun and "just finishing". At this point my old client had a bit of an epiphany about the difference between what I do and what others do. "If you just want to enjoy your time, be fit and finish then go to the other guys. If you want to be fast, be your best and see the world from the top of a podium, you go see Ian."

Now this got me thinking. When I started doing this, it was never my intent to cater only to the "elite" of the age group world but when I sit back and look at my client's results over the last eight years it seems that I have inadvertently self-selected that client base. In relative terms I do have a disproportionate percentage of clients who have reached podiums, put in repeated personal bests and qualified for various Age Group World Championship type events. The interesting thing about this is that many of them came to me with the "happy to finish" mentality and over their time with me developed into podium contenders.

How does this happen? I believe it comes down to the science behind what I do. There is no real "secret" to my success other than investing in the best testing equipment available and making it available to the general population. I think a lot of age group athletes aren't so much happy with just finishing as they have simply come to terms with it because they don't fully understand the subtle nuances to effective training and they've never been exposed to the fine details of how their individual body is responding to the training stimulus they are providing.

Here's the thing, my athletes don't necessarily train any harder or longer than others do, they simply train smarter. When you know exactly what your Anaerobic Threshold and Aerobic Endurance Threshold's are, you have specific targets to work with for every training session. It's those targets that allow me to develop a "happy to finish" athlete into something more. When they start to see and feel the improvements a whole new world of possibilities opens up to them. They start to believe they are capable of more and once that belief sets in, they start to achieve more. And then it just becomes a self perpetuating cycle. Every gain, every success spurs the desire for bigger, better and more. One of my greatest joys in this business is in taking middle of the pack age groupers and opening their eyes to the true potential of their body and mind through smart, focused training.

So if you're reading this as one of those I've developed, then I thank you for putting your trust in my plan. If you're reading this as an age grouper who is starting to wonder if there may be more to your sport than just finishing, then let's talk.

I've been bought out...sort of

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:18:00 +0000

So, I suppose I should be flattered. The big giant corporation Lifetime Fitness has bought up all the assets of NewLeaf Fitness, the company who provides (or provided rather) the equipment and support for the fitness and Vo2 testing I've been performing for the past eight years.

You can read the news release here.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mgc-diagnostics-corporation-completes-sale-of-new-leaf-business-assets-to-life-time---the-healthy-way-of-life-company-168037756.html

I guess myself and the other small scale centres like mine posed too much of a threat to their business model. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid. Maybe they just did a cost analysis and some number crunchers figured it was cheaper in the long run to bring the hardware and software in-house rather than continually paying recurring fees to a third party. Can't really blame them there, but if that's the case I'm sure they aren't too upset about cutting off the heads of all the small guys like me out there.

The truly frustrating issue for me is that this is of immediate concern for the viability of my business model. You see, the O2 sensor that all of these systems use is fairly similar to a fuel cell and have a finite life. In my experience with NewLeaf, the lifespan is normally around 16-18months and mine just hit it's end life two weeks ago, rendering my unit useless. All assessment appointments have been put on hold as a result. I knew it was coming up and I also knew that NewLeaf had a new unit available at a fairly modest upgrade cost which I had budgeted for. I have cash on hand, ready to spend for my cool new upgrade.

Do you think I could get an answer from anybody? Hah! It would take at least 24hrs to get a response to any question I had from my supplier and anything I sent directly to NewLeaf was completely ignored. Well, I now know why. The deal was in the making but they couldn't say anything, so best to not say anything at all.

I'm not a big fan of delays and run-arounds, so while they were busy not getting back to me, I got busy searching for alternatives. Thankfully I found one. One that I believe in the long run is actually better for both my clients, current and future and for my business model. It is a more accurate, durable unit that is significantly more cost effective in the long run than the NewLeaf unit was. With all the knowledge I've accrued over the past eight years, if I knew back when I started all that I know now, this new unit is hands down the one I would have bought instead of the NewLeaf.

The trouble is timing. If my NewLeaf unit were still functioning (and ideally if it had been serviced back in the spring) I'd have a roughly 18 month window to budget the roughly $12,000 I need for the new unit and I'd be able to buy it when I was ready to instead of when I have to. The only thing I dislike more than delays is having my hand forced, and my hand is definitely being forced right now. Without assessment functionality my coaching programs would not be nearly as effective as they are right now. It's having that data and my keen understanding of how to apply it that sets me apart from other coaches out there. And it's that understanding, application and personalization of the results that sets me apart from mass production factories like Lifetime Fitness.

So where does all this leave me? Well to be honest I feel very much at a crossroads. Making a major re-investment in my business is not something I was planning on having to do at this point in my life. It seems to me I have two choices. Throw up my hands, wave the white flag to the big guys and walk away. Or pony up and use this as a catalyst to bigger and better things, providing a level of personalized service that a big corporation like Lifetime could never dream of providing.

For those of you who know me, the answer to this is pretty darn obvious! Besides, I'm too good at what I do, and honestly I wouldn't know what else to do with myself. I love what I've been able to do over the past eight years, I feel blessed to have a job that has never truly felt like work and honoured to have played a small part in the athletic successes of so many.

So ya, to hell with you Lifetime, you just got yourself some real competition.

Now, please be patient while I go out and rustle up $12,000! As soon as I'm up and running for assessments again, you will be the first to know.

And finally, I'd like to close this with a huge word of thanks and appreciation to all those who have trusted me with their fitness and performance over the years. Your support and in many cases friendship is what keeps me so happy with what I do.

some random thoughts on bike fit

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:08:00 +0000

A good fit is as much about body angles on the bike as it is about body displacement. How your weight gets displaced along the wheelbase and where your center of mass lies in relation to the bottom bracket is every bit as important as what your hip and knee angles are. In fact, I could easily argue that weight displacement is more important as it this factor that determines how the bike is going to handle out on the road.

The sad truth is, a decent fitter can arrive at the appropriate body angles on a virtually infinite array of bike sizes. Saddle height, saddle fore-aft and stem length can all be adjusted to "make" a bike fit the rider. IF your definition of fit stops at body angles. Mine does not.

The way I see fit, there is a pair of x-y parameters that ultimately determine proper rider position. Saddle height and saddle nose to center of handle bar. Now, these are not to be confused with the more commonly understood x-y measurements of stack and reach, although they are related. Stack and reach refer only to bike dimensions. What I'm focused on has more to do with rider position.

Saddle height obviously determines knee angle. Saddle nose to bar center determines hip angle. Yes, I'm oversimplifying a bit, but hopefully you get the idea. What I want to focus on mostly here is the cockpit reach or saddle nose to bar center measurement. Say your optimal hip angle occurs with a cockpit reach of 66cm. By combining top tube and stem lengths you can see that it is possible to arrive at that magic 66cm number in a wide variety of ways. At extremes, you could have a 60cm top tube with a 6cm stem, or a 54cm top tube with a 12cm stem. And yes, I am oversimplifying again. Work with me. So we have a bunch of different ways of arriving at that magic cockpit reach and hip angle. Do you supposed all of those options are going to handle the same out on the road? Not a chance.

You need to think of your stem as your steering axis. A short stem creates a very twitchy, fast to respond steering input. Some people like this, many don't and I consider it to be a very unsafe way of riding. The shorter your stem, the more likely you are to lose control in bumpy and uneven surface conditions and the more likely you are to over-steer in an emergency situation. The longer the stem, the more controlled and stable the steering response. But again, you can go too far and create a bike that is sluggish and completely unresponsive. In my humble opinion the ideal generally lies somewhere between a 10 and 12 cm stem. Any shorter and I consider the bike too big, any longer and I consider the bike too small. Now there are always extremes. Cippolini used to ride a custom 15cm stem on a very small bike. He did this because the smaller frame was lighter and stiffer, and the longer stem gave him optimal control when he was throwing the bike around underneath him in the sprint. I can imagine he would have a serious loss of control in those violent sprints if he were riding even a modest 12cm stem. So ultimately where you lie on the scale comes down to your riding style, your range of motion and your biomechanics. A good fitter will understand this and take all of it into account when performing your fit.

But wait, there's more! That ratio of top tube to stem length impacts the overall geometry of the bike as well, which also impact it's handling on the road. Stock bikes are built proportionally. A shorter top tube creates a shorter head tube, longer top tubes require taller head tubes. So where you end up on the horizontal plane has a huge impact on where you end up on the vertical plane. This has the greatest impact on people with long inseams and short torso's. That short torso requires a shorter top tube length than your overall height would indicate, but those long legs cause a problem. Long legs means tall saddle height. Short torso means short top tube for short cockpit reach. But, short top tube means smaller frame and a shorter head tube, which can then create too great a drop from saddle to handlebar, causing a massive shift in your COM over the bottom bracket. Essentially, it can pitch you too far forward, put too much weight on your hands and have your COM too high above not only the BB but the frame in general. This can create a very top heavy and weight forward bike that will climb poorly and descend dangerously.

Twice in the last month I've seen bikes that were sold based solely on rider height and both times they were the wrong size and geometry. Sometimes these people need a custom bike and sometimes they can work with a stock bike. But it may not be the bike they "wanted". When your body is disproportionate, you have to go with what works. Fortunately, not all size 54cm frames are created equal. Every company has their own ideas about what a particular size means and they all have their own ideas about how their bikes should ride. So armed with the proper knowledge and tools, it is usually possible to find a stock bike with a geometry that can be tweaked for the individual riders needs. And when I can't, custom is my recommendation.

I have morals when it comes to fitting, and I will never just "make" a bike fit. If I don't believe it's going to handle well and safely on the road, I'll shut down the fit and work on finding the client a bike that will.

Size Matters, or It's All About the Inches

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:07:00 +0000

So I’ve been meaning to write this one for awhile. It’s all about the importance of something many tend to overlook, especially when buying a new bike. That something is your gearing set up and corresponding gear ratios.

In laying out training plans for cyclists I’ll often get a slew of emails early in the outdoor season with people lamenting how hard it is to keep their heart rate down outside. It’s obviously very easy to control and measure effort on the trainer when you have no outside influences acting upon you. But, once you hit the great outdoors and have head winds and hills to contend with, measuring that effort though constant monitoring of cadence and gearing becomes increasingly important. And it becomes very difficult to do effectively if you aren’t geared properly for your fitness and the types of terrain you’ll be riding on.

This became very evident to me personally over the course of last fall and this lovely, early spring. As you will know if you’ve been following me, I’ve taken some much needed time off of any structured training, just riding, running, hiking, climbing etc for fun. As a result, my overall health has remained quite good, but my cycling specific power and fitness has suffered. My current ride is a Guru CX bike that came stock with true cyclcross gearing. That means a 48x38 chain ring set up on the front and a 12-25 10sp cassette on the back. When I started trying to actually train again last fall, I had an impossible time trying to keep my heart rate down and cadence high on even the smallest of climbs. And living up here in Halton Hills, it’s pretty darn difficult to keep it flat without taking to riding around the block a hundred times! So, that’s what I did. I dusted off the mountain bike and spun lightly around town to keep my heart rate down in the aerobic range it needed to be in for my current fitness level. Between that and my basement dwelling pain cave time on the trainer this winter I did get stronger but when I pulled the Guru out again this spring I still found it tough to keep the heart rate down where I wanted it on the hills.

Luckily a solution presented itself when I cleaned up my workshop and went through a bunch of stuff to organize into keep and toss piles. In the process I came across an Ultegra compact crankset that I had no idea I still had! Sweet! For non-techie’s out there reading this a compact crankset means a 50T big ring and a 34T small ring. I swapped it out, went for a ride…HEAVEN!

Where the 38T small ring forced me to constantly be at the upper end of my cassette just for the flats, giving me nowhere to go on the hills, the 34T allowed me to use the low to mid range of the cassette on the flats, giving me plenty of gearing to use on the hills.

To fully understand this you need to look at the gear inch ratios of the two options. Sheldon Brown has an awesome website for doing just that.

With the old CX set up, my tallest (hardest gear) gave me a 105.1 gear inch and my easiest was a 39.9. Switching over to the compact had numerous benefits. My tallest gear jumped to 109.5 and my easiest dropped to 35.7. In effect, I get a better top and bottom end and more useable gears over all. The compact is a much more efficient use of the 10 speeds than the CX set up was.

Now, most of you won’t be riding a 48x38, but I’m willing to bet a lot of you are on the old school (my opinion) standard 53x39 set up. So, let’s look at that. A standard 53x39 with a 12x25 cassette gives you a top end of 116.1 and a bottom end of 41.0. Switch to a compact with the same 12x25 and you now have a top end of 109.5 and a bottom end of 35.7. You lose some on the top, but gain plenty on the bottom. And really, as long as you aren’t a sprinter, you probably aren’t going to miss that top end. But, say you do want the top end, you have a few ways of doing it. You can keep the 53x39 and switch out to a 12x27 cassette. You keep your 116.1 and move to a 38 on the bottom. You’ll note though that the jumps between gears get pretty big, which can become a pain out on the open road. If you’ve ever had that feeling of one gear being too easy and the next one being too hard, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Your other option is to go with the 50x34 and run a tighter cassette on the back, say an 11-23.The 50x11 top end gives you a 119.5 which is actually bigger than the 53x12 and you still get a 38.8 on the bottom end which is pretty well equal to the 39x27 set up, with much tighter spacing through the full run.

So you see, size does matter andbigger isn’t always better. And, with properly thought out gearing selections tuned to your fitness and terrain it is completely possible to keep your heart rate down and cadence up when out in the real world.

If you’ve got a bike now and it’s set up old school and you’re finding it hard to be at the intensity you need to be, maybe it’s time to make a change. And if you are in the market a new bike, be sure to ask questions about the component spec and gearing and don’t be afraid to ask for changes so that the bike matches your needs out on the road.

Sometimes, shorter is better

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:32:00 +0000

If you’ve been following equipment trends in triathlon over the last few months you’ll have noticed a movement towards shorter crank lengths. I’ve been a fan of this for a long time simply from the standpoint that a shorter crank promotes a faster spin with less torque/muscular force being applied to create your power. I’ve written here previously about the benefits to triathletes of generating your power through cadence vs force. Feel free to go check that out before continuing here.

Dan Empfield over at Slowtwitch has really brought the shorter is better philosophy to the forefront over the last few months, using another angle for his argument. Hip angle.

He’s done a great job of explaining it so I see no need to paraphrase or plagiarize his thoughts. If you’re interested in his theory behind it, please go check that out as well.

Suffice to say that it has caught on so well that even good old Lance has traded in his traditional 175’s for a pair of 170’s as he makes his return to triathlon. And when Lance does something the world tends to follow pretty quickly.

I recently got a text from a local pro who I frequently do bike fit consults for. He read the article on Slowtwitch about going short and Lance’s adoption of the 170’s and wanted to know my thoughts. I told him that I agree with the concept and that we should have a look at his set up with both his current 175s and a set of 170s. The results were phenomenal.

Using the Retul 3D system I got a baseline of his fit with the 175’s, making note of hip angle, hip vertical travel, knee lateral travel and knee tilt. Then we put the 170’s on and had a look.

After adjusting saddle height to accommodate for the shorter crank length we saw a 6mm decrease in knee lateral travel, a 3 degree change in knee tilt, from -3 to 0 and a 13mm decrease in hip vertical travel (hip rock). It also opened his closed hip angle by 2 degrees while reducing his open hip angle by a degree. Better biomechanics, better efficiency and a few extra watts all from a 5mm change in crank length. All in all, some relatively free speed.

It seems to be catching on in the pro ranks this season. I’ll be interested to see how long it takes for manufacturers to start changing spec. I remember when compact cranks first came out. Athletes adopted them fairly quickly but it took 3-4 years before bikes started getting spec’d with them. I wonder how long it will take for this shift to take full effect.

A Supplemental

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:01:00 +0000

Good day and thanks for checking in. I know my next topic is supposed to be a continuation of my discussion of breaking in training and racing but I wanted to divert for a moment and talk quickly about supplements.
I get asked fairly frequently what my views are on supplements and nutritional products. These questions tend to come from two camps. My athletes, and sales reps trying to sell me on their version of the latest and greatest product to hit the market. Mostly due to an increase in queries from the second camp, I feel it's time I put my thoughts on record.

I always welcome this question from my athletes, but it's a hard one to answer. I'm a firm believer that what works for one person isn't always going to work for another. We all have different tolerances, needs, tastes and sensitivities. All I can do is tell them what has worked for me in the past, and what seems to really be working well for other athletes and encourage them to experiment on their own to find what works for them.

Overall though, it should be noted that I'm not a very big fan of processed nutritional products. I don't believe we are supposed to be getting our vitamins and minerals from powders, pills and drops. I firmly believe that if you eat a truly healthy, balanced diet comprised mostly of whole, real foods, you're going to get everything you need. Granted, athletes do need to supplement their caloric and nutritional needs during training and competition but I believe that too can be accomplished through real, natural foods. As a quick example, when I'm training in the heat and need additional electrolytes and minerals I use a mixture of coconut water, plain water, lemon and either agave nectar or honey for flavour. Coconut water is truly nature's sports drink. When it comes to needing calories on the bike, I make my own energy bars and gels. There are a multitude of sources out there for recipes. One of my favourites is The Thrive Diet by Brendan Brazier. He's got some great recipes at the back of the book for home made, natural bars and gels. Yes, it takes a bit more work than stopping off at the running store on your way home, but it is a far more satisfying snack when you know exactly what is in it.

Which leads me to the second camp. I know there are a lot of coaches out there who sell nutritional products on the side to supplement their income. I don't really blame them. Coaching isn't exactly a business you get into to get rich! But for all I've said above, that business model just doesn't register with my moral compass. I take great pride in being neutral on a wide range of products. By not selling anything it leaves me free to recommend what I feel is best for each individual client. That goes from bikes, to running shoes, to cycling jackets to indoor trainers to food. If I'm making a buck by selling X, I may hesitate to recommend Y even though I know it's the better option. I want to be free to recommend what I think will be the most effective product for that client in that situation.

But beyond that, I just flat out have issues with the nutritional products industry. I don't think it's right to isolate vitamins and minerals into pills, powders and drops. I believe that nutrition is a holistic endeavour and that a particular food is made up of its particular nutrients, in those particular quantities for a reason. When we isolate these nutrients I believe we are messing with the balance of nature and risking harms that we don't even know about yet.

I also don't believe the industry really needs to exist. If it weren't for the fast food/processed food industry we wouldn't really need to buy nutrients in a bottle. Processed foods may be calorie dense (in fact the argument could be made that many of them are too dense!) but many of them get the nutritional quality processed right out of them by the time they make it store shelves. I think it's kind of ironic that many eat these processed foods in part because they are cheap, but then go out and spend good money on supplements to get what they can't from the cheap processed foods. When you add up the crappy food and the pills/drops/powders I wonder if it wouldn't have been cheaper to just buy the real, whole foods in the first place?

Now don't go thinking I'm all preachy and perfect! Far from it. I do enjoy the odd fast food meal. I try my best to live by the 80/20 rule. 80% good stuff, 20% crap that happens to unfortunately taste really good!
As for supplements, only two things on a regular basis. A vegetarian protein powder for my smoothies and oil of oregano as an immune booster when I think I may feel a cold coming on.

So, those are my thoughts. Please take them with a grain of natural sea salt and experiment on your own to find what balance works best for you.

The Break

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:14:00 +0000

One of my favourite cycling films is a documentary called Overcoming. It follows Team CSC as they prepare for the 2004 Tour de France. It's a great behind the scenes look at what goes on in the world of professional cycling. One part that really stuck with me was a brief commentary from the team director Bjarne Riis. He was talking about maintaining the bicycles, how one of his favourite things as a racer was to tinker with his bike, making sure all the bolts were tightened just so. He talked about how you screw them in just right, but sometimes you go a quarter turn too far and the bolt snaps. But, he says...how do you know how far you can tighten a bolt if you never break one in the process?

It's an interesting question, and I think you all know he's not really talking about breaking bolts. No, what he's really talking about is breaking cyclists. Which is exactly what I want to talk about today. The Break...

Before I go any farther I want to make one thing clear. This is NOT for everybody. If you are a middle to back of the pack athlete and more importantly are happy to be there, just taking part and challenging yourself then this isn't for you. This is for the athlete who wants to move up, wants to set PR's, wants to push the limits of what he or she can handle and ultimately for those who want to win. As a coach, it's this latter group of athletes that I will deliberately attempt to break at some point during a season, because exactly as Mr. Riis said...how do I (and they) know just how far they can go unless they go too far every now and then?

There are two types of break in the athletic world. The Training Break and the Race Break. I'm going to focus on the Training Break for this instalment.

The Training Break is quite simple to understand. At some point during a macro build cycle I make the choice to push my athlete to what I think will be their limit. The training gets picked up an extra notch, I ask for more power, faster paces and/or longer distances than they are used to. But not too much more than they are used to. I don't want them to fail right off the mark. That doesn't teach anybody anything. Instead, I make them just hard enough that as a stand alone workout, each session is achievable. It takes just about everything they've got, and leaves them exhausted when they are done, but they are achievable on their own. It's the cumulative effect of a three week build cycle of progressively harder and harder workouts that causes the break to happen. If I did my job right, somewhere in that third week the muscles have had enough and just can't fire the way they should, the way they were firing even a mere week ago. It's a workout that the athlete has to shut down and walk away from. If that happens, I've succeeded. I've pushed my athlete to a new level of training intensity and from that point onward I will know exactly how far I can take them without breaking them. I know exactly how much I can tighten the screw. Effective training is very much about pushing limits, placing stresses on the body and then allowing the body to compensate for those stresses with proper rest and recovery to get stronger and better deal with that stress the next time it comes along. Once an athlete has broken in training I'll be better able to optimize those training stresses by pushing to just below the breaking point and then bringing them back to a happy place with a mix of active and passive recovery. Optimize the stress, optimize the recovery, maximize the training benefit.

Now, there's a little more to it than that. There is something else I'm looking to learn and teach in this process. You see, I don't tell my athlete when I'm pushing them to break. If I did, one of two things would happen. Either they would be afraid of breaking and not execute the workouts 100% which means they probably won't break. Or, if they do push through and break, they will be mentally prepared for it and move on from it easily. And this ruins the second part of the process. In breaking an athlete during training I'm looking to see how they handle a "failure" both mentally and emotionally. I need to know what they are made of, how they handle set backs. No matter how fit and strong you are, not every competition is going to go to plan. By learning how to deal with a setback in training they are better able to handle setbacks during the race season. This part requires a lot of feedback between coach and athlete. Once they have broken and rest and recovery kick in, it's very important to keep the line of communication open so I can assess how they are dealing with it, and help them understand how and why it happened. Most are frustrated at first, I let them talk and work through that with a little guidance from me. Once I see where they are headed mentally I talk them through my thought process and how/why I pushed them that hard. I help them understand that not only is it ok that they broke, but that it was totally expected. If they can come to grips with that concept, that not only is it ok to break, but that sometimes it's actually expected, then they are on the road to being better able to handle things when and if the Race Break occurs.

Which will be the topic of my next instalment.

As always, thanks for reading and happy training!

on the white stuff...

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:09:00 +0000

Hello everybody! Welcome to 2012, and welcome to my first new post of the new year. I hope everyone had a great holiday season full of friends, family, good food and of course excellent training.

Mine was full of all those things save the last one. And decidedly a little too full of the good food part judging by the scale this week! And that is what I would like to talk to you about today. The effects that certain foods had on my body and more importantly my emotional well being over the last couple of weeks.

Those of you who know me know that I preach (and try to live by) a relatively wheat and sugar free lifestyle. I'm not a fan of processed foods and I'm happy to say that for the last 4-5 years I've been quite comfortably in the 80% good-20% not so good range with my nutrition. As a result my weight has been very stable regardless of the level of training intensity or volume and my overall well being has been fairly good as well. That all changed over the course of a few weeks this December.

I'm not entirely sure what happened but as the holidays approached I started eating more and more sugary, starchy, processed foods. With my fiance being a teacher there ended up being a lot more chocolate and cookies and the like around the house as she kept bringing stuff home that her kids had given her. This is also the first year in quite some time that I've had to do the multiple family/multiple Christmas dinner thing, and each one came with it's share of heavy foods, sugary desserts and more alcohol than I'm used to. I'm certainly not blaming anybody but myself for this. It was my own willpower that gave in, my own choice to go for the cookie or brownie instead of the apple and almonds. And that really was it, my willpower vanished. I found myself grazing on cookies and sweets that were in the house all day long most days. I wasn't particularly hungry or in need of the calories but I found myself going for them all the same. I even found myself wondering why I was eating said cookie as I was eating it. I'd have this little conversation in my head..."oh look, cookie! hmm, I'm not really hungry, but it tastes really good, but I just had one a few minutes ago, and ya it was really good..." etcetera, etcetera. And usually the conversation would end when the cookie had been devoured. Oops!

All this was taking its toll. Over the course of the month I'd managed to pack on a very unwanted eight pounds. First time I've put on weight of any significance in a few years. Hmmmm, not good. Reality check number one!

Then something really odd happened. It's like my body hit a breaking point. We were having a big feast on New Year's day at the in-laws. Turkey, stuffing, all the goodies. I had a glass of wine and some chocolate as an appetizer and when I got up from the dinner table I instantly felt very light headed and just overall "off". I shook it off, hoping to sleep it off but the feeling persisted the next day. At that point something else switched in me as well. I stopped craving the sweet things and really started craving salads and veggies and fruits and nuts. I needed healthy, real, unprocessed food, and I needed plenty of it. That whole week after New Years was a clean week for me, but I still felt like crap. Zero energy, no interest in working out, rock climbing, didn't even want to be bothered walking the dog. All I wanted to do was sleep and flake on the couch. Fortunately I was quite busy with clients that week or I may have not left the living room! I did try to go climbing a couple of times and both times were epic fails. I had nothing and no motivation to even try.

All of that is very much not the usual me. I love climbing, I love being active and I love taking Charlie out for walks. I hate just loafing around feeling sorry for myself and yet for a whole week there I was, doing just that. Reality check number 2!

So what happened? I'm no doctor but my best guess is that in the span of a month I managed to create an addiction to sugary foods, overdose, detox and deal with the withdrawal effects. Quite the month!

Looking back though, it had to be an addiction. Look at my behaviour. Eating things I didn't need and more importantly, intellectually didn't want. My brain knew I didn't need the 5th cookie of the day but my emotional needs over-rode my rational thoughts. I knew what I was doing was bad and I was doing it anyway, with no real thought to stopping it. And it appears that the only thing that stopped me so quickly was the light headed, woozy feeling after that New Years Day dinner. That was my tipping point. The point where my rational brain was able to take charge and say "hey dumb-ass! This isn't good for you so cut it out!"

And cut it out I did. I went mostly cold turkey that first week. I think I may have dipped into the cookie jar so to speak once or twice later in the week just to get me through a couple of really low lows, but since then I haven't really looked back. I'm back to climbing, back to enjoying walkies, and started into a fairly aggressive training regimen to get myself back to my good weight and over time find myself a new, better weight. I have some goals and focus for my training now. Very important ones that will help keep not only my training, but also my nutrition on track.

There is plenty of data and research out there that shows how the body can become addicted to sugar and to high glycemic carbohydrates in general. The insulin response, the change in brain chemistry, the "sugar high" followed by the sugar crash.The bargaining we do with ourselves and others to justify our consumption of such foods. It's funny actually. I can suggest cutting out a lot of things without much push back from clients, but when I suggest cutting out the sugary, starchy foods (breads, pasta's, sweets) that's when the justifications start. We can all agree that sugar isn't a drug but it can certainly have the same effect on the mind, the body and the soul. In all my years, I've never experienced anything like that and I certainly don't plan on it again.

So, back to eating clean, healthy and real for this guy. And hopefully my little brush with the sugar addiction will inspire a few of you to at least cut back if not cut out the processed side of the food chain.

If you are so inspired and all of this is new to you, check out the following books for ideas, tips, reasons and recipes.

The Thrive Diet
Wheat Belly
The Paleo Diet

As always, thanks for reading. Happy training and happy eating!

A little IMFIT Kitchen recipe

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 23:15:00 +0000

Roasted Chicken with Quinoa stuffing and goat cheese mashed potatoes...
Ok, this one is so good it requires the full recipe. It's pretty simple but does require some prep and the instructions are a little too detailed to post on my FB page.

Quinoa stuffing:

pre-cook the quinoa at your convenience. Here at home we almost always have a container of cooked on the go in the fridge. You'll need about a cup to a cup and a half depending on the size of your bird.
soak quinoa in apple cider for 5-6hrs so it soaks up the moisture and flavour. Use enough cider to completely cover the quinoa in the bowl.
drain remaining liquid off and save for the roasting pan
add raisins and crushed walnuts
stuff bird and place any remaining stuffing in a small dish to heat and serve

The Bird:

rub olive oil generously all over bird prior to stuffing and placing in the pan.
once in the pan pour left over cider from soaked quinoa into the bottom of the pan and add enough fresh cider to cover the bottom of the pan entirely.
tent with tin foil and roast at 375 till done. Usually 1.5-2hrs depending on weight

The Potato:

boil potatoes till soft. I like to use red potatoes and leave the skin on. This is where a lot of the goodness is hiding.
drain liquid, add a splash or two of almond milk and about half a small package of goats cheese and mash

There you have it. A super tasty and pretty darn healthy chicken dinner. Prep time on this isn't really that long if you have the quinoa ready to go already. You just have to plan far enough ahead to get it soaking early enough. I think it took me all of about 10min to actually make the stuffing and get the bird in the oven. Hardly missed any of the football game!

Bon appetit!

Let's Make it a Merry Christmas 2011

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:18:00 +0000

Good morning!
Today is one of my favourite days of the year...US Thanksgiving! A full day of mid week football and it really kicks off the holiday season in earnest north and south of the border. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to call out to all of you in the IMFIT community to help out with my Annual Christmas Family Adoption that I do here through IMFIT.

Last year was a great success thanks to many of you out there in my little community and I'm back at it this year hoping to make it an even bigger success with a bigger community. Help me help make a family's Christmas a little more merry this year. For those of you who aren't familiar with this, I adopt a needy family in the Halton Region each Christmas, contribute a chunk of my own cash and reach out to friends and clients to donate whatever amount they can to go towards helping fulfill the list that Halton CAS has provided me.

This year's family is a single mom with 2 boys, aged 8 and 15 months. Every year that I do this, the simplicity of the list is what gets me the most.

Mom: Gift Cards for some clothes and a hair salon (mom's never ask for much)
8yr old boy: clothes, socks, Star Wars Lego (I love that Star Wars is still cool)
15 months: clothes, socks, teething rings, puzzles, colouring books.

In this day of techie this, glitzy that, LCD 3D, Ipod, Wii etc...we are constantly bombarded with messages telling us to buy all these big, bright toys to have the perfect Christmas. I mean, A Lexus for Christmas...really?! The media, corporations and marketing whiz-kids have done an excellent job of blurring the lines between what we want, and what we really need. I don't know about you, but when I see a list like the one above, it makes me to stock of what I need.

I've had to do a lot of that in the recent past having been on my own and taking care of my dog. My discretionary income wasn't what it had been in the past. Sure I'd love a new 42" LCD TV, but I don't need one. Heck, I didn't even have cable, I was happy with four or five channels free over the air waves, so why bother with the fancy TV? LOL Even now that I'm in an awesome relationship with a great woman and we are both living fairly comfortably, neither of us really need any of the stuff TV and radio is telling us we need right now.

This want vs need issue is why I do this every Christmas. Personally, I don't need anything other than food on the table, a roof over my head a great woman at my side and a healthy dog at my feet. I have all those things, and have no problem providing them for myself. Those in my family circle, and friends circle are all in the same situation. They have everything they need, and don't want for anything discretionary. I would rather put my Christmas dollars towards people who need things, and are having a hard time providing for those needs on their own. And, I'm hoping enough of you out there will feel the same and join me in helping this family have a happy Christmas.

If you are interested in helping out you can either donate cash to my shopping fund, or choose an item on the list and drop it off to me. Either way, drop me a line and let me know if you're in.

Thanks for reading, and have a Happy Holiday!

The IMFIT Kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (IMFIT.ca Athletic Performance Studio) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:04:00 +0000

Greetings! As usual it's been a long time between posts for me. With the addition of our new four legged mascot Charlie a little over a month ago I've been finding it hard to set aside the time to commit my thoughts to page. But, we all seem to be into a nice little routine now, so here I am.
And as a nice little segue, I want to talk a little about finding time for the things that are important for our health, happiness and performance.

I've been wanting to do something along the lines of the IMFIT Kitchen for awhile now and finally got motivated to get it started after seeing a Facebook post from one of my "friends". She was both congratulating and mocking herself for actually having had the time to cook a real meal with real food for herself and her two kids. It bothered me, this should not be news. Cooking, preparing and consuming real foods should not be a milestone in someone's life. Especially someone who makes a living promoting a healthy lifestyle as this person does.

Sadly it's not the first time I've heard this though. I think we as a society have been tricked by some very slick marketing from the fast food and packaged food industries into believing that we don't have the time in our day to prepare and consume healthy, real food. One of my goals with the IMFIT Kitchen is to show that it can be done, and it can be done on a tight "time budget".

It's true that I now have the luxury of working primarily from home which does allow me more time than most to prepare healthy meals, but that wasn't always the case. Last year at this time I was living on my own with my dog, working a full time job that started at 8:30 in the morning and ended at 4:30, with a 45min commute on either end. After getting home I would typically have to feed and walk the dog, feed myself and then head back out to see a client or work one of the part time evening jobs I was holding then. And I would say that at least 80% of the time, I ate real food cooked and prepared by me and packed healthy, real food lunches and snacks to have while at work.

As the IMFIT Kitchen progresses I hope not only to share what I'm eating, but how I'm preparing and how long that preparation takes. I'll be doing this with a mix of written FB and Twitter posts and some video blog of actual preparation as time goes on. (As a side note, anybody have a used Go-Pro camera they want to unload? I'm looking for something hands free to aid in the video department.)

For the athletically inclined who are reading this, you know that food is fuel. What you eat has a direct impact on how you feel, how you sleep and how you perform in training and racing. I think those sound like pretty good reasons for making real food a priority in your daily and weekly timeline.

My other purpose with the IMFIT Kitchen is to answer in detail over time a question that I get from many of my clients..."what should I eat?" or the similar "what do you eat?" Now, I'm not saying I'm perfect. Far from it. I try to live by the 80-20 rule every week. 80% good and 20% "bad". I'm a firm believer in balance and the 80-20 rule has served me fairly well. It's when I allow that to slip to more of a 60-40 rule that I end up in trouble! There are plenty of healthy, real food options out there and quite a few that I still think the masses haven't really caught on to or just don't know what to do with. My aim is to hopefully catch you on to some new things and maybe some new ways of preparing some old things in healthy and delicious ways. I'm also hoping to break through the confusion of all the different diet labels that are floating around out there. Paleo, vegan, vegetarian, Zone, Paleo-Zone...blah, blah, blah. Why does what we eat have to have a label in order to make sense? Simply eat real foods, organic when and where possible, local when and where possible and stay away from the stuff you know doesn't agree with you. Now, if I could just come up with a label for that I could make a million dollars with a book! LOL

Seriously though, eating well doesn't have to take exorbitant amounts of time, thought and energy. And what little extra time it may take could very well be added back to you in both quality and quantity of life down the road. It's your body and your life. You've only got one. Don't put better fuel into your car than you do into yourself and your children.

So stay tuned for more from the IMFIT Kitchen and if you have any recipes or ideas you'd like to share please feel free to post them on my FB page.