Welcome to the 1st of many Razor Performance newsletters. My aim is to keep these light enough to be enjoyable, but heavy enough to be informative and build on my social media musings, with a possible sprinkling of fun.
Nutrition has been the ‘main thing’ this month, more specifically calorie tracking. Let’s start there, and follow it up with some heart rate variability and a smidge of strength training.
If you want to perform, lose weight, gain weight, beat PB’s you need to fuel yourself appropriately. Every time I ask people to track calories I get some pushback, ‘it’s too much admin’, or it’s seen as a ‘bodybuilding’ thing to do. Trust me when I say, every single person learns something new EVERY time they track their calories. I still do it, I have done it multiple times, and I still learn. It is however, new to most people, so to make things easier…
Here are some actionable ideas on how to do it well.
Download an app that you pay for. This will make you do it. Carbon diet coach is my favourite app, £10 a month. Surprising the difference in adherence when you pay for something, same as anything really.
Add in your food to the diary. Don’t worry about being absolutely precise, just have a good guess to start with.
The first job is to hit the calorie target, get used to how much you need to eat.
When you have this down, aim to hit the protein target. Most people I see find this number daunting, but check the cheat codes below for easy additions. As a side note, as you get older you need more protein, unfortunately society is going the other way, let’s buck that trend.
Cheat codes for protein are
Protein for brekkie, eggs, salmon, greek yoghurt.
Baked apple skyr youghurt (or it sister flavours) from Waitrose. Game… Changer. Tonnes of protein, low carb, bloody tasty
Beef jerky
Meat
Protein shakes.
Don’t overthink the carbs and fats, just hit the calories and protein. Getting more in-depth can be left for a later date.
Don’t add the calories that your smart watch suggests as this is a highway to disaster, just stick to the numbers that the app tells you. Smartwatches can be hugely inaccurate, and anecdotally will massively overestimate the calories you need.
Eat your fruit and veggies.
Be consistent.
If you have a bad day, pro rata the rest of the weeks calories down. Think in weeks, not days. Same if you eat too little, hit the numbers, less is not more.
Learn….It’s actually less restrictive than you think. Weigh yourself first thing in the morning, post poo, 3 times a week and take an average. This will give you a good idea of where you are. It will also show how much your weight can fluctuate in 24 hours and across the week.
Also this week whilst we are on the subject.
If you are doing an endurance event or session, you need to eat carbohydrate during the event/session. Below is a great infographic of what this looks like and the amounts necessary.
Get this wrong and it’ll cost you. I see so many people who haven’t even considered this before their race/event
The figures below don’t work for everyone, a 100kg male will need more than a 50kg male, so it takes some experimenting, and experimenting should take place throughout your training plan. It should be built in to your programme as the distances increase. When the distances are shorter (1-2.5hrs), aim for the 30g of carbs and see how it feels. If you can take more then add a little more. This will stand you in good stead to increase the amounts as the distances get longer. When they do indeed get longer, add carbs as suggested below.
Unfortunately I can’t tell you exactly what will work for you, but this gives you a good starting point.
For reference, a gel is approx 25g, and an isotonic drink ‘portion’ is around the same, but all info is on the label.
Pondering’s, musings and spiking’s of my interest. (HRV)
I turned 40 last week. It felt weird. But that enough of that.
I got an Apple Watch. The reason I wanted it was to keep an eye on my heart rate variability. If you are unsure on what this is, and you are serious about training, get yourself in the know, as it is the biggest thing in recovery and ‘readiness’ at the moment. If you want a quick overview, there is an article here https://medium.com/@altini_marco/the-ultimate-guide-to-heart-rate-variability-hrv-part-1-70a0a392fff4
PS. Marco Altini is my go to man for this stuff
If you don’t want to read that then here are the basics… HRV is the time between each beat of the heart. The exact time between one boom and the next boom.
As a very basic explanation, if the timings of the beats is regular (similar times between each beat), you are in a state of rest and digest, where your body is recovering and may need to recover.
If the timings are irregular, and the timings are slightly different between the beats, your body is ‘excited’, and ready to go.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that the data I get from the Apple Watch is ok, but a little subpar. This is because it gives me just one data point at any point in the day, not taking into consideration sleep, stress, circadian rhythm and all sorts of other factors. Having said that, it is fine if you are new to HRV and just want to see some trends.
If you have an Apple Watch, open you health app, click Heart rate, then Heart rate variability and have a look. You may be able to pick out one day where your HRV was really low, and match it to a hard training session/lack of sleep/night on the booze. Hopefully this will spark your interest, as it does with me (I’m boring).
Below is what you actually need to do to get some reasonable data, and also how you might use the data.
Take a measurement when you wake up to make the data reliable. If you have a whoop band or Oura ring they take an average across the night. I feel like this is fine, but not as good as first thing in the morning,
Use an app to record it like HRV4Training (if you don’t have a whoop or Oura ring)
If you train with me on my Bespoke online training you can also link it to the app to get an ‘exertion score’ which is also excellent. Shameless plug.
MOST IMPORTANTLY - Use it in conjunction with a TRAINING PLAN. If you do an intense training session, your HRV will be low, obviously it will be low. Your Whoop will tell you to relax and take a day off, I mean, FFS.. you're not my dad. If you plan some rest within the programme, it doesn't matter about the daily score, you just recover when you planned too. This is the biggest mistake I see when people are using HRV, we want it to be low sometimes because it shows you have done some hard graft. The only time you should change your training plan is if it’s low and you don’t expect it to be low. This could mean that your training took more out of you than you expected, or you may be a little run down.
Finally….Your aim is for it to be high when you want it to be high. The event or your biggest session of the week. If you get that right, you are winning. Again, think about the long term outcome you want, not one low reading. Rest, sleep and solid plan will do this for you.
Discussions from the floor
I have heard variations of the phrase ‘strength training has been a game changer’ for me over the last couple of weeks. All endurance athletes, all doing weights once a week, just once, 1 hour tops.
Below are some actionable tips to start your strength training.
It doesn’t take much to get strong
Lift heavy where you want to be strong. Seems simple right?
Load as much as you can hold proper form, but you should be on the brink of losing form on your last set.
2 heavy sets is enough for the lower body
2 heavy sets is enough for the upper body
Supplement exercises that are less heavy, after your heavy sets
Single leg work is vital
Trunk work is vital however make it movement based. eg, if you are in a plank, add some movement, we need to be strong when the spine moves.
You do not have to squat and deadlift if you don’t want.
A favour
If you have enjoyed this newsletter, share it, tell your friends, or tag me in your social media channels to help it grow. Below is a link to my Facebook community, it would be great to have you, as well as my instagram where I add lots of (hopefully) interesting content. If you need any help wit
h your strength and conditioning I have a bespoke, fully online programming service that I think is the future of training. If you are interested, or you know anyone that might be, please get in touch. Until next time Andy/Razor
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