"The more you ride the healthier you will get assuming
you have a good Bike fit, proper pedaling technique, proper hydration and
nutrition and adequate sleep."
|
Fitness & Nutrition
for Bicyclists
To
fully enjoy cycling and to avoid or reduce injury it is a good idea to get into
and stay in top physical condition on a year round basis. The health benefits
of bicycling are beyond dispute. Recent studies on heart attack prevention place
inactivity before obesity as the first cause of heart attack. They also show
that regular exercise not only thins the blood by reducing bad cholesterol but
keeps the muscular chambers of the heart flexible throughout life, making the
heart a more efficient pump for oxygenated blood. Other studies show that people
under stress from their jobs perceive junks foods (deep fried or highly processed
foods with lots of sugar and transfat) to taste exceptionally good and that eating
junk food actually helps relieve their stress temporarily. The same is true of
alcohol. After a long day at the office, many people drift into bars for happy
hour and gulp
beer, wine or cocktails with lot of residual sugar and lots of calories.
Not surprisingly, resort to junk food or alcohol, produces the kind of belly
fat associated with increased risk of heart attack. What if you responded to
bouts of high stress by clearing your
calendar and riding your bike? You would get stress relief from riding
from increased oxygen intake, reduction of blood pressure, reduction of blood
cortisol and release of endorphins. You will also lose your belly fat, look and
feel better and reduce your cardiac risk profile. We know that high blood pressure
and diabetes are common consequences of extra weight. These can lead to stroke
and damaging neuropathies affecting the eyes, fingers and toes. The more you
ride the healthier you will get assuming you have a good iike fit, proper pedaling
technique, proper hydration and nutrition and adequate sleep. More riding will
build your aerobic base, enabling you to keep up your pace on long rides and
up steep climbs and not get "dropped" by your cycling friends. That
will feel good.
Aerobic Conditioning for Bicyclists
Sustaining energy and delaying fatigue while riding is not just a matter of good hydration with fluid containing water, salts, electrolytes. carbs and protein. It is very much a question of aerobic fitness. To gain and sustain a high level of aerobic fitness, cyclists need to optimize their cardio-vascular fitness and VO2 max (lung capacity to take in and efficiently utilize volumes of air). There are many ways to achieve this result which can be done singly, sequentially or in combination. Putting in lots of base miles at low intensity will burn fat. Fat is a drag factor that reduces your speed, makes you work harder and tires you out. As you get leaner, you become more able to do intense interval training that will raise your lactate threshold and enable you to work harder longer. Interval training involves riding at maximum intensity for a set period, followed by easy riding to flush out the lactate and repeating these intervals for a time period that gradually increases from 10 to 20, even 30 minutes, as you build your strength. Other proven methods include cross training such as running, spinning classes, aerobic work out classes at your local gym or YMCA, doing Tai Bo at home or working out at home on a bicycle trainer (such as Cycle Ops) to videos that make you sprint or time trial. An excellent series of training videos is put out by under the name Train Right by Chris Carmichael, founder of CTS and Lance Armstrong’s riding coach. They are available at www.trainright.com or www.performancebike.com An exercise physiologist named Graeme Street puts out a DVD series called Cyclo-Core at www.cyclo-core.com that has terrific workouts to build up your aerobic endurance and important cycling muscles such as the hip flexors, quads, hamstrings and glutes.
The Lactic Acid Myth
Lactic acid is the substance that makes old egg nog taste sour. Lactic acid can make our muscles feel like they are burning, but it does not cause muscle soreness, which is a product of muscle fiber breakdown from mechanical overuse. Our muscles convert glucose (blood sugar) to lactic acid in the absence of oxygen when we ride or engage in any vigorous activity at 50% or more of our maximum work capacity. Some of the lactic acid goes to the liver where it is converted into glycogen and stored until more blood glucose is needed and insulin is recruited to convert the glyocen to glucose. The rest of the lactic acid is broken down by the mitochondria in our muscle cells. Some 90% or more of the lactic acid that gets into our muscles is converted to lactate (which is a carb that can be used by our muscles much more quickly and easily than glucose). The residual portion consists of hydrogen ions (acidosis) that cause muscle fatigue as they build up. The secret to harnassing fast twitch muscle fibers and keeping them fueled during intense riding is to build the number of muscle mitochondria by training with high intensity intervals. The more lactic acid we generate, the more lactate fuel we have to power our fast twitch muscle fibers, so long as we have enough mitochrondria to convert the lactic acid to lactate and clear the waste. Hence riders should not fear lactic acid. New research by George Brooks, professor of integrative biology, at UC Berkeley suggest that cyclists should train above their lactate threshhold in short hard intervals, because lactic acid generates lactate and lots of lactate will spur development of more mitochondria and your muscles will be able to support higher levels of energy production. The old notion that all lactic acid is a harmful waste product is now being rejected as wrong. The notion dates back to findings in the 1920s by Otto Meyerhoff. Contemporary thinking has revolutionized sports drinks, some of which come with lactate as an ingredient.
Weight Lifting for Bicyclists
In order to get up out of the saddle and ride standing up, you need strong
triceps. To get up a tough hill by pulling on the handle bars you need strong
biceps. To gain the endurance needed for long, challenging rides, you will need
strong abdominal, low back and gluteal muscles. You will also need strong neck
muscles to keep your head up so you can always watch the road around you. Many
riders have strong quadriceps but weak hamstrings and calves. To maximize your
pedaling power and efficiency you need strong hamstrings and calves.
The answer to all these needs is not more cycling, but some form
of resistence training. Pushups and planks are good. So is weight lifting in
the gym or at home. To develop a program specific to cycling, you can contact
a cycling coach or personal trainer who works with cyclists. You can also develop
your own program by consulting books. One good book for this purpose is Weight
Training for Cyclists by Ken Doyle and Eric Schmitz available for purchase through
Amazon.com Many of the exercises in their book can be done at home with an inexpensive
set of dumbells and a bench. If you have some extra cash laying around, you can
always invest in a weight machine by HOIST. These come with a benchseat, lever
arms and pulleys that enable you to work every important muscle group in your
body. They can be purchased for about $1,500 at stores like Busy Bee and have
a lifetime warranty.
Core Strength/Balance for Bicyclists
Efficient cycling means not rocking back and forth on your seat when you are
putting out effort, and being able to isolate maximal effort in your leg muscles
while staying relaxed in your torso and arms. While practice riding at a high
cadence of 100 rpm in the big chain ring with an easy gear will help, there is
no substitute for having a strong core.
No matter how strong your legs are , if you have a weak core you
will ride slower, ride with less power and fatigue more quickly, because your
strong legs are attached to a marshmallow. With a strong core you get maxiumum
benefit of those strong legs.
Exercise studies show that cyclists with a weak core, must expend energy on
stabilizing their torso while they ride that could have gone into pedal power.
Core strength comes from training the muscles of the abdomen (rectus abdominus,
transverse abdominus and obliques); the hip flexors; the spinal erectors in the
low back; the glutes; the quads; and the hamstrings. To build strength in these
parts of your body you can lift weights with your abdomen contracted; do Pilates;
do Power Yoga with videos by Rodney Yee; do crunches on a machine, bench, mat
or exercise ball; swing a medicine ball or a combination of these. A cycling
fitness expert named Graeme Street has put out an excellent series of DVDs on
how to build and maintain a strong core that can be puchased on the web at CycloCore.
Gaiam Fitness not only puts out power yoga DVDs by Rodney Yee and Pilates DVDs,
but also puts out a DVD called the Abs Ball workout with Jonathan Roche, that
can definitely strengthen your abs. You can buy his abs ball (an 8 pound medicine
ball with handles) at Discovery Channel Store or on the web. Deadlifts, clean
and jerk lifts, pilates, back extensions on the Swiss ball and other forms of
exercise to strengthen the low back, can injure the muscles of the low back if
done too fast, too hard or with the wrong body position. All of these demanding
exercises should be done in a slow and controlled manner, with the emphasis on
the quality of the reps not the quantity. If you feel pain its probably best
to stop, but if want to continue its a very good idea to limit the number of
reps and the range of motion of the exercise until you build up strength. If
you do accidentally strain your low back, there are two good books on how to
reduce pain and how to rebuild lower back muscle strength gradually after injury.
These are Art Brownstein, MD’s “Healing Low Back Pain Naturally” (Simon
& Schuster 1999) and Dava Sobel’s “Backache: What Exercises Work”
(St. Martin’s Griffin 1994).
There is no doubt that Pilates can help cyclists reach their maximum
potential when you do it right. Lance Armstrong did not fly up mountains in the
Tour de France just because he had a strong will, a light weight bike and a monster
aerobic engine. He did Pilates too. When choosing an instructor, find someone
who is experienced in working with bicyclists and then ask their clients for
feedback. Oakland is blessed with some top notch Pilates instructors, such as
Leonore Deaton and Kirin Haithcox at the Working Body on Grand Aveune.
Flexibility for Bicyclists
Weight lifting adds bulk, and needs to be balanced with movement or stretching activities to maintain flexibility. Yoga and Tai Chi are both very effective and enjoyable ways to stay flexible and maintain balance in varying positions. They also improve mood and help with visualizing your cycling goals. Gaiam puts out some excellent Yoga DVDs for athletes where Rodney Yee lead you through focused workouts to maximize flexibility and strength. Check out www.gaiam.com. An important way to maintain flexibility is to always stretch for 5-10 minutes after a bike ride. There are plenty of books and Internet materials on stretches for your hip flexors, quads, glutes, hamstrings and calves. Using a foam roller or a compressible ball to lengthen your contracted muscle fibers after a ride is an excellent practice. Many cyclists experience contraction of their IT (ilio-tibial) band while riding and using the foam roller will help stretch it out.
Balance Training for Bicyclists
Bikes are symmetrical. The handlebars, forks, tubes, pedals, cranks and wheels
on one side of the bike are mirror images of those on the other. Perfect cycling
efficiency demands perfect symmetry from us, but this is but a dream. Real humans
are asymmetrical. One hand or foot is larger than the other. One arm or leg is
longer than the other. One shoulder or hip is stronger than the other, etc. On
top of that many of us have feet that point inwards (pigeon toed) or outwards
(bowl-legged) when we walk, run or cycle. Many of us have feet that pronate (collapse
inwards) or supinate (swivel outwards) when we walk, run or cycle. What about
bike position? Some of us are lucky enough to ride with a flat back, head up
and a relaxed neck. But many of us ride bent forward with a hump atop our backs,
face down with tight, scrunched neck and shoulders. Shoe inserts to correct flat
feet with collapsing arches that cause foot pronation can help alot. Sophisticated
bike fits and mechanical changes to the bike (such as changing the position of
the handlebars, saddle or cranks) can help alot too. But more than any external
change, changing our own bodies is the best remedy. Yes, we can actually improve
our own bodily symmetry. One way to do this is with isolated leg training to
build comparable power in both legs. Another way is to have your pedaling technique
analyzed by a computer software program to locate the distribution of power and
dead spots on your left and right sides as you do complete circles. You can also
use the BOSU balance trainer, BONGO board or indoor bike rollers to train your
body and brain to work harmoniously in physically challenging situations. Find
a physical therapist to work with who understands balance issues and knows how
to help you develop improved physical and functional symmetry. Your cycling will
become more efficient, less consciously effortful and more enjoyable. You will
also be a safer cyclist, more able to hold a straight line bewteen moving and
parked cars in traffic and more able to make quick turns to evade cars or corner
skillfully on steep or wet downhills.
Balance products can be ordered from www.performbetter.com or
from www.paralleldreams.co.uk. They
can also be purchased from big box retailers likes Sports Authority and Big 5.
The BOSU is an excellent balance trainer. Indoor cycling on rollers also helps
improve balance. Cycle Ops makes good and inexpensive rollers.
Energy Drinks for Bicyclists
These are a must for endurance on long rides because cycling depletes the glycogen (muscle sugar) in your system, and your muscles have to have sugar to work. In the old days cyclists put Gatorade in their water bottles to input sugar and electrolytes into their blood stream. While Gatorade is still good, more sophisticated products are available. Gatorade has been criticized for not having enough salt. Gatorade does not have protein. Energy drinks with protein supply working muscles with the protein they need to reduce breakdown and to hasten repair when your ride is over. Getting some protein into your system will also reduce blood cortisol. Using Accelerade during rides and Endurox after rides, puts sugar and protein into your system in the right ratio to keep you in the saddle on long rides and prevent muscle breakdown. Other products are available. To protect muscles against the toxic products of hard exercise (such as free radicals) you can drink a fruit juice rich in anti-oxidants at the end of a ride. One tasty product is Pomme, made up of pomegranite juice either on its own or mixed with other fruits. Odwalla now makes the same sorts of pomegranite drinks too. Cranberry juice is also good and less expensive. There are plenty of choices for different preferences. A good book on staying energized through nutrition is “Nutrition for Peak Performance” edited by Ed Pavelka (Rodale 2000) In 2004 Lance Armstrong's cycling coach Chris Carmichael came out with a new line of energy drinks and nutritional products for cyclists. His website is located at www.trainright.com.
Coffee
It is well known that the caffeine in coffee sharpens one's mental focus and
concentration and raises one's energy level. Recent functional MRI studies that
record real time brain responses to ingestion of substances, confirm that drinking
coffee activates centers of attention and mental focus in your frontal lobes.
There have been articles suggesting that drinking coffee helps your muscles contract
more efficiently, so its good to drink coffee just before a work out. For the
coffee lovers out there, it gets even better. An exercise psychologist named
Rob Motl at the University of Illinois at Urbana, who works in their department
of kinesiology, has published research showing that coffee helps hold down the
pain threshold your skeletal muscles during intense physical activity. Normally
when you engage in energetic muscular activity like cycling, your muscles build
up a substance called adenosine, which binds to pain receptors in the nerve cells
of the muscles and sensitizes them to pain. Caffeine blocks the build up of adenosine
and disrupts this sensitization. Over the counter Migraine medicine contains
a mixture of aspirin for pain relief and anti-inflammatory action as well as
coffee to speed and enhance the effects of aspirin. Lance Armstrong drinks Peet's
coffee, which is very strong and highly caffeinated Could it be that one of Lance's
secret weapons for riding longer, harder and faster up mountain peaks is Peet's
coffee? Why not drink a cup of strong coffee before a ride and see how it affects
your muscle endurance. If you can ride longer than usual without getting sore,
maybe there is something to this. Recent studies available on the Internet show
that sports drinks with caffeine as an igredient led to better time trial results
than the same drinks without caffeine.
Coffee is also good for your general health. Believe it or not one
cup of coffee has more soluble fiber for lowering blood cholesterol than orange
juice. Studies on Parkinson's Disease show that in the absence of a family history
of the disease, people who drink coffee are significiantly less likely to get
this disease than non coffee drinkers. Its gets better. The 15 year study of
nearly 42,000 women over age 55 in the Iowa Women's Health Study concluded that
coffee drinkers have a lower death rate from cardiovascular and other inflammatory
diseases than those who don't drink coffee. The reason is that coffee is a major
souce of anti-oxidants that may inhibit inflammation in the human body. So drink
up and don't feel guilty when you hit Peet's, Starbucks or your other favorite
coffee places.
Hydration for Bicyclists
Every health person, and certainly every athlete, should drink at least 8 eight
ounce glasses of water a day. Even if you cannot manage to consume water at this
level on a daily basis, when you ride it is critical to stay well hydrated to
help flush lactic acid, avoid thickening of the blood, keep your kidneys and
liver working and avoid dehydration headache or muscle spasm. Recent studies
show that dehydrated cyclists must work harder and build up more lactate in their
blood streams to maintain the same power level as hydrated cyclists. Can too
much water hurt performance? Yes. If you drink too much water while riding you
are at risk of diluting the salt content of your tissues to the point where brain
swelling, coma and death can ensue. This may sound far fetched, but an article
in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 tracked the performance of marathon
runners, and linked over hydration with weight gain, bloating, altered consciousness
and even death. The article suggested that you get salt and potassium with your
water, and that you never drink so much water during an athletic event that you
gain, instead of lose, weight. In early 2005 a college boy at Chico State died
during a hazing when his frat brothers had him drink huge quantities of water
and then swim across a lake. Thus its good to be well hydrated, but bad to be
overhydrated. Those who are not sure where the boundary is should consult a trainer.
How best to stay hydrated? Pure water is absorbed less rapidly during
exercise than water with some dissolved solids such as salt and sugar, which
is why sports drinks hydrate you better than water. New research shows that adding
a little protein to sports drinks increases the rate of water absorption from
your stomach. Using sports drinks with protein makes good sense for other reasons.
The protein protects your muscles from being broken down by cortisol and consumed
for fuel during intense exercise.
Losing Weight in a Healthy Way with Good Nutrition
Cyclists can spend a small fortune purchasing ultra light bicycles or components
to help them get up hills or go faster on flats. A cheaper and smarter way is
to lose weight. Taking off 10 or more pounds of belly fat and love handles and
replacing it with lean muscle, will decrease weight and add a lot of power. Increasing
your power to weight ratio will increase your ability to climb hills, sprint
and time trial. Basal metabolism or resting metabolism is the rate at which you
burn calories when doing nothing but sitting quietly in a chair. There is a device
called an indirect calorimeter that can quickly and accurately measure your basal
metabolism and tell you how many calories your body needes to take in each day
to sustain your life. When you add on the number of calories you burn cycling
to your basal metabolism, you now know your threshold for maintaining weight.
Someone who wants to lose weight simply needs to meal plan so that his daily
calorie intake is at the threshold rather than well above it. Certified nutritionists
have indirect calorimeters and will test you at a reasonable price. Companies
like KORR and Medtek make the devices. Medtek makes a light, handheld model for
slightly under $2,000. How can you lower your daily calorie consumption so you
don't feel like you're starving? One technique is to take longer to eat your
meals, so your body has time to tell your brain that you are full. When you wolf
down your food, you still feel hungry because the brain hasn't been notified
by messengers in the bloodstream that your belly is full. Nutritionists can advise
you on many other healthy, natural techniques. When you are not exercising and
your metabolism is at its basal level, muscle tissue burns three times the amount
of calories that fat burns. Replacing fat with muscle not only slims you down,
but turns your body in a fat burning machine. Male cyclists with significant
belly fat who ride primarily on weekends should not fool themselves into thinking
they are protected against heart attack because they are getting an aerobic work
out. Mainstream medical publications are now in agreement that the foremost predictor
of heart attack for men is belly fat, not blood cholesterol levels, C reactive
protein levels or other measures.
For some cyclicts eating healthy and getting regular exercise leaves
no dent in that last 10-15 pounds they are aching to lose. What then? You may
wish to consider healthy supplements that pack real nutrition and lack scary
ingredients associated with known bad side effects like ephedra. Such supplements
do exist. Examples are capsules containing powdered green tea and capsules with
omega 3, 6 and 9 acids, especially those containing CLA (conjugated linoleic
acid). The primary considerations for any supplement are effectiveness (does
it really work), safety (absence of intolerable side effects) and price (can
I afford it). My favorite nutritionist says that clinical studies do not clearly
establish the effectiveness of any particular supplements for weight loss, but
she has heard so many anecdotal success stories, her advice is "try it and see
what happens. If you lose weight and don't feel sick, wonderful." The theory
of how supplements could help you lose weight is by boosting the number and efficiency
of the mitochondria in your muscle cells. The mitochrondria are the energy production
centers in your muscle cells, which burn food and oxygen to create energy to
power your muscles (largely through ATP production) Ordinarily about 5% of the
material produced by energy production consists of free radicals (oxygen atoms
short one electron). Free radicals pillage other cells to steal one electron
and damage them in the process. This cellular damage is called oxidation and
produces bodily
"rust" such as rancid fat, which produces hormonal changes that slow your metabolism
and spark fat accumulation. While only exercise will increase the number of your
mitochrondria, you can use supplements to protect them and help them function
better.
The best form of mitochondrial boosting exercise is interval training on the bike (intense aerobic bursts at 90% of your max. capacity followed by longer rest intervals). The following supplements are readily available at health food stores and natural grocery stores like Whole Foods. Fish oil supplements with Omega 3 protect muscle cell walls from damage. NAC (N-acetylcysteine) replenishes cellular glutathione, which is a very powerful anti-oxidant for protection of mitochrondria and boosts immune function. AIDs patients take NAC to get glutathione into their cells to increase their immunity to disease. Alpha-lipoic acid or ALA is a metabolic anti-oxidant that protects mitochondria and boosts metabolic rate. ALA works in part by making our cells more sensitive to insulin. It is fat soluble (unlike Vitamin C) and water soluble (unlike Vitamin E). It also has the capacity to dramatically increase our body's ability to use Vitamins C and E. Increasing your sensitivity to insulin is a real good idea. Obesity and diabetes are two pathological conditions linked to cellular resistence to insulin. Acetyl-L-carnitine or just plain old L-carnitine increases transport of fat into the mitochrondria to be burned. Co-enzyme Q and NADH both boost energy production. Creatine powder helps diffuse carbohydrate fuel more readily into your working muscle cells during exercise, so the mitochondria are kept stoked. Amino acids (arginine and aspartic acid) are the raw materials used in cellular metabolism by the mitochondria. D-ribose is the raw material needed to produce energy and create ATP in the cells. Chromium is necessary for the health of your muscles and as a supplement it alsob boosts your metabolic rate.
L-carnitine will serve you best if you take it in pill or liquid form on a regular basis for several weeks before your big bicycling event. If you wait to take it until the day of the event, it will not have a chance to saturate you muscle tissue.
Whether or not you use supplements, a good approach to healthy weight loss
is to increase carb intake through greater consumption of whole foods that contain
carbs, especially fruits, vegetables and beans. These foods are high in the carbs
you need to fuel your athletic performance but have no animal fats. They are
also nutrient dense, anti-oxidant rich and provide lots of heart healthy fiber.
To learn more check out
organic athlete. Fruits and vegetables contain
significant amount of water and fiber. They can be quite bulky and filling. You
wouldn't want to live on a diet of cabbage as it would make you feel heavy and
sluggish. Athletes also need protein and quickly absorbed carbs, especially after
competition or intense training to avoid muscle damages.To keep your diet balanced
and get the maximum anti-oxidants from fruits and vegetables you can focus on
nutrient dense foods with the highest concentration of anti-oxidants. These are
listed in the ORAC index based on their relative Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity.
The ORAC index can be accessed from the US Dept. of Agriculture or the Brunswick
Laboratories: Journal of American Chemical Society. The foods at the top of the
ORAC scale are 70% cocoa solids (13,500 units) and pomegranate (10,500). At the
bottom are celery (130) and cucumber (110).
Three excellent books on natural, healthy weight loss through smart nutritional changes without drugs, surgery or radically restrictive eating programs are:
The Abs Diet
By Men's Health Magazine editor David Zinczenko
Available at bookstores or through www.absdiet.com
The South Beach Diet
By cardiologist Arthur Agatston, MD
Available at bookstores or through www.southbeachdiet.com
Ultrametabolism
By Dr. Mark Hyman (no relation of mine)
Available at bookstores or through www.ultrametabolism.com
The Southbeach Diet and Ultrametabolism both present excellent discussion about why its so hard to lose weight with structured approaches to doing this in a gradual, progressive and healthy way. They are written for the general public, not athletes. The Abs Die is written for people who are passionate about fitness. It combines home exercise with smart eating and easy to make recipes that actually taste good. You get 3 healthy meals a day plus two snacks consisting of nuts and fresh fruit or a delicious smoothy made with ingredients like chocolate whey protein, peanut butter, low fat vanilla yogurt, crushed flax seed, ice and milk or vanilla whey protein, honey, pecans, crushed flax, vanilla yogurt and ice.
Exercise physiologist/cycling fitness expert Graeme Street puts out a DVD series on off season conditioning called Cyclo Core, which can be purchased at www.cyclo-core.com His DVDs address nutrition, weight loss and core conditioning through body weight resistence exercises and lifting dumbells. The workouts are very challenging and will increase your strength and endurance. His nutritional advice is sound. Graeme advocates portion contro; eating 5-6 small meals a day to keep your metabolism stoked and avoid metabolic shut down with fat storage; eating more fiber, more protein, more veggies (especially greens) and more healthy fats (from cold water fish and nuts); cutting out sugary snacks made from processed foods; and planning your meals and snacks in advance so you aren't caught in a hypoglycemic craze in which you toss out good habits and down a bag of jelly donuts.
Avoiding Premature Osteoporosis
The January 2004 edition of Bicycling Magazine had some rather shocking news for cyclists. Turns out that cycling long hours while seated puts no stress on your spine and is equivalent to being weightless, and that we sweat out calcium while riding. Professional cyclists with 10s of thousands of hours of cycling in their 40s had the spines of old men as measured by x-ray imaging and bone density testing. The magazine suggested standing up intermittently while cycling; taking a calcium supplement; increasing intake of dairy; running; weightlifting; and doing back strengthening exercises. The magazine can be purchased at bike shops, large book retailer or www.bicycling.com.
Heart Health
The heart is the pump that drives oxygenated blood to our muscles, our internal organs and our brain 24/7. When the heart falters and our tissues are deprived of oxygen, they can become irreversibly damaged. A strong heart makes us feel healthy and energetic, while a weak heart makes us feel weak and sluggish. Cycling is a form of cardiovascular exercise that stimulates heart health, but cycling alone cannot maintain heart health. Good nutrition, adequate sleep, maintaining friendships, laughing and learning to cope with stress are also essential. Foods that promote heart health include oatmeal and oat brain (which bind to the bad low density cholesterol and clear it from our bloodstream) and foods containing Omega 3 and Omega 6 essential fatty acids like virgin olive oil, crushed fax seed powder and cold water fish such as tuna, mackeral and salmon. A glass or two of red wine every day is heralded as a way to keep the arteries open due to substances from the red grape skins. A daily mutivitamin with iron will keep your the hemoglobin in your red blood cells functioning normally so it can deliver oxygen efficiently. Foods rich in anti-oxidants help repair cell damage and promote cardiovascular health. These include blue and purple berries and fruits, carrots, green leafy veggies and other root vegetables. Whole wheat bread and pasta, and brown rice, can provide fiber necessary not just to avoid colon cancer, but to help clear the bloodstream of bad cholesterol. No matter how fit you are, your heart can malfunction due to genetic problems that are not readily detectible. Sometimes the physiologic stress of sports can trigger a heart attack in a fit athlete. Remember Jim Fix? What can we do to prevent this? Annual check ups where the doctor listens to your heart and takes your blood pressure are a must. How about heart scans? They are cheap and could save your life. The 6/23/05 edition of the Wall Street Journal reports that fit young athletes occasionally die suddenly and without warning due to having an enlarged heart, a condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy that tends to run in families. It is associated with a huge left ventricle that can respond to intense physical exertion with a fatal heart rhythm disturbance. The article states that the condition can be detected by an inexpensive heart scan and responds to treatment.
While exercise is critical to good heart health, you can overdo it. Some athletes overtrain and become fatigued which prevents them from improving their performance. We all need rest and recovery. It is an art to time your rest and recovery periods just the right way. If the interval between training sessions is too long your performance declines from deconditioning, but if the intervals is too short your performance declines due to fatigues. Your heart rate can tell you whether you are energized or fatigued through what is called HRV or heartrate variability. This is the time interval between heart beats. A fatigued heart shows flat HRV with interval between heartbeat staying much the same in response to activity, whereas a rested heart shows good variability or healthy fluctuation in HRV. Polar now makes a test for overtraining called OwnIndex fitness test that measures your resting heart rate as well as your HRV.
Iron Supplements
It is common knowledge that the hemoglobin in our red blood cells is what binds to oxygen and carries it to our tissues, including our heart muscles and skeletal muscles. It is also common knowledge that an essential component of the protein hemaglobin is iron, and that iron poor or anemic blood leads to weakness and lethargy. Not surprisingly competetive cyclists tend to have blood levels of iron that are double, or more than double, those of healthy people who get regular exercise but do not engage in competitive sports. Is this an accident? No. Competitive cyclist take iron supplements every day. Since some iron supplementation is good, but too much iron in the blood is toxic and dangerous, it makes sense to talk to your doctor and get regular blood tests to monitor your iron level, if you are seroius about iron supplements. Using whole foods to boost your iron level is safe. Prune juice and iron fortified oats like Sun Country Oats made by Quaker Oats are loaded with iron.
Tracking Your Progress
The concept of tracking your fitness progress involves many methods. You can keep a weekly log of trip times and mileages, and see how your distances and speeds change over time along known routes. You can use an ergometer to measure the average watts and maximum watts you produce during your rides. You can use a heart monitor to check your maximum HR, average HR and ability to sustain riding in a given HR zone. You can keep a log of how much weight you lift, the number of reps and number of sets, for particular lifts with free weights or machines. You can see how you feel and how well you perform while climbing the same tough hills on a periodic basis. You can enter bike races. You can go to a cycling fitness consultant to get your cadence, watts, VO2 max or other capacities measured. Another way to track your progress is to monitor how the composition of your body changes over time. The home, the local gym and the doctor's office are all places where access can be had to devices that measure aspects of your anatomy. It is cheap, quick and easy to measure everything from muscle girth to bone density to percentage of body fat. Weight alone is a misleading indicator of health and fitness, because what really matters is the relative amount of lean muscle vs fat in your body composition. One measurement we keep hearing about in the obesity literature is BMI which stands for Body Mass Index. This is a mathematical formula that incorporates your weight and height to come up with a number reflecting your total body fat. It assumes that much of your weight is from fat, so it is not accurate for an individual who works out alot and has high muscle density. Because of this many pro football players have BMIs in the obese range. A BMI under 18.5 means you are underweight. A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 means you are normal. A BMI of 30.0 to 34.9 signals you are obese with high risk of heart attack. A BMI of 35.0 to 39.9 signals you are obese with a very high risk. A BMI over 40 means you are very obese with an extremely high risk cardiac risk. One site thas discusses BMI and has an instant BMI calculators is www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/pubic/heart/obesity/lose_wt. Another similar site can be found at www.consumer.gov/weightloss/bmi.htm#BMI .
Since BMI is a mathematical formula that applies to all men and women it is less accurate in determining your body composition than methods that measure this more directly based on unique attributes of your body. One technique is to use calipers to measure the width of skinfolds created by pinching the skin together at anywhere from 3-7 places on your body. The Lange Skinfold Caliper can be purchased for $180 to $220 and the Harpenden Skinfold Caliper from $275 to $400. This method can be thrown off by lack of training in the use of calipers. If you want to avoid the cost of buying calipers and you want it done right, you can have your skinfolds measured at the YMCA, many fitness clubs and many hospital wellness centers. If you want to learn how to measure you own skinfolds, check out www.brianmac.demon.co.uk (the site for the Yuhasz Skinfold test) or www2.gsu.edu/~www.fit/bodycomp.html/Skinfold.
Another way to measure your body fat % more accurately than with BMI is with BIA or the bioeletrical impedence method. This involves standing on a scale that sends a harmless micro-current of electricity into your body through your heels. The micro-current passes easily through water based substances like blood and muscle but encounters resistence or impedence as it moves through fat. An excellent scale that measures weight and body fat percentage at a very reasonable price ($59) is made by Tanita of Arlington Heights, Illinois. It is simple to set up and use. You only have to remember to weigh yourself barefoot and to repeat your periodic weighings at the same time of day when your hydration level is roughly the same. Tanita recommends weighing yourself about 3 hours after your last meal. To check it out go to www.tanita.com
A futuristic and very high tech way to measure the exact percentage of your body fat, which is more accurate than the BMI formula or even the use of Skinfold calipers, is to place yourself in a Bod Pod. This is a chamber created by Life Measurement Instruments of Concord, CA, that uses air displacement and takes just 5-8 minutes. Since these machines cost $30,000 to $40,000 I do not recommend buying your own. The Bod Pod is discussed at the Georgia State University site. A Google search of Bod Pod will yield plenty of other sites.