Supplements is an area discussed a lot and everyone is always looking for the next best thing to give them the edge whether that’s on the big sportives’ you’re planning next year or smashing it up the hills with your friends.

But what supplements are actually worth taking?

Well we have performance enhancing ones and then health/recovery ones and we’re going to cover the main ones.

Performance

Creatine – A topic of hot debate within cycling but one of the most proven performance supplements available. The easiest way to decide if you need/want to use this is to think about your training! Are you currently doing off-season gym work, peak power training, track cycling or maybe you’re a crit sprinter? All these would benefit from creatine and improve your 10 second power output, recovery between efforts and sessions. But if you’re doing lots of climbing the potential of added water retention may outweigh the benefits. 5g a day to get the effects.

Beta-Alanine – Shown to improve your performance in the 1-4min effort range perfect for hill climb season and those punchier efforts you might be putting out. Takes a while to load the system (4-6) weeks but once in will be there for 10 weeks or so. Can make you feel a bit tingly after taking though. 3-6g a day best divided into 1.5-3g servings with a meal to avoid those tingles

Caffeine – Massively proven to improve endurance performance and reduce perceived effort and pain. But your average cup of joe probably isn’t enough. An amount of at least 3mg/kg/bw is needed to improve performance and takes ~60mins to peak in the blood. 1 espresso shot = ~75mg so you may be needing a bit more than usual. Be aware of any conditions you may have or steadily increase your intake. If you go from no caffeine to 3mg you may know about it.

Health

Omega-3 – An essential fatty acid we can only get from outside sources and is needed for everyday health! Proven to reduce inflammation and potentially aid in recovery. Getting a supplement to help with your daily needs at around 500mg of EPA and DHA a day or having some oily fish like Salmon with pesto crust is ideal for your daily intake.

Vitamin D3 – shown to help with bone density and formation. But also aids in immunity over the winter period or if you get minimal sunlight exposure. A recommendation of 1000iU a day or 25ug has been suggested if your blood test results come back lower than <75 nmol/L

Hydration for a Marathon

How much water do I need? This depends on quite a few factors if we look on a general daily basis there can be some debate on how much water to have but looking at around 0.033/ml/kg for an everyday sedentary individual should keep you in a fluid balance. For example, weight 70kg*0.033 = 2.31L water a day at a normal temperature and no activity.

How can you determine how much water you need to take on per hour during a marathon? Water requirements are very individualised and based off of each person’s individual sweat rate. This will also be affected by such things as heat, humidity and intensity of exercise. Though a general rule of thumb of 400-800ml an hour should suffice. But saying that there is a better way to work this out as mentioned.

Is there an equation or rough guide people can use to work this out, in relation to their height, weight and running intensity? How much will I be losing in sweat?  You can in fact perform your own sweat test which is easily done:

1. Take a standard session you might do – ideally at race pace- for this let’s say 1 hour. Weigh yourself before (naked).
2. Drink a controlled amount of water with you – for example let’s say 1 bottle of 500ml, ensure you drink all of this over the session.
3. After the hour session before consuming anything else, undress, wipe yourself down with a towel and weigh yourself again.

This number at the end will let us know your average sweat rate per 1Hr at race pace at that outside humidity and temperature.

Pre-race hydration – how much extra water should you be taking on each day in the week before your race to ensure you’re adequately hydrated? Over hydration protocols have been shown to not be an effective form of hydrating in the lead up to an event. You’re best off making sure you meet your daily needs and then on the morning of just ensuring you’re adequately hydrated as I describe below.

How much water should you consume in the hours before your race? Start sipping about 600ml of water with an electrolyte in 3 hours before the race until your urine is clear if it still isn’t clear have another 400ml on top of this.

How can you tell if you’re adequately hydrated? Urine colour is the easiest way to check with the darker it being the more dehydrated you are and the lighter/clearer it is being more hydrated. You can if you want though

Should you avoid ‘dehydrating’ tea and coffee? Tea or coffee does not dehydrate you in itself – it would be illogical to think taking on more fluid will dehydrate you. But caffeine is a diuretic meaning it will cause you to pass urine more frequently. So, every time you go the bathroom you should be topping up. If anything, caffeine is proven for its performance enhancing abilities and I would recommend it at 3mg/kg/bodyweight 30-60mins prior to the event. Though this should be practiced and/or consulted with your GP if you have any reason to be wary of high caffeine intakes

How will the weather on the day impact your hydration? Will be there be enough water stations on course, or should you carry some water with you? How can you plan for this? It takes 2 weeks to acclimatise to a certain temperature. Running regularly and sessions at “race pace” will ensure you’re acclimatised but if it’s hotter on the day understand that your fluid requirement with alter with an increased sweat rate.

What are the signs of dehydration and overhydration – how do you know if you’ve had too little or too much water? Is the risk of overhydration (hyponatremia) worse than the risk of dehydration? There are quite a few signs of dehydration and overhydration with hyponatremia being a place that can be caused both by having too much fluid or not enough as the main issue is electrolyte balance, symptoms of this can be causes fluid movement into the brain, causing swelling with symptoms that can progress from feeling strange, to mental confusion, general weakness, collapse, seizure, coma and death.

One noted sign is to see your heart rate raise 5-8bpm for every 1% of dehydration.

Using the sweat test making sure you don’t lose more than 2% of your bodyweight is important as past this point you will start to struggle and start to get issues.

How to work this out:

70kg * 0.02 = 1.4kg or 1.4L of water

If in your 1 hour sweat test while consuming 500ml of water at the end weight 69.5kg we know you lose 1L/1kg of water an hour at the race pace, at the temperature/humidity.

If you carried on drinking at that rate for 3 hours you would now be 1.5L dehydrated which is over the 2% which we want to avoid.

Is the ‘drink when you’re thirsty rule’ reliable while running? Typically, if you’re drinking when you are thirsty rule probably means you’re already a bit dehydrated – but as explained over hydration isn’t good either. Steady consumption of water that is matched with your hydration testing and making sure you’re not losing more than 2% bodyweight should be the focus.

What’s the best method for alternating water with energy drinks (London usually has Lucozade Sport stations every 4-5 miles) and why should you be drinking Lucozade Sport/energy drinks as well as water? Muscle glycogen stores (stored carbohydrate) typically will only provide enough energy for ~90mins of exercise so taking on carbohydrate each hour will enable you to maintain blood glucose levels and keep performing. Carbohydrate solutions of 3-5g per 100ml also improve your uptake of water hydrating you better and typically sports drinks contain electrolytes too.

How important is it to take on electrolytes both during and before the race? Incredibly important – water on its own doesn’t hydrate you as well as if it contains electrolytes as mentioned but things like hyponatremia only happen with excessive water intake and no electrolyte intake upsetting the balance and essentially diluting yourself. You can get your sodium loss rate tested but if you’re leaving salt lines on your face or clothes you are probably a salty sweater.

Recommendations of 0.5 to 0.7 g/L of sodium for exercise lasting <3hours with longer durations going up higher per hour. Your typical electrolyte tab is around 0.4g.

Can you explain how energy drinks can contribute towards grams of carbs you need to fuel yourself per hour, and how many they can supply? Well it depends on the drink used, but performance improvements have been seen from as little as 20g an hour. I would suggest aiming for 40-60g an hour at least and more if you’re running intensely. Getting this from a glucose:fructose mix at a 2:1 ratio with improve your ability to digest it and reduce incidence of gastro-intestinal distress. The reason for carbohydrate-based drinks is simple the maintenance of blood glucose enables you to keep performing the exercise you’re doing. The amount we need will vary depending on exercise intensity, duration and also how well trained an individual you are.

Post-race hydration – how much water should you take on after your race? Ensuring you’ve replaced what you’ve lost should be the main goal so continuing to drink water with electrolyte for a while after the event should be expected – ensuring you’re getting the right mixture as described above to help.

Getting on track and heading towards your fitness/health/fat loss goals can be daunting especially when you have no idea where to start, so making this journey as easy as possible is paramount to your success but also your enjoyment of the process.

Here are 6 simple things that you can do;

1. Walk – One of the biggest factors on our energy expenditure is our “non-exercise activity”. This is everything you do that isn’t specific exercise, so walking to the bus or train, walking around at the office or at lunch etc. If 1000 steps equate to around 50Kcals then if you increased your daily step count by 2000 steps at the end of the week you would have burnt an extra 700Kcals. And all you had to do was to walk a bit more.
2. Track your food – This is a big one! If you want to lose body fat having an idea of where you are calorie-wise is important. Without getting too technical about the ratios of what you’re having, if you start tracking your food and realise your weight/ measurements aren’t dropping then look at your average intake over a week and reduce it by 100-200kcals per day and you should see further loss – that is If you exercise stays consistent 🙂
3. Do exercise you enjoy – Too often people believe running or other various forms of exercise are the best for “fat loss” but honestly the best is the one you’re going to enjoy and consistently keep doing
4. Eat protein – Protein at every meal helps with the retention of muscle when in a calorie deficit – something you must be in to lose fat – as nobody wants to lose the muscle they have! It is also highly satiating meaning when you’re in that calorie deficit you feel less hungry, the hungrier you are the harder it is to adhere to you diet and stay on track.
5. Drink Water – The principal of all life and performance and fat loss. The process of breaking fat down is done through something called hydrolysis, and as you may guess that process requires water, and is performed much more efficiently in a hydrated state. You want to perform well in the exercise you’ve chosen, whether it’s faster or stronger and hydration has a massive impact on that with being dehydrated as little 2% seeing a significant decrease in performance.
6. 6. De-stress – Sometimes we set our goals and we’re smashing our workouts, eating well and for some reason you’re not dropping weight, or your stomach has reduced in circumference and in the end, you feel like giving up! Well it can be so easy to forget but being stressed can cause us to retain huge amounts of water thus feeling like you’re not making progress! Think about your week; think about how much sleep you’ve had; how’s work? The best way to de-stress is to ensure you’re getting those 7-8 hours of sleep; meditate; take time for yourself; organise your diary. All of these can help you de-stress and you may find a bunch of that water-weight coming off.

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Veganism and opting for less meat in our diets is becoming more popular and there added benefits to having more items like pulses and lentils in our diets with more micronutrient density.

Pulses and lentils are a great way to add protein and slow releasing carbohydrate to your diet that help aid in recovery and provide slow releasing energy for training, particularly great if you’re having a training session 2-4 hours after eating them.

Why 2-4 hours?
They are low GI carbohydrates so they’re digested a lot slower and so need time allow for that release of energy which is important if you’re wanting to focus on performance.

100g of cooked chick peas will provide you with;
164Kcals
9g protein
27g carbohydrates (8g fibre)
3g fat
16% your RDA of Iron

The quality of protein is dictated by the amount of amino acids that food contains and the bio-availability (how we digest them). Very few vegetable sources contain a complete amino acid profile meaning sometimes we need to combine foods together to make them complete.

Why is this important?
All nine of the essential amino acids are needed to promote “muscle protein synthesis” or the creation and stimulation of recovery and growth in muscle.

The protein of pulses is high in certain amino acids and low in others whereas grains are the opposite being high in what pulses are low in. Combining them provides all the essential amino acids needed to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

This is really important to know if you’re a vegetarian/vegan.

Here is an awesome recipe of mine that you may enjoy

RECIPE: Roasted vegetable and lentil soup

Ingredients:

• 1 tin mixed beans (can be in a sauce)
• 1 tin mixed pulses or chick peas
• 2 tins chopped tomatoes
• 1 onion & bell pepper
• 2 garlic cloves – minced
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1/2 tsp chilli,
• 1tsp smoked paprika
• Salt & Pepper
• 1tbsp Worcester sauce
• Fresh Coriander to garnish

CHOP onion and bell pepper and fry in pan till golden

ADD rest of ingredients and bring to a simmer

LEAVE to cook for 15-20mins and reduce

DONE

SERVE in a big tortilla wrap with some fresh coriander and some sour cream

Hydration testing is something you can do throughout the year at different points as the weather changes. It’s a great way to stay on top of how much you should be drinking to avoid dehydration and hyponatraemia.

It’s recommended that we avoid water loss exceeding 2% of our bodyweight. So, if you weigh 70kg that would be the loss of 1.4kg of water.

Here’s the test:

1. Take a standard session you might do a 1-hour turbo is ideal. Weigh yourself before (naked).
2. Drink a controlled amount of water over the turbo – let’s say 1 sports bottle (500ml). Ensure you drink all of this over the session, oh and that you’ve dressed yourself again haha.
3. After the hour session before consuming anything else, undress, wipe yourself down with a towel and weigh yourself again.

This number at the end will let us know your average sweat rate per 1Hr in those conditions. It’s important to remember this number relates to the intensity of that session and the ambient temperature. You will always sweat more indoors as there is no wind cooling.

With that loss add the 0.5kg from the bottle you drank. This now tells you your sweat loss per hour. So, if you lost 0.5kg you’ve lost in total 1kg over 1 hour.

You can use an outdoor ride to test this too BUT ensure it’s still only an hour if you go for longer then you will start eating food or gels, you will also be expending large amounts of glycogen that will also affect the results.

Tiredness, fatigue and drops in performance and usually and most likely caused but things like overtraining, poor sleep, lack of recovery and under nourishment -sufficient calories in the right ratios of carbs protein and fat to facilitate work load-. But sometimes there is a possibility it could be a micronutrient deficiency such as Iron.

Why?
Iron is required for the formation of oxygen-carrying proteins, haemoglobin and myoglobin, and for enzymes involved in energy production. Oxygen- carrying capacity is essential for endurance exercise as well as normal function of the nervous, behavioural, and immune systems.

What does it mean?
Iron depletion (low iron stores) is one of the most prevalent nutrient deficiencies observed among athletes, especially females. Iron deficiency, with or without anaemia, can impair muscle function and limit work capacity. Iron requirements for endurance athletes, especially distance runners, are increased by approximately 80%.

It would be worth noting athletes who are vegetarian, vegan or regular blood donors should aim for an iron intake greater than their respective RDA; 18 mg women and 8 mg for men – though if you’re vegan this goes up to about 33mg for women and 14mg for men.

Due to the increase in popularity in veganism providing a non-haem (non-meat sources) I thought it would be apt to provide a list of iron sources that everyone can eat.

• Spinach – 1 cup = 6.43mg
• Swiss chard – 1 cup = 3.96mg
• Cumin – 2tsp = 2.79mg
• Parsley – ½ cup = 1.88mg
• Turmeric – 2tsp = 1.82mg
• Beet Greens – 1 cup = 2.74mg
• Collard Greens – 1 cup = 2.15mg
• Bok Choy – 1 cup = 1.77mg
• Asparagus – 1 cup = 1.64mg

Before you take any kind of supplementation, I would highly recommend getting your blood tested though to make sure as supplementing without being deficient could be detrimental

Recipe:

Here’s a recipe for a simple addition to your day to add ~9mg of Iron to your day in an organic way

Saag Aloo

• 1 large onion
• 2 large potatoes
• 400g Spinach
• 1tsp – fresh grated ginger, turmeric, garam masala
• 2 garlic cloves chopped
• ½ tsp cumin seeds
• Olive oil
• Salt

PARBOIL chopped potatoes (cubes)

HEAT oil and cumin seeds in separate pan

ADD chopped onion and cook till golden in pan

DRAIN potatoes

ADD potato and everything else except spinach to pan

HEAT till soft

ADD spinach and cook till wilts

DONE

Feeling light on the bike, and not carrying a few extra pounds can make the difference between feeling like a seal going uphill or soaring up it like an eagle.

Weight has a huge importance in cycling but also in health and finding your ideal riding weight is a sought-after goal by many avid cyclists.

Here are my top tips for helping you achieve that race weight.

Be in a calorie deficit – This might sound silly but if you’re ultimately not in a calorie deficit you will not drop the excess body fat/weight you want. Even if you cycle 20+ hours a week, if you have fast cake hands and you’re eating more than you’re burning it won’t come off.

Understand where you are – This could be one of the most crucial ones! If you don’t know what you’re having in general- let alone how much of it- how do you know what to change? Write a food diary for yourself for one week. You may be surprised as what you snack and just happened to forget about.

Be conservative – Knowing you need to be in a deficit is important and once you’ve seen how much you’re consuming you can start taking a few things out. Don’t drastically drop out all your food and have an apple a day- this might drop weight quickly but may not be all the right weight and you will find you may plateau quickly, will you then go to half an apple? Do it steadily and start with around 200 calories a day reduction and see how your weight is after one week.

Not all days are equal – Eat for the day’s activity rather than eating the same every day. If you’ve got a rest day and you’re going to have it nice and relaxed then you really don’t need to eat a huge amount and could probably have less because your energy expenditure is less. But if you’re going out for a big weekend ride with all your friends for 5 hours then you can definitely eat more calories.

Think weekly rather than daily – Carrying on from the previous point, rather than eating the same every day and focusing on daily intake think about your week and where you could do with more calories and less and plan accordingly. If you needed on average 2500Kcals a day that would be 17,500 a week. You could divide that weekly amount better in relation to your rides with less on lounging days and more on hard riding days.

How much should I lose – Your weekly weight loss should be around 1% of your bodyweight in pounds per week. This will change depending on how lean you are already. If you’re bigger you will find you have more scope to have a slightly bigger drop but if you’re on the leaner side aiming for 0.5% might be best. Why? Because the amount of muscle loss with bigger weight drops when you’re leaner can make up a larger percentage, so it’s better to go steady and lose

Keep Protein high – This is an obvious one but when in a calorie deficit and trying to drop weight it’s important to keep protein high to prevent muscle loss during this time and it’s also satiating, keeping you feeling fuller for longer! Aiming for around 1.8-2g/kg/bodyweight would be ideal in this situation.

Carbs for performance – Dropping all your carbs out when riding lots is a no-no. You will quickly lose all your energy and feel tired, lethargic and probably end up bingeing when someone brings some cake into the office. Instead of eating fewer carbs and riding worse, why not fuel for your workouts or rides so you can work as hard as you can, get the most out of that session and in turn burn more calories because you worked harder? One study suggests that ingesting carbs before working out increases the post-exercise “afterburn” effect more than the fasted state. That means more calories burned throughout the day, not just during your sweat session, though not fully conclusive, some food for thought there

Fats for weight loss? – Having a high fat, low carb diet for dropping body fat gets mentioned a lot but is it right? Fat has 9Kcal per gram whereas carbohydrate and protein are only 4Kcal per gram. So you could quite easily over consume on fat and end up not being in your calorie deficit anymore PLUS you could have twice as much protein and carbohydrate than you could fat if comparing equal amounts.

Think long term – In relation to fat for weight loss, and when comparing two identical, calorie deficit matched diets between low carb high fat and high carb low fat, the latter has been shown to work more effectively BUT – here’s the big “but” – does that work for you! If you’re riding lots and lots and training hard then realistically you’re going to struggle on the bike and in your sessions, you will underperform on your wattage and may get cravings causing you to ultimately binge two weeks down the line ruining your progress.

The best diet is the one you can stick to – The decision between eating more or less of carbohydrate or fat should be dependent on your activity and what you will actually stick to! If my special, amazing fantabulous diet here “diet special” would make you lose more weight but you absolutely hated it and felt rubbish on the bike, the likelihood is that you won’t stick to it. As long as you’re in a deficit and eating a well-balanced diet with lots of vegetables and enough protein to stop muscle loss you will lose fat.

Fasted riding – Research has demonstrated that fasted cardio does not increase fat burning over a 24-hour period. While your muscles adapt to using more fat when you exercise, you don’t actually lose more fat overall on the days that you exercise versus days that you don’t. If you’re wanting to increase your ability to utilise fat at a higher rate during exercise then it’s great but if you’re doing it just for increased fat loss you could be putting yourself through a harder session for no reason.

Tracking your food – If you’ve done a food diary and followed the tips above but are still struggling to lose the fat you want then here are some more tips. Keep another food diary for a week but actually weigh all your food or scan the barcode of the foods you’re having into a calorie tracking app which will give you an accurate measure of how much you’re exactly consuming. Then repeat the above tips of reducing your calories by about 200 a day or 1400Kcal over a week, keeping protein high and carbs adequate for training and see if you lose weight then.

Increase your non-exercise activity – What does that mean? Well if all your riding and any training your do is exercise activity we want to increase what isn’t that and our way of controlling it can quite easily be through step count. Setting yourself a step count means you will always have some level of calorie expenditure you can control and ensure you’re hitting, even on your rest days. This is a great way to increase your calorie deficit without reducing your food or adding another session in.

Use Volume – When dieting you’re going to be a in a calorie deficit and as such you can sometimes find yourself feeling pretty hungry. The best way to combat this is to have meals high in volume. Make the most of vegetables to create filling meals such as a noodle soup, tomato based curry sauce, stews and stir-fries. The number of calories in non-starchy veg, such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and bell peppers is very small so why not make the most of it and eat more?

Here’s a recipe that makes a low calorie, low carb ice cream that can really fill you up and curb your sweet cravings.

Protein Frogurt

Ingredients;

• 200g Frozen raspberries – Or any berry
• 150g Fat free Greek yogurt
• 30g Whey protein

WHACK it all in a bowl

USE a hand blender to combine it all (this may take a few minutes, you can use a food processor but will need to stir frequently)

BLEND till smooth

DONE

Literally that easy and you will have made yourself a Frogurt/ ice cream style snack.

“New year, new you!”; “A fresh start!”, “My New year resolution!” and “Got to lose that Christmas weight” are all things that are said frequently this month and whether that’s the case for yourself or you’re still trying to carry on your goal of dropping a little body fat then this is just for you!

Understanding how to create a deficit and then the importance of carbohydrate, fat and protein and their role in fat loss is important.

Deficit

First of all, we need to be in a calorie deficit to lose body fat – if it isn’t dropping then you’re still eating too much compared to the activity you’re doing. Try tracking your food in a calorie counter and doing so accurately while monitoring these things;

• Your weight (preferably as a weekly average)
• Step count – all your non exercise-based activity
• Monitoring the calorie or Kj expended on your chosen bike computer

Protein

In a calorie deficit protein is integral to success and helps us to keep fresh and powerful on the bike. It is the foundation of recovery; it aids us in maintaining our lean tissue; it’s filling and may help us still gain some muscle despite being in a deficit.

How much?

Aim for 2g/kg/bodyweight per day and have a portion with every meal which is every 3 to 4 hours in addition to after our training session.

Fat

Fat plays an important role in hormone, nervous system and cell health and provides fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids.

How much?

As cycling is mainly endurance based, we only need a daily requirement of about 0.6-0.8g/kg/bodyweight to keep a healthy system with higher intakes only really being needed on specific protocols, strength-based sports or very high calorie intake days. On rest days- which could be a couple of days a week- we can quite easily a drop this amount a lot lower to help with a calorie deficit.

Carbs

Lastly, we have carbohydrate – this fills out the remainder of our daily calories.  These become the most heavily manipulated macronutrient on training days fuel for the work required.  Have a larger daily serving on intense/ long duration bike days or if you’re just at work all day and not training then sack them off a bit, eating smaller portions at each meal as you don’t need the energy.

Focus on having some carbohydrate before hard sessions, fast releasing before morning sessions (like a 1 slice of bread, banana and a bit of honey) or slow releasing 2-4 hours before an evening session or a later start on the weekend.