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

There is the main thought process that brown or complex carbohydrates are good and white is bad. But ultimately, it’s all about context, and isn’t as black and white as that. Both white and brown or simple and complex carbohydrates have their place in the diet. What is more important is the timing in which we have them and the foods we have them in conjunction with.

Glycaemic index (GI)

GI is measured on a scale of 1-100 where 100 is glucose and fastest releasing – with complex typically being lower.

• 1-50 Low
• 51- 70 Medium
• 71-100 High

Low to Moderate:

Low to moderate Gi carbohydrate is ideal to have most of the time in particular that 2-4-hour period before training – this is for the steady rise in blood sugar – as well as tending to be higher in fibre and micronutrients. This means you will feel fuller for longer and potentially solve any energy fluxes you might have been getting through the day.

It’s not the most ideal food to have on the bike though, for the above reasons and when looking at performance, the higher Gi, simpler carbohydrates are much more effective

High:

The whiter, more simple carbohydrates increase blood sugar a lot quicker, tend to be low in fibre and depending on the source micronutrients.

Where this type of carbohydrate excels is in the period directly before, during and after a workout or ride. This is due to the speed of the release making the energy viable for use straight away, aiding in immediate performance or recovery.

Knowing more about these allows you to know when you can have some of those sweeter foods and when you should cut back on them in relation to energy levels and best utilisation.

RECIPE: Mediterranean flaked sea bream pasta

Ideal to have 2-4 hours before a session providing 80g of steady releasing carbohydrate and 20-30g protein.

Ingredients per 1 person;

• 1 fillet sea bream
• 100g Spaghetti
• 1tbsp Olive oil
• 1 clove garlic
• Small handful cherry tomatoes
• 1tbsp of olives
• Salt & Pepper
• Fresh Basil to garnish

BOIL your spaghetti with some salt till just before it’s done (al dente)

FRY minced garlic in your pan with olive oil first then adding fillet, salt and pepper

ADD halved cherry tomatoes and olives after 3 or so minutes

DRAIN cooked pasta

ADD pasta to frying pan and stir in once fillet is crispy

SERVE with a garnish of basil, and remaining oil from the pan.

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.

What sources of food or sports supplements would be the most ideal to be eating on the bike to keep you energised and give you fuel for optimal performance?

Our choices include real food like; fruit, jam sandwiches, flapjack etc. energy bars, gels and carbohydrate drinks. Ultimately though these are divided into the three sections of;

• Solid
• Semi-Solid
• Liquid

Some great research has been done showing that if all three variations contain the same amount of carbohydrate, protein and fat in them then the speed at which they’re digested is the same though the feeling of fullness is always most with solids despite the speed being the same.

Liquid options can vary in concentration with low concentrations of around 3-4g carbohydrate per 100ml promoting better fluid uptake or is more hydrating. A strong solution that is 6-8g per 100ml would be iso-tonic which has a similar concentration to blood will focus more on providing carbohydrate then hydrating and then the last being hypertonic 8g> per 100ml and will be purely focused on carbohydrate provision but will have a slower absorption rate and will cost you water from your body to move it across. Gels can be found in this area to and normally advertise what they are or you can work it out.

Solids come in many forms, bars tend to be higher in fat, and may have protein so consider the slower digestion and that if you have quite a few it will eat into your total daily amounts you should have. Personally If you’re not training for anything in particular then fuel your rides with food you will enjoy and make sure you get the most of the ride.

Ultimately consider what you’re doing; riding with friends, training for an event, racing etc. How you fuel on these should determine your choices as practicing for your race you should use what will be on your race, but if you’re just out on a jolly then the world is your oyster!

Pre-ride and especially pre-race or sportive is a time that’s filled with old tales of what is best to eat-the “Miracle Breakfast” that will have you riding faster than ever! Most of the time these tales are just fads or gimmicks getting you to purchase odd foods or supplements that often aren’t warranted.

Something I stand by when working with One Pro and any of my riders is the anagram “KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid”, especially before a big day out on the bike whether that’s training or sportive alike.

So why Oats?

• When you have at least a couple of hours before heading out Oats are quite carb dense and not too high in volume – so you don’t end up overfeeding and getting bloated – and provide a nice steady release of energy.
• If it’s a big day you should have probably carb loaded for 1-2 days prior and have your muscles saturated with stored carbohydrate, so on the day you only need to top up your depleted liver glycogen stores.
• Oats can be combined with other ingredients– like honey and bananas to increase the number of carbohydrates and to further aid in liver glycogen replenishment, because they are comprised of fructose.
• Porridge is available pretty much anywhere in the world (same for bananas and honey), making it ideal to have in practice and on the day, helping you to keep to your usual routine and safe knowing you’re going to feel great because of it.
• Aiming for about 100-120g before should ensure you’re topped up, and will aid in performance – this looks like 80g of uncooked oats, 1 medium banana and 1 heaped tbsp. of honey.

Recipe: FLAPJACK

Here are my flapjack energy bars that I make for One Pro on race day. The riders absolutely love these!

I recommend making 8-12 per batch (no less than 4 per batch though as they will be too much to digest at once on the bike)

150g Oats (I used Quaker Oats)

180g Banana

50g Raisins

160g Golden Syrup

Orange zest

1tbsp of squeezed orange juice

1 or 1/2 tsp cinnamon

MASH bananas

ADD golden syrup, zest, juice

STIR

ADD oats and raisins

STIR

DIVIDE 

BAKE @ 180C fan assisted for 10-15mins

LEAVE to cool

DONE

Macros for 1 of 8 – 168Kcal – 36.75g Carbs – 2.5g Protein – 0.3g Fat – 26.75g Glucose – 10.3g Fructose

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.

Knowing what we should have before a ride is important so we can make the right choices to give us the perfect fuel so we can ride harder and perform better and having foods like berries, fruit and ultimately fructose can aid us in this.

Liver Glycogen –
The name for stored carbohydrate in the liver. This store of energy has a direct relationship with being able to maintain blood glucose levels during exercise, and if its low you’re going to quickly find it hard to maintain your exercise output.

You may not have known but when you carbohydrate load you’re saturating your muscle with loads of carbohydrate, which is usually the day before a/or THE big ride. But despite carb loading you will still wake up with a liver empty of glycogen, as that fuel is used to maintain blood sugar levels while asleep.

What role does fruit play in this?
Well fruit is first and foremost broken down in the liver with a large proportion of that energy being stored there.

What does this mean for me?
Knowing that, you can make that pre-ride/race breakfast improve your performance even more than before. Combining a steady, slow releasing carbohydrate like porridge or brown bead 2-4 hours before with fruit like a fruit compote, banana or maple syrup can help bring those liver glycogen levels back to normal.

How much should I have?
For breakfast – Looking solely at performance and not accounting for goals like body composition then having 1.1-2.2g/kg/body weight would be ideal – the amount deepening on ride duration, intensity and also if you woke up quite a lot lighter than the previous day

If you’re already out riding – Having fruit in your pocket, honey in your water or some fruit juice are all sources of fructose and can be had in amounts of up to 30g an hour while on the bike. Great ideas of ways to save money on gels and still help your performance.

Here is a great fresh snack/meal idea to add to your day while its hot and summery;

Protein Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 200g Frozen Rapsberries
• 30g Whey
• 1-2 tbsp water

ADD all ingredients to a bowl

BLEND with a hand blender (alternatively you can use a food processor but will require some pushing around)

ADD extra tbsp of water if not combining

With the warmer weather picking up now and you heading out in your summer kit, you’re inevitably going to be sweating a lot more! Replacement of fluid is important but replacing electrolytes is just as crucial.

Over-hydrating with water without electrolytes or being severely dehydrated are equally as dangerous and can lead to hyponatremia which is a dangerous place to be.

Electrolytes?

Electrolytes are the minerals we lose through sweating and help with muscle contraction and fluid balance in addition to other vital functions. The main electrolyte we lose in exercise is Sodium.

Salty Sweater?

Some individuals can be particularly salty sweaters and may need 1000mg of sodium per bottle to maintain electrolyte balance.  Considering most commercial electrolyte tabs only provide 300mg a serving you can easily see why you might still be getting issues.

If you’re getting any of the above symptoms or notice you have a particularly salty face or large salt lines on your jersey there is a good chance you may be needing more.

Try upping the dosage and see how you feel or if you’re still being  caught out while on the road give this quick lifesaver a go.

There are services by some companies like “Precision Hydration” that do a sweat test that quickly analyses how much salt you lose in your sweat and what kind of sweater you are and I’m sure it’s not the woolly variety.

Emergency electrolyte carb drink

This nifty little concoction is something you can make at any café, pub or eatery – the sugar improves water uptake as will the salt but this is primarily replacing your important electrolytes. And the citrus is to help prevent dry mouth and add some flavour

Ingredients for 1 bottle

• 1-2g salt
• 15g table sugar (3 level teaspoons)
• Citrus Juice