When working with athletes I recommend starting on the low to moderate side just to be careful, and then increasing or decreasing calorie intake based on your performance.

Traditional sports nutrition with simple sugars dextrose, fructose, sucrose or other fast-carbs like maltodextrin require frequent feedings in order to sustain blood sugar.

Recreational triathletes fueling with UCAN typically use between calories per hour to fuel a long effort, while elite athletes training at a higher intensity tend to use more. Here are some tips on fueling with UCAN during a workout:.

For athletes with body composition goals, a recovery drink with steady-release carbs instead of sugar will keep the body in fat-burning mode for longer post workout. Hydrate has 5 of the major electrolytes vital to athletic performance and replaces the electrolytes triathletes often lose through sweat, which is the best way to optimize dehydration recovery.

During training, consume 1 serving every hours based on your individual sweat rate and hydration needs. Mix Hydrate in with your Energy Powder to give your fuel an electrolyte boost. There are many different lengths of triathlons, from sprint to Olympic to a full Ironman distance, so your fueling needs will vary depending on how long you are exerting yourself.

For longer distances, you should prepare to bring plenty of fuel with you on the bike and run. Back Triathlon Nutrition Tips Exercise. The Challenges of Fueling for Triathlon It is no secret that finding a triathlon nutrition plan that is right for you can be a challenge.

Bob Seebohar, sports dietitian at eNRG Performance and former U. Olympic Team dietitian, works with age-group and elite athletes.

He says the top three reasons triathletes want to work with him are to: eliminate GI distress minimize energy swings improve body composition The traditional recommendations for triathlon fueling - loading your body with calories of sugar per hour - can be tough on the stomach and cause highs and lows in energy.

It also trains you to rely on carbohydrates for fuel instead of allowing you to tap into your nearly limitless reserves of body fat for energy. As a response to the challenges athletes were facing, Seebohar developed a nutrition strategy called Metabolic Efficiency Training that teaches endurance athletes to be less reliant on sugar and strategically time their carbohydrate intake to control blood sugar and become better at burning fat.

Before finding UCAN, I was always just trying to figure out what works. Many athletes are busy with work and have limited time to train. UCAN products can be incorporated throughout all aspects of your training to keep your energy steady throughout your workout and beyond.

This allows you to put in consistent work without any physical or mental disruptions. UCAN works best when you consume an entire serving over a short period of time and allow it to steadily release into your body. The starch-based carbs in UCAN digest easily and can be mixed concentrated with just ounces water per serving; mix multiple servings in a single bottle and keep your hydration separate The Energy Powder will settle in your bike bottle over the course of several hours.

Try using the metal ball from a Blender Bottle or something else to break up the powder in your bottle. Shake before drinking each time and the powder will mix back up. Hydration and Electrolytes Water is not always enough to keep your body functioning properly during exercise, especially as we sweat in the warmer months.

The balance of electrolytes and water keeps you hydrated throughout your training and races. Switching to water will help reset your stomach by balancing the osmolality. When your stomach is back to normal, switch back to electrolyte mix along with your sports gels.

We recommend separating your drinks electrolyte mix and water from your calories in case you become extra thirsty and start drinking more.

This is also why we don't recommend using an all-in-one nutrition strategy. If your stomach gets upset and you switch to water, you'll no longer be taking in any calories and the bonk becomes imminent.

Triathlon nutrition is not all created equal. Adjusting for the duration is self-explanatory, and the differences will be apparent in our nutrition calculator at the beginning of this post.

However, there are crucial differences in the proportion of carbs, fats, and proteins that you need to adjust for each workout. Fueling for speed workouts is all about carbohydrates — carbs, carbs, and more. Instead, focus on the proportion of carbohydrates you eat before and during your speed workout.

Speed workouts are typically short, high-intensity workouts designed to improve your speed over a given distance. Given the high intensity, it can be hard to digest solid foods during a speed workout, so this is an excellent opportunity to practice fueling with sports drinks, energy gels, and electrolyte mixes.

Most speed workouts are minutes long, which means that you technically have all the stored carbohydrates you need to complete the workout. However, this assumes that your glycogen stores are full at the beginning of your workout. That means you need to fuel your speed workout with a carbohydrate-rich meal before the session.

Endurance workouts are defined as low-intensity workouts that are strictly below Zone 2. Check out our guide to Zone training for triathletes in Everything You Need to Know About Heart Rate Training Zones.

The focus of endurance workouts for triathlon is learning to burn fat as fuel. To burn fat as fuel, your body should be relatively low on carbohydrates. This does NOT mean that you should enter each endurance workout depleted. Instead, you should be fueling with fats and proteins instead of grams of carbohydrate.

Before an endurance workout, focus on fueling with minimal grams of carbohydrate such as berries or bananas. This will stabilize your blood glucose levels while still using fat as your primary fuel source.

As long as you strictly exercise below Zone 2, you should never need to worry about bonking. Using fat as a fuel source is one of the most significant determinants of triathlon performance, especially for a long course or Ironman triathlete.

The last category of the training session we have is race-specific workouts. These are workouts designed specifically for your goal race and typically completed once per week. Race workouts involve race pace intervals and are the perfect opportunity to practice your race-day nutrition.

This is the exact effort you will be swimming, riding, or running at on race day, so knowing what your body and your stomach can handle at such an effort is important.

One of the biggest mistakes a triathlete can make is not practicing their race-day nutrition strategy in training. Make sure you nail your nutrition targets caloric intake, number of carbs, etc.

in training to avoid trying something new on race day. This example looks at two different athletes competing in an Ironman and finishing in a time of 12 hours.

Both athletes will burn the same number of calories in this simplified example , start with the same number of stored calories, and consume the same number of calories throughout the race.

Using what we know about fat and carbohydrate metabolism, we can see exactly how many more calories from fat the high fat burner uses compared to the low fat burner.

By the end of the race, the low fat burner has a surplus of over 1, calories, putting them at great risk of bonking or ending up with a DNF.

You can see the pieces coming together in the above paragraphs. We will put the puzzle together in our triathlon racing and training nutrition plans. Start by returning to our triathlon nutrition calculator and noting your target number of calories consumed.

Once we break down our nutrition strategy, we need to divide our strategy into three different categories of workouts: speed, endurance, and race. Fuel your speed workouts with grams of carbohydrates before the workout. That could be a bowl of cereal, toast, or pancakes. Anything rich in carbohydrates to fill up your glycogen stores before the workout.

However, we recommend having a sweet-tasting drink that will activate the neuromuscular system and give you a kick each time you take a sip. When completing an endurance workout, your nutrition goal should be to control your blood glucose levels. Instead, your goal is to burn as high a percentage of fat as possible.

Before an endurance-building workout, consume a meal that is high in protein and fat while low in carbohydrates. For example, you could have an omelette, peanut butter, meats, seeds, or nuts. Suppose your endurance workout is longer than 90 minutes.

In that case, you should be fueling with the same high-fat and high-protein foods at a rate suggested by the triathlon nutrition calculator. Just plug in the workout, time, and details, and you will get the target number of calories to consume. These efforts should be fueled in the same way as you will fuel your race day efforts, but with some slight modifications.

That means a high amount of carbohydrates before and during the workout. When you first start your race-specific workouts weeks before your goal race, your should start at the low end of the nutrition calculator when it comes to taking in your calories.

You will gradually increase this amount each week to help train your gut while also training your race-specific fitness. At the peak of your race-specific training, you may actually be consuming more calories than the target from the calculator.

On race day, you'll actually be able to drop your calories down, and your stomach should be able to handle the race-day calories comfortably compared to what you consumed in training. Similarly to how you increase your training load over time, you should focus on increasing the number of carbohydrates that you can consume each week.

Another key point is that you should consume a high-carbohydrate snack before your race-specific workout. Aim to consume a muffin or bowl of cereal, for example, minutes before your race workout, to ensure that your glycogen stores are completely topped off.

During your race workout, consume the exact amount of calories that our triathlon nutrition calculator suggests. These calories should come from mostly carbs, such as sports gels and energy drinks. Specifically, you should aim for a high percentage of carbohydrates consumed during these workouts.

Our nutrition calculator will provide your target number of calories to consume, but you can also narrow it down by calculating the grams of carbohydrate per hour to consume. In everyday life, you may be consuming grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight per day.

However, as a triathlete, your carbohydrate requirement will be much greater on high-intensity training days and race days. These days, a triathlete should aim for 8 to 12 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight per day.

For example, a 70 kg triathlete may be consuming 2, calories per day. At CHO carbohydrate grams per kilogram, this athlete should be aiming to consume grams of carbohydrate per day.

Remember that this goal doesn't need to be met every day. The grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight per day are reserved for big training days, high-intensity training sessions, and races.

The main difference is that Ironman is significantly longer than other forms of triathlon, and it can take upwards of 12 hours for many triathletes. When it comes to your race day nutrition, the timing and foods should be the same as your typical triathlon nutrition plan.

You can get all of these numbers from the calculator above. However, the biggest difference in Ironman triathlon nutrition is the volume of food that you will be consuming.

That means that you really need to train your gut. While it may appear simple on the surface, triathlon racing and training nutrition can be hard to perfect. Proper fueling is one of the keys to success in endurance sports, yet there are some basic principles that you can easily get wrong.

The topic of fasting has come to the forefront of the health and fitness industry in the last decade. There are countless studies, podcasts, and articles on the benefits of fasting, but there is still much that is unknown.

Crucially, most of these studies involve members of the general population, not endurance athletes. For those getting into triathlon, aiming for a PR, or trying to compete at their very best, fasted training is NOT a good option.

The best way to make the biggest fitness gains is to fuel your training and get stronger. Many athletes, especially endurance athletes, struggle with their body weight and body image. But the trend is changing, and the best triathletes in the world are now strong and muscular.

It is impossible to guess your ideal body weight for a triathlon, and perhaps there is no answer. Because of the tri-sport nature of triathlon, you can always be better at one discipline and worse at another. The key is to NOT focus on your body weight, and rather, focus on your performance. Fuel your workouts using our nutrition calculators above, and your ideal body weight will reveal itself.

For more information on body weight and running performance, check out This Running Weight Calculator Will Find Your Ideal Running Weight.

Triathlon nutrition is essential for athletes, especially for those participating in a Proper fueling can make the difference between a successful race and one marred by fatigue, cramps, or gastrointestinal distress.

Nutrition is too often a black box that folks don't want to admit is an area of concern. This comprehensive guide will help you understand how to optimize your nutrition for your first It's time to eliminate the uncertainty. On Carb Loading More experienced folks can go above and beyond what is discussed here, but here are the basics for a safe carb loading procedure.

Day Before: Add about g carbs to what is likely to be a limited training day or a light shake out. Day before, rest day, g carbs, If normal protein intake daily is ~g per day, consider reducing it to ~g per day during the carb load. If normal fat intake daily is ~90g per day, consider reducing it to grams per day.

If normal fiber intake is ~30g per day, consider keeping it there or reducing it very modestly. For the duration of the carb load, stick with foods that your body is familiar with recently.

Remember, exact quantification of this stuff is highly unnecessary. If you want to get more granular about weighing out grams of nutrition, then the intra-race and intra-training fueling is a much better place to spend that time and energy. Still probably not entirely necessary, but much more useful than fussing over the specifics of daily nutrition totals or carb loading.

There are time and psychology tradeoffs always. Consider wisely. Race Day Breakfast Target eating breakfast around Consume a meal with moderate to low protein, lower fat, limited to no fiber, very high carbs, and higher sodium. Caffeine if you like. Fluid can come from coffee, electrolyte beverage or juice.

Example food choices: Cup of quick oats with skim milk, half cup of brown sugar,? Coffee with milk and sugar to taste. Cup of apple juice or better yet, an electrolyte beverage with mg sodium per liter of beverage.

Up to a liter of water with breakfast. The numbers: That might add up to g carbs, g protein, g fat, g fiber, 32oz of fluid, mg sodium. So are most dissolvable electrolyte tablets or hydration mixes.

If you are a first-timer and want to finish your Keep in mind that this plan is based on general assumptions and may need to be adjusted according to your individual needs. Get in the water. Get water in your suit. Swim your swim, make it through transition, get on the bike with your shoes on, and your feet secure in the pedals, and get up to cruising speed.

Here are your options. Safest Possible: Target g per hour. The reason not to do less, is if you underfuel, cramping, bonking, and fatigue and pace issues could prevent you from finishing. Listen to your thirst and know that some folks do tolerate Optimal: The major difference in the optimal performance nutrition and the safest-possible performance nutrition is carbohydrate intake.

Most folks perform at their best using grams of carbs per hour on the bike. Some very fit, and very experienced folks can benefit from as much as g per hour. The sodium and water story is just the same as the safest possible scenario.

But you can push your upper limits of sodium consumption a bit more in hotter scenarios. In a hotter environment it might be ~mg of sodium in 1. Run Fueling Most folks experience some degree of dehydration on the bike, and they carry that dehydration with them onto the run.

Pair that with the increase in jostling that the gut gets when you start running, and the gut tolerance for most triathletes goes down on the run, compared to the bike leg. Keep in mind that your fluid intake may need to increase when you start running.

There is less convective air cooling while you run, and in a For a 2-hour half marathon, that adds up to g carbs, mg sodium, and mL water ~48oz. FUELING SET-UP AND LOGISTICS:. CARRY ON BIKE:. One bottle ml of WATER. CARRY ON RUN:. BIKE: Starting 5 mins into the bike drink the bottle of sports drink alternating with water according to thirst over the duration of the bike.

RUN: Assuming aid stations at 1 mile and 4 miles take gels before you arrive at aid station and wash down with water. You're also moving while fueling a pet peeve of mine is seeing athletes stand around in transition to fuel when they could be moving! By fueling with gels on the run and you don't have to carry anything heavy or awkward.

When planning for longer events like Ironman you're probably going to want solids and a bit of variety. But just keep in mind the more solid the carb source the more work the gut has to do to break it down. So in my opinion the more liquid, the lower risk. Especially for the shorter, more intense efforts.

I sell Neversecond products. I don't there's a massive difference between the glut of brands out there in the market but the nice thing about Neversecond products is that their portioned into 30g packages which makes planning to guidelines simpler!

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