Address the Source of Your Performance Weakness

Don't Sleep in Your Weak Spot [Infographic]

As 2016 is drawing to a close, many of us can't seem to stop thinking over our year's past accomplishments and conquered goals. Maybe you nailed a PB in your bench press, mastered the double under, or whipped out a sub six finally. You're feeling pretty darn proud of your performance and your bod. Perhaps you're even thinking you're in the best shape of your life, but are you?

The best trained athletes like Tom Brady, Peter Sagan, Lionel Messi, and Stephen Curry all have something in common besides being the top dog in their respective sports. They all work on their -- weaknesses.

Say what? Yeah, this is usually where the rubber meets the road between the pros we watch and the rest of us. These sports superstars aren't on the field, in the gym, on the track, or in their clips working on their strengths. These talented and gifted individuals spend the bulk of their practice addressing the problem with their game, striving to constantly improve their shortcomings. We've all heard the saying: "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link."

How about in 2017, you and I stop sleeping in the weak spot of our performance and hit the source of it instead, getting to the root of our performance problem. With the correct diagnosis and approach, we can get faster, stronger, and endure.

Lack of strength in weight training or inadequate speed while cycling or running can mean you have weak biomechanics. If your form is suffering, you'll use more energy and work at a higher work rate when engaging in your favorite sport which will deplete your fuel, increase the acidity of your muscle pH, hinder your lungs from turning over carbon dioxide than someone else who ably and effectively moves the kinetic chain with accuracy, using less effort and muscle glycogen to cross the finish line.

If your thing is weight lifting, check out your movement patterns by watching yourself in the mirror or in a video captured by your phone. Perform an unweighted movement and determine if your basics are spot on from set up to finish. BOLO for knee(s) that shoot out, incorrect foot placement or weight distribution in your shoe or bare foot, eyeball uneven barbell or dumbbell height. These are all signs that you need to dial back on the weight when lifting or lowering.

If you fade in the saddle or fatigue before your journey's end, then endurance is your Achille's heel. If you consistently do shorter, more intense practice like HIIT several times per week instead of going for more frequent and time demanding longer durations or if you fail to follow up your anaerobic push with a lengthy steady-state pace, your body probably goes to higher percentages of MHR sooner rather than later, knocking your muscles out from under you or crippling your lungs. Solution: Add more time onto your workout each week, increasing gradually and consistently until you reach your sport's ultimate length. In generally a month to month and a half of working around or slightly below 70% of your maximum heart rate, your body will adapt and create additional mitochondria or power plants in your muscle cells which will allow you to go longer with greater metabolic vigor, less fatigue, and breathlessness. 

Speed, strength, and endurance are all measurable values. Do what the pros do to improve their sports performance and eliminate the weak spots in your game by charting your workout details. Composing a workout history will help remind you to address your troubled spots in a move in order for you to perfect a flawed movement pattern and provide you with the critical info to work on strengthening all of the muscles that power that move, helping you to strengthen weaker muscle fibers in say maybe your shoulders, low back, hips, or core. Logging your workout times, pace, splits, and distance covered in your phone or on paper consistently without fail will provide you with an accurate recollection of really how much time you are putting into your practice and show you if you are incrementally increasing your quickness and endurance as you should. 

Yes, self improvement takes time but what better investment of your days than spending seconds, minutes, and hours creating the best you that you can be. Right?

Thanks for reading. Your readership encourages me and I appreciate that.

- Bell Gia

Nutrition and Fitness Expert

Offsetting Training Stress with Nutrition

Still smiling after a 20 mile run. 

Stress: An Inevitable Component of Achievement

There's a common joke amongst long-distance runners: You don't have to outrun the tiger, you just have to outrun your FRIEND! 

Competition is healthy. It promotes mental and physical growth. It forces us to try harder than we had ever tried before, to persevere longer than we thought possible, and to push beyond ones comfort zone and pain threshold to perform at a level that the athlete did not know that they were capable of reaching, achieving, and surpassing. 

To compete means to perform. Performance competitions like triathlons & ironman triathlons, half & full marathons, as well as expedition & adventure races require professional and amateur athletes alike to push their limits throughout the entire training process in order to improve both their mental and physical condition to emerge victorious. 

The amount of training necessary to compete at a high-performance sport is cognitively and physically demanding. Demanding on ones time, balancing work & family life.  There also exists a continuous tug-of-war and second-guessing game that goes on in the mind and body of a performance athlete as she or he attempts to weigh and assess training intensity with the risk of potential injury, trying to sustain motivation while experiencing physical and mental training fatigue, and struggling to stay hydrated and properly nourished but lean enough to stay competitive during the entire training process up to the day of the race.  

Training is stressful. Stress that is both physical and mental. Performance stress can be physically manifested in swollen joints, sore muscles, lethargy, nutritional deficiency, and weight gain. Mental stress can also be physical in nature, showing up as anxiety, inability to concentrate and sleep at night, depression, and fatigue. 

Initially appearing as weight gain and fatigue, stress, if ignored and unaddressed, can lead to systemic inflammation. Inflammation, now shown in clinical research to be one of the leading causes of acute and chronic illness as well as one of the leading causes of disease. Stress's ability to inflame the body and weaken the immune system is not to be taken lightly. 

So how can an athlete offset the negative physical manifestations of high-level training and speed up recovery? Nutrition and adequate hydration are two effective ways to counteract and mitigate training enervation and fatigue.

A healthy athlete is a well-performing competitor. Health begins with consuming nutrient-dense foods as part of a well-balanced diet that is full of plant-based variety and color.  Correct nutrition and adequate hydration are the legs on which sports conditioning and recovery stand. 

Muscle recovery requires a full range of vitamins and minerals coming from nutritious living foods. High-level training offset with a proper nutrient-dense diet can continually regenerate the athlete's cells by providing both the physical energy as well as the chemical building blocks required to replace lost or injured tissues as well as to rejuvenate and revitalize joints, tendons, ligaments, and muscles necessary to compete on race day. 

Before you sign up for your next race, sit down and look at what you are feeding your body with. Eating sport-specific foods can help enhance the athlete's workout quality and fitness level by providing the correct balance of carbohydrates, fats, and protein as determined by exercise intensity and performance requirement. Ultimately, your body is only as good as the food you feed it and an athlete is only as good as her or his body is on the day of the race.

Thank you for your readership. I definitely appreciate your support as I live out my passion in words.

- Bell Gia

Nutrition and Fitness Expert

BellGia.com