Ride Your Gut Off with These 3 Training Tips

Here’s how to use your bike to shed that dangerous spare tire

BY SELENE YEAGER  APRIL 13, 2016 

 

Grab a friend and try these weight-loss strategies on your next ride. PHOTOGRAPH BY BRADLEY P JOHNSON

Belly fat is bad news. While researchers debate the real health risks of a higher body mass index (BMI) or carrying a few extra pounds, everyone agrees that wearing too much weight around your waist is largely detrimental to your health. 

Research shows that a waistline over 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women puts you at risk for heart disease even if you’re not technically overweight and otherwise in good health. Belly fat has also been linked to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar and diabetes. Again, bad news.

The good news is that you already own the best tool for shedding that bad-news belly fat: your bike. The key is performing a variety of workoutsthat build your fat-burning engine, rev your metabolism and the production of fat-burning hormones, suppress your appetite, and help you burn more fat and calories all day long. Yep, your bike can do all that. Here’s how. (Read Bike Your Butt Off! for a fully guided weight-loss plan for cyclists.)

Go hard. Do interval training once or twice a week (no need for more; stick to one day if you race or go hard on weekends). Numerous studies have found that high-intensity training significantly reduces total abdominal fat, including dangerous visceral (belly) fat more effectively than lower-intensity exercise. There are endless ways to do interval training. One simple example:

•Warm up: 10 to 15 minutes
•Pick up your effort so you’re working hard (a nine on a One-to-10 scale; you’re breathing hard, but not gasping) for 30 seconds to one minute. 
•Go easy for one minute.
•Repeat a total of five times.
•Cool down for two to three minutes.

Research shows your body also unleashes human growth hormone, which helps you burn fat and maintain muscle, after just 10 to 30 seconds of high-intensity exercise. High-intensity exercise also appears to help curb your appetite and trigger hormones that regulate feelings of hunger and fullness better than lower-intensity exercise, so you’re less likely to overeat. 

Keep it controlled and comfortable. Yes. We just told you to go hard to burn off unwanted belly fat—but don’t overdo it. Going hard all the time stresses your body and leaves you chronically inflamed, which can backfire by contributing to belly-fat storage. Cap the intensity to a couple times a week and take the rest of your weekly rides at a controlled, comfortable pace. 

“Most recreational cyclists are doing too much high intensity training and they’re not getting leaner or faster,” says Iñigo San Millán, PhD, the director of the Exercise Physiology and Human Performance Lab at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Many of your rides should be in Zone 2,” he says. That’s an intensity where you can talk the whole time—about a five to six on that One-to-10 scale. “This is usually the intensity that elicits the highest fat oxidation for energy purposes,” says San Millán. These rides are not only good for burning fat, but also for building your slow-twitch, endurance muscle fibers; increasing capillary development; improving your ability to use lactate for energy; and making you a better fat-burner all the way around.

Aim for about 80/20. A number of coaches prescribe what is known as the “80/20 rule,” also called polarized training, for balancing training intensity. It’s definitely worth a try for burning off belly fat as well as for getting fitter and faster. The goal is to spend 80 percent of riding time at low intensity and 20 percent at moderate to hard intensity. That way, when it’s time to go hard, you have the freshness and energy reserves to go hard enough to maximize those interval efforts.

Hitting both intensities actually improves your abilities all around: Your slow-twitch muscle fibers do the work of recycling the lactate your high-intensity, fast-twitch fibers produce. so when you spend time building them, the payoff is being able to work harder at high intensity—which in turn stimulates more fat burning. Research shows this intensity combo also makes you faster. In a 2013 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers found that when cyclists performed six weeks of 80/20-style training, they more than doubled their power and performance gains, such as lactate threshold, compared to when they spent more time in moderate training zones.

After A Hot Moto An Ice Cold Brew ....Hard To Beat!

9 Healthy Reasons to Drink Beer

Justify that post-ride pint with any of these nine health benefits of beer

BY CAITLIN GIDDINGS MARCH 25, 2016 

 

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM BARHAN/FLICKR

There may only be one National Beer Day (April 7), but don't let that keep you from celebrating this beverage year-round.

Think of all the reasons we ride for beer. There’s the obvious—after a hard ride, it tastes like the liquid equivalent of a high-five—and the less proven—it functions as a PED for previously untested dance moves. But those aren’t the only justifications for ending your group ride at the nearest craft brewery. Here's our list of nine completely defensible reasons to (responsibly) enjoy this treat.

Beer can help reduce your risk of heart disease.
According to Harvard University, more than 100 studies show an inverse association between moderate drinking and risk of heart attack or death from cardiovascular disease. Across all the studies, a 25- to 40-percent reduction in risk has been found.

Beer can lower your risk of Type 2 Diabetes.
In a meta-analysis of 15 studies on moderate alcohol consumption andType 2 Diabetes risk, the American Diabetes Association found “a U-shaped relationship with a highly significant ∼30-percent reduced risk of type 2 diabetes in alcohol consumers of 6 to 48 g/day compared with heavier consumers or abstainers.” It’s important to note that a standard 12-ounce beer contains about 14 grams of alcohol—so drink responsibly if you want these health benefits.

Beer can increase your bone density.
Studies have found that beers—particularly darker, hoppier ales—have a high amount of silicon, which contributes to bone and connective-tissue health. The Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture reports that this suggests a moderate intake helps fight osteoporosis.

Beer can prevent Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
Drinking in moderation can actually help you stay at the top of yourmental game. Researchers at Lanzhou University recently found that a compound found in beer hops, xanthohumol, can guard against oxidative stress and might fight the onset of dementia or cognitive decline.

Beer can reduce your cholesterol.
Good news: A study recently found that moderate beer consumption can increase HDL, or healthy cholesterol, even more markedly for women. The American Heart Association recommends you don’t get carried away, though, and recommends no more than one drink per day for women and one to two for men.

Beer can prevent kidney stones.
A toast to never finding out how miserable it feels to pass a kidney stone! Beer intake has been shown to have an inverse relationship with this painful ailment, with each bottle consumed per day estimated to reduce risk by 40 percent.

Beer can support bike advocacy.
Sometimes supporting breweries not only means supporting local business that can make a place more livable and rideable, but also directly supporting bikes. Plenty of beer brands, like New Belgium, Flying Bison Beer Co., and Squatters, support bike advocacy organizations and events for cyclists. Turns out beer and bikes just go well together.

Beer might be able to fight cancer.
Researchers in Germany discovered that the xanthohumol in beer hops—the same stuff that helps prevent dementia— can block excessive testosterone and estrogen and thus reduce the chance of prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women. They’re further studying xanthohumol for potential use as a cancer-fighting drug, but in the meantime you can get your dose from a nice IPA.

Beer is a great post-ride reward!
In the last 10 miles of a hard grind, it’s nice to have a post-ride beer to fantasize about for added cycling motivation. You can end your ride at the local brewery with your crew and enjoy the social lubrication and relaxation benefits beer can offer—or you can ride straight home and indulge in one of life’s supreme pleasures, the shower beer. Either way, nothing will taste better when you’re tired and sweaty.

The Easy Way to Estimate the Calories in Beer

Is your favorite post-ride pint wrecking your diet? Use this smart, quick approach to find out.

BY JOE LINDSEY APRIL 12, 2016 

 

The next time you go drinking, take a second to figure out exactly what you're gulping down.PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ALAN LEVINE/FLICKR

Few things taste quite as good after a long ride as beer. But whether your tastes trend toward light-bodied pilsners or hop-bomb Imperial IPAs has a lot to do with what you’re ordering, and we aren’t just talking about flavor.

All alcoholic drinks have calories in them, byproducts of the sugars used in fermentation (and, to a degree, the sugars left over from the fermentation process). But all beers are not created equal calorically. Beers range from well under 100 calories per 12-ounce serving, for light beers, to 500-plus-calorie bombs for something like Dogfish Head’s highly regarded 120-Minute IPA.

So those two session IPAs you just knocked back at happy hour? That could mean 300 to 350 extra calories—calories you have to account for in your daily intake if you’re trying to lose or maintain weight.

The exact number of calories comes down to two factors: how much sugar was in the wort (the liquid from the mash of sprouted grains and water used in the first step of the brewing process); and how many unfermented sugars are left after brewing. The scientific names for those values are, respectively, the original gravity (starting sugar) and final gravity (unfermented residual sugars at the end of the brewing process).

The amount of calories from residual sugars varies by individual brew just as alcohol content does, but generally it’s 30 to 40 percent of a beer's total calories. To get the exact calorie count of a beer, you’ll need to know both the original gravity and final gravity. (Hint for the soused: FG is always the lower of the two numbers.)

Here's how to calculate the exact number of calories in your beer:

1. Calories from alcohol: 1881.22 x Final Gravity x (Original Gravity — FC) / (1.775 — OG)
2. Calories from leftover sugars: 3550 x FG x (.1808 x OG) + (.8192 x FG — 1.0004)
3. Add both figures for total calories

For most of us, beer + complicated equations = faulty math. There are a few sites and apps that will do the calculations based only off of OG and FG, but unless you’re at a taphouse or brewpub that publishes those numbers on the tap board, you’re outta luck.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way: estimate based on alcohol content. Pretty much every bottle, can and beer list out there has ABV listed for each brew these days. And, when you calculate a number of beers, across various styles, through the above OG-FG equation, you’ll find that, per ounce, there’s about 2.5-3 calories for every percent of ABV. For most beers, it’s 2.5, but for full-bodied beers like most stouts, it’s closer to 3, hence the range.

Estimating calories in beer requires a much simpler formula: ABV x 2.5 x ounces per serving

So: A four-percent pilsner has 12 calories per ounce; a 12-ounce serving will have 120 to 144 calories. That nine-percent Imperial IPA? A wee bit heartier, as it clocks between 270 and 320 calories.     

To be sure, this is just an estimate, and you probably noticed how the caloric margin of error increases with higher-alcohol beers (use the 3x multiplier with full-bodied beers, or to ensure you’re not underestimating). But it’s accurate enough for the goal at hand: to be honest with yourself about how many calories you’re really drinking, and whether that—and not your Strava activity—is the real reason you’re having trouble losing those last few pounds and keeping them gone.

If you’re still fuzzy on math, here’s your drinking game plan: That myth about Guinness draught being the lowest-calorie beer that’s not a “light” beer is absolutely true. Although its dark color might fool you into thinking it’s a full-bodied beverage, it’s just 125 calories per 12-ounce bottle.

11 Ways to Sleep Smarter to Improve Your Ride

Want to fall asleep faster, sleep easier, and get the most health benefits from your slumber? Here's how.

BYSHAWN STEVENSON

 

This information is excerpted from the new book Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success. In it, you'll find a fun and entertaining look at how sleep impacts your body, brain, and performance, plus the real world tools to help you recharge your life by revolutionizing your sleep.

Cycling and sleep go together like peanut butter and jelly. This may come as a surprise, but you actually don’t get in shape while you’re exercising. You’re literally tearing down your body while working out, creating thousands of tiny micro-tears in your muscle fibers. Then once you’re asleep, the transformation starts. Your body releases large amounts of beneficial hormones and elicits repair programs to build you up better than before. You expose yourself to a significant healthy stressor with a workout, but you only get the full reward if you properly rest and recover

That’s why it’s important that you get quality sleep so that you get the most gains from exercise. Here are 10 ways to sleep your way to a better ride:

Know the value of sleep
Many people are negligent about getting enough sleep because they don’t truly understand the benefits they’re getting from it. High quality sleep fortifies your immune system, balances your hormones, boosts your metabolism, increases physical energy, and improves the function of your brain.

Get more sunlight during the day
Light signals to your hypothalamus and corresponding organs and glands to be alert and “wake up.” That triggers your body to produce optimal levels of daytime hormones and neurotransmitters to regulate your biological clock. The body clock is most responsive to sunlight in the early morning, between 6 am and 8:30 am. 

Avoid screens before bedtime
Computers, iPads, televisions, and smartphones kick out a sleep-sucking blue spectrum of light that can give you major rest problems. The artificial blue light emitted by electronic screens triggers your body to produce more daytime hormones (like cortisol) and disorients your body’s natural preparation for sleep. Instead of using your devices before bedtime, try reading a book or writing in a journal.

Have a caffeine curfew
Caffeine is a powerful nervous system stimulant. If your nervous system is lit up like a Christmas tree, you can forget about getting high-quality sleep. Try setting an unbreakable caffeine curfew to make sure your body has time to remove the majority of it from your system. For most people, it’s generally going to be before 2 pm—but you can make it earlier, if you’re sensitive.

Be cool
Something called “thermoregulation” heavily influences your body’s sleep cycles. Studies have found that the optimal room temperature for sleep is really quite cool, around 60 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Anything too far above or below this range will likely cause some difficulty sleeping. If you have trouble falling asleep, try taking a warm bath an hour and a half to two hours before hitting the sack. This may seem counterintuitive, but the minor increase in core temperature from the bath will fall accordingly and level out a little cooler around the time you turn in for the night.

Get to bed at the right time
You can get amplified benefits of shut-eye by sleeping at the right hours.  It’s been shown that human beings get the most beneficial hormonal secretions and recovery by sleeping during the hours of 10 pm and 2 am. If you’re not feeling well rested when you wake up despite eight hours of sleep, try sleeping during those critical hours.

Consume more good sleep nutrients
The foods that you eat can dramatically impact the quality of rest that you get; so if you want to change your sleep, mix up your diet. Some of the things clinically proven to damage or disorient your gut microbiome include: agricultural chemicals, processed foods, too many antibiotics, chemical food additives, and chlorinated water. Some of the nutrients that can improve your sleep include:  selenium, vitamin C, tryptophan, potassium, calcium, vitamin D, omega 3s, melatonin, vitamin B6, probiotics, and prebiotics.

Create a sleep sanctuary

If getting rejuvenating sleep is a high priority for you, then you need to take some essential actions to treat it as such. The bedroom should be for two things, primarily. (One of them is sleep.) Humans are creatures of habit and habitat. Our brains are always looking for patterns so that they can automate behavior based on our environment. If you sleep in your bedroom—and don’t work or watch television there—your brain will be expecting sleep when you enter.

Have a big “o”
This is the other primary thing that the bedroom should be used for (as if you didn’t know). Having an orgasm can be like a full-on sedative for most people because your body releases a cocktail of chemicals, including oxytocin, serotonin, norepinephrine, vasopressin, and the pituitary hormone prolactin. It can also boost your immune system, fight depression, and help you live longer. So be responsible, have fun, and enjoy the benefits that the big “o” can have in your life.

Get it blacked out
It’s a well-established fact that we sleep better in a dark environment, yet so many people aren’t taking full advantage of this. Having light sources of any type in your bedroom can disrupt your sleep pattern. In fact, your skin actually has receptors that can pick up light. Block light from the outside and blue light from electronics inside your bedroom as well. Use blackout curtains if necessary—this way you can prevent triggering a suppression of melatonin from indoor or outdoor light.

Train hard (but smart)
It’s not just when you ride, but how you recover when the exercise is done. There are a few principles to optimize your sleep (and your results from exercise). First, time it right: Morning workouts are ideal if you want to get the best sleep at night. This may be counterintuitive for people who believe you can fall asleep faster after going through a tough workout, but riding in the evening significantly raises your core body temperature, and it can take four to six hours for it to come down again. This can prevent you from getting the best sleep possible. But there's no need to be worried if you choose to work out later in the day. It’s been found that when your core temperature comes down after exercise, it actually goes a little bit lower than it normally would. If you had to pick a time, morning is the best when it comes to sleep, early evening can provide some benefits, and smack-dab in the afternoon shows little to no benefit at all as far as blatant sleep benefits are concerned.

In addition, to get the best hormonal response, you need to lift heavy weights. This will trigger your body to secrete more anabolic hormones that will enable you to feel better, look better, and sleep better. Your genes expect you to life heavy things, and when you do that your body changes accordingly—including dropping body fat, improving health biomarkers, and most importantly, getting the sleep you require. Make sure you’re lifting weights at least two days per week.

5 Ways to Be a Better Fat Burner

These strategies can help you burn more fat on and off your bike

By selene yeager January 29, 2016

 

Watch these numbers go down while your on-bike power booms. Photograph by Mitch Mandel

There are a few obvious benefits of being a better fat burner: You shed unwanted padding and reap the related health benefits, including a lower risk for metabolic and chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes. But even if you’re lean, improving your fat burning capacity will help you ride better because tapping into your nearly limitless fat stores increases your endurance and reduces the likelihood of bonking on long rides.

 “You’ll also feel better,” says two-time Olympic coach Gale Bernhardt, co-author of Become a Fat-Burning Machine. “When cyclists train themselves to burn more fat, they enjoy more-even energy levels on their bike and they don’t need to eat so much to fuel their rides.” Here’s what she and others recommend:

Add a few very hard intervals: To maximize your fat burning capacity, Bernhardt recommends doing what she deems “miracle intervals” once or twice a week (but no more). These are very short 10- to 30-second max effort intervals with complete recovery between them. Combined with regular endurance training, research shows this type of very high intensity interval training (HIIT) increases your maximum oxygen consumption, raises your lactate threshold, and improves your cycling economy, all of which allow you to stay “aerobic” longer, so you can burn more fat at higher intensities. You need a fitness base to do these, so if you’re a true beginner, have a few months of cycling under your belt before working these interval workouts into your routine. 

Here’s a sample “miracle interval” workout:
•    Warm up for 20 minutes at an aerobic effort
•    3 x 30 seconds all-out power production, 4:30 easy Zone 1 spinning
•    3 x 20 seconds all-out power production, 4:40 easy Zone 1 spinning
•    3 x 10 seconds all-out power production, 4:50 easy Zone 1 spinning
•    Cool down with easy spinning

Respect your recovery. Remember hard training only works if you allow your body to recover. You need easy rides and days off, too, says Bernhardt. “The biggest mistake I see riders making is they’re going hard too often—sometimes every day,” she says. In that situation, fatigue blunts all those adaptations that make you a better fat burner. In any given week, Bernhardt recommends doing no more than three rides that are very stressful, whether that’s intervals, a hammerfest group ride, a hard hilly ride, or a very long ride.

Remember, too, to get adequate sleep. Sleep is when your body repairs and fully recovers. Plus, research shows that skimping on sleep slows your metabolism, which is obviously not beneficial for fat burning, and leads to weight gain.

     RELATED: 5 Ways to Ride Hard and Recover Harder

Do a couple coffee rides every week. When glycogen stores are low, your body is forced to pull from your fat stores, which is why pro cyclists have sworn by fasted rides for ages. It’s easiest to do in the morning. Once or twice a week, have some black coffee (like our signature blend, Puncheur), which encourages the release of fatty acids into your bloodstream and go for your ride, saving breakfast for when you get back. “If you’re going to ride more than an hour and a half, take food with you and start eating after about an hour and fifteen minutes,” says Bernhardt. 

Some research suggests that doing hard efforts in a fasted state boosts your fat-burning adaptations even more. So if time is short, you can get up, bang out your miracle intervals, eat breakfast, and be on your way. 

Eat more fat. Low-fat is officially dead. And if you want to be a better fat burner, eating more fat helps, especially if you eat more über-healthy omega-3 fatty acids from fatty fish, nuts, and avocadoes. Research shows that these fatty acids activate receptors in your digestive tract that improve your fat-burning metabolism. Bernhardt personally recommends getting as much as about 50 percent of your daily calories from fat. “I find when my athletes eat a high percentage of calories from fat, they only need about 70 to 100 calories an hour on their bike. It doesn’t happen overnight. You need to give your body several weeks to adapt before you feel really good during key workouts.” 

Skip the energy foods for short rides. Yes, even fat-burning machines need to fuel up during long and/or hard rides and competitions. But too many riders eat too much, taking bars and drinks before, during, and after every ride, blunting their fat burning and in some cases actually packing on pounds. For rides less than an hour, leave the sports drinks and bars at home.