Need to be fitter / less fat

[DirtFix]

Practice practice practice!

 

[danielb]

I totally get where you are coming from having faced the out of shape and fitness mountain. Being that Canberra provides a very small window where the temp is fit for humans to ride (riders cruzing to work at 7:30am in near freezing condition = not human :smow i got a mag trainer and a heart rate monitor and watched repeats of the tour. The heart monitor is great and allows you to do accurate interval training.

Good luck mate and hand in there!

 

[SF Trailboy]

Righto Mick have watched your thread for a while and it has now kicked me into doing something. In the same boat as you and have decided that I will treat myself to a new bike when I lose 10kgs. (10%) of my body weight.
Have signed up to the myfitnesspal app for more accurate food intake details and a tracking function.
Will continue my current training rides which are weekly - 2x 32km road rides (about 1hr 30minutes for me) 1x 2hr MTB (slow pace ride) 2 x 1hr sufferfest sessions - using the no longer than 2 days without a ride rule and one day of sufferfest in the am followed by MTB ride pm.
I try to ride 4 XC 50km races per year so i think this is why my training is sorted - I am slow but have fun - just got to kick the junk/fast food/beer adiction I have.
Trying to ensure 45 hours sleep per week.
Have bought multivitamins and fish oils - no other supplements except for chocolate milk for a treat.

Aim is to be 89kg by February have the 32km road rides down to near 1hr 15 min and then spend between 3.5k - 4k on a nice new bike....

Time to start being fitter / less fat...

 

[slowmick]

awesome plan bloke. I am currently sidelined with a fractured shoulder but am hoping to get back to riding (at least a stationary bike in a gym) in a couple of weeks along with starting range of motion exercises.

Am interested to see hear if you like the myfitnesspal app and if you think it helps.

Have you picked out your new bike to work towards? I shouted myself some new bars for completing the rapha rising challenge. looking forward to trying them.

oh, yeah - who's chocolate milk do you favour?

 

[Linga]

While training for a different race I used a combination of the slow carb diet, cardio on an empty stomach and weights (bodyweight and lactic acid training) to drop my body fat from 19% to 9% in 10 weeks. As a byproduct I gained almost 4kg of muscle to stay virtually the same weight. 79kgs

I can't speak highly enough of protein in the morning after training and a slow carb diet for body change.
I think there are plenty of places you can download the book if you want.

 

[SF Trailboy]

awesome plan bloke. I am currently sidelined with a fractured shoulder but am hoping to get back to riding (at least a stationary bike in a gym) in a couple of weeks along with starting range of motion exercises.

Am interested to see hear if you like the myfitnesspal app and if you think it helps.

Have you picked out your new bike to work towards? I shouted myself some new bars for completing the rapha rising challenge. looking forward to trying them.

oh, yeah - who's chocolate milk do you favour?

No chop on the shoulder mate, hope it heels fast and you get to try out those new bars soon.

So far the my fitness pal app is really there for helping with food intake. I am being overly honest with it making sure that I under value my exercise and over value my food (when I need to guesstimate a bit)
very easy to use and is quite efficent for recording food and exercise. Is a little motivator as well, seeing it in writing each day.

SO far my new bike is a dually XC race bike of some type. Locally shops sell trek and Giant - the new anthem advanced 27.5 1 with the carbon wheels has my interest. Will be demoing as many as I can. really liked the look of the BH pushys had going cheap but funds just arent there just yet. (less takeaway and shit food will be a big help here with funds as well - my junk food addiction is on par with a smoking habit)

Goulburn Valley or Oak are my choice (moove has no where near as good as chocolate taste) mind you any chocolate milk is good....Loved the Mammoth but it appears to have gone from the shelves in NSW.

 

[Mywifesirrational]

I am being overly honest with it making sure that I under value my exercise and over value my food (when I need to guesstimate a bit)
very easy to use and is quite efficent for recording food and exercise.

Quite like my fitness pal as a food diary but the exercise measurement is woeful.

Used some of the physiology equipment in the lab to determine how accurate the exercise measurements were, I estimated they probably over estimate by 40% on every consumption.

Anything that doesn't use HR to determine energy expenditure is guessing widely -most definitely underestimate here.

 

[slowmick]

MWI - not wanting to take up your time but can give a quickie on how heart rate helps calculate energy expediture? Does it help work out and efficiency of the body for the work done in the exercise? Will probably go over my head but i'd appreciate it if you coudl give it a go.:thumb:

 

[Mywifesirrational]

MWI - not wanting to take up your time but can give a quickie on how heart rate helps calculate energy expediture? Does it help work out and efficiency of the body for the work done in the exercise? Will probably go over my head but i'd appreciate it if you coudl give it a go.:thumb:

Essentially there is a fairly linear relationship between HR and calorie expenditure, as your HR increases your energy output increase. From memory the reliability is somewhere around 0.83 which is very good for such a simple non invasive measurement tool.

I'll have a dig around later and try and find the formula or a decent layman's description, but you need to know a few things such as Sex, BMI or Mass (kg), age and perhaps a base measure of current fitness (this will highly affect HR at submaximal exercise).

You'll find if you use something like a fitbit or decent HR monitor you'll need to input this information before it can give you estimation of energy expenditure, where as myfitnesspal just uses a base calculationt based off mass, age, distance traveled and pace/speed of travel - but misses the most important variable of HR.

In cycling consider the difference measuring HR makes, you ride to the top of a mountain and coast for 15-20 minutes back down, HR will be low demonstrating quite low energy putput as your not pedalling, but myfitnesspal with only consider speed and distance traveled, it doesn't know your not pedaling, hence it generally over represents exercise energy expenditure.

Also compared to strava's predicted every values (without HR input), strava is much lower. Not saying this part of myfitnesspal is terrible, but certainly underestimate as you are.

 

[slowmick]

thank you very much for that. there must have been a whole lot of measurements to figure that out. lots of white coasts and clip boards. makes the idea of training with a heart rate monitor make a little more sense. cheers for taking the time.

 

[Calvin27]

In cycling consider the difference measuring HR makes, you ride to the top of a mountain and coast for 15-20 minutes back down, HR will be low demonstrating quite low energy putput as your not pedalling, but myfitnesspal with only consider speed and distance traveled, it doesn't know your not pedaling, hence it generally over represents exercise energy expenditure.

I've found strava actually does a good job of estimating energy without a HRM. It seems to know when I am going downhill and accounts for this. Pretty much the times I have gone downhill coasting, it has showed zero wattage.

If you want to get fit, but don't want excessive maintenance. Get a single speed and crunch some fire trails haha!

 

[Mywifesirrational]

I've found strava actually does a good job of estimating energy without a HRM. It seems to know when I am going downhill and accounts for this. Pretty much the times I have gone downhill coasting, it has showed zero wattage.

If you want to get fit, but don't want excessive maintenance. Get a single speed and crunch some fire trails haha!

Yeah Strava is not to bad, as the calculation for watts seems pretty good but ultimately if your not plugging your HR into the calculation you're only going to get a estimate, sometimes close, sometimes widely inaccurate. I'm happy to use strava's results for personal use, would not waste my time if I was training elite/sub elite athletes - unless HR and cadence were also being recorded.

Where as myfitnesspal only uses recall for exercise and only bases the activity of preset norms (considered to be unreliable), this is where if riding i'll put the strava prediction of consumption into myfitnesspal, things like gym and incidental activity I ignore completely... exactly as you do it slowmick, get a hidden/non recorded deficit.

 

[JoelFitz]

Any tips for the heart rate zone you should aim for if looking at weight loss? I'm using strava default which seems based on age and suggested Max hr. But most my rides I seem to be around the z4 as tend to try and push myself a bit. Though not sure if more benefit trying to stay in the z2 or 3 for weight loss?

 

[pharmaboy]

Any tips for the heart rate zone you should aim for if looking at weight loss? I'm using strava default which seems based on age and suggested Max hr. But most my rides I seem to be around the z4 as tend to try and push myself a bit. Though not sure if more benefit trying to stay in the z2 or 3 for weight loss?

Hi Joel, determine your own max heart rate - a good way is to find a hill that is steep and that you rarely if ever can climb without stopping- when you feel that imminent need to vomit and are so out of breath that you are quite happy to fall off your bike sideways rather than ride any further - you are at YOUR maximum heart rate.

Then put that into Zones - I like Friels zones and descriptions of threshold power etc.

Maximum calorie burn is at that 90% or so ( for a fit person) of your measured maximum heart rate, because that's the race pace output or what you can do for around 90minutes before you run out of glycogen and bonk. At that point you can only ride on about 25% TP because all your energy is coming from fat stores - it's a fairly awful state to ride in, and most people haven't quite got there - once you have you tend to avoid it.

at about 75% of MHR ( by memory- look it up) is where you burn half fat and half glycogen stores - if you have time, this is a good bang for buck to burn fat. It also has the advantage that most people don't complete the ride feeling hungry and then undo all their work - your body will seek to replenish your glycogen stores, but not the fat stores, so half the energy spent goes to weight loss ( theoretically)

Longer slower rides burn fat, help with muscle efficiency . Fast hard rides expand cardiac output and moved you functional threshold higher but burn nearly all glycogen and no fat.

 

[driftking]

As pharma alluded to threshold is a better measure than heart rate.
You need to weigh up the overall workout though, working at 90% you will inevitably burn more calories than working at say 50%, but at 50% you can ride longer so it might be more beneficial. Ideally given you are able to workout hard and are given the all ok by the doctor, you should include both longer riders and sprints. Sprints are pretty brilliant and while you will here and argument for EPOC its very minor. The best thing seems to be a combination of both long rides and sprints.
Make sure to include some resistance work, if you just do cardio you will drop muscle as well, dropping muscle slows down your metabolism, your goal should be to at least maintain muscle mass during this fat loss time.

There was a study i read (Haven't been able to find it), where participants did one type of exercise (either sprint or endurance), this activated the break own of fat, for it to be ready to use though it said it takes a few hours to enter the blood ready for lipolysis, by than undertaking the other form of exercise later in the day it accelerated the fat lose and energy burn from fat stores. Unfortunately I cant remember the exact protocols so Its of little help to yourself. I will see If I can find it later on though.

As a standard with my posts on health, I am not qualified in anyway, so all this is personal opinion and research, take what you will at your own risk. You should always be given the all clear by a doctor for any diet or exercise changes.

Good luck with the journey mate.

 

[JoelFitz]

Thanks for that info! The max rate is interesting. I've only just started using the hr monitor. So far I've worked out I can quite happily be around 170-175 on a hard climb but over 180 and I feel like crap. Never have to stop on climbs though so might need to push bit harder to find that spot but I reckon it'll be around 185. Probably about right for my age (34)..

 

[bikeyoulongtime]

woah, loads to consider here, and thanks everyone for sharing

Something maybe I've missed in here is general flexibility. My main fitness issue with gravity enduro is the sprint/stop/sprint/stop format.. essentially starting cold, then going for it at close to 100% for five to ten minutes, then stopping, riding back up, probably getting cold, then going hard again. This really fucks with my legs and lungs, and is pretty different from anything I've 'trained' for ever.

So, general bike fitness is awesome - and like others I'd highly recommend a lot of torso upwards strength exercises to complement leg work. But flexibility is also key. I use yoga, although I'm a terrible student! It helps give my muscles the ability to push hard in a hurry, then relax and recover relatively quickly. I also find focussing on breathing very helpful when things get lactic in a hurry... you'll hear me choofing like a steam train down the track!

Maybe not exactly what you're after, Slowmick, but a path to consider - since like everything, more benefits come with more practice.

Happy better riding

 

[driftking]

woah, loads to consider here, and thanks everyone for sharing

Something maybe I've missed in here is general flexibility. My main fitness issue with gravity enduro is the sprint/stop/sprint/stop format.. essentially starting cold, then going for it at close to 100% for five to ten minutes, then stopping, riding back up, probably getting cold, then going hard again. This really fucks with my legs and lungs, and is pretty different from anything I've 'trained' for ever.

So, general bike fitness is awesome - and like others I'd highly recommend a lot of torso upwards strength exercises to complement leg work. But flexibility is also key. I use yoga, although I'm a terrible student! It helps give my muscles the ability to push hard in a hurry, then relax and recover relatively quickly. I also find focussing on breathing very helpful when things get lactic in a hurry... you'll hear me choofing like a steam train down the track!

Maybe not exactly what you're after, Slowmick, but a path to consider - since like everything, more benefits come with more practice.

Happy better riding

If you are riding back you you should not be cold at least not in the legs, if you find you're getting cold, find a way to stay warm or warm up a little prior to your timed downhill run. I was aware enduro was more a down/up/down format without much stopping. what is the stop time between efforts? It takes quite a while to cool right down, up to 1hour to remove lactate from the muscles(providing no cool down)

Given the length of the event you would not be actually riding at 100% but more lactate threshold/anaerobic threshold. You cant hold your 100% for 5mins. even 30seconds is a hard feat.

What you might instead be struggling with and this is my unprofessional opinion of course is in fact lactate build up and lactate clearing due to abrupt stopping and starting of hard efforts. Building your aerobic base and focusing on lactate threshold training would be a good move, but also ensuring that between efforts you do something very light to help clear the muscles and keep the blood flowing during events.

I'm not sure what specific training there is to improve lactate clearing and reduce build up and I woudl not be confident going into something I'm not 100% on but, there is two conventional thoughts; 1. improve the bodies ability to utilize and deal with the lactate and 2. improve the rate at which it can be cleared.

There is a lot of details one could go into when looking at the role of lactate, there are different energy cycles like krebs as well as the function of hydrogen ions and much more. If someone else wants to get into these details I'm sure it could help, otherwise it might be a good read to learn about it yourself, having the knowledge there really lets you understand how and why you're training in a certain fashion.


As a standard with my posts on health, I am not qualified in anyway, so all this is personal opinion and research, take what you will at your own risk. You should always be given the all clear by a doctor for any diet or exercise changes.