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Blog postYou are not going to believe this: your weight is a better predictor of your race performance than how much or how well you train.
From Chapter One: Get Leaner, Go Faster in the new edition of Racing Weight:
The advantages of being light and lean for endurance performance are so obvious that they hardly needed to be scientifically proven, but exercise scientists have gone out and proven them anyway, and the proof is interesting. In a 1986 study Peter Bale and his colleagues at7 years ago Read more -
Blog postEach sport favors a particular body type.
During the Olympics, we stumbled across a blog post on a photo book called The Athlete by sports photographers Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein. This book is a collection of photographs of Olympic athletes wearing very little–and perhaps a bit more oiled up than is strictly necessary. Nevertheless, to see a tiny figure skater next to a weightlifter is a fascinating reminder that the elites in our sports are elite in part because of how they7 years ago Read more -
Blog postCarbohydrate restriction in many popular diets actually hurt endurance sports performance
In the new edition of Racing Weight, author and certified sports nutritionist Matt Fitzgerald debunks the low-carb approach to dieting.
Low-carb diets restrict calories from carbohydrates, a fuel source that dozens of studies over decades have shown to be the most critical fuel source for high performing endurance athletes. Citing a wide variety of recent academic studies that show decrea7 years ago Read more -
Blog postEach sport favors a particular body type.
Racing Weight explores the average body types of athletes in cross-country skiing, cycling, rowing, running, swimming, and triathlon and explains how each body type is suited to its sport.
So what body type do you have?
The Runner’s Body: Let’s face it, top runners and light and skinny. Elite male marathoners average 7% body fat (only cross-country skiers are leaner) and women weigh in at 12% body fat, the leanest of all endura7 years ago Read more -
Blog postResearch, common sense, and race experience have shown that leaner athletes tend to be faster. Why? It’s not just gravity.
Gravity
It’s the most obvious reason. We’ve all felt the heaviness that comes with fatigue while running or riding uphill. Swimmers that have to move larger limbs get tired more quickly, too.
Competition for Oxygen
One of the most crucial underpinnings of endurance performance is the ability to deliver oxygen to the working muscles at a hig7 years ago Read more -
Blog postRacing Weight Cookbook delivers more than 100 flavorful, easy recipes for athletes that will help you hit your ideal weight without compromising your performance.
This is a Level 2 recipe, meaning it will take a little bit more time (30 minutes) and is intended for athletes who have some cooking experience in the kitchen. But the effort will pay off! The crisp flaxseed crust keeps the chicken wonderfully moist inside. You can use golden or brown flaxseed; the only difference is color.7 years ago Read more -
Blog postBody mass index (BMI) has been in the news lately. It was put there put Katherine Flegal, a researcher on the epidemiology of obesity. Flegal and a few of her colleagues conducted a scientific review of past studies that had correlated body mass index with the risk of dying of various diseases. Their “meta-analysis” was published in the January 2013 edition of JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association). The reason it made news was that Flegal’s study reported that men and women wh7 years ago Read more
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Blog postRacing Weight Cookbook delivers more than 100 flavorful, easy recipes for athletes that will help you hit your ideal weight without compromising your performance.
Racing Weight Cookbook: Greena Colada Smoothie – so green!
Try out this easy-to-make recipe for as a pre-workout fuel-up snack or a light post-workout recovery snack.
1 SERVING // 5 MINUTES
Recipe profile: High Carb, Vegetarian
1 14-ounce can crushed pineapple in juice (unsweetened)
&frac17 years ago Read more -
Blog postRacing Weight explains 6 simple ways athletes can lose fat without losing performance.
Everyone knows what a diet is. Because dieting is so familiar and ubiquitous, we don’t usually define it, but if we wanted to do so anyway, we could describe it as the practice of adopting a set of dietary rules—which usually include reduced food intake or forbidden food types—for the sake of losing weight.
Performance weight management is rather different from dieting. It is best defined as7 years ago Read more -
Blog postRacing Weight Cookbook delivers more than 100 flavorful, easy recipes for athletes that will help you hit your ideal weight without compromising your performance.
Try out this easy-to-make Level 1 recipe for lunch.
1 SERVING // 20 MINUTES
Recipe profile: High protein
8 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breast or tenders
½ teaspoon chipotle powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ red onion (grill before slicing)
2 10-inch whole-grain7 years ago Read more -
Blog post“Iron War is the best endurance sports book I’ve ever read.” — Joe Friel, author of The Triathlete’s Training Bible and founder of TrainingBible Coaching
“Captivating, animated, uniquely readable and downright thrilling. [Iron War] is a truly great read—and an ode to our sport with all its quirky characters and epic venues…It is absolutely comparable to Krakauer, Bowden (Blackhawk Down), or Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm)… Iron War is what we buy books for: Excitement, entertainm7 years ago Read more -
Blog postWhen Dave Scott and Mark Allen waded into Kailua Bay to the start line of the 13th Ironman® World Championship on October 14, 1989, the existing race record was 8:28:37, a time that Scott had established in 1986. The record for the marathon run portion of the race was 2:49:11, a mark set by the same man in the same race.
But Mark Allen won the Iron War in 8:09:15, demolishing Scott’s record by nearly 20 minutes. Scott finished second, just 58 seconds back, after having raced at hi8 years ago Read more -
Blog postBarry Siff, writing for Triathlete.com, offers a review of Matt Fitzgerald’s new book Iron War. This review includes a selection of photographs from the book.
Here’s a brief passage:
“I’m not normally one for hyperbole. But, I am totally comfortable with Matt Fitzgerald’s subtitle of his new book: Iron War: The Greatest Race Ever Run I can unabashedly (and proudly) admit I have watched that race at least 30 or 40 times while spinning on my Computrainer during those cold, dark8 years ago Read more -
Blog postThe duel between triathlon legends Dave Scott and Mark Allen at the 1989 Ironman® World Championship is remembered as one of the greatest races in the history of endurance sports. In that race the longtime rivals swam, biked, and ran neck and neck for eight full hours until, with 1.7 miles left in the 140.6-mile competition, Allen broke away from Scott on the last hill to claim his first Ironman victory after six failures and five losses to Scott.
The battle caused so much excitem8 years ago Read more -
Blog postPhoto courtesy TriSports.com
“Captivating, animated, uniquely readable and downright thrilling. Iron War is a truly great read—and an ode to our sport with all its quirky characters and epic venues…It is absolutely comparable to Krakauer, Bowden (Blackhawk Down), or Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm)…Controversy aside Iron War is what we buy books for: Excitement, entertainment, information and inspiration. Iron War provides those things in volumes. It is great writing, great storyt8 years ago Read more
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This revolutionary training method has been embraced by elite runners—with extraordinary results—and now you can do it, too.
Respected running and fitness expert Matt Fitzgerald explains how the 80/20 running program—in which you do 80 percent of runs at a lower intensity and just 20 percent at a higher intensity—is the best change runners of all abilities can make to improve their performance. With a thorough examination of the science and research behind this training method, 80/20 Running is a hands-on guide for runners of all levels with training programs for 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon distances.
In 80/20 Running, you’ll discover how to transform your workouts to avoid burnout.
• Runs will become more pleasant and less draining
• You’ll carry less fatigue from one run to the next
• Your performance will improve in the few high-intensity runs
• Your fitness levels will reach new heights
80/20 Running promotes a message that all runners—as well as cyclists, triathletes, and even weight-loss seekers—can embrace: Get better results by making the majority of your workouts easier.
A good comeback makes a great story. In The Comeback Quotient, sports journalist Matt Fitzgerald shares the stories of top athletic comebacks, to give you inspiration and tools for your own comeback in sport or life.
Every sports fan loves a great comeback. Is there a special quality shared by top athletes who triumph over great challenges? And can anyone acquire it? In The Comeback Quotient, celebrated sportswriter Matt Fitzgerald supplies the answer to both questions. He identifies these mega-achievers of astounding athletic comebacks as “ultrarealists,” men and women who succeed where others fail by fully accepting, embracing, and addressing the reality of their situations. From ultrarunners like Rob Krar to triathletes like Mirinda Carfrae to rowers, skiers, cyclists, and runners all over the world, Fitzgerald highlights and speculates on just what makes these comebacks so compelling. As for whether anyone can stage his or her own great comeback, the answer is a resounding yes: Anyone can become an ultrarealist to some degree. In the tradition of his best-selling How Bad Do You Want It?, The Comeback Quotient combines gripping sports stories with mind-blowing science to deliver a book that will forever change how you perceive the challenges you face, giving you the inspiration and the tools to make the next great comeback you witness your own.
The greatest athletic performances spring from the mind, not the body. Elite athletes have known this for decades and now science is learning why it’s true. In his fascinating new book How Bad Do You Want It?, coach Matt Fitzgerald examines more than a dozen pivotal races to discover the surprising ways elite athletes strengthen their mental toughness.
Fitzgerald puts you into the pulse-pounding action of more than a dozen epic races from running, cycling, triathlon, XTERRA, and rowing with thrilling race reports and revealing post-race interviews with the elites. Their own words reinforce what the research has found: strong mental fitness lets us approach our true physical limits, giving us an edge over physically stronger competitors. Each chapter explores the how and why of an elite athlete’s transformative moment, revealing powerful new psychobiological principles you can practice to flex your own mental fitness.
The new psychobiological model of endurance performance shows that the most important question in endurance sports is: how bad do you want it? Fitzgerald’s fascinating book will forever change how you answer this question and show you how to master the psychology of mind over muscle. These lessons will help you push back your limits and uncover your full potential.
How Bad Do You Want It? reveals new psychobiological findings including:
- Mental toughness determines how close you can get to your physical limit.
- Bracing yourself for a tough race or workout can boost performance by 15% or more.
- Champions have learned how to give more of what they have.
- The only way to improve performance is by altering how you perceive effort.
- Choking under pressure is a form of self-consciousness.
- Your attitude in daily life is the same one you bring to sports.
- There's no such thing as going as fast as you can—only going faster than before.
- The fastest racecourse is the one with the loudest spectators.
- Faith in your training is as important as the training itself.
Athletes featured in How Bad Do You Want It?: Sammy Wanjiru, Jenny Simpson, Greg LeMond, Siri Lindley, Willie Stewart, Cadel Evans, Nathan Cohen and Joe Sullivan, Paula Newby-Fraser, Ryan Vail, Thomas Voeckler, Ned Overend, Steve Prefontaine, and last of all John “The Penguin” Bingham
Racing Weight is a proven weight-management program designed specifically for endurance athletes.
Revealing new research and drawing from the best practices of elite athletes, coach and nutritionist Matt Fitzgerald lays out six easy steps to help cyclists, triathletes, and runners lose weight without harming their training.
This comprehensive and science-based program shows athletes the best ways to lose weight and avoid the common lifestyle and training hang-ups that keep new PRs out of reach.
The updated Racing Weight program helps athletes:
- Improve diet quality
- Manage appetite
- Balance energy sources
- Easily monitor weight and performance
- Time nutrition throughout the day
- Train to get—and stay—lean
Racing Weight offers practical tools to make weight management easy. Fitzgerald’s no-nonsense Diet Quality Score improves diet without counting calories. Racing Weight superfoods are diet foods high in the nutrients athletes need for training. Supplemental strength training workouts can accelerate changes in body composition. Daily food diaries from 18 pro athletes reveal how the elites maintain an athletic diet while managing appetite.
Athletes know that every extra pound wastes energy and hurts performance. With Racing Weight, cyclists, triathletes, and runners have a simple program and practical tools to hit their target numbers on both the race course and the scale.
"I am always amazed at how much I learn from Matt Fitzgerald's books." -- Shalane Flanagan, Olympic bronze medalist
Cutting-edge research has proven that triathletes and other endurance athletes experience their greatest performance when they do 80 percent of their training at low intensity and the remaining 20 percent at moderate to high intensity. But the vast majority of recreational triathletes are caught in the so-called "moderate-intensity rut," spending almost half of their time training too hard--harder than the pros. Training harder isn't smarter; it actually results in low-grade chronic fatigue that prevents recreational athletes from getting the best results.
In 80/20 Triathlon, Matt Fitzgerald and David Warden lay out the real-world and scientific evidence, offering concrete tips and strategies, along with complete training plans for every distance--Sprint, Olympic, Half-Ironman, and Ironman--to help athletes implement the 80/20 rule of intensity balance. Benefits include reduced fatigue and injury risk, improved fitness, increased motivation, and better race results.
Matt Fitzgerald has been running (and writing about running) for most of his adult life. But, like many passionate amateur runners, he never felt he was quite fulfilling his potential. If he follows the training, nutrition, and lifestyle of an elite runner, just how fast could he go?
In his mid-forties, Matt at last has the freedom to do nothing but train, if only for the span of one summer. The time is now. He convinces the coach of Northern Arizona Elite, one of the country's premier professional running teams, to let him train with a roster of national champions and Olympic hopefuls in the running mecca of Flagstaff, Arizona, leading in to the Chicago Marathon. The results completely redefined Matt’s notion of what is possible, not only for himself but for any runner.
Filled with a vibrant cast of characters, rigorous and quad-torching training, and a large dose of self-deprecating humor, Matt’s gripping account of his “fake pro runner” experience allows us to partake in the dream of having the chance to go all the way. Yet for the gifted young runners Matt trains with, it’s not a dream but concrete reality, and their individual stories enrich this inspiring narrative.
Running the Dream pulls us into the rarified world of professional running in a way we can all relate to, regardless of speed, and to take away pieces of one man’s amazing journey to try to achieve our own potential.
If you’re like most endurance athletes, you’re concerned about your weight. You know that every extra pound slows you down.
Matt Fitzgerald’s Racing Weight Quick Start Guide applies all the principles of his best-selling book Racing Weight in a detailed set of weight-loss training plans. You will devote 4 to 8 weeks to starting a weight loss of 5, 10, or 20+ pounds.
Lose weight quickly by following a schedule of high-intensity workouts and strength training as well as a menu of calorie-restricted, high-protein meals and snacks. Low-volume and high-volume plans make it possible for cyclists, runners, and triathletes with a wide range of experience to maintain their training levels. Replace fat with muscle while keeping your appetite in check.
Once you’ve hit your quick start weight-loss goals, you will continue dropping unwanted pounds using the proven strategies of the Racing Weight program. Zero in on your racing weight through improved diet quality, balanced macronutrient levels, proper timing of meals and snacks, appetite management, and training for lean body composition.
The Racing Weight Quick Start Guide will accelerate your season goals so you’ll be racing leaner and faster than ever before.
Whatever your training demands, Racing Weight meals make it simple to dial in the right mix of carbs, fat, and protein and satisfy your appetite. Put high-quality, well-balanced meals on your table in as little as 15 minutes with time-saving tips for food preparation and grocery shopping.
Discover the best foods for athletes:
- 100+ healthy recipes for any athlete, from reluctant cook to cooking enthusiast
- Whole grains, fiber, and lean protein to elevate diet quality
- Fresh, energy-dense meals that help runners, triathletes, and cyclists train harder
- Nutrient-rich bars and smoothies to promote fast recovery
With Racing Weight Cookbook, you'll take control of your diet with the proven Racing Weight approach, practiced by the world's best endurance athletes and backed by scientific research. The fastest athletes tend to be the leanest, but every athlete needs to eat well to perform well. Racing Weight Cookbook makes it easy for you to eat and train for weight loss at the same time.
Step after step for 26.2 miles, hundreds of thousands of people run marathons. But why--what compels people past pain, lost toenails, 5.30 am start times, The Wall? Sports writer Matt Fitzgerald set out to run eight marathons in eight weeks across the country to answer that question. At each race, he meets an array of runners, from first timers, to dad-daughter teams and spouses, to people who'd been running for decades, and asks them what keeps them running. But there is another deeply personal part to Matt's journey: his own relationship to the sport--and how it helped him overcome his own struggles and cope with his wife Nataki's severe bipolar disorder.
A combination of Matt's own How Bad Do You Want It? and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Life Is a Marathon captures the magic of those 26.2 miles. At the end of the day--and at the end of the race--the pursuit of a marathon finish line is not unlike the pursuit of happiness. You will pick up the book for a powerful personal story about what running does for the people for whom it does the most. You will put it down with a greater understanding of what it means to be alive in this world.
Hudson is the most innovative running coach to come along in a generation. Until now, only a handful of elite athletes have been able to benefit from his methods. Now Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon shows all runners how to coach themselves as confidently and effectively as Brad coaches his world-class athletes. Becoming your own best coach is the ticket to running faster at any distance.
First you will learn to assess your abilities. Then you’ll learn how to devise a training program specifically geared to you. Filled with easy-to-follow sample training programs for distances ranging from the 5K to the marathon and abilities ranging from novice to advanced, Run Faster is the cutting-edge guide for optimal performance.
With Hudson’s guidance, you can train smarter and more effectively—and avoid injury. And you’ll soon be running faster than you ever thought possible!
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