dON'T MAKE MY FUELLING MISTAKE

The other week I reminded you that this is your newsletter than that i wanted your questions so I don't have to sit here trying to think of stuff to write about.

Well, we got a couple of good questions in.

James wants to know about warming up in the cold weather, how much is too much

And Shannon is concerned about energy and why she's feeling more tired than she thinks she should

Lets start with Shannon as it ties in with a little experiment I've been running.

A little while ago I noticed I was knackered all the time, exhausted and my gym sessions were suffering as a result.

I took a little step back and had a think over the various aspects of Davehood, and realised that I'd been pretty busy the last while and one of my most consistent behaviours when I'm busy is to stop eating.

My early career in the hotel trade meant that when on shift, breaks were a luxury and it wouldn’t be unusual to put in a 12+ hour shift, running around carrying trays and serving with a smile, and do the whole thing on just a sandwich or two that the chef was kind enough to give you.

And I tend to default to that as a habit. A bad habit, but a habit non the less.

So I decided to try something.

I had to track my food.

Now, I'm not a nutrition guy, putting it into a spreadsheet or paying for an app all sounded like too much hassle, so I thought I'd ask Kato.

Kato, named after Inspector Clouseau's sidekick in the old Pink Panther movies (Yes, for the fans out there, I am aware it's Cato, not Kato, leave it alone!) is my ChatGPT

I entered my initial prompt:

"Kato, lets start a food diary. I want you to calculate macros and offer up suggestions if there are significant gaps in the micro profile What do you need to know in order to begin?"

And then each week I then get Kato to summarise the week in a format I can copy across to a spreadsheet with the column headings:

Date | Meals (Summary) | Activity / Training | Calories (kcal) | Protein (g) | Fat (g) | Carbs (g) | Fluids (L) | Steps (est.) | Energy Balance(calorie deficit/surplus) | (Notes / Suggestions)

And allowing for inaccuracy, using it merely as a guide it has helped shine a light on my bad habits, and that awareness has helped in keeping me on track.

There were days that Kato reckons I was under fuelling by over 1000 calories, no wonder I was tired.

My behaviour here is far from unique.

A great many folks, especially youth athletes and females are under eating, either by choice, habit or accident.

So lean into the AI assistant in your pocket and start letting it track your intake. Just gather info for the first couple of weeks, then look at where you can make improvements.

And don't get bent out of shape if you over consume at an Xmas party, it's Xmas, we're supposed to over consume!!

Now, James and warming up in cold weather.

What is a warm up and why do we do them?

In short a warm up has a simple intent - get us ready to train/exercise

To do this we are ensuring blood flow is directed towards the muscles rather than the digestive tract, we're raising the heart rate, "oiling" the joints and getting the mind right.

So, skip, do joint mobility, use the 100 Rep Warm Ups, to injury rehab drills and get the mind focused.

You don't need to be breathing hard or sweating heavily, but a light sweat is good, an elevated heart rate is good.

It could take 5 minutes or 15 minutes, doesn't matter too much.

After the body is generally warm, then it's more specific.

If you're lifting it's load acclimation, ie light/short sets as you build up tot he working sets

if it's outdoor running or cycling, it's doing the first 5 - 10 minutes nice and gently, feeling the legs turn over and flow start to set in (which is still load acclimation). Maybe it's a few drills, hops and bounds etc

And then you're off.

The important thing really is that your warm up gets the mind & body right.

That means the you're focused, your muscles pliable, injuries are "treated"

And you haven't done so much that you've used up available energy that should have gone into the training.

Now, here's a cheat code...

If you take "movement breaks" through the day, ie, as I have previously mentioned you "be more dog" by using stretches and pandiculation movements such as the AiM drills I give out as rehab, then by the time you get to the warm up, you've already got your foot in the door.

If you move through the day, maybe your warm up just needs to be a pulse raiser and a bit of load acclimation.

It really is simple, and believe it or not, quite easy.

Keep your questions coming, I love reading them and love writing about them.

Chat soon

--

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.DaveHedges.net

Not Everything is a Priority

I'm send you my "Monday Newsletter" at almost 10pm on a Thursday

That should tell you how the weeks been going!

Now, where's the lesson in this and how am I going to spin it into an

informational newsletter?

Well, simply put, life happens.

And I spend a lot of time explaining to clients that it's ok to miss a

workout, it's ok not to train on your holidays.

It's ok, to only do the bare minimum some days.

It's ok to prioritise other things when other things need prioritised.

I've said before how my clients tend to fall into one or more of 3

categories:

1) Injured and looking for a way to regain fitness

2) A keen amateur athlete with well defined goals

3) General Fitness people looking to keep fitness high enough to take on

any challenge that comes their way

Regardless of the category you fit into, you will be well advised to

take occasional breaks away from training.

Those in category 2 generally would have this planned, maybe after a big

event or at the end of the season, we call this by a fancy name, because

they're athletes, we say it's "periodisation"

The other two categories tend to have more freedom, they can take breaks

whenever they see fit.

And for everyone, there will be times where life simply tells you to

take a break.

So what we do is instead of focusing on individual workouts, we look at

the month.

If we had planned to train 3x/week this month, then that would have been

12 workouts.

If we get all 12, then that's great.

If we miss a couple, we still have 10 workouts in the bag.

Then we compare months against months, are we hitting a good average, or

are we consistently missing sessions.

Then we have information to work with.

Again, an athlete will be more focussed, but they also have a timeline

set for them.

Rehab clients tend to be very focussed until they stop hurting

It's the journeyman that can wander.

Just like I let this newsletter slack every now and again, because it's

not the main part of what I do, if fitness isn't the main thing you do,

then the odd miss isn't going to harm you.

Just so long as on average, you get more sessions in than you miss.

And even more important than that, so long as your key metrics that

you're training to improve are moving in the right direction.

Your Squat has gotten stronger, your 10K time has gotten quicker, your

toe touch is a little deeper, you're Tee Off has gotten a little further

That's the key, that's why we train.

It's about results

It's about having the strength, mobility and endurance to to the things

that make life worth living!

--

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.DaveHedges.net

Can You explain energy systems?

Nate has been asking some really interesting questions about how the body fuels itself.

He asked for a breakdown of the bodies energy systems, so here's what I told him:

"You have 3 energy systems.

Aerobic

Anaerobic

And the horrible middle child glycolitic (which has changed its name a few times as more evidence is discovered)

Aerobic is ALWAYS running and relies on oxygen being around.

Anaerobic is a few seconds, uses ATP that is already within the cells.

The Aerobic system then steps up to replenish that ATP

And the weird middle child that is dominant when going flat out after the Anaerobic system runs out of juice and before the Aerobic system can catch it up.

Glycolitic system kind of runs on Lactic Acid and hate as its fuel source.

ATP is the currency of energy. It's what the cells need to operate.

We break down glucose and create ATP through some mind blowingly complex biochemistry.

Fun side bar, one of my school buddies memorised the entirety of the Krebs cycle just to piss off our A-Level Biology teacher who we called "Clang"

So, in short injest food, digest it to glucose.

Glucose can be used immediately, most of the time we convert it to Glycogen and store in the muscles and liver for when we need it in a hurry.

Excess glucose can also be shunted into the fat cells.

Using glycogen to create atp is best done through the Aerobic system and is our normal operating mode.

Anaerobic makes ATP from glycogen and creatine

Glycolitic production is nuts but if you're using it, you'll be blowing out our arse too hard at the time to care anyhow!!

So, TL:DR

Fill the glycogen stores and we're all rosy in the garden.

When to fill them?

Either fill the tank before a journey

Or top it up as you go along

Either way, you get there!"

Now, outside of "for interest" how useful is this info?

To most people most of the time it isn't particularly useful.

I spent quite a while reading up and learning about this stuff because I thought it'd make me a better coach, and I'm not sure it has.

As I said in the reply to Nate, we need fuel, and wether fuel up in one sitting or across many sittings is a personal choice.

Our training can be adjusted to better access the various energy systems.

Be that anaerobic, aerobic or gylcolytic.

Of the three, the glycolytic tend to be the least trainable with short term gains being the norm.

Developing the Aerobic and Anaerobic works bets for most people most of the time.

And as the aerobic system is ALWAYS running, and has the job of refuelling the other two systems, it's a really good idea to have this well developed.

I'l talk more about aerobic fitness in another newsletter, because there's more to understand there than simply going for a run or a bike ride.

But it is important to understand that just because an exercise raises your heart rate for a bit, it may not actually be aerobic developement.

Anyhow, more on that next edition.

I'll see you there....

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.davehedges.net