Skinny-Fat Coaching

Skinny-Fat Coaching SKINNY-FAT Coaching assists people, primarily cyclists and gym enthusiasts, develop a lean, muscular and high performing body.

02/12/2021

To be faster and stronger whether cycling or running, you need to improve your power to weight ratio. In speaking to athletes, many determine their functional threshold power (FTP) using a power meter on the bike or a running power tool like Styrd and focusing on the power number and weight in a linear way. However there is a better, more structured way by creating a training plan in three phases. Phase one is to train in an energy deficit (caloric) and focus on strength and metabolic conditioning. This is to reduce fat and maintain muscle. Phase two is energy neutral (calorie maintenance) and focus on power. This is where you progressively load the training to trnsfer the strength gain into a higher power value. Phase three is to add a very slight energy surplus from phase two and increase training intensity and speed significantly. By following this nutrition and training protocol consistently and as phased over say an 18-26 week program, an improvement to an athlete’s power to weight ratio wil be achieved without doubt.

Recovery is an important facet of an athlete’s training program. To be able to complete training sessions as planned and...
31/10/2021

Recovery is an important facet of an athlete’s training program. To be able to complete training sessions as planned and produce the output as expected, the body and mind must take time out. The challenge is to undertake recovery as effectively and efficiently as possible as the next training session can come up very quickly after the one just completed. There are many ways to recover and they all need to be considered. Key recovery strategies include rest, sleep, refueling, eating adequate protein, walking, ice baths, hot/cold showers, meditation, massage, foam rolling and stretching. Recently I have been using leg recovery boots. The high pressure boots increase blood flow and helps reduce lactic acid. After using them regularly for the past 4 months, I have found them to be the most effective recovery tool or activity I have used especially when my legs training volume has been high. The only downside I have found with recovery boots has been when my training intensity and volume have both been overloaded simultaneously, the effectiveness is reduced. In such cases, the old and proven tradition of more rest as well as extra sessions in the boots mitigates the adversity.

12/09/2021

One of the most important injury prevention and training readiness tactics is your pre-start warm up. With age and especially in cold conditions, it is critical that you warm up before you leave home. We don’t all have an hour to warm up at home before we start our ride or run but there are a few simple things you can do. One is to have a hot shower for 5 minutes. This helps to loosen up your muscles without straining them, increase your alertness and warm up all parts of your body quickly. Spend 5-10 minutes rubbing in warm up creams especially on tendons, where you experience recurring injuries and have scar tissue. I highly recommend Painaway Ultra and for a warmer sensation Green Dragon. Then dress up areas which are problematic to keep them warm while you get ready to go or drive out to your training destination. For example put on arm & leg warmers or compression garments. I like to put compression bandages on my calves to further improve blood circulating in the area while having my pre-training fuel and getting my bike ready. If you do have a few extra minutes after your coffee and before you head out, a short foam roll will also help. If you any warm up at home tips, feel free to comment.

01/09/2021

It’s been a while since Skinny-Fat Coaching has posted. COVID has had a significant impact on training and competition consistency as has communicating with followers. Will aim to post regularly going forward. If you have any questions or are seeking training, fitness or nutritional advice post your questions and it will give me inspiration to post informative content. In the meantime if you are in Australia and locked down do everything you can to keep motivated and active. The good news is that winter is behind us and warmer days and more daylight is our way out.

03/12/2020

With lockdown now eased in Melbourne, many are back to full training either on the bike and/or in the gym. This will now greatly enable you to return to your usual training volume. However, you may find if your goal is to drop a bit of weight, the scales may not be dropping in a quick manner. One left of field reason for this is although your training is up, your NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis) is still down. This may be due to you still working from home and the energy you normally expend each day such as walking to and around work, walking up and down stairs, standing for long periods and carrying things around is reduced. So if you want to burn calories but can’t add more to your training, incorporate more NEAT activities into your day.

14/08/2020

Currently in Melbourne we are in a full lockdown due to COVID-19 restrictions. From an exercise perspective, we are now restricted to training with one other person, within 5 kms from home and for an hour in duration. The biggest impact these restrictions have on endurance athletes is on exercise density, the combination of volume and intensity of your training. Using cycling as an example, many cyclists measure their exercise density by the volume (number of kms) they cover each week on the road. These restrictions make it impossible to complete the training volume they are accustomed to. This now means that many cyclists will experience a significant reduction in their strength and conditioning over time. So how do you ensure you maintain your density and in fact, make gains in capacity. The best way to do this is to increase the exercise intensity component of your training. Instead of your usual tempo, steady state ride for 3 hours, keep it to one hour and do high intensity intervals. Examples are 10 x 2 minutes high end intensity on a flat road or velodrome or 7 x 4 minute hill repeats with sprint finishes up a steep. This will balance things out as a long low intensity session matches the volume of a shorter high intensity session. This way once restrictions ease, you can easily return to your usual exercise density and quickly build back to your expected state of strength and conditioning.

02/08/2020

I had someone tell me they have started on a Ketogetic diet and have lost weight. They asked whether Keto or Intermittent Fasting is better for weight loss. They both offer health benefits but when it comes to weight loss, it doesn’t really matter. You lose weight no matter what your approach to diet is as long as you are on a calorie deficit for a period of time long enough. If you think it is because of Keto or IF you are kidding yourself.

09/05/2020

I was asked recently “can you build leg strength training on the bike?” The answer is yes, but it’s not the ideal way to build muscle mass in your legs. If you want to build leg strength through cycling, the approach I recommend is to incorporate a low repetition, high load training session into your weekly sessions progressively increasing over a mesocycle. An example is to do 6 x 30s hill repeats on an 8% section in say a 53x17 gear ratio at max force with a 2 min rest in between. Then 7 reps week 2, 8 reps week 3 then deload to 53x27 in week 4 to recover. Next month repeat but do it in a harder gear 53x15 and so on. Once you run out of gears you can go back to the gear you started with and increase the gradient to 10%. The key to building strength is to maintain muscular tension by keeping the effort to 30s and hitting it with 10/10 force. I often see riders doing strengthies in the big chain ring for up to 6kms non stop. To me that builds muscular endurance rather than strength as the muscle tension is too low.

30/04/2020

If you are serious about becoming physically stronger and build lean muscle you need to structure your training in three key ways. One is to integrate your diet and your training. Second, you must develop a training program based on progressive overload in line with your MRV (Maximum Recoverable Volume). And finally three, you have to take a Deload week every 3-4 weeks to ensure you have the capacity to keep the improvement tracking upwards.

25/04/2020

In this time of social isolation and reduction in training volume, it is an opportune time to turn to changing your body composition as your short term training goal. If you would like to add more lean muscle, you should be in a calorie surplus, reduce your cardio and focus on resistance training based on progressive overload. If you are carrying fat you need to shed, then do a mini cut with an aggressive calorie deficit, increase your high intensity cardio and keep them short and incorporate a maintenance based resistance training program. This way when you return to your normal training in a couple of months time your body will be in much better shape.

This week we feature cyclist Noel Jacobs from Hawthorn Cycling Club who won the Victorian Time Trial Championship in Mas...
20/11/2018

This week we feature cyclist Noel Jacobs from Hawthorn Cycling Club who won the Victorian Time Trial Championship in Masters 7 in October 2018 for the second year in a row.

Noel has a remarkable story having overcome health challenges in recent years to compete in the elite class of his age group. Next year, Noel has his sights on the Nationals.

Noel has passed on three tips and insights which helped him win the title, again.

1 Practice as much as you can on your TT bike whether it’s out on the road or on the trainer indoors.

2 Work out your race strategy and stick with it over the course of the race. Don’t just turn up and wing it.

3 Keep your pre-race warm up focused. A warm up of 20 minutes of increasing tempo with micro bursts thrown in at the end is the right approach.

Noel has also been kind to provide a screen shot of his power zones during the State Championship TT. It shows there was no cruise time with 79% of the time spent at threshold and above.

Please share Noel’s story.

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