Fuel The Pedal podcast

The provision or restriction of select nutrients in an athlete's diet can elicit a variety of changes in fuel utilization, training adaptation, and performance outcomes. On this episode we discuss the impact of both acute and chronic carbohydrate restriction on iron metabolism, comparing models of periodized carbohydrate availability and ketogenic low carbohydrate high fat diets. We also touch base on the link between low energy availability , poor iron status and altered hepcidin activity in endurante athletes.

Iron deficiency (ID) is a prevailing nutritional concern amongst the athletic population due to the increased iron demands of this group. Athletes’ ability to replenish taxed iron stores is challenging due to the low bioavailability of dietary sources, and the interaction between exercise and hepcidin, the primary iron-regulatory hormone. This will be the main focus of this episode.

On this episode we are talking with Peter Hespel and Chiel Poffé from the University of Leuven / Bakala Academy to provide an update to the topic of exogenous ketones in cycling thanks to their research on this topic. Do ketones improve performance after all? Is there any particular context in which their use is justified? Find out here. 

Today we are bringing back Dr. Dana Lis to have her talk us through some recent research on collagen supplementation in the specific context of explosive exercise performance and we’ll discuss if this may have implications for sprinting performance in cyclists.

A recent food technology innovation created new CHO drinks and gels with added sodium alginate and pectin in solutions of multiple transportable CHO, with the intention of encapsulating those CHO molecules in the stomach forming a gel which allegedly enables a smooth transportation of the drink through the stomach to the intestine. But are the claims of improved gastric emptying, increased CHO oxidation and reduce GI symptoms supported by science? 

On this second episode of this series dedicated exclusively to the female cyclist and endurance female athletes, we are talking again with Kirsty Elliott-Sale and Eimear Dolan about the role of oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) and exercise performance. This episode was based on a recent Meta-Analysis published by the guests themselves on Sports Medicine and they'll tell us what they found. Do OCP users have a lower performance when compared with naturally menstruating women? Is performance superior in OCP taking days vs. OCP withdrawal days? Tune in to find out.

This is a multi-episode series dedicated exclusively to the female cyclist and other endurance female athletes. On this episode we'll go through a recent Meta-Analysis published by Kelly and Kirsty on Sports Medicine and they'll tell us what they found regarding the influence of the different menstrual cycle phases on exercise performance and how can we produce more high-quality research in the future.

On this part 2 on the applicability of low carb, high fat ketogenic diets in endurance athletes, we will resume our talk and put the spotlight on the exercise activities that could benefit from a ketogenic diet approach, as well as some novel areas such as the impact of ketogenic diets in the oral microbiome (nitrate reducing bacteria), it's effects on bone health and the use of exogenous ketones in cycling.

On today's episode with Prof. Louise Burke from the Australian Catholic University, we discuss the current knowledge on the use of low carb, high fat ketogenic diets in endurance athletes, in particulate the research performed by her group with elite racewalkers. Is this diet approach the future of elite endurance sports? Do they have a place in cycling?

Dietary nitrate supplementation produces an ergogenic effect due to the improvement of mitochondrial oxygen efficiency through a reduction in the oxygen cost of exercise that increases vasodilation and blood flow to the skeletal muscle in recreationally active subjects. Today we are talking with Dr. Andrew Jones from the University of Exeter to find out the application of nitrates in cycling.

Exercise-associated physiological disturbances alter gastrointestinal function and integrity. These alterations may increase susceptibility to dietary triggers, namely gluten and a family of short-chain carbohydrates known as FODMAPs (fermentable oligo-, di-, monosaccharides and polyols). Today, Dr. Dana Lis talks us through how foods rich in these elements can trigger this symptoms and how to avoid them.

Over the last decade it has become clearer that taste is not limited to the oral cavity and it can also affect multiple physiological systems resulting in increased exercise performance. On today's episode Russ Best explains how the taste of carbohydrates, caffeine, menthol, capsaicin and bitter compounds can influence exercise performance.

Teun Van Erp, a former Sport Scientist at Team Sunweb developed his PhD on studying the load, intensity and performance of male and female professional riders from Team Sunweb. we’ll go through the training characteristics of pro cyclists, loads, the power zones of cyclists’ when competing, we’ll talk about gross efficiency of pedalling, women vs male road cycling, reliability of some training parameters and some other interesting geeky stuff.

Exhaustive or unaccustomed intense exercise can cause exercise-induced muscle damage (EIMD) and its undesirable consequences may decrease the ability to exercise and to adhere to a training program. Dietary and supplemented polyphenols appear to be a promising way of reducing EIMD. On this episode, we go around the latest evidence on this subject and the applicability it has to athletic populations.

RED-S is the broader, more comprehensive name for what was formerly known as female athlete triad (or simply the triad), which was a condition seen in females participating in sports that emphasize leanness or low body weight. As it was also seen in males, the name was changed to the comprehensive term RED-S which may be more frequent than we think and that can have serious consequences not only for exercise performance of athletes but for their long-term health as well.

In the last years, research in the area of probiotics has progressed considerably and significant advances have been made in the selection and characterization of specific probiotic cultures. As expected, a growing number of dietary supplements containing probiotics are commercially available worldwide, and the number of products being marketed and claiming to improve the health and performance of athletes continues to increase substantially with common oversimplifications and generalization of a complex topic. In this episode with Dr. Jamie Pugh we’ll present a balanced overview on Probiotic supplementation while recognising how complex the gut microbiota is and the common misinterpretations and limitations of the current research on probiotics use in athletes.    

Anthony Warner aka The Angry Chef will be sharing his strong views on food, diet and scientific mistruths during this sensitive times during the coronavirus pandemic. How can we better filter health-related information in the future?

PART 2. The majority of endurance athletes suffer from some kind of gut problem during training and competition. Symptoms like nausea, cramping, bloating, side stitches, and the need to defecate can negatively impact an athlete’s performance. Why are gut problems so common during exercise? And what can athletes do to prevent and manage gut symptoms that occur during training and competition?

The majority of endurance athletes suffer from some kind of gut problem during training and competition. Symptoms like nausea, cramping, bloating, side stitches, and the need to defecate can negatively impact an athlete’s performance. Why are gut problems so common during exercise? And what can athletes do to prevent and manage gut symptoms that occur during training and competition?

Discussing the latest research on the implications for health and performance of carbohydrate and energy periodization in endurance athletes. We also discuss some of the recent research on the impacts of ketogenic dieting in markers of bone health in endurance athletes.

On this episode we talk with one of the greatest specialists in strength training about the still overlooked importance of including properly periodized strength training routines in road cycling. We go around some of the basic concepts of strength training and how to implement it in a regular Pro and Amateur cycling calendar to maximize performance.

On this episode we present the latest evidence and limitations on collagen supplementation in athletes and clinical populations through some of the works performed by Sara Oikawa at McMaster University under the supervision of Prof. Stuart Phillips.

On this episode Dr. Graeme Close talks us through the nutrition interventions to focus our attention on when dealing with injured cyclists, as well as the preventive aspects where nutrition could also play an important role. We also go through the evidence behind some popular dietary supplements claiming to support recovery in injured athletes. 

On this episode we go back in time and revisit the best moments of each episode throughout 2019. A sort of teaser if you didn't have a chance to listen to a particular episode. Thank for for staying there during this past year. Have a great 2020! Stay tuned!  

On this episode we tackle the main themes surrounding nutritional factors with altitude exposure such as: altered energy availability, Iron status, carbohydrate oxidation, hydration, antioxidant supplementation and other posible hematological and non-hematological considerations while performing altitude exposure. 

Although the Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) paradigm has been linked with adverse physiological and performance-related outcomes in men, the synergistic effects of low energy availability on reproductive hormones put females particularly at risk of negative outcomes. The majority of sports-specific nutritional research has been conducted in male athletes, which limits the application of knowledge to female athletes. On this episode we'll try to go over all the nutrition considerations and research challenges yet to come in the following years.

Performance during continuous or intermittent high-intensity exercise can be limited, at least in part, by the accumulation of hydrogen ions (H+) which reduce muscle pH and interfere with muscle contractile and metabolic processes. There is evidence that both ß-alanine and sodium bicarbonate ingestion can enhance exercise performance during single or repeated bouts of high-intensity exercise in which energy is supplied predominantly through anaerobic glycolysis. On this episode with Dr. Bryan Saunders we tackle the role of both these supplements in increasing muscle buffering capacity in cycling.

On this very special episode, Dr. James Morton tells us about the Fuel For the Work Required model and how he went on applying it with Team Sky. We also get into more detail on the effects of protein during races, recovery and considerations for future performance nutrition-related research.    

On this very special episode, Dr. James Morton talks us through his integration in Pro Cycling while working with Team Sky. This is part 1 of 2 episodes dedicated to this topic. On this first part we will focus on the logistics, planning and coordination required with all the team staff when planning for a World Tour cycling race. On part 2 we'll dig into the nutrition-related topics that are crucial for performance in Pro cycling.  

Endurance athletes are always looking for an edge. That extends to professional cyclists, who are among the fittest humans on earth and who require an inordinate amount of fuel to pedal through grueling mountain stages and time trials during multi-week races like the Tour de France. In the past years, a lot of hype has been going around exogenous ketones with some people even calling it the "fourth macronutrient" and the next magic bullet to get that competitive edge in cycling. On this episode, Mark Evans (PhD) who has been one of the researchers contributing to the available research so far shares his insights on the subject.

Appropriate recovery from the stress of exercise is an essential component of any periodized program aimed at maximizing training-induced physiological adaptations and enhancing athletic performance. Prolonged, sustained endurance training sessions exert significant metabolic demands that include the depletion of endogenous fuel stores (e.g., liver and muscle glycogen), loss of body fluid and electrolytes, hormonal perturbations, and damage/disruption to skeletal muscle and body proteins. Given the current lack of evidence regarding the impact of protein ingestion on postexercise muscle remodelling, Dr. Daniel Moore is joining us to clarify on the role of dietary protein in cycling.

In the latest decade, milk has gone through some rough times. Milk its perhaps experiencing its lowest reputation in the history of mankind. A food that was once praised for its role in children’s growth and as important throughout the life cycle, started its downfall when the Paleo diet came out. Currently, milk still remains quite unpopular in athletes’ perception, irrespective of the solid body of evidence attributing important benefits to its inclusion in the athletes’ diet, particularly in the post workout period after endurance sessions as we will discuss here today Dr. Lewis James who has been giving an important contribution for milk research as a recovery drink in the last years and hopefully we can clarify and increase milk’s reputation, at least among cyclists. After all, we are probably talking about the biggest bang for your buck in terms of sources of high quality protein.

While some parts of the world are concerned with eating, because of food insecurity, the “worried and well-fed” are increasingly obsessed with so-called “clean eating" with an obsessed and unfounded fear of artificial foods, food additives and the inability to accept that in some contexts its ok to exceptionally have foods that are less healthy.    On the sports setting, we are passing on the image that athletes should be eating only real food (whatever that means), with an excessive focus on food quality rather than quantity, scrutinizing food insuring that always always comes from the healthiest sources with labels like: no hormones, organic, no glyphosate, gluten free, dairy free, unrefined, non-processed, no artificial flavourings, preservatives, additives or carcinogenic packaging. At first glance, such concern for consuming the healthiest foods possible seems like a respectable display of health consciousness. For some, eating healthy can become an obsession, resulting in endless list of food concerns such as environmental impact, local food sourcing, animal rights, combining, time of meals, excessive researching, cataloguing, weighting and measuring foods and excessive meal planning. These factors are actually part of a "non-oficial" eating disorder called orthorexia. James Kennedy is a Chemistry teacher who tries to fight Chemophobia (its actually the tittle of his book) while trying to teach chemistry in a accessible, dynamic way, putting things into perspective. Natural things may not actually be safer than the artifical ones and everything around us (even natural foods) are actually composed of chemicals. Dosage is a fundamental concept to take from this enlightening episode. 

Branched-chain amino acids, glutamine, collagen and HMB, started as being supplements popular in the fitness world only, but quickly invaded the endurance sports world, particularly cycling. Quite often we see cyclists urging to take glutamine after training to aid in recovery, or BCAAs during training to reduce muscle damage, collagen to protect the joints or even HMB to minimize loss of fat free mass during periods of long training sessions. To help clarify this topic Dr. Stuart Phillips & Dr. Filipe Teixeira will provide us with the latest update on the research available on these supplements and their posible application in endurance sports, particularly in cycling.

Carbohydrate mouth rinsing can be defined as flushing a carbohydrate-based drink around the oral cavity for certain time, followed by the subsequent expulsion of fluid. Plenty of research associates carbohydrate mouth rinse to positive effects in athletic performance, not only in endurance activities but also with a growing interest in high intensity sprint-based activities. On this episode we discuss the results found by a recent publication from our research group, and other research performed so far to discuss whether Carbohydrate mouth rinse can actually be applied during cycling race events.

As Sports Nutritionists besides having to properly fuel cyclists during training and racing, there is also an additional challenge we often face. And that challenge is to try our best to minimize GI symptoms in cyclists. We can prepare a rider for months but if one key meal in a moment surrounding or during the race goes wrong, we can jeopardize months of preparation and condition the rider’s performance for that day. On the other hand, we must make sure these athletes ingest a rather high amount of CHO-rich foods while on the bike in order to be able to sustain higher intensities in latter stages of the race. But this high exercise intensity and high quantity of ingested CHO are also some of the main factors that can also limit gastric emptying, CHO absorption and lead to some GI symptoms to occur, which may have serious consequences for cyclists. On this episode Dr. Jamie Pugh helps us understand the main causes and practical strategies to minimize GI symptoms in cycling. That is why the name of this episode is "Feeling lighter from start to finish..."

Competitive road cyclists are at risk of developing the health and performance consequences of low energy availability described in the relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) clinical model. Low energy availability can arise unintentionally and/ or intentionally from restrictive nutrition, as cycling is a gravitational sport where low body weight confers a performance advantage, up to a point, until cumulative low energy availability leads to adverse clinical outcomes such as low bone mineral density and other important hormonal imbalances such as low testosterone that can impair cyclists performance and jeopardize their health. Some of these carelessness may be avoided by bringing "real" graduated dietitians/nutritionists into the sport. Not self proclaimed nutritional coaches nor other professionals already working with the teams such as physiotherapists, doctors and strength coaches whose role in a cycling team is essential but its surely not prescribing diets, managing nutritional recovery, fueling up for/during races and everything that proper sports dietitians/nutritionists were trained to do.  I say its time for a change! Its time to bring US into cycling!

Skeletal muscle cramps are highly prevalent in endurance sports and often affect cyclists during racing events when the intensity of physical exertion is very high and the duration is long. But there is little consensus among coaches and nutritionists on what causes them, being often associated with dehydration and sodium loss. Additionally, the wrong belief that supplementing with magnesium will prevent/treat exercise associated muscle cramps still remains pretty much alive in the cycling spectrum. On this episode we interview Dr. Kevin Miller from University of Central Michigan, USA. He's performed a significant amount of research on the etiology of muscle cramping, particularly on how can pickle juice help relieve muscle cramping.

Elite cyclists are always seeking to maximize training adaptations to improve racing performance and using altered environmental conditions to achieve this outcome has become increasingly popular among these athletes. Additionally, a series of potencial nutrition and hydration interventions may also optimize the adaptation to altered environments. Similarly, the use of heat acclimation to optimize performance in hot/humid performance in hot/humid environmental conditions is well supported by scientific evidence, appearing to have positive outcomes. On this episode, we will present the evidence for such outcomes and how to apply them in the context of cycling training and competition.

Chronic carbohydrate restriction is still a popular strategy amongst athletes on the weight loss and sports performance realm. Cyclists often restrict carbohydrate ingestion for weight loss purposes, although they recognise the importance of ingesting them to increase exercise performance and also the consequences of restricting them. In the last years, some interesting research on the effects of deliberately training with low muscle glycogen reserves has emerged, pointing out that there might be some amplification of training adaptations induced by training with low glycogen availability. Some of that research has been brilliantly reviewed by Dr. Sam Impey in his article entitled: “Fuel for the Work Required: A Theoretical Framework for Carbohydrate Periodization and the Glycogen Threshold Hypothesis”. On this episode we will discuss the rationale behind each of these strategies how to apply them in a practical context.

Defining breakfast and discussing the effects of skipping breakfast and training in a fasted state on training adaptations and metabolic outcomes such as increased fat oxidation and mitochondrial biogenesis. Here we will also talk about what would be the ideal breakfast composition depending on the type of cycling race event in order to maximize performance.

Hello everyone and welcome to the fuel the pedal podcast. Your source of Science based nutrition… for cycling only. It is a tremendous pleasure to be here. My name is Gabriel Martins and I’ll be your host hopefully for a long time. First, let me give you a bit of info on my background and why in the world am I doing this in the first place. Im a Portuguese Nutritionist living and working in Spain, more specifically Madrid, I came here to study a Master’s degree in Sports Nutrition and ended up working as a PhD researcher at University Camilo José Cela. I also work as a cycling nutritionist for two cycling teams in Madrid. I practise cycling myself and try to compete occasionally at a very amateur level of course. I’ve been a cycling fan all my life since I was a little kid, something I can thank to my father and it’s something that Im really passionate about. But enough about me, you’ve just bumped into this channel just out of pure curiosity because you like cycling, or you’re a nutritionist who wants to know more about cycling nutrition and hear about what’s the latest evidence on a specific subject. Well, Fuel the Pedal wants to answer all that. We surely live in a world loaded with information which basically leaves athletes, nutritionists and the general population confused and ironically misinformed.  The more information we have, the less we seem to know. Fuel the Pedal is a filter. We need filters of information in our lives, in many more areas than just nutrition, cycling and physiology. Here we will interview the top researchers on their field, Sports nutritionists with true experience on cycling or a related matter and also cyclists whose experience and eating patterns may help us get a better idea on how should we adapt nutrition plans to the specific context of cycling. So if you’re interested improving your nutrition knowledge on cycling, here is one hungry Nutritionist thriving to give you the most accurate Science behind this beautiful sport that we all love. One Portuguese, living in Spain, broadcasting in English. I can tell you right away that in the first episode we will talk about breakfast and fasted training with one of the top leading researchers in this area. Many other great guests are coming so stay tuned for next episode. If you want to stay updated with all the new episodes please subscribe Fuel the Pedal Podcast on Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher. I will soon add other platforms that you can use to hear this Podcast. We are also on Instagram, twitter and facebook so there’s a lot of ways for you to stay tuned with us and it’ll be a pleasure to have you riding with us. So let’s get this show on the road. Thank you for listening and I hope to have you as a frequent listener of Fuel the Pedal Podcast.