Triathlon nutrition: 10 common mistakes triathletes make
Nutritionist Jon Hodgkinson explains how to avoid the 10 most common nutritional mistakes that triathletes often make…
Nailing your nutrition for both training and racing is a triathlon discipline all in itself! Yes, it can be a minefield. But by following these 10 expert tips below, you’ll become a more efficient, stronger, less-injury-prone, energy-charged triathlete in no time!
1. Always prepare your nutrition before training and racing
You’ve signed up to a new training programme, swim sets are pencilled in, long rides have been okayed with your other half (sort of!) and that threshold run is looming. GREAT but what are you fuelling these sessions with? What will you use to recover? How does your daily routine impact the times you can eat and foods you have access to?
Nutrition is often the missing link in any good training programme. It’s time to make a plan. My top prep tip for success: batch cook and freeze. With winter rides, a hearty soup will do the trick for post-ride recovery; warming and nourishing at the same time.
2. Don’t change your nutrition strategy on race day
The feed station doesn’t have a bar or gel you’ve used on all those hard fought training miles… what do you do? Pick up the nearest option and hope for the best? What’s the worst that could happen? It’s all just energy, right?
This is one detail you may want to pay more attention to if you’ve ever had a turn for the worse during a race. Your body, under race day tension and physical exertion, is a different beast to the one you normally find yourself in.
A late change to unfamiliar ingredients could come back to bite later in the race. Here’s where you need to work on consistency. W
here possible control the food you have on the bike, store what you can on your person for the run and stick with what you know when the pressure is on.
3. Don’t make it harder for your body to recover
Hard training creates an inflammatory response from the body to help kick-start recovery. This is quite natural. However, from a nutritional approach we often consume foods that also add to this inflammatory load leaving the body in a more degenerated state making recovery for the next session much harder.
Try cutting out refined and processed foods. Cook with saturated and mono-unsaturated fats such as butter, coconut oil and olive oil as they don’t degrade too quickly when heated. Up your omega-3 levels with nuts, eggs, oily fish and consider a good quality fish oil capsule or liquid.
4. Don’t view food purely as fuel
It’s all too easy to see food as a means to an end. Often, when your training load is high, you may grab anything just to keep going. This is where we need a little more insight to help aid both performance and recovery.
My top tip? Get ahead and plan your meals for the week or at least a few days, batch cook in the evening and have leftovers ready to go the next day. Always be one step ahead.
5. Don’t use triathlon to lose weight
The age-old mantra of move more, eat less is slowly starting to be picked apart within the research community when it comes to weight loss.
However, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of expecting your triathlon training to be the driver for dropping a few pounds. In some instances this works, but don’t be surprised if your training goes up without a correlation in weight going down.
6. Get the right amount of sleep
Alarm set for an early-morning swim, bike or run and you hit the snooze button more times than you’d like to admit? Sleep is a vital component of your recovery routine and shouldn’t be overlooked. But here’s where you could be going wrong…
Too much caffeine throughout the day, relying on stimulants and sugary-based foods to give you a boost, using your smartphone late at night and disrupting your body’s natural down regulation process.
7. Reduce the use of stimulants during the day
Caffeine and sugar definitely give a boost BUT do you know how much you’re actually consuming? Could it be that our constant micro dosing of such stimulants is inhibiting training performance?
The answer is probably yes, but in order to see that in action we need to start reducing them (sometimes slowly) within our daily routine, allowing the body to become more sensitive to their effect when we really do need them.
8. Don’t be swayed by marketing jargon
We’ve all succumbed to some savvy supplement marketing, but in reality most benefits sold in supplements, whether it’s improved energy levels or reduced recovery time, can be obtained via advanced planning and good sourcing of the foods we consume.
A simple way to achieve this would be, as already mentioned above, to control blood sugar levels for improved energy, stop watching your phone late at night and get to bed earlier for better recovery.
This may sound simple, but it really does work. At Triathlon Coaching UK we’re all about the bigger picture, especially when it comes to nutrition.
9. Maintain good nutritional habits all-year round
Your main event is done and the training diary is much more manageable. Your foot is off the gas, but your nutrition should not be. Those extra pounds you lost in training will reappear!
Why not view the off-season as the perfect opportunity to hone your nutritional skills? Practise meal-prep technique, work on routine, get your partner on board, improve your cooking skills.
Keep it simple at first, maybe scramble some eggs, throw in a few peppers and toast some sourdough before trying to set out on the quest for a Michelin star!
10. Look after your gut
Studies of the gut are increasingly prominent and we’re now realising how important this complex part of our digestive system really is. Fermented milk products, such as natural yoghurt containing probiotic bacterial strains, can have a positive impact on gastrointestinal wellbeing and digestive comfort.
When your body’s under stress it’s not so easy to absorb the foods you’re feeding it and the last thing you want on the start line of your next race is an upset stomach, or, even worse, halfway through a long ride!
Build in some natural probiotic containing foods to your daily routine, full fat natural yoghurt is a good start.
Jon Hodgkinson
Personal trainer and nutritionist 
