Slowtwitch Performance

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Welcome to Slowtwitch Performance

Unsure of how to get the ultimate race performance from your training efforts? 

We offer the following Services that are GUARANTEED to improve your performance.

• Online Endurance Coaching

• Training Plans

• Swim Underwater Technical Video Analysis

• Personal Training

• Nutrition counseling

• VO2 & Resting Metabolic Assessments

• Lactate Threshold Testing 

 

Getting Started  

I prefer to work with a client towards a long-term goal of a year, a season or a specific race. It gives me a better understanding of what the athlete's overall goal to be able to develop a suitable long term plan. From here, I can periodize the season into Transition, Foundation, Preparation and Peak phases and then re-adjust the program as the athlete makes progress toward his/her ultimate goal. Weather you are located in St Louis or anywhere in the world we can help with your sporting achievements.

We begin work with an athlete when I receive the Athlete Profile in my email. I carefully look over all the information the athlete has sent me and then I start the customized plan. I take the athlete’s lifestyle into account including how many hours the client works, what their family commitments are, how long they have been training, previous injuries, race goals, and others.

The next step is to evaluate the athlete's current fitness level and Heart Rate Zones. There are a variety of ways of doing this but the ones I like to use most often are my standardized field tests in each sport and also a Metabolic Vo2 assessment. Lactate Threshold testing is also a great way of identifying an athlete’s correct levels of training intensity. It usually takes a few weeks to determine the correct heart rate training zones for athletes, so this takes a time commitment from the coach and the athlete. We will determine RPE, Lactate Threshold and heart training zones for cycling and running as well swim pacing times. These can all be done at our facility here in St Louis or one of the many other Facilities located all over the world.

Once I have the athlete's baseline fitness determined, we work together through the different training cycles to help the athlete reach his/her goals. I use an Annual Training Plan to develop my athlete's programs. This is not written in stone as there are situations that arise and things can change. I am pretty flexible on re-adjusting the schedule to fit around the athlete's life.

Once we get into a good rhythm of training we will consistently test fitness and re-evaluate the program.

 

My Beliefs.

Triathlon and sport are my life and my passion. It is part of who I am. Sports give me the energy and drive to reach higher, to want more. Endurance sports are not just an activity, event or hobby, but a lifestyle, a healthy lifestyle. Sport at the purest level has made me the person I am today and I love what I do.

Ever since I can remember, I've been interested in sport, but more importantly, "how can I get better or improve?"

After injuring my ACL playing Australian Rules Football, this lead me to Triathlon where I started competing in 1991 as part of my knee rehabilitation. This brought me to wanting to share my passion with others through Coaching and Personal Training.  Since 2003 I have gained many various certifications and education. During my course of study I gained exposure in numerous fields that will help me guide and assist you as an athlete. These areas include: physiological testing, strength and conditioning, sports psychology, sports nutrition, athletic injury and biomechanics.

I believe my ongoing studies, 35 year athletic history and lab experiences have been instrumental in my ability to understand the concepts behind endurance training. I consider myself a student of the sport and continue to learn daily. I am very opened minded about training philosophies and realize that there is so much more out there for me to learn and experience. The excitement of learning and experiencing something new, gives me great incentive, motivation and drive.

My philosophy is simple. I'm a firm believer in results through consistency in training and consistent testing. I don't believe in magical programs or workouts, but believe in learning, having fun, motivation and getting out the door. I prefer to focus on that which has significance, set goals, big and small, with plans on how to achieve them. Celebrate the everyday victories; learn the lessons of our failures.

I'm looking for hard working athletes that want to be inspired. I love living a healthy lifestyle and helping others achieve their fitness goals. I'm the type of coach that wants to develop relationships with my clients. The better I get to know my athletes the better I can help assist them with their individual needs. I understand that there will be periods of frustration. I believe that is one of my most appealing traits. Throughout my years as an athlete I have had personal experience and/or struggles with: motivation, diet, injury, time constraints, etc. I feel that having successfully moved passed these points on numerous occasion gives me the experience to help guide you through the rough times.

Compliance and communication are crucial to an athlete/coach relationship. We are all more similar than we are different. However, there is no exact science to triathlon training. We are essentially running an experiment based on basic physiology and performance philosophies. Having said this, I would like to agree on a plan for the entire year or season so that we know the overall goals that we are working towards. We will never know if the training is working unless you see the plan through.

 

 

Metabolic Assessments.

Metabolic Efficiency Training: Clearing up the Confusion!
Bob Seebohar, MS, RD, CSSD, CSCS
It seems as if the topic of metabolic efficiency has really gained some speed among the
athletic community lately. Because of this, there are numerous interpretations that are
being presented by non-health professionals or self-proclaimed “nutritionists”, some of
which are not entirely accurate. Spreading the message of metabolic efficiency and how
it can help an athlete achieve better health and optimal performance is great except
when the concept is misunderstood and leads to unsafe implementation strategies. I
wanted to take the time to clear up some of this confusion in this article.
Let me start off by making a few bold statements:
Point 1: Developing metabolic efficiency does NOT require starvation training or fat
loading dietary protocols.
Point 2: Daily nutrition has a SIGNIFICANT impact on improving metabolic efficiency.
Point 3: Athletes MUST change their daily diets to have a more positive effect on
improving metabolic efficiency. Following an aerobic training plan alone will not cut it.
Point 4: It is the control of blood sugar and the insulin response that has a positive
impact during dietary manipulations. It is the increase in mitochondrial capacity and
mitochondrial enzymes that has a positive impact during aerobic training.
Here are a few reasons why the metabolic efficiency concept works:
1. It has helped many athletes achieve a healthier body weight and composition.
2. It has helped athletes lower their blood lipid profile (cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL).
3. It has improved insulin sensitivity (thereby reducing the risk of diabetes).
4. It has allowed athletes to get in tune with their biological hunger better thereby
managing weight and emotional eating much more efficiently.
5. Finally, it has allowed hundreds of athletes the ability to fuel with fewer calories during
training and racing which decreases their reliance on simple sugars.
In an attempt to try to keep this article somewhat short, I will only discuss a few of
fallacies that are circulating in the media and social outlets regarding the metabolic
efficiency concept.
Background
To fully understand the metabolic efficiency concept, it is first important to understand
some history and background information. The crossover concept describes the
relationship between exercise intensity and the use of carbohydrate and fat. It dates
back to the 1930s and has been widely accepted among exercise physiologists with
research to support it.
You know it as this: as exercise intensity increases, the body prefers to use
carbohydrate for energy. The basic message of the crossover concept is that the body
prefers to use carbohydrate at increasing intensities while the reliance on fat
significantly decreases.
The goal of improving metabolic efficiency is to extend that crossover (“push” it to the
right) as much as possible by teaching the body to use more of its fat stores at higher
intensities. This will allow more area under the curve where a greater percentage of fat
is being utilized at higher intensities. This will benefit any athlete in any sport of any
duration both in the short and long-term.
Aerobic Training
Prior aerobic training results in cellular adaptations that can increase fat oxidation and
decrease sympathetic nervous system activity. These adaptations can improve the
ability of the body to use all of the energy substrates, but overall, the adaptations will
favor more fat than carbohydrate oxidation.
With higher intensities of exercise, certain biochemical adaptations contribute to the
increased use of carbohydrate. These adaptations include contraction induced muscle
glycogenolysis (the breakdown of stored glycogen to glucose so the body can maintain
blood sugar and use glucose for fuel), increased recruitment of more skeletal muscle
with a greater proportion of fast twitch fibers and increased sympathetic nervous system
activity. Norepinephrine (similar to adrenaline which constricts the blood vessels and
increases blood pressure and blood glucose levels) may stimulate both liver glucose
production and lipolysis (the breakdown of fat stored in fat cells). Epinephrine
(adrenaline) signals the heart to pump harder, opens the airways in the lungs and
increases blood flow to the major muscles. This intensifies the contraction induced rate
of muscle glycogenolysis which leads to a higher lactate formation. The acidic effect of
lactate and hydrogen ion development inhibits free fatty acid transport by inhibiting a
key enzyme, carnitine palmitoyl transferase, which reduces fat uptake into the
mitochondria.
Training the body to oxidize fat at higher intensities will delay the accumulation of lactate
which means athletes will be able to maintain a higher power output or velocity longer.
Yes, aerobic training does help improve this process; however, the dietary manipulation
is even more powerful and more realistic for athletes to implement considering that you
may not have adequate time to put in the aerobic training or you may not be in the
proper training cycle.
I have proven with athletes that metabolic efficiency can be improved during a high
intensity training cycle. Bold statement I know. How is this done? By keeping the daily
nutrition plan in check and controlling blood sugar and insulin. It is really not too difficult
but for some reason, athletes and coaches believe that the only way to improve the
body’s ability to burn fat is only through aerobic training. That is not correct.
Nutrition Impact
In addition to lower intensity, aerobic training, metabolic efficiency can be further
manipulated through proper macronutrient partitioning and by following a nutrition
periodization program. Eating a highly refined carbohydrate diet leads to an increase in
carbohydrate oxidation. While the benefits of eating more carbohydrate may be justified
during the competition season, this type of eating can work to your disadvantage at
lower training load times (transition and early preparatory season) because it will not
allow the body to fully reap the benefits of increased fat oxidation.
Eating too many refined carbohydrates or eating a large amount of carbohydrates with a
lower protein and fat intake at one time leads to an increase in carbohydrate oxidation.
This decreases the body’s ability to oxidize fat due to a higher insulin response
experienced. As insulin increases, fat oxidation significantly decreases because insulin
inhibits lipolysis (the breakdown of fat) by activating protein phosphatase 2A which
dephosphorylates hormone sensitive lipase and inhibits its activity.
Therefore, to properly teach the body to use fats more efficiently, carbohydrate intake
should be held at moderate levels in the preparatory and transition training cycles and
depending on the athlete, sport and number of competitions, possibly even during the
competition season. Controlling blood sugar through proper food selection is the key
nutrition take-home message.
The goal is to balance macronutrient intake so proper metabolic changes can happen
and since a large number of athletes eat an unbalanced daily diet (too high of a refined
and processed carbohydrate load), it is important to bring them back into balance to
control blood sugar and insulin levels. Research proves that eating lean protein and
fiber together has a blood sugar stabilizing effect as well as being very successful in
weight loss strategies.
Back to Basics
As stated previously, the concept of metabolic efficiency centers on the control and
proper management of blood sugar. When blood sugar is high from eating an
imbalanced macronutrient diet, insulin levels will increase which will inhibit the
breakdown of fat. It is really as simple as controlling your blood sugar to teach your
body to burn more fat and preserve carbohydrates.
However, contrary to what many non-health professionals believe about the concept of
metabolic efficiency, starvation training sessions are NOT a piece of this puzzle. In my
professional opinion, these should not happen nor be encouraged.
In fact, when implementing a metabolic efficiency training nutrition program, an athlete
should not go hungry or starve themselves. It counteracts the entire purpose of the
concept which is to control blood sugar and the hormonal response of insulin to
encourage the body to burn fat instead of turning off the mechanism of burning fat.
Better blood sugar management is seen when correctly using the metabolic efficiency
concept and this leads to controlling hunger better without starving the body.
The concept of metabolic efficiency supports an athlete eating a small metabolically
efficient snack comprised of carbohydrate, protein and fat PRIOR to a workout so
proper fuel can be supplied to the working muscles and prevent being in a catabolic
state. Then, and only then, if the training session is less than 2-3 hours, is it satisfactory
to only consume water and electrolytes because physiologically, the body has enough
carbohydrate stores to fuel this amount of moderate intense exercise. After this amount
of time, some calories are needed.
Don’t believe the hype that you may read. You do not have to starve yourself, teach
your body how to handle bonking or follow a high fat diet to improve your body’s ability
to use fat at higher intensities. That is just plain ridiculous! You also do not need to
train your body to consume as many calories that it can stand during training. This is
not necessary and will only increase the risk of GI distress, increase the need for simple
sugars and may even predispose you to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.
Improving your body’s ability to burn fat at higher intensities requires a combination of
diet and training program manipulation. One alone does not cut it.
I hope that has cleared up some of the confusion surrounding this very exciting topic.
As a resource to the athletic community, I have formed a Facebook page for Metabolic
Efficiency so successes and challenges can be shared amongst athletes and coaches
implementing the concept of metabolic efficiency. The goal is for everyone to share
their strategies, ideas and metabolically efficient recipes so all athletes can benefit from
them. Here is the link:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Metabolic-Efficiency-Training/109603719102889?ref=ts
Feel free to contact me at coachbob@fuel4mance.com if you have questions or
comments. By the way, my qualifications include the following to show that I have some
background in this subject and am not just throwing around some fancy words in an
article:
-Undergraduate degree in Exercise and Sport Science
-Masters degree in Health and Exercise Science (emphasis on metabolism)
-Masters degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition
-Registered Dietitian
-Exercise Physiologist
-Board Certified Specialist in Sport Dietetics
-Past Director of Nutrition, University of Florida
-Past Sport Dietitian, US Olympic Committee
-2008 Team USA Olympic Sport Dietitian
-2008 Olympic Triathlon Team Sport Dietitian and Exercise Physiologist
-Published author
-Nationally recognized expert in sports nutrition