Innovative diet keeps Armstrong lean and powerful
Nature plays a cruel joke on professional cyclists. Though they spend up to 30 hours a week on their bikes, they still have to watch their weight to be successful at the Tour de France. After developing new nutrition techniques, Lance Armstrong and I have been able to optimize his race weight without sacrificing performance.
The Stakes: Two pounds can mean the difference between raising your arms in victory and losing 30 seconds on a mountain summit finish. When you’re pedaling up a mountain pass, you’re propelling your bicycle upward, against gravity, as well as forward. Since your legs have a finite amount of power, the amount of weight they have to push uphill makes a big difference.
In cycling, we use a measure called power-to-weight-ratio to compare the climbing strength of one rider against another. Lance’s chief rival, Jan Ullrich, can generate more power, in watts, than Lance can because he is significantly bigger than Lance. However, when you divide their sustainable power outputs by their respective weights, you see that Lance can produce more power, per pound of body weight, than Ullrich can.
To put this in perspective, consider Lance a new Subaru WRX STI and Ullrich an Audi A8. The Audi has more horsepower (335), but that horsepower has to pull a bigger mass (4,300 pounds). The Subaru has a little less horsepower (300), but since it has to move less weight (3,300 pounds), it’s much more nimble and can accelerate like a bullet.
The Problem: A cyclist’s life revolves around food, and he is always hungry. It takes a lot of calories to supply the energy needed for training rides that sometimes last upward of six hours, and no one blames him for wanting to put his feet up with a massive bowl of pasta once he’s done. Yet, at the top level of the sport, all that training could be for naught if you get to the race 5 pounds heavier than your competition.
To make positive adaptations to training, your body needs a slight surplus of energy. To lose weight, you need a slight energy deficit. Trying to lose significant amounts of weight while training hard can do more harm than good because it robs the body of its ability to recover, which in turn reduces the positive impact of workouts.
We have seen examples of this from Jan Ullrich. Earlier in his career, he would gain more than 20 pounds during the winter, slim down slightly in the spring, then lose the final dozen pounds within a month before the start of the Tour de France. The problem, however, was his power output suffered from the combination of caloric restriction and increased training. He arrived at the Tour de France lean and mean, but without the power to challenge Lance in the mountains.
The Plan: No professional cyclists, not even Lance, stay at their Tour de France weight all year. They aim to be as light and as powerful as possible for three weeks in July, and after that they move back up to a healthier and more sustainable weight. What Lance and I wanted to avoid, however, was the big weight fluctuation (18-26 pounds) typical of pro cyclists. I wanted his training efforts to improve his power output and make his aerobic engine stronger. Using training hours to merely burn calories and lose weight is a waste of valuable time.
I looked at the ways Lance’s training changed during the year, and then designed a nutrition program that matched the calorie, nutrient, and training demands of each segment of the year. The results were dramatic. Between 2002 and 2005, his weight has fluctuated only about 9 pounds up and down, yet he has not had to go to the extremes of weighing his food or depriving himself of meals or snacks. We have not had to spend time thinking about weight loss, either. That has provided more time to concentrate on performance.
The plan is relatively simple, and works for any active individual. During the fall and winter, the intensity and weekly duration of Lance’s training are relatively low. He is exercising, but it’s mostly moderate-intensity aerobic conditioning. To fuel this level of training, he doesn’t need as many calories as he does at the height of the racing season.
Not only does he consume less food during this period, he also alters the nutrient balance. During the height of the season, more than 70 percent of his calories may come from carbohydrates because he needs the fast-burning fuel to power his aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. During the fall and winter, we increase the percentage of protein in his nutrition program and reduce the carbohydrate contribution to 60 percent to 65 percent. This may seem minor, but when it’s combined with the overall caloric reduction, the two make a big difference in calories and body weight.
As his training intensity and volume increase through the spring, we increase his caloric intake and the percentage of calories coming from carbohydrate. The aerobic engine can burn a mixture of carbohydrate, protein, and fat, but the anaerobic system that kicks in to contribute additional energy for high-intensity efforts burns only carbohydrate.
My first priority is to make sure Lance has the fuel and nutrients he needs to perform. I look at the demands of his training and lifestyle and use that information to design his nutrition program. It’s an idea with a lot of potential. You’d be shocked to discover how much more you can accomplish when you don’t have to spend time thinking about body weight.