Racing Weight Quotes

“prioritizing volume within your physical and psychological tolerance, keeping the intensity low most of the time yet going really hard when the time is right, and carving out a modest amount of time for strength training.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“chapters—increasing diet quality, managing appetite, balancing the energy sources, monitoring performance, and timing nutrient intake—”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“TAKE A CREATINE SUPPLEMENT. Creatine phosphate is a fuel that the muscles rely on for maximum-intensity efforts such as sprinting 100 yards. Certain precursors of creatine phosphate, such as creatine monohydrate, are taken as supplements to increase creatine phosphate stores in the muscles. Research has shown that creatine supplementation enhances gains in muscle strength, size, and power resulting from resistance training, as well as performance in repeated high-intensity intervals. While creatine is extremely popular among strength athletes and recreational weight lifters, few endurance athletes use it. Yet it is likely to be helpful to those athletes who are seeking greater muscle strength and power.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“WHEN THE MUSCLES BURN MORE CARBOHYDRATE DURING A WORKOUT, THEY TEND TO BURN MORE FAT AFTER THE WORKOUT.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“The six steps that the highest-performing athletes most often take to attain their racing weight are by definition the most effective weight-management methods for endurance athletes because the objective of weight management in endurance sports is better performance”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Beets are a flavorful, versatile vegetable with a very high concentration of a class of antioxidants known as betalains. Research has shown that betalains have uniquely powerful anti-inflammatory properties, so they help athletes with postworkout recovery.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“FASTING WORKOUTS. A fasting workout is a long, moderate-intensity workout undertaken in a fasting state—that is, without a meal beforehand and without carbohydrate consumption on the bike. When you deprive your muscles of carbohydrate in a long workout, they burn a lot more fat. Such workouts also boost general fat-burning capacity. I suggest that you perform one fasting workout per week during a quick start.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“The most effective way to prevent off-season weight gain from getting out of hand is to set a specific weight-gain limit. I suggest you try to limit your off-season weight gain to no more than 8 percent of your optimal performance weight.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“you don’t want to change your training for the sake of shedding more fat without regard for how the changes will affect your performance. You should train for performance and trust that your body will move toward racing weight as your fitness moves toward peak level.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“For many, the road to becoming an endurance athlete began with a diet. Maybe this is your story. The guy who once had regularly ordered the bacon burger was suddenly rolling out special requests at a restaurant—keep the toast dry, hold the dressing, boil the egg, steam the vegetables. For most successful athletes, somewhere along the way a new lifestyle emerged and the focus shifted from dieting to performance. Performance”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“The most successful football linebackers are massive because their job is either to be immovable (offensive linemen) or to move the immovable (defensive linemen). Tennis players typically have average builds because their sport requires a combination of qualities—quickness, power, leverage, balance, and stamina—that favors no extremes of size or shape. Endurance sports, of course, tend to favor two related characteristics: low body weight and lean body composition (or a low body-fat level). This is the case because endurance racing demands the ability to move economically so that a high work rate (or speed) can be sustained for a long time and a low body weight and lean body composition contribute to movement efficiency.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Lack of time is the most commonly cited excuse for not exercising. But surveys suggest that those who exercise regularly are just as busy with their jobs, families, and other responsibilities as those who don’t work out. So the time excuse is just that: an excuse. We’re all pressed for time, yet we all have time for our highest priorities. If exercise is important to you, you will find the time to do it. Consider the case of David Morken, an age-group triathlete whom”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“While it pays to be light and lean in all endurance sports, there is thankfully no single, ideal body type for any specific endurance sport. The variety you see in the physiques of world-class cyclists, runners, and other endurance athletes can be surprising.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“How does lifting weights enhance running economy and endurance? Other studies have shown that it works by increasing the stiffness of the leg when the foot hits the ground (Dumke et al. 2010). The legs function as springs during running. Physics teaches us that a stiffer spring loses less energy when it lands and bounces higher. Your legs will do the same thing if you strengthen them in the gym.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“The benefits of weight lifting on running performance were demonstrated in a 2008 study by Norwegian researchers (Støren et al. 2008). Seventeen well-trained runners were divided into two groups. Members of one group continued with their normal run training, while members of the other group added to their routine three weekly strength sessions consisting of four, four-repetition sets of half-squats using their four-repetition maximal load (i.e., the heaviest weight they could lift four times). After eight weeks, members of the strength group exhibited not only the expected gains in maximal strength and rate of force development, but also significant improvements in running economy (5 percent) and in time to exhaustion at maximal aerobic running speed (21.3 percent). The control group showed no improvement in any of the measured parameters.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Concentrating your protein intake in the latter part of the day will maximize muscle regeneration in the evening and through the night.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Body weight and body-fat percentage have no meaning in isolation for endurance athletes. These variables have meaning only in relation to performance. Weighing 145 pounds is not better than weighing 155 pounds unless you perform better at the lighter weight. A body-fat percentage of 12 is better than a body-fat percentage of 13 only if you’re faster at 12 percent.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Even as low-carb diets were validated as a means to lose weight, however, their theoretical underpinnings were dismantled by other research. Careful studies revealed that the weight loss that resulted from low-carb diets had little to do with ketones, insulin, and cravings. The real reason people lost weight on the Atkins diet and other low-carb diets was that they ate fewer calories. Scientists were able to show that when calories were held equal, low-carb and low-fat diets yielded equal amounts of weight loss.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Remember, anything you do as an athlete that helps you perform better is likely to make you leaner as well; including enough carbohydrates in your diet is another example of this principle.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Anticarb sentiment in the endurance sports community is an ideological spillover from the weight-loss diet culture.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“the Harvard School of Public Health study found that yogurt attenuated long-term weight gain better than any other food, including fruits and vegetables.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Now it is believed that phytonutrients are actually weak toxins that stimulate the body’s endogenous antioxidants through a stress reaction, much as other positive stressors such as exercise strengthen various systems of the body. In any case, we know that men and women who consume high levels of fruits exhibit higher antioxidant capacities, are less prone to chronic diseases, and live longer.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“The problem for these individuals was that, while they did lose a significant amount of weight through dietary restriction, this very restriction seemed to prevent them from gaining any power through sprint interval training. More specifically, Lunn suggested, inadequate protein intake kept their muscles from adapting to the stress imposed by the sprints.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“The common methods of performance weight management work—they improve performance—and are therefore more or less required for sustained success in endurance sports. Dieting, in contrast, tends to sabotage performance, making sustained competitive success difficult or impossible.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“This great attitude is one that every endurance athlete should emulate. The only way to determine your optimal racing weight is to discover it through experience, and the only way to attain your optimal racing weight is to focus on performance. If you eat and train for maximum performance, you will ultimately achieve your best performance, and your weight and body-fat percentage on that day will define your optimal racing weight. In the meantime, be patient and enjoy the mental challenge of trying to figure it all out.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Where do such numbers come from? I’ll tell you where they don’t come from: They don’t come from the body-weight tables and formulas created by health experts. These tables and formulas, which include height-weight charts used by life insurance companies and body-mass index guidelines used widely by doctors, are far too general to help individual men and women determine an ideal body weight.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“You cannot change your height, the width of your hips, the length of your feet, or any of several other anthropometric variables affecting endurance performance that I have discussed in this chapter. You can’t change your genetic potential for leanness, either. But you can reduce your body-fat percentage (and thereby adjust your weight) to the level that is optimal for performance in your chosen endurance sport given your unchangeable genetic constraints.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Body weight was found to have a statistically moderate effect on total race time, while body-fat percentage had a large effect on total race time and a moderate effect (bordering on large) on swim, bike, and run splits. Both body weight and body-fat percentage were more strongly correlated with split times and total race time than are training variables such as average weekly training time.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Each sport favors a particular body type. The principle of “form follows function” determines the particular physique that tends to perform best in a given sport or in a given position or role within a sport.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“The practice of nutrient timing, or consuming the right nutrients at the right times throughout the day, will enable you to partition your energy more effectively and achieve your racing weight.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition