- Dr Dan Plews and Ed Maunder

A review of the review by David M. Shaw et al. Sports Medicine 50(4): 641-656, 2020

In this blog, we are going to summarize a recently published review by former AUT PhD student Dave Shaw on the evidence for and against exogenous ketone ingestion (11), as well as some of our own personal experiences. Dave’s PhD included studies on both the ingestion of exogenous ketones in a sports drink and longer-term adaptation to a very low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet (10, 12), with one of the main purposes of this review being to highlight the stark differences between these two interventions. In this blog however, we are going to focus on studies of exogenous ketone supplementation for endurance performance. Ed (PhD student & Endure IQ LDT102 guest instructor) was fortunate enough to be part of the team of authors writing the review.

Exogenous ketones 

A point here to note is that when we discuss exogenous ketones, we are not...

In Endure IQ LDT102: Training Program Fundamentals for Long Distance Triathlon, we explore the best training methods used by long-distance triathletes that facilitate optimal performance, and in LDT103: Heat and Long Distance Triathlon, we focus on something all long-distance triathletes seeking to cross the finish line at the World Championships will encounter, heat. In this blog, we are going to touch the surface of both of these crucial topics by describing a case study that we published this year on a three-week heat stress training camp in Kona, Hawaii undertaken by two elite Ironman triathletes (10). This case study gives strong practical insight into how a very successful three-week block of training can be performed by two elite Ironman triathletes, and the additional considerations that are encountered when temperatures rise.

 Heat stress training camps: What are they? Why do endurance athletes do them?

The first things to ask, then, are what exactly is a...

-Dr Dan Plews

By now, I hope all of our current and past LDT101 course enrolees are convinced of how important it is to maximise your capacity to make use of your effectively unlimited fat energy stores during long distance triathlon. As Prof. Grant nicely puts it during the course introduction in Endure IQ LDT101: The Practical Application of Low Carbohydrate Performance for Long Distance Triathlon, “the devil is in the detail!”.  In this blog post, I am going to describe specific training situations in which using a small “carbohydrate booster” might be a useful tool in getting the best adaptive bang for your buck.

Background

As we have discussed previously, one of the main anxieties endurance athletes have before making the move to LCHF, is the possibility of suffering a loss of high-intensity performance. The strategy we set out in LDT101 should go some way to alleviating these anxieties but it is no secret that being able to...

If any of you have listened to Dan’s chat with Triathlon Taren on his podcast recently, you would have heard him talk about the importance of getting your zone 2 intensity right and ensuring that level 2 endurance training is at the correct physiological stress, i.e. below the first ventilatory (or aerobic) threshold. The reasons that this is so important are both from an adaptation perspective (i.e. ensuring we are making the correct physiological adaptations), but also from an overall physiological stress, which effects our ability to train consistently well. This blog discusses why ensuring that your level 2 training is actually at level 2 could be the key to unlocking your ability to train consistently as you pursue your Long Distance Triathlon goals.

Indeed, one of the most important factors impacting the success of training for long-distance triathlon is intensity distribution and discipline, concepts we will cover in great detail in Endure IQ LDT102: Training...

- Professor Grant Schofield and Dr Daniel Plews 

We’ve watched  the battleground in diet shift recently from debates around saturated fat, and eating more healthy whole grains, to a largely vegan agenda. The ideology of the Garden of Eden diet, is close to the vegan ideals driven primarily through the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and touted as a recruitment strategy (or “health ministry”). Recently, it's gone to greater levels. The Netflix doco “Game Changers” has seen widespread discussion around this topic, and we’ve been fielding a lot of questions around this of late. This blog is our attempt to sum up our thoughts.

We’ve listed the pros, neutrals, and cons of adopting such a diet for general health and when in the context of sports performance. There are many ways that you can approach this topic, from health, sustainability, moral and personal perspectives to a sports performance perspective. We'll be tackling a few...

Given that we have put together an extensive course on how low carbohydrate diets optimise performance in long-distance triathlon at Endure IQ, we’re sure that title got your attention!

Throughout our Endure IQ LDT 101 online course, we outline the reasons why adopting a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet to become ‘fat adapted’ may help us to perform at our best in an Ironman triathlon. This dietary approach drives adaptations that allow us to tap in to our effectively unlimited fat energy stores at a much higher rate than ingesting a traditional mixed diet would, in order to support energy expenditure during exercise.

This effectively reduces the energetic burden placed on our body’s finite endogenous carbohydrate fuel stores, which become depleted to very low concentrations after long-duration vigorous exercise, a phenomenon linked to the dreaded bonk. However, when talking about fat-adaptation, we receive a lot of questions about whether we should be in...

As we discussed in part one of this blog, our recently published study led by my PhD student Ed Maunder (5) identified that moderate environmental heat stress of 35°C and 60 % relative humidity stimulates our carbohydrate use during cycling, but probably only at high intensities rather than the more moderate Wattages we cycle at most of the time during an Ironman triathlon. Practically, this might mean that we are cautious to limit high intensity spikes during the World Championships in Kona where we face the dual threats of bonking, and high heat, given that this could theoretically spin our carbohydrate use to a much greater extent than at an Ironman taking place at a lower temperature.

The second part of that same study sought to examine these effects under both more extreme, and less extreme environmental heat stress, given the wide-ranging conditions we encounter on the Ironman circuit, at different events and also within the same event. For example, it’s well known...

As all long-distance triathletes will know, a hot topic and key consideration when fine-tuning your preparation for the Ironman World Championships in Kona is heat. The effect of the high environmental temperatures encountered at The Big Dance on our physiology, psychology, and performance is so pronounced that we are actually putting together an entire course dedicated to it – LDT103, for which enrolments will open in May 2020.

This blog will summarize a recently published study conducted at AUT by my PhD student Ed Maunder (5), which focused on how acute heat stress impacts substrate metabolism during endurance exercise (i.e. fat vs carbohydrate use). We like to talk about this topic a lot and the implications of this study nicely link back to the important principles we outlined in our online course Endure IQ LDT101: The Practical Application of Low Carbohydrate Performance for Long Distance Triathlon. It’s undeniable that, reserving our limited carbohydrate...

With the race season coming to a close, and the Ironman World Championships just around the corner, many athletes will be squeezing in as many key sessions as possible during this critical training period. But as we sit on a knife’s edge between training “too much” and “too little”, it’s useful to have some objective measurement to ensure we’re maximizing the adaptation from every training session we undertake.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to have contributed to a heart rate variability guided training study with lead author Alejandro Javaloyes (1). The study compared an eight-week cycling training programme prescribed according to either pre-defined block periodization (BP) or guided using heart rate variability (HRV). That is, subjects completed either a mixed programme set out in advance or a programme adjusted on a day-to-day basis via daily heart rate variability measurements using the smartphone application ‘HRV4Training...