TRIATHLETE WEIGHT DEBATE
Interesting article on weight management by Macca (LINK AND TEXT BELOW). What's your opinion ?
When it comes to Ironman, lighter is not necessarily better.
I’d say 99 percent of people I talk to in this sport believe weight’s relationship to performance is as simple as “less is better.” This is a half-truth—the weight puzzle is much more complex. There has never been a bigger topic of discussion within my team of advisers.
On my journey through this sport, I have found that maintaining different weights at certain times within my training cycles or season is just as important as the actual training cycle itself. ?
The most important thing I have learned about weight management is that drastic changes can wreak havoc on the body. Endurance athletes like to exist on the “lower than healthy” end of the scale because for a period of time, this gives you the biggest bang for your buck. This is absolutely true, but you have to pay for that somewhere—usually with sickness, injury or burnout. As much as the body doesn’t enjoy being overweight, the same can be said about being underweight.
I came through the Australian system of triathlon under the guidance of legendary coach Brett Sutton. In his opinion, lean was too fat, skinny wasn’t skinny enough and, put simply, the leanest you could get while maintaining the workload was optimal. For many of us who passed through this system in the ’90s, the proof was in the pudding, with the success of the athletes he was churning out. He still has incredible success with female athletes in particular, and weight was something that he drilled into us constantly. During this time, I have to admit, I found that the leaner I got, the faster I went. It just seemed so simple. I was young, and my natural speed, flexibility and youth fed this lighter body. In a race that is short, dynamic and fast like Olympic-distance racing, it worked.
As my ambitions shifted to longer racing, taking this simplistic view just didn’t give me the knockout punch it did in my younger days. It was baffling! When a system works and then suddenly doesn’t work as well, you need to reassess and change.
It was long-course racing that showed me that the science of weight management—and the entire topic of weight—did not need to be focused solely on getting skinny. In the summer of 2003, my strength and conditioning coach suggested that I was too lean for my body size to pack a punch in long-course racing. “You need to carry fuel and deliver power after four hours of exercise,” he said. “How do you intend to do that effectively on an empty tank?”
If you look back at my seasons between 2002 and 2005, I was flawless. I won multiple Ironmans per year, short-course races and pretty much everything on the racing calendar—but come Kona, my competitors would have the last laugh as the wheels started to fall off. The great Mark Allen, a mentor and idol of mine, told me in the winter of 2005, “Macca, you need to be fat in July to win in Kona. You’re race-ready all year! That approach does not win Hawaii or support athletic longevity.”
This statement led me to study weight from a different perspective. I had to understand how to gain weight healthily, and how to use weight loss as a tool so that I was at a perfect race weight come Ironman time.
I am naturally a “bigger” athlete compared to most other professionals. Bigger athletes have more weight to gain and lose, and the adaptation times at these weights are much longer. I think that, of everything we learned from Coach Sutton, this was the most important. His belief that the lower muscle mass of a woman—and the way they carry body fat—made weight control a more important puzzle to success in female racing. The larger athlete relied more heavily on strength and power to deliver results, and if you lost too much of that, through rapid weight loss or incorrect adaptation times to new weights, you either broke down, got sick or lost your natural strengths.
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With the shift to long-distance racing, my team and I focused heavily on two key weight variables: First, we needed to find my optimal race weight, which was a difficult process of trial and error. We realized my old ITU racing weight of 165 pounds was simply too lean for me to deliver the marathon I needed in Kona. I failed miserably in Kona in 2004. I had previously been successful in my sub-eight-hour race in Roth with a 2:40 marathon. I was quite shocked that I had run so fast weighing 169 pounds, and my instant reaction was to get down to my perceived optimal race weight, which I thought was 165 pounds for Kona. By race day, I was hollow and weak.
In my off-season I would always try to add about 7 percent to my optimal racing weight. We believed that carrying weight was actually healthy, and that the body needed a rest from the aggressive “fighting” weight. We decided in the summer of 2005 to add about 8 percent body weight and have a long off-season, a bit like a hibernating bear. Boxers have been doing this for years. Train heavy and build strength, add speed as you begin to drop the weight. I started the training season at 182 pounds, the heaviest I had ever been in my athletic life. We focused on low-heart-rate, high-volume work, and spent a lot of time on strength-specific workouts to adapt to a heavier frame. My body liked the extra weight, my recovery was much faster, and it was a lot easier to deliver the strength-specific workouts in the early season.
We found instant success. I won Ironman Australia for the fifth time with my fastest run on the course (2:44:14) and again ran a 2:41 in Germany to win my third Challenge Roth under the eight-hour mark. We had added nearly 8 pounds to my racing weight. I was now racing Ironmans at 171 pounds. I posted my first ever performance in Hawaii at the end of the year, running the fastest marathon of the day with a 2:47. We’d started to understand the weight puzzle and how gaining and losing weight effectively could be my biggest asset. More importantly, I was able to solidify in my own head that my Ironman racing weight was higher than I had imagined.
What I have learned and hope you can benefit from:
Skinny does not always mean faster. We all have an optimal race weight, and we all have to find that. You can feel it, and you know when you are there. Be attentive to your training and record things when you’re feeling good. Do not get caught up in the mind-set that lighter is always better.
Think positively about your weight, no matter how heavy you are, after a break or prior to a big block of work. All that extra weight will protect you early in your training and build a stronger body. Keep your heart rate low and focus on strength work in the beginning of your training phase to capitalize on this. Endurance will come next, and speed is the final piece as you get closer to your racing weight.
To bring your weight down, do as much through fueling as you do through training tweaks. Do not rush this. Your body prefers a slow reduction in weight, and I can assure you that if you do it properly you will hold your form for a much longer time. Rapid weight loss, and lack of adaption time, is costly.
You should hit your race weight about three weeks prior to race day. Once you are at race weight, you have a window of time for feeling excellent—ride out a few events at this weight or hammer out a big long-course performance.
Chris “Macca” McCormack has more than 200 race wins to his credit and is widely considered one of the best athletes the sport has ever seen. His 2013 season will include another Kona bid.
Comments
Now that I'm back to 170 or so I don't have the lightheadedness, dizziness, blood pressure and other issues I ran into last year. Between now and race day in April I will certainly drop a few more pounds but I will do everything in my power to keep my weight above 165.
Thanks for posting Juan. I think this is something many of us struggle with. First, many of us (including myself) have this number in our head and that is our racing weight. However, how do we know that is the ideal weight? Trial and error I guess. Personally I raced at the lowest weight I have ever raced at last year for IM Canada. I didn't diet to lose weight, but always watch what I eat. Gradually weight just kept coming and at the end I raced at 142 lbs. At the start of training I was around 155lbs. I don't have many races to compare to when racing at this weight, but I did feel better than when racing somewhere in mid 150's. A good point that is made is adding 7-8% of body weight at the start of training. Although this makes sense, I have a hard time doing that. Both physically and mentally it is difficulty to add 10 lbs and be comfortable. I am currently around 145 lbs, so a few pounds over what I think is ideal racing weight for me (but who knows, maybe 145 is better), and sort of hoover around that weight all year round.
I was a mid-distance runner in college.... and a HEAVY/SHORT one at that. Always have a frame
I was always the heaviest when we transitioned from Track to Xcountry. At 5'9" and 155lbs in college that was excessive for Xcountry.
But I have found in Long Course Triathlon, my body composition feels really good at 155 to 160.
Instead of telling us what he weighed at different times of the year, I would have found his article more informative if he would have identified his % body fat (measured by a solid tool like a BodPod) at those different times.
When I get there (if?), I will see how I feel about more weight loss.
Fitzgerald makes the point that each person's racing weight needs to be determined by trial and error — ie, at what weight is your athletic performance optimised.
I hope Tim Cronk posts here to explain how he 'knows' what his racing weight is — noting that he follows the same strategy as Macca in that he is at his race weight only for the period just before his race.
Like everything, it's a range, and I think we can all agree that Pros and AG'ers have completely different ranges and/or expectations.
I think I understood from the article that Macca's starting reference point for race weight was ITU/Short Course racing. Now go find some pics of guys like this and it's clear they are very, very lean. Like pro cyclist skinny but without quite the T-rex, 12yo girl arms that these guys often have.
If you take this as his starting point and then scale upwards towards the weights that he references, and post some race day pics, I suppose, I think we can agree that his "very lean" is probably very different from our "very lean," and certainly very, very difficult for AG'ers to achieve.
At the same time, stand at the finish line of an IM and you'll see that body composition / applying some attention to losing fat is clearly a factor in the success of the folks finishing in the speedy hours of the day. You'll see a direct relationship between time on the clock and % body fat, with a few outliers in the form of former single sport stars who can get away with a little body comp slack because their swimming technique, for example, buys them 10-15' against the competition on the run.
But when Macca says to race a long course "a little heavy," think he's definition of heavy is different from an AG'ers. Hopefully people aren't headed to Hometown Buffet tonight because "Macca said."
1. Its Individual, Individual, Individual....
2. Lighter is Better ... Until its Not.... How much is too much ? see #1
3. Being at optimal race weight year round = Not good.
4. Staying within a reasonable range year round and moving to race weight slowly is good.... Whats the range? see #1
5. How do we know whats best for the individual? No magic formula . Trial and error within some basic guidelines... I think some of the basic guidlines in the article of staying within 7-8% of our perceived race weight year round and taking several months to then achieve our perceived race weight target about 1 month out from A race , would be some good places to start.
6. For most its probably much lower than we think it is , will take several seasons to get there healthy , but like working your FTP we should just focus on the process and let it happen.
7. Remember nothing taste's as good as skinny feels! (well almost , at least in season its true)
@Peter.... What I think my optimum race weight is , has been determined from how I feel and how I race at various weights overtime.... Several years.... Not just one season.... True Optimum Race Weight is a balancing act within 1-2 pounds for me (consider Macca was talking ranges of 5-6lbs and he is much larger)... I have had the absolute best races of my life ( 4-KQ's) at my perceived optimum race weight and I have also had the worst races of my life at those weights (Coz DNF and KONA 2014).... I will say like Macca said you'll know when you are there and for me it occurs about 4-5 weeks out from IM , I start having these long run sessions that feel almost like I'm floating effortlessly , that usually coincides with my approach to the weight I will race at... I feel really good here but it takes way too much discipline to remain there , not to mention probably unhealthy longterm .
For the record my weight has fluctuated between a low of 117 in season to 128 off season a full 10% , I'd rather it didnt but I do like to eat just like the next guy and training makes me hungry.... It does take discipline to reach my target race weight of 120 for an IM.... I would love to race a HM or M at that weight but just cant seem to make it a priority like I can when I'm getting ready for an IM.
At my body fat % it's not even a question... I need to lose a bit of weight. How much, I don't know. Might never know, but if I can get within 10lbs of some ideal range for my height I'm probably good. It's like when people ask me how far I hit my 5 iron. If I knew exactly how far I hit ANY of my clubs, I wouldn't be sitting in an office for a living.