Ben Parsons & Clint Muhlfield at the Breck Epic 2010
Author: Ben Parsons – Team Hammer Nutrition/Sportsman Ski Haus
The Breck Epic consisted of 251 miles, 42,000’ of climbing over six days, and the majority of it was trail. Trail that often made you howl with joy, and trail that sometimes left you feeling like a bag of bones hurled off the face of the Eiger. Adding to the challenge, Breckenridge sits at 9500’, so we routinely raced between 10,000’ and 12,000’ so oxygen was an asset as rare and valuable as beer in the desert. As a last minute decision, we decided to race the Open Men’s Duo instead of solo, hearing there was a super stacked field and wanting to take a shot at a podium. We were also intrigued at the challenge of completing over twenty hours of racing with a teammate. Continue Reading »
Your workout or race can go down the drain fast if you follow the “calories out, calories in” protocol that many “experts” recommend. Athletes who attempt to replace all the calories they lose will end up with bloating, nausea, vomiting, and/or diarrhea . . . definitely unpleasant and performance-inhibiting scenarios.
If you want to achieve your best performance, replenish calories in “body cooperative” amounts, allowing your fat stores to make up the difference, which they will easily do. While 240-280 calorie per hour is a theoretical hourly maximum based on the liver converting 1 gram of carbohydrates (4 calories) per minute into glycogen, almost all athletes report success with far lower hourly caloric intake. Continue Reading »
Hammer Nutrition is proud to sponsor world-class rower Ursula Grobler who holds a world record and has an excellent opportunity to win an Olympic gold medal in 2012. We caught up with Ursula recently, just one month of training away from competing in the Senior World Championship Trials, as she pursues a dream that reaches all the way to Olympic Gold. Continue Reading »
Author: Steve Born
Athletes tend to focus on training and neglect recovery, specifically the critical step of refueling as soon as possible after each workout. We tend to think that a hard workout deserves a nice reward. Do you usually first go for a shower or relaxation after a hard workout? Are beer and pretzels your favored post–workout snack? If so, remember that a hard workout has left your body in a state of utter depletion and physiological vulnerability. However, it’s also in a state of prime receptivity, ready to absorb nutrients. Taking those few extra minutes to properly refuel is one of the most important things that you can do to improve your race day results. In fact, properly refueling your body immediately after your training session is as important as anything you did in the actual workout. When you give your body what it needs as soon as possible after exercise, it will respond wonderfully in the following ways: Continue Reading »
Stevie Cullinan, of the Hammer sponsored Team Waste Management, races during the Redlands Classic. Photo - Brian Smith
Author: Jim Bruskewitz
Gains in strength, power and endurance are adaptations to stress (training). If the stress remains constant, there is no need for further adaptation and improvements are followed by a performance plateau and eventually an involution or decline in performance. Continue Reading »
Author: Steve Born
When exercise goes beyond two hours, we generally recommend that athletes use a “carb + protein” fuel (Sustained Energy or Perpetuem), either as their sole fuel from beginning to end, or as their primary fuel (roughly 2/3 – 3/4 of the time). The reason for this recommendation is that once you hit that second hour and beyond, a small percentage (roughly 5–15%) of their energy requirements will be fulfilled from protein. If you don’t provide some in the fuel mix, at least part of the time, your body has to cannibalize the lean muscle tissue to obtain the amino acids it needs to fulfill that small percentage of its energy requirements. Continue Reading »
Author: Jim Bruskewitz
If you’ve discovered training with electromuscular stimulation (EMS), you’ve no doubt found that you can cut your recovery time down significantly and increase the training load that you can absorb. We all wish we could recover more quickly, fit in more high quality training, and enjoy the increased fitness that results. Athletes find that the Globus Muscle Stimulator active recovery program is an easy and effective start to using EMS to improve their performance. Once the unit is charged, the pads placed, and the program started, the Globus Muscle Stimulator does the rest. It is programmed to flush the muscle beds of the metabolites that remain after training and make room for a fresh supple of oxygen rich, nutrient laden blood. Fitting the active recovery program sessions into a typical training week is easy. Since this program is used to enhance recovery from training, it can be used after any training session with positive results. Since the active recovery program has so much utility, it is generally the most used program. Continue Reading »
Owen Gue stays focused heading into a corner. Photo - Angela Nock
Author: Jim Bruskewitz
I speak with many athletes using E-stim (Electro Muscular Stimulation = EMS). We discuss training with the Globus EMS units and the conversations are just like conversations I have with athletes for whom I write training plans. It isn’t easy to feel as though you’ve fit all the pieces together to produce a plan that yields optimal results. One of the challenges of designing a training plan that does or does not include EMS training is that we are capable on any given day of enduring a training load that is larger than one we can absorb and recover from in time to do it again quickly. What makes it all the more challenging is that we don’t know if we have stepped over the line of doing more than we can absorb until later-a day or two removed from a workout or collection of workouts. Everything may seem to be clicking along in a way that bodes well for a great performance only to find that we “get off track” and “lose our edge”. Of course experience with getting off track teaches us what we shouldn’t have done and that’s valuable information. It doesn’t do much for the frustration we feel when our good intentions leave us bent over to pick up the pieces instead of rolling smoothly toward achieving our goals. Continue Reading »
No research has conclusively arrived at an recommended daily intake for fluids, but about 0.5 – 0.6 fluid ounces per pound of body weight makes a more accurate standard than the “eight glasses a day” commonly recommended for everyone. Multiplying your body weight in pounds by .5 to .6 will give you the figure, in fluid ounces, that you should aim for daily to maintain regular daily hydration needs (that is, in addition to your exercise-induced needs).
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