- Health, Fitness & Weight Loss
- Sport Specific Performance
- Nutrition
- Adapting Recipes
- Avoiding the Runs while Running
- Breakfast Boycotters Beware!
- Dentist Dollars
- Don't De-Tox, De-Junk!
- Eat Well to Stay Healthy this Winter
- Food Additives
- Get Grainwise
- Healthy Eating - It's a Balancing Act!
- Healthy from the Inside Out
- How Alcohol can Contribute to your Weight
- How Food Choices can Influence your Sleep
- How Iron Deficiency Impairs Performance
- Is Sugar the New Fat?
- Improving your Power to Weight Ratio
- Portion Patrol and Control
- Sports Drinks - Do they Work?
- Supermarket Shopping Survival
- Sustainable Eating Practices
- Ten Top Tips when Out Eating
- Vitamin D - The Sunshine Vitamin
- Will Vitamin Supplements Keep the Bugs at Bay?
- Training with Specific Conditions
- References
Improving your Power to Weight Ratio
Improving your Power to Weight Ratio - the Kit or the Kilos?
When I was out for dinner the other night a friend mentioned he had just brought some flash new wheels for his road bike. When I asked why, his response was “they’re lighter and will make me go faster”. I had to point out the irony as he finished off his dessert, “Do you think avoiding the ice cream could do that too?”
Going faster whether on a bike or in a boat, is largely influenced by your power to weight ratio: your power output (in watts) divided by your body weight (in kgs). If you can reduce your weight by reducing your fat mass (and your power output stays the same) your ratio goes up, and so you go faster.
There is no doubt that having good equipment is important, in fact it may even be the difference between winning and coming second. But for most recreational athletes, fine tuning the engine (that’s you), is what will make the most difference. With this in mind I was happy to point out to my friend that the only spare tyre on his bike should be the one underneath the seat and not the one around his middle.
Losing weight while training presents a fine balance where you have to create an energy deficit to lose weight but still provide your body with enough energy to train on. If you get it wrong, you will feel tired and won’t be able to maximise the benefits of your training. So here are my three top tips on how to lose the extra couple of kilos:
1. Don’t ‘go on a diet’. Diet is simply the word DIE with a cross at the end! Expect to lose around 300-500gm per week and still train hard.
2. Be Fuel Efficient. The amount of extra calories you require for recreational exercise isn’t actually that much so make sure you choose foods that have the ‘filling-up’ factor. These include oaty cereals, dense whole-grain breads, yoghurts, smoothies, fruit etc.
3. Watch your portions. For many people, particularly athletes, it is often not what how much
It’s futile to spend thousands of dollars adding all the latest bells and whistles to your machine, when it’s more beneficial to fix the engine that powers it.
By Kath Fouhy, BSc, PG DipDiet, NZRD - 21/01/09