NUTRITION
FAT BUILDING
Channel swimmers, indeed all long-distance cold water swimmers, need substantial quantities of fuel. But what, when and how much? Sports scientist Joel Enoch reveals his optimum nutrition plan…
Twenty one is a signifi cant number for those get ing the key of the door to adulthood, for gamblers at the casinos
of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo, and especially for anyone who’s contemplating swimming the Channel. Those 21 miles between Shakespeare beach in Dover and France’s Cap Gris Nez – literally ‘grey nose cape’ – play on the mind of any wannabe Channel swimmer, most of who will think of lit le else for two or three years before. Anything that can help make those 21 cold, painful miles pass more quickly and easily is very welcome, and one of the things that can do this is body fat. An important weapon for any long-distance, cold water swimmer, fat can help a body become more eff ective at retaining warmth. As Midgie Thompson commented in her piece on body fat in the fi rst issue of H2Open, while the use of wetsuits may be banned from offi cial Channel crossing at empts, “there are no rules governing internal insulation”.
PILING ON THE POUNDS Paul Newsome, Swim Smooth founder and H2Open writer, completed his fi rst Channel crossing on 9 September this year. He piled on the pounds to help keep warm during the swim. “In March 2010, I liaised with an old friend, David Walliams' coach Dr Greg
Whyte, about how best to acclimatise to the cold. Greg stated that the very best body shape for coping well in cold open water conditions would be that of a sphere, and hinted that I may need to increase my sprightly 66kg frame by upwards of 12kg to cope. “I achieved this by ceasing any land-based cardiovascular activity (e.g. cycling and running) and gradually increased my daily calorie intake. This has been a defi nite plus point through all the training – eating what I want, when I want it! “When I started my acclimatisation to cold open water swimming in May 2011, fi ve months prior to my crossing date, I was up to 74kg and the extra body fat really helped as I tackled waters as chilly as 8ºC for four to six hours at a time. By September, with 70kg literally under my belt, the 17ºC of the Channel felt far more doable. “Worryingly, friends and family tell me that I look much bet er at this weight! The increase in weight actually helped my buoyancy a lot and I felt like I was wearing a wetsuit the whole time. I also seemed to put weight on where I needed it most, around my kidneys and middle, as well as under the arms. There is a limit though: I got out of the water without any chafi ng, but this might have not been the case if I had added any more body fat.” For Paul’s guide to training for the Channel, turn to page 28.
32 UP!
But is weight gain the only thing that you can do nutritionally to help you swim longer and more eff ectively, particularly as a Channel swimmer? Is there an optimum weight to gain, how should you put it on, and most importantly, how do you lose it again aſt erwards? I went looking for some answers.
DOES WEIGHT GAIN HELP? The answer here is defi nitely maybe. Increased body fat may be bad for health and possibly even streamlining (and therefore speed) in the water, but it also helps fuel lower-intensity exercise, helps body position in the water and is key to maintaining your core body temperature in cold water. It’s not always strictly necessary to get fat er for open water swims. Research shows that while leaner swimmers might feel the cold sooner than larger people, the risk of hypothermia may in fact not be signifi cantly diff erent. Further evidence exists to show that body fat plays no signifi cant positive or negative role in swim performance. In most conditions then, adding body fat may be as much about comfort in the water as it is about actual core temperature and the risk of hypothermia. There is no one formula for how much weight to put on, or any guide to the insulation benefi t that, for example, one kilo of fat will give you. Such a decision needs to be carefully made on an individual basis, treading the line between eff ectively helping the body deal with the cold and negatively aff ecting technique. As it’s a long, cold swim, though, most channel swimmers see at least some weight gain as important. So, how is this best achieved when adding body fat in itself can negatively impact total body health?
Channel swimmer and sociology lecturer at the University of
Warwick, Professor Karen Throsby, has gained a stone in weight for her open water exploits. She commented in an interview with the Guardian, “I simply ate more of the things I usually eat, and then maintained that weight.” Paul Newsome (see box) agrees that eating habits shouldn’t be
drastically changed, saying: “The key thing for me as a swimming coach was to make sure I snacked on nuts, dried fruit and pulses, and ate something like pizza only maybe once a week.” There’s no two ways about it, to put on weight you need to consume more energy than you burn, but where this energy comes from is key. For both of these swimmers it was not a case of eating lots of fat y foods, but rather it was a simple case of eating a larger quantity of normal, healthy foods. I have seen high-fat diets advocated for weight gain in other circumstances, but Channel swimmers are lit le diff erent to other endurance athletes. In an ideal world, they should eat a diet containing about 60 percent carbohydrates, 25 percent fats and 15 percent protein.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76