Nutrition for Hyrox - PART 2

Flowing on from our Nutrition for Hyrox - PART 1 episode, today we're diving into carb loads, race week plans, supplements and meal timing on event day 🏃🏼‍♀️

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The Eat Like Ruby podcast is not a substitute for professional medical or dietary advice.
The advice given in this episode is general in nature and should not be used to treat any medical conditions, health conditions, illnesses, injuries and/or any nutrition related conditions, deficiencies or similar.
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Please consult your health care professional before implementing any of the advice, information or protocols discussed in this episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello fam, welcome back to the pod. Today we are doing Nutrition for Hyrux part two. So obviously, we did Nutrition for Hyrux part one. I would say that was about four weeks ago. So if you haven't listened to that one, I would definitely go back and do so. I tried to time these episodes a little bit with Brizzy Hyrox by the time this episode comes out. I think we're gonna be about two, maybe three weeks out from Brizzy Hyrocks, which is awesome. But the cool thing about podcasts is obviously you can listen to them anytime. So we're gonna have a lot more Hyrocks throughout this year and throughout the years to come, I'm sure. So cool to just be able to listen back to these anytime you're coming into a Hyrox event. And what we're gonna speak about today and what we have spoken about in that previous episode has a lot of crossover with a lot of our other events. So even if you're not doing high rocks specifically, if you do things like turf games, fittest in the city, gym comps, crossfit comps, similar, obviously every event kind of has its little unique things, but there's a lot of overall factors that are gonna be the same when it comes to fueling these events. And we also did our Nutrition for Running episodes in the recent months as well. That was a three-part series. And again, so many similarities. So if you're a regular listener and or you've listened to those, you're definitely gonna hear some double-ups in between all these episodes. But like I always say, I'd rather cover things too many times than not enough. And I think just cool to make sure we have all of the information in the individual episodes so that if someone is doing high rocks in two years' time and they stumble across these episodes, they can just listen to the HyRox Eps and know what they need to know going into that event. So we are gonna cover some things today that we've probably covered in recent weeks, but just really cool to be aware of and understanding all these things as you're heading into Hyrox whenever that is for you, or a similar event, or maybe you got no interest in high rocks at all, but you just love the pod. In which case, we love you. Thank you so much. But we're gonna get into Nutrition for HyROX part two, and really what we're gonna look at today is when we're closer to the event. So, in that previous HIROX app, we spoke more so about the things you want to be thinking about and be aware of as you're deciding to do high rocks and maybe you're starting to come into a high rox training block that's maybe like three months give or take. Obviously, things we want to think about in terms of fueling that training block, practicing a few things with our fueling strategies so that we can refine that strategy throughout those weeks and arrive at race week with some pretty confident plans and good confidence in knowing, like, I've trialed this shit, this shit works for me. I am good to rip in and fuel my Hyrux comp. So I'd like to think you've listened to those, you've gone about that the right way. And now we're gonna look at we're coming up to race week, we're coming up to comp day. What should we be thinking about with nutrition? And this is where we're gonna have a lot of similarities with our running episodes, because obviously similar thing where you go through that running block and you think about all of your fueling strategies, and then as you get to race week, you're like, okay, cool, all of the trial is done, all of the prep is done. Now I'm just preparing for the event itself, which is really cool. And the first big thing to look at here, which is exactly the same as running, or it should be, if you have followed a good structured program coming into HyROX, when you get to the week of the event, predominantly these events are towards the end of the week. I know now HyRox is getting so big that they're extending it across like five days. So I do have some athletes doing Thursday, I have some doing Friday, and then some on the weekend, but obviously they're towards the end of the week. And really what I'm getting at here is you should, like I said, have followed a structured program that gets you to that week. And then you're in your taper, you're in your D load, you're not doing too much gnarly training at all during that week because really the training is done, the prep is done. And now it's just about resting the body, recovering, replenishing, refueling, like just making sure the bod is primed, prepped, rested, and ready to rip in. So obviously, if you are high-roxing on like a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, you don't want to do gnarly training sessions Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Like I think everybody gets that. So that's why I always say a good structured program should have you prepped by then. And ideally, people should be deloading or tapering a few weeks before this, but then really getting to that event week. Training volume is down, training intensity is down, the body's in a nice rest and recovery mode, getting ready for that event. So then when we come over and look at nutrition alongside that, I said this with the running girls. During this time, we really just want to make sure we have a decent intake coming in to fuel the body, to fuel that rest, that recovery, make sure we really are getting fueled well. Obviously, we don't want to over-consume and overfeed, there's no reason to, but we definitely don't want to underconsume. So, really, this is just making sure we have like our maintenance intake in place. If you're someone who tracks your food or is mindful of these things, you should have an idea of what that is. You might work with someone like myself or similar and you get more of a meal plan. But really, whatever way we're going about it, the overall aim with nutrition as we come into that high orcs week is really just making sure this person is getting the fuel and the energy they need in a sufficient amount to look after themselves, make sure they're rested, recovered. I feel like I'm gonna say that a million times, but that really is the aim. And then again, similar to the girls getting ready for a run on the weekend, a running event, as we go through that week and we just make sure we're fueling and we're eating a decent amount, that then slowly starts to transition into a carb load. So we did speak about this a little bit in the last Hyrox app, but when we look at carb loading for Hyrux, we're not looking at doing like a massive carb load. We spoke about some of the numbers in those recent episodes, but when we do like a big dog carb load, we're looking up around that like 10 to 12 grams of carbs per kilo of body weight. And we do this more so for big endurance events like marathon, half iron man, full iron man, ultra marathon, like big events four plus hours, right? So then when we come back to something like Hyrux, obviously everyone's time is gonna be a little bit different, but we're not pushing out into that massive endurance style event. Usually we're looking at like just under an hour up towards that hour and a half kind of window, give or take, depending on your division, your fitness level, all those things. But when we come back to carb loading for this, it's not so much about making sure we have the biggest, like maximum carb load in place. It's more so just about making sure we have enough carbs available for the body to get through that event. We spoke in that last Hyrox app about carb availability, which is a really cool thing to understand and be aware of throughout your whole Hyrox prep. And then this obviously comes into play here as well. So carb availability is exactly what it sounds like. Making sure there are enough carbs available for the body to utilize and to get through what it wants to get through and to do what it wants to do. So when we think about doing something like HIROX, we just want to make sure that there is enough carbs available for the body to draw on and get through HIROX, right? And so when we do those massive endurance events, this is where we do that massive carb load to completely maximize glycogen source. So glycogen is a storage form of carbohydrate. So we're looking at muscle glycogen here, and really, I think I said in one of these episodes, think of your muscles as like little tanks, and muscle glycogen is just like making sure that tank is full. And so if we go into an event, we obviously eat carbohydrates in the lead up to the event. But there's only so many we can eat in those hours before the event if we start thinking about comfort and digestion and things like that. So we can have carbs available to the body in terms of like we just recently ate carbs and they're available. But then if we've carb loaded, we've taken those carbs in over those days. If we think about this for a second, we've taken carbs in across days that are also, like we said before, more of like a taper or a D load for you. So the body doesn't really use those as much as it would when we've got big training in place. So it moves them into storage. Muscle glycogen is a storage form of carbohydrate. Let's remember that. So across those days leading into high rocks, when training volume and intensity is down, but carb intake is up, the body gets those carbs coming in. It uses some just to get through its daily life, but it also goes, hey, you've given me a fair bit because it's a carb load. I don't need these, I'm gonna move them into storage. Again, muscle glycogen is a storage form of carbohydrate. So it literally puts those carbs over there in those little tanks. Obviously, this is a simplified version, but this is just a really cool way to think about it. We move that carbohydrate into those tanks, into storage. It's sitting there in storage. We go into high ROX in those coming days, the body starts ripping into Hyrox. It's like, hey, I need carbs. Well, perfect, because I've stored some for ya, right? Like this is the point of the carb load. And so coming back to the amount and stuff, like we said, Hyrox isn't long enough that we need to have the absolute maximum muscle glycogen and therefore the most maximum carb load in place. But we just want to make sure it's solid. We want to make sure it's good. We want to make sure there's enough to get through that event. So, what this usually looks like, this is very different person to person. I've said that so much throughout these performance episodes because carb loads are something that we really need to trial and refine and play around with different amounts, but then also different foods and food portions and servings and so many little things because we are taking in a big amount of something that we're not used to taking in. And often people can have some issues and some intolerances and things that we don't even really know about because you've never taken that food in in that amount before. So I think I said that in recent episodes, but often people can just think like, oh, I love carbs, so this would be awesome. I'll just eat a few carbs across these days. It doesn't usually go too well when people do that because we really want to get them in in the right amounts, in the right food choices for us personally, in a structured way that allows them to come in comfortably throughout those days and go through that process of getting moved into storage. If we haven't done this before and we haven't trialed some of these things, we don't want to just hit the body with a mass amount of carbs that we don't know works for that person. Like I said, there's so many little factors in a carb load that we need to refine and like trial and refine for the individual. And you don't want to find out two days before Hyrox that certain shit doesn't work for you and find yourself in a big, uncomfortable position when you're trying to feel your best going into an event. So this is why I've said so much recently like this is something you do want to play around with in the lead up to the event. And then when you get to race week, ideally you have done those trials, you have an idea of what this looks like for you. And then coming into those days leading into high rox, when we do a massive, like big dog carb load, like I keep talking about, we bring things like protein and dietary fat and dietary fiber way down because we're trying to get in a mass amount of carbs and there's just no room for those other things. When we do something like a moderate carb load for something like HIROX, we keep those things a little bit more moderate. So because we're not trying to bring in an insane amount of carbs, we're just trying to bring in a really decent amount, we tend to bring things like protein, fat, and fiber down a bit just to make sure everything's comfortable and we can get it in. But think about it in terms of like if we're doing a massive carb load and it's like the more carbs I want to get in, the less of the other things I want to get in. Because I want to have as much room available in my system for those carbs to just come in nicely. As that amount of carbs comes down to a more moderate amount for a carb load for something like Hyrox, the protein, fat, and fiber can come up a little bit because we're not trying to get as much carbs in. So therefore, we don't need to reduce those other things as much because we don't have to create as much space. So that might be a little bit confusing if this is your first time hearing about all this. But I would definitely go back and listen to the other Hyrox EP and the nutrition for running apps because there's so much crossover, even if you're not doing a running event, it's still fueling, it's still carbs, it's still all of these things that we want in place for HIROX. And so the way I do this with my clients, it's a little bit different from person to person, like always, because people are gonna have different tolerances and preferences and things like that. But it's also looking at like what is this person doing with their day-to-day nutrition? Because I have a lot of clients who are doing Brizzy Hyrox and they're also doing things like the new Samarathon, Brisbane, GC, Sydney, Sunny Coast, like they've got a lot of other events coming after that Brizzy Hyrox as well. And so because of that, they are training twice a day. Most of my girls doing Brizzy Hyrox are training twice a day because they're doing a lot of high rock stuff, they're still trying to do some strength stuff, and they're doing a lot of running. So by default, it's just like, I gotta get a lot of shit in, I gotta train twice a day. So the reason I bring this up is because these girls are then usually on a pretty solid daily intake and then usually on a pretty solid carb intake. So the other day I started looking at setting up a carb load, like the Hyrux carb load for one of my clients. I don't think she'll mind me shouting her out. McKenzie, she's actually doing the women's solo pro, which is awesome. Like, go off. I cannot wait to see how she goes. But she's also doing the Noosa Full Marathon, which is about six weeks later. So Ken's training volume is high. And her body weight is around the low 60s. And that's important because obviously, when we look at setting up carbohydrate intakes, we base it around body weight. So for Ken's, when we started looking at setting up this moderate carb load, when we look at a moderate carb load, we look around anywhere from sort of like five to eight grams of carbohydrates per kilo of body weight. When we looked at Ken's day-to-day nutrition, I'm like, dude, you're doing six to seven grams on a normal day. So that's cool because it tells us, like, hey, you can get in carbs, you're comfortable getting in carbs. And side note, we've also trialed a lot of things for her with the pre-event nutrition and just like how many carbs she can get in before sessions and before events and stuff. So we've spoken about that a lot in recent weeks, but we've been through that with her. She had pretty good intakes in place and we ramped them up a little bit just to get them to where we like ideally want them to be at those optimal levels. But we've gone through all of that with Ken's, we've gone through just good day-to-day fueling. Like she's just gone through this process we talked about, tick so many boxes, and now we are starting to look at actual event week. When we looked at that and we're like, okay, cool, let's look at a carb load. Okay, well, if we know that on a normal day you're putting away like six grams of carbs per kilo of body weight, we know we can pretty confidently push up towards seven or eight, you're not gonna have too many problems. So then we wrote a meal plan for her, and these kind of carbload meal plans are actually the best because when we do start to push up to like 12 grams of carbs per kilo of body weight with sweet FL, protein, fat, fibre, all of that, it's actually quite miserable. It's usually just like plain rice, plain pasta. Like it's a bit dull. When you come back to these moderate carb loads, it's actually a real sweet spot where it's like, wow, I get to eat a shit ton of carbs. But I also get enough protein and fat and stuff to play with as well that it's actually just a really solid day. So with Ken's, we just took what she was currently doing. And any of my other Hyrux girls listening will be like, yeah, you've done this with me as well. We've got Sienna, Jazz, Trish, I've got so many girls doing Frizy Hyrux. If I missed you, apologies. But I've gone through this process with pretty much all of my girls where it's just like, okay, well, what is your day-to-day nutrition like? Ideally, what is that optimal carbload amount for you coming into this event? Where do these two things sit in comparison to each other? Like, do we have much of a gap? Or when we look at someone like Ken's and most of these girls are in a similar position, you've got such a decent intake coming in every day that you're hitting pretty close to these numbers anyway. So then what we do from there is just take your normal days of eating and then be like, let's just ramp up the carbs a little bit and let's just scale back the protein and fat and everything a little bit. And this is really just making sure that we definitely have enough carbs coming in over those days coming into high rocks. So we've got good carb availability to make sure we've got good carbs available for that event. That's really as simple as it is. So just looking at what you're currently doing and being like, where do we refine this and just ramp it up a little bit to make sure we're in that sweet spot when the event comes around. And so this is the cool stuff I would be thinking about. If you're listening to this thinking you are going to do high rocks, eventually, this is why it's so important to just know all this stuff and play around with it. Because for these girls, it's not a huge thing for us to get these carb load plans ready because we have trialed so many little things along the way. We've got good day-to-day fueling in place. When we get to doing these plans for the race week, it's just like, cool, let's look at everything you're currently doing, let's tweak it that little bit and let's go. So that's why it's just so cool to have the time and the understanding of all this stuff. And if we stay on the subject of carbs and fueling for a second, obviously, if we look at the actual event day, it is similar to the running stuff that we've spoken about, but typically, like not always, but typically running events are in the morning, and high rocks can be any time of the day. So this is like the one curse of high rocks. If you know, you know, like people are just waiting to see what time they're gonna get. And I've had people get 8 a.m., I've had people get 8 30 p.m. Like you just don't know. And you don't know until really close. Like they don't give you much warning at all. So that's fine, it is what it is. But what we typically do is just wait for that time. And side note, I just keep my schedule pretty open in these weeks because I know I'm just gonna get hit with a bunch of times, and then people being like, So what does nutrition look like now? So that's always fun. But really, what we're looking at is like once you get that time, we really want to just reverse engineer. Let's say you get three in the afternoon as your race time. We really reverse engineer from there with everything that we know about fueling and nutrition, and then everything we've learned about you. And again, this is just why we want enough time to actually learn the shit about you. So if you got three in the Avo, we'd reverse and go, okay, cool, we know we want to do carb top-ups pretty close to events, like say in that 30 to 60 minutes before the event. So the carb top-up's gonna happen around like 2 to 2:30. Then we reverse from there and go, okay, well, we know like two to three hours before that event, we want that high carb meal, maybe a bit of moderate protein, fairly low fiber, fairly low fat. And again, this like that's probably the main thing I trial with my Hyrox Girls is we want to get a certain amount of carbohydrates in in that meal, which can be challenging for people to get that in and then feel good going into the event. And this is where we start looking at things like training the gut, building the tolerance, etc. So that's probably the main thing I look at with people is like that meal you're gonna have, say three hours before, if you're competing at three, this meal is gonna happen around midday. This is where we want a certain amount of carbohydrates coming in per kilo of body weight. And usually that amount is a bit higher than what people are currently doing with their pre-training nutrition. Not always. And again, when we look at girls that are doing like multiple training sessions a day and stuff, they're getting in pretty good fuel. But there's also a lesson here to people like if you are coming into high ROX or you're thinking about coming into high rocks and it's kind of your first time dabbling in this stuff, and you have spent a large amount of time on lower calories, you aren't really big on pre-training and intra-training, you don't have a big carb intake coming in, this is where you've usually got a lot of work to do. And that's fine so long as you give yourself the time to do the work. If you're someone who's not used to any of those things, and then we look like for McKenzie, we'll come back to McKenzie first again. Ken's is taking in 200 grams of carbs as a pre-training meal. 200 grams of carbs. Most women aren't eating that in a day. Like that's gnarly, and it's awesome that she can get that in. But that took a bit of work for us to get there, and we worked out that that's really good for her. Like, that is awesome. I love that. But come back to what I was just saying. If someone doesn't take in many carbs normally, you've been on low calories for a while, you haven't practiced a lot of pre-training, intra-training, fueling, big carb availability, all these things, you're gonna be a long way off from getting 200 grams of carbs in. And side note, that's not to say everyone has to take in 200 grams of carbs before high ROX. Definitely don't do that if you don't know that that's the right amount for you. Like, can't stress that enough. But that just backs up my point. That's not gonna be a good time for most people if you have not worked up to that and really refined that plan for you. So, just important to really think about all these things. Someone who is gunning it for to kill it in that solo pro division has gone through like refining, trialing, tweaking, assessing all of these things and has built herself up to be able to take in 200 grams of carbs before that event. Like that's unreal. And so that's gonna be really different for everyone. You just want to think about like where you're currently at, what event you're thinking about doing, how much time do you have, where do all those things currently sit for you. But that's just important to think about. Like, you do want to do some sort of a mini to moderate carb load going into it. And then you're gonna want to have decent carbs on that day. And all of that really wants to be planned and trialed and personalized to you, which usually takes a bit of time. If we come back to lining up that event day, like I said, we want to carb top up a few hours before that, we want that big high carb meal. And then before that, this is where we just look at really putting your usual meals and your usual nutrition in place. If I had someone who was competing at three, we'd really be looking at optimizing certain amounts of carbs from like midday onwards. But then in those meals before that, I'd be looking at just a really decent meal around like mid-morning, let's say nine-ish. And usually these girls get up early because they're training for a million hours a day. So if they get up at five, six, seven, whatever it is, like decent breckie when we get up. And this is where again, I look at like, what are you normally doing for brecky? What are you normally doing mid morning? Because again, we don't want to have to bring in different shit to the diet if we don't need to. Someone's having a really decent breckie that has a good amount of carbs. We want some protein in these earlier meals because we We're going to minimize protein later in the day. So really, I'd look at what they normally eat around that time and then just go, okay, cool. We want to keep this as normal as possible for you because we know that that works for you. Maybe we need to tweak some of these amounts just to make sure it lines up well for the day overall. But anytime I can avoid overhauling someone's diet, I will. Because again, if something works for people, we don't want to change that if we don't need to. So that's really what I'd be thinking about. And again, you're just looking at whatever time you end up drawing and kind of reversing from there and going, okay, well, what am I eating in the hour before it? What am I eating two hours before that? And then depending on how early or late in the day your event time is, what am I eating before that? What am I eating before that, etc.? And then the other cool thing to think about here, actually, one more thing to touch on with this carb stuff, we can look at intra training nutrition. Personally, I'm not really prescribing intra training stuff for people doing Hyrox unless they we really know they need it or they really want it. So what we mean by this is like eating during the event. I don't think HIROX is long enough that we need to eat during the event. Again, unless we have determined for whatever reason this individual really thrives by doing that and it's going to optimize shit if they do that. But for most people, like I said, if we're looking around that hour give or take mark, if we've done a good carb load, if we've had good nutrition leading into the event on the day, we definitely don't need carbs during that event. A lot of people, or I shouldn't say a lot, but some people like to do a gel. That can be pretty easy, like to just throw back one gel, maybe around that halfway point. So I'm definitely not against it. Like if you like to do that, if it suits you, whatever, that's totally fine. But also if I think about some of my solo people, especially, if we look at this for a second, like when people are doing doubles or relay or whatever, you're gonna have times where you're stopping. So you might stop for a second and be like, yeah, I will grab a lolly or I will grab a gel or whatever. Like obviously you've got it in your pocket or someone passes it to you or whatever. When we look at people doing solo, and especially, like I said, someone like Ken's who's gunning it in that solo pro division, you've got to kind of weigh up. Is it worth me stopping to eat? And like I said, it's not right or wrong, it's not bad, it's not good, but it's more just like if I have optimized everything else and I'm really well fueled, is stopping to mess around with a gel going to then, am I gonna get more benefit from that gel? Like, am I gonna get enough benefit from that gel to make it worthwhile stopping to consume it? And it that might seem like a small thing, but when someone has busted their ass and they're going into like that solo pro division, those small things add up. Like they are counting the seconds, they're gunning for really specific times. So, like I said, you want to weigh up, is it worth it? Am I gonna get much benefit from that gel? And obviously, we get benefit from gels because it's more energy coming in. But then if we just look and go, but if I've taken in enough energy throughout everything else I've done, higher that length of high rox isn't usually a time where we see people really start to run out of carbohydrates and glycogen and all these things to the point where they need to top them up. So that is a little bit of an individual thing. And again, you might be someone who's like, no, I do hit the wall, like I hit the wall at the 40-minute mark. It's worth me losing five seconds to mess around with my gel if taking that gel really optimizes my energy and then saves me minutes in the back end of that race. Obviously, it's worth sacrificing five seconds if it's gonna make up minutes for you compared to if you didn't have it and you drop those minutes because your energy drops. So that's where I would just individually look and be like, where do I fall with all of that? And then again, you want to make sure you've practiced that and you've refined that going into the event. So when I think about all of my competitors, I don't think I've got anyone at all doing intra-event nutrition. Yeah, at this point in time. So yeah, just something to think about. But like I said, I wouldn't be against it if I felt like it was beneficial for that individual. And then obviously the other little thing we want to look at in race week is supplements. So supplements fall into that same category as everything else, in terms of we don't want to bring them in in race week if we haven't trialed them already. So there are definitely a few supplements that we look at with the high rock's girls, pretty similar to the running subs. And like I said, you just want to play around with those in the lead up to those events, see what works for the individual, see if something doesn't, and then you should have a pretty good structure and a good strategy going into that race week of what you're gonna utilize and how you're gonna utilize it based on knowing that those things didn't cause an issue for you when you trialed them prior to that. So the things we look at here, like obviously a big dog is creatine. Pretty much any person I work with who has a performance goal, we will tell them to take creatine unless there's some sort of major reason that we wouldn't. But I would say 99.9% of my athletes and my gym girls take creatine. And now the big one we can look at is caffeine, obviously, a heavily researched lot of evidence behind caffeine. Obviously, it is a bit of a personal thing. Some people love it, some people don't, some people are like pretty neutral, they don't mind, but definitely something worth trialing. Unless someone says to me, like, no rooms, I hate caffeine, like I'm not a caffeine person, then obviously we don't have to use it, but definitely something worth trialing and structuring around your event, like in the lead up to the event. And then the other couple of subs we look at is the beetroot shorts. They're a big one I use for the Hyrux girls. So if we like whenever we're looking at supplements, we always want to look at a few other things first. Like we want to make sure day-to-day nutrition is good, we want to make sure carbloading is good, pre-training nutrition is good. Like there's things that are gonna give us more bang for our buck, more benefit, more return compared to supplements. So when I start working with someone, like a lot of these girls doing Brizzy Hyrux, we started working with them early in the year, and it allowed us anywhere from sort of eight to 12 weeks to work on things for that person leading into that event. And so we literally just go through that process of like, well, step one, we just want to make sure we've got good day-to-day fueling in place. Again, these girls have big training volumes. So we want to look and go, you're doing a lot, you're asking a lot of your body. We want to make sure you're fueling that on a day-to-day basis so that training is good, performance is good, recovery is good, we're minimizing risk of injury. Like the list goes on. Day-to-day fueling is the number one thing we want to look at before anything else. Some people are killing this when they come to me, or some people have come to me because they're not killing this. So, this, like how long we need to spend on this, is different from person to person. But usually our first sort of like two to four weeks is just making sure we've got the right intake coming in for you, making sure we've nailed that, we've refined that, it's working for you, it's fueling everything that we're doing. And then that starts to lay our foundation to then go, okay, cool. Next thing we want to look at is the pre-training and the pre-event nutrition. So if you've got good day-to-day fueling coming in, then we want to hone in a little bit more on specific windows like pre-training. What does pre-training look like for you? Again, for some people it's great, for some people it's not so great. Mostly what I see for people in this position is like you're eating something and you've got like a good food choice. You've got good carbs coming in before training, but usually not enough. And especially when we look at your overall training volume and the events that you're working towards, usually, not always, but usually there's room to increase the amount of carbs we have coming in in that window. And usually that takes a bit of time. If someone's having like one banana or one crumpet, and then, like I said before, we get Ken's up to 200 grams of carbs. We didn't just go from 40 grams of carbs to 200. Like we want to go 40 and then maybe 60, maybe 80, and stopping anywhere along the way that we need to stop for that person, pushing if we think we can, scale it back if we think we need to, like that is a real kind of trial, error, assess, refine process. So that's usually the next thing we look at. So then if we look at the fact that I will come back to the supplements, I promised, but if we look at the fact that we've spent the first month, let's say, just getting day-to-day nutrition sorted, then we start getting pre-training and pre-event nutrition sorted, we start to build that up. We take a few weeks to build that up. Then we start looking like how close are we to this event? Do we need to practice a carb load at some point? If we want to do one, then yes, we do. So then we might find ourselves like four or five weeks out from the event. Okay, cool. We're gonna practice the carb load on this day, we're gonna practice this pre-event meal on this day. Like I've said before, I really advise my girls to try all different things on different days. You don't want to trial multiple new things at a time. If something doesn't work, you don't know what caused it, or you don't know what the problem was. It can be really hard to go through that process. So you want to trial one thing at a time and be able to tick it off or work on it. So we go through that process of trialing all these things and then we start to come over to subs. This is where the subs come in. I want to make sure all those other things are sorted first. There's no point getting someone on beetroot shots if they're not eating enough food every day. Like if you're just not even having decent meals, beetroot shots aren't gonna help you. Like, so you've got to really look at like where we need to put our energy first, the things we need to look at first, and then come down to those one percenters. Like, subs are gonna be those one percenters that can give us that little bit of a boost, but like I said, they're not gonna do anything if overall fueling is not good. So it just depends on like how much people need to work on all of those things and how much time we have, as to how much time we get left with to trial different subs. And just as a little bit of a side note, I feel like this is worth mentioning here, especially to long-term listeners and people who are quite invested in this stuff. I have people that I've worked with for ages and we're still trialing new things because we've just never had the window or it's never been the right time to trial something. So let it be okay. I think sometimes when people get into events and performance nutrition, they're like, I just want to optimize everything right now, which makes sense. Like you want to do as best you can at your events. Like, I absolutely get that. But let it be okay that like as each event comes around, we might be like, okay, cool, like we've refined so much for you over the months and years. Now we can trial this one little niche thing that it just never made sense to trial at another time. So just let that process be okay. And if we come back to the subs, this is where we start to look at those little niche things like the beetroot shots. Like the beetroot shots are awesome if all of that other shit is in place. But like I said, beetroot shots aren't gonna save you if you're not even eating enough. So beetroot shots are definitely one that I get my girls to trial. Ideally, like if we've gone through that timeline I just said, if we get to that point where we've got maybe three or four weeks to go and we've refined most of those things, I usually say to people, try and get your hands on a beetroot shot, or I'm I feel like I'm a little beetroot shot dispenser. Like I hand them out to so many people and just say, like, give one of these a go on a morning, like before a session where everything else is the same. Because again, we don't want to try on multiple things. So I say to people, like, we've refined your pre-training meal, that's awesome. We've refined your caffeine intake, that's awesome. Go into a sesh that you normally do. Everything else on this day is really similar to what you're normally doing. Now just bring in the beetroot shot alongside all of that. Side note, we always tell girls to put these in juice because anyone who's ever had a beetle shot on its own. If you know, you know. So I always tell my girls to put these in juice, but that's up to you. But I always say to them, like, bring this in just with nothing else. And if it's like if you don't notice any dramas, and this isn't something that would commonly cause dramas. Like, we don't expect someone to do a beetle shot and be like, oh my god, everything went to shit. But you could just be that one in a million person who just doesn't respond well to it or just doesn't sit well in your stomach or whatever it is. Again, like I always say, we don't want to find that out on race day. We want to find that out four weeks before race day. So we can just be like, nope, that's not for you. 99% of people shouldn't have a problem with a beetroot shot. So we give that a go, we take that off, we confirm that it's good for you, and then that can just become part of your race day strategy as well. And another really cool example of that, something that came to my mind when I was saying all of that is coming into this Brizzy Hyrux, we have Shaq doing a supplement that he's never done before. And if people don't know, Shaq is my husband, like I've done his nutrition for 10 years and for a lot of events, and that's where I was saying before, like you still can bring in new things because we've just never thought about bringing this in for him, or we've just been playing around with other stuff. It's never made much sense. But for Brizzy Hyrox, we've been trialing, we've tried with him early March tart cherry extract, which if people don't know, like I won't get into it too much today, but it's just like a good, like high antioxidant. It's a very small supplement that you take, like you take a small amount. So like a high potency antioxidant, which is just like reduce oxidative stress. If we think about antioxidants and the point of those, this is just like a high dosage of that. This is something where we want to use this in a really strategic way. So we're gonna use this in the lead up to the event, like five days before it, and a couple of days after it, to just, like I said, reduce that oxidative stress in his body. But we'd never use this for him before. And he did like a little mini event in Feb. And I said to him, like, it'd be cool for the two days after that to just have a go at that tart cherry and just make sure you don't have any dramas, because I definitely would love you to use that for Brizzy Hyrux, but practice what I preach. Like, I'm not gonna tell you to use it if we don't know that it's good for you. So he trialed that, and again, not something we would commonly expect to have problems with, but you don't want to find out the hard way. So we trialed that for him for a few days. That was all good, so we're gonna have that as part of his plan. That's absolutely like a one percenter. Like, he's not a full Iron Man without that in there. So that's where, like I say, these are such small things that you want to look at when you've got everything else really sorted. And then in terms of subs, I feel like there's one more that's worth mentioning. This is definitely something that, like, if you don't have this in your plan close to high rocks, there's no point bringing it in. This is something that we've got to like load with, and it's very um like we need a lot of time for this one, but I feel like it's just worth looking at beta alanine. Some people call it beta alanine. What we're looking at here is I'm not gonna get too much into I'm getting deja vu. I feel like we've spoken about this at some point on the podcast before, but anyway, we've spoken about a lot of stuff. But this can be a good set for Hyrux. This can be a little bit more like if we get into the nitty-gritty of this, this can be a little bit more beneficial for people doing um doubles or relays, because the way beta-alanine works is it's essentially like a lactic acid buffer. It's a bit more complex than that, but in simple terms, that feeling of lactic acid that is that feeling of like burning in your muscles. You know, if you do like um a bunch of leg extensions or more applicable to high orcs, like when you do the walking lunges or things like that, that burning feeling that you get in your quads, that's lactic acid buildup. And good structured beta alanine supplementation can help essentially like prolong that or like delay that so that that feeling doesn't kick in as soon or as intense, etc. So the reason I say it's a bit more applicable to doubles or people doing a relay is because it tends to work best or it does work best when the exercise bout is one to ten minutes. So if we think about someone doing solo, their exercise bout is like 60 minutes. When people are doing the doubles or the relay, they're going and then they're stopping and then they're going and then they're stopping. So beta-alanine might be like it's not to say it would be detrimental to someone doing solo, but it would just wouldn't be as beneficial as it would be to those people that are doing that more stop-start, like interval style almost. And so, like I said, it can just help reduce that feeling of lactic acid buildup and therefore fatigue in that muscle. But when we bring beta-alanine in as a supplement, we usually do like a six-week loading period. So we've actually done a six-week loading period with Shaq throughout Feb and March because he's doing Hyrox doubles. So he's like a prime person who would benefit from this because he's gonna have bouts of going really hard and then bouts of stopping. So we bought this in like early Feb. We have used this for him in the past for other events, but it is quite a what's the word I'm looking for? It's quite a complex strategy. Like it's not that complex, but it is, because beta alanine is also the thing that gives people that shitty feeling of like numbness or tingling from pre-workouts or subs like that. So if you know, you know. If you've ever had something like that and then had that real tingly, shitty feeling, that's beta alanine. So some people have had that in a way where they're like, wow, I'm never going near that again. Some people don't mind the feeling, some people haven't experienced that feeling because they haven't had enough of it at once. So that's really where that kicks in, is when the dosage is high and it's like too much comes in at once, or not too much, but enough comes in at once to prompt that feeling. So that's where I come back and say it can become a complex strategy because for Shaq, for example, we've used this for him for six weeks, four doses a day, four like one gram doses spread out throughout the day. So it's actually one and a half grams. So this is how complex it is. We for that loading period, we want to do like a six-week loading period where we give him like six grams a day. For 99% of people, if you have six grams at once, you're gonna get that feeling pretty gnarly. So that's why we divvy it up into those four servings throughout the day. And then if we think about how many people forget to take things that they take once a day. Like so often people like to me, oh, I forgot to take my creatine, forgot to take my fish oil, etc. And you take it once a day. So then you come over to a supplement that you want to take four separate times a day. Most people aren't pulling that off. Most people are just forgetting it's annoying, etc. And rightly so, right? This is where we come back and we look at supplements and we go, is shit worth it? If that's gonna give you like a tiny bit of a benefit, but it's just gonna be a massive pain in your ass for six weeks, is it worth it? Again, it's almost like I said before with the gel. If trying to throw back a gel during Hyrox is just gonna be an F around for you and gonna delay your whole event and you're not really gonna get much benefit from that gel, is it worth it? So that's what we always want to look at with anything we do with nutrition. Is the return worth it? Is the payoff worth it, or is it more trouble than it's worth? So beta alanine, definitely like a good supplement if someone gets it right and gets into their system well. With Shaq, like we've put these little one and a half gram scoops. He has two protein shakes a day, so he put it in there. He has, I don't even know what else he has today, creatine, so he put it in with that. So I love how I say I don't know what else he has today where I planned all his nutrition. But we've just kind of got into a good routine of spacing that out for him. And I think this is the final week of his six-week loading, and then you just go on to like a once-a-day serving of it, so he will just have that with his creatine and stuff, but that is a bit of a mission. Like, I'm not oblivious to the fact that that's a pain in the ass for most people. So it's just one of those things where you want to weigh up like, is that worth it to me? Is it not? Am I doing one of the events like the doubles and the relay where it might be more worth it? Like, there's so many little things to consider there. So, definitely another supplement to consider, but you do want to go through and go, like, is it annoying for me to do that loading period? Have I experienced that tingling and that numbness feeling before? And was that worth it to me? Because again, a lot of people have experienced that and they're like, hell no, could be the best sub in the world, and I never want that feeling again. So just kind of going through that process and working out whether it's something you would benefit from bringing in or not. And then again, making sure you actually have enough time to structure that and just remembering with all those subs, like A, we do want to trial all of them, and B, they really are the one percenter. So people are so often like, what subs do you do? What subs is Shaq on? What subs should I be doing? Like people can really put a lot of pressure on that. But then again, it's like, are you even eating enough every day? It's just like important stuff to think about. So if you kind of summarize this whole Hyrux convo, really we do want to make sure that when once we've decided to do HyROX, like I always say, you want to make sure you've got that good structured training in place going into that event. And then you really want to line up good nutrition structure alongside that and go, well, if I'm gonna do a 12-week training block, I'm gonna essentially do like a 12-week nutrition block as well. And just go through that process, like I said before. Make sure good day-to-day nutrition is coming in. We said in that first high rox episode that you really just want to be fueling yourself during this time. You don't want to be in a deficit, you don't want to be deficient in energy for the physical consequences that that could lead to, but then also just for the enjoyment. You don't want to be a cranky bitch training for high rox who's hungry and miserable, and it's just a recipe for disaster. So, step one as you go into that high rox block would just be like get good day-to-day fueling in place, make sure you've got a decent intake coming in. Step two, start to look at refining the windows around training, like a good pre-training meal, intra-training if you want or need it, post-training, refueling, replenishing, recovering, and then looking at what you're currently doing with all that stuff, the optimal amounts that you could or should be doing, seeing if you've got much of a gap there, because that would be the next thing I would work on is just bridging that gap, slowly increasing those servings and those meals, then starting to take that info into a bit more of a moderate carb load approach, like if I know I'm gonna fuel the event well on the day, do I have a good fueling strategy for the days before it? Getting that moderate carb load in place, giving that a bit of a trial run, refining that if we need to, and then coming into those smaller things like the SUP protocols and just trialing a few different things if they appeal to you, see how they feel. Maybe they're good, maybe they're not. But really, if we look at that 12 week training block, by the time you kind of spend a couple of weeks on each thing, you've got that 12 week nutrition block as well. And you want to utilize all of those weeks because you are gonna have to spend a few weeks on each thing. And really just refine your personal fueling strategy going into that event. And then lastly, just think about what I said in there, where I've got people that I've worked with for years, even Shaq, who has a living nutritionist and we're still playing around with new stuff. So let it be okay. Like you obviously want to get a good foundation in place as quick as you can. But then just be open to the fact that if you're gonna do these events for a while, it's totally fine and normal and common and expected that we might do one event and just go, wow, that thing didn't work for me, or that plan didn't work for me. I thought I had a good cardboard in place, but I really hit the wall. Maybe I do need to go extra carbs in that next one. Like settle into the process, enjoy the process because we still refine these things for people that have been doing them for ages. So I think people can get caught up in thinking, like, I need the most perfect plan. Even as your body changes and your fitness level changes and stuff, and you get more experience with these things, what was once the most perfect plan might not be anymore. So just be open to the fact that it's kind of going to be an ongoing process and it can be a really cool one. So I feel like that's a good place to wrap up. If you're interested in this stuff, we did, like I said, the three episodes about nutrition for running. We've done the previous episode about high rocks. We did three episodes on fueling female fitness, which are three of our best episodes ever. If you're, if I do say so myself, if you're into performance, fueling, competitions, sport, any or all of these things, I would definitely check out all those episodes. If you got something out of these episodes, please chuck it on your Instagram story, tag eat underscore like underscore Ruby, and I will be back very soon.