C’pas tout de s’entraîner: Eating a steak during a maratjon

Podcasts

January 31, 2023

| AXiO Clinique de médecine sportive

In a brand new podcast series, the Centre Multisports André-Chagnon invites you to discover that training does not stop at lifting weights, sweating or running a marathon. Under the title It’s not all about training, these interviews aim to shed interesting and professional light on an aspect closely or not very far related to training. In a first series of six meetings, Patrick Richard questions nutritionist Joanie Séguin about the importance of food.

During our 4th meeting, Joanie and I discussed nutrition around training: what do we eat before, during and after training? The famous spaghetti before a race, is it always a good idea? I entered this discussion with the idea that I didn’t know anything, nor did I remember what I had learned in previous podcasts. So, knowing nothing, I learn from the mouth of the nutritionist that our diet during training depends a lot on what we ate before we started training. In other words, if you were a fan of two or three cabbage mustards before you started getting in shape, you may need to change your diet to optimize your fitness.

Are you following me?

The objective of the combination of good nutrition and training is first of all to give the necessary energy to your body so that it accomplishes the efforts that you ask of it. Anyone who trains lightly a few times a week does not need to engage in unbridled carbohydrate ingestion. But if you’re the type to do two Ironmans in the same week, maybe it would be worth making an appointment with Joanie and planning what you’re going to eat. If you are looking for a nice ready-made answer, avoid foods that are too fatty and proteins before a workout. We aim for carbohydrates to give us the energy we need. But again, not being the specialist in anything, it is well worth communicating with Joanie and listening to her podcast to find out. I won’t leave you without reminding you that supplements can help. Think of it like a pyramid: at the bottom, you have balanced meals, a good workout, and at the top, in the last 5%, you swim in the world of supplements. These can make a small improvement in our performance (per small, it is estimated around 3%), but supplements will never fix bad lifestyle habits.

Patrick Richard