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Hey there, triathlon studs and studettes! Join in for a great show about going big and eating raw.

I take you along with me on a huge training week of over 20 hours.  We also chat a lot about raw foods and how to make them happen on your menu.  We even have an audio clip from a raw food rap video.

We also have an interview with a new triathlete, Brandon, and how he's cleaning up his diet and enjoying more energy.

"Performance of the Week" goes to Jeremy for his awesome swimming workouts.  He scored a sampler from our sponsor, Action Wipes!

You can see from the picture above the benefits of better nutrition and the workouts that follow.  So what are you waiting for? Drop in and check it out!

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I get a lot of requests for recipies for green smoothies. Instead of posting a bunch of different possibilities, how about we just go through the formula instead.

Green Smoothie = liquid base + leafy greens + veggies + fruit + special ingredients.

Special Note - Some people skip the leafy greens and veggies, and that can be bad news for your health.  Drinking a huge fruit-only smoothie is like pouring sugar syrup right into your guts. Fruit may be healthy, but fruit is loaded with sugar and needs to be taken in moderation.  Grinding up 5 lbs. of fruit sugar into a liquid and pouring it directly into your food-hole is a great way to start off a "Let's get diabetes!" party.  Now, there's nothing wrong with a fruit smoothie per se, just make them a small treat, not a daily habit of gigantic proportions.  Ok, back to the regularly scheduled program...

Liquid Base. Water, ice, coconut or almond milk, and Odwalla Superfood (a sweet mix of some crazy-healthy ingredients). Mix and match any of the above to make the smoothie runny enough to be blendable.

Leafy Greens. I stick with two basics: Kale and mixed baby greens. You can easily use spinach as well. Leafy greens are the whole point of the smoothie, so don't skimp. People don't eat anywhere near enough leafy greens, and putting them in a fruit smoothie is the an amazing way to sneak them in your diet. They improve your health so dramatically, any way you can find to chomp on more of them is fantastic.

Veggies. I always throw in some carrots. On occasion I will put in a piece of a beet or a chunk or yellow, red, or orange bell peppers, which are actually very sweet. Green bell peppers don't taste good in a smoothie, BTW.

Fruit. In a Green Smoothie, fruit is more of an accesory to make the leafy greens and veggies taste better. I usually add two pieces of whole fruit or the equivilant amount of smaller fruits. Examples include bananas, apples, oranges, blueberries, strawberries, lots of stuff, really. I simply grab what's available and use it. I also always throw in some grapes because they work great as a natural sweetener.

Special ingredients. To make the smoothie truly super green, I throw in a tablespoon or two of spirulina. To add some kick to the flavor, I'll squeeze in a little fresh lime, toss in some Ginger, and even put in a little cilantro (another leafy green!).  To add in some healthy fats, I'll put in some avocado and/or Vega EFA oil.

How to Drink/Store. I pour as much of the smoothie as possible into a liter bottle and put that in the fridge. The leftover goes into a sports bottle with some ice and water. I sip on the sports bottle throughout the day. When it gets empty, I refill it with more smoothie mix and ice water.  It's all gone by early evening.

You might be thinking all this is too much, and it is.  I just stick to the formula and grab what's available in my kitchen.  No smoothie has all the stuff listed above.  I never make the same smoothie day-to-day and I never measure out the ingredients on purpose; each one tastes slightly different and that's good. For example, I bought a couple of pears and some strawberries this week and I'm using those as my main fruits instead of the banana and orange that I usually use.

You don't need a green smoothie daily.  What you do need is leafy greens and veggies.  The green smoothie is just a tasty and convenient way to do it.  If you eat a green salad or two a day, you probably have your green bases covered, so don't think this is the only way.  Enjoy!

Recently, I was asked by one of my students if there was anything they could do to help them get ready for staying in aero position on the bike for long races like 70.3 and the Ironman distance. I smiled and told him, "Yes."

I don't think he knew what he was asking for when he asked if we could spend a couple of classes working on being comfortable for long periods of time in aero position. Last month I wrote about a pose called Malasana, or Garland Pose, which is essentially a deep squat. At any rate, we were using Malasana in order to both open the hips and experience a greater connection to our feet which can be useful in running for moving with greater ease (especially after a hard bike leg) and generating more power resulting from greater range of motion.

Like many yoga poses Malasana can be a preparation for or a segue into other more challenging but very useful poses. And as it turns out it can also be a great beginning to an exploration of getting and staying aero on the bike. So what we are going to do over the next few posts is move from Malasana into a few more poses that can be added in sequence to promote the necessary bodily transformations that can make long bike legs less difficult from a positioning standpoint which in turn, ultimately, can lead to more efficient runs.

The next pose we explore in our sequence of aerodynamic building yoga poses is a pose called Bakasana or Crow Pose. The reason this pose is so important in our quest for aerodynamics is that it can promote the necessary core integration we need to support our torso out on the aerobars. Although in yoga Bakasana is an arm balance and when you first see it you might think it is a pose for strengthening the arms. Nothing could be further from the truth. By and large arm balances in yoga are core cultivators. And for our purpose of getting aero and being comfortable on the bike, Bakasana can train us to properly engage our core to provide the "lift" we need to comfortably maintain a flat back.

To come into Bakasana, we start in Malasana - a deep squat with our heels together. Place your palms on the floor out in front of you about a foot and a half away from your feet. You want your knees up even with your triceps. Shift your body forward bringing your weight fully onto your hands. Bending your elbows keep shifting more and more of your weight into your hands while keeping head up and your gaze on the floor in front of you. With your body centered over the palms, try bringing one foot off the ground. Engaging your core by bringing your navel in and up toward the spine as though you are lifting and filling the area near the kidneys with air. It is this internal movement that provides the lift in the hips and keeps the knees high up on the triceps. Technically for our purposes, you could stop at this point and work the pose by alternating between lifting your right and left feet off the ground and bringing them up toward your hips. Trust me 3 to 5 reps with each foot is a workout.

If you are comfortable with balancing on your hands and have no problem with the pose while one foot is on the ground, then try taking both feet off the ground at the same time. Again, be sure to keep your head up with your gaze out in front of you and in between your hands. If you have open hips and can get the sense of lift through your core you may find you are able to get quite a bit of height in the pose. If so try holding the pose for about 6 to 8 unhurried breaths before bringing our feet back to the ground.

If for some reason the arm balance doesn't work for you, say balance is an issue, or you have weak wrists, you can still reap the benefits of the pose by taking the balance aspect out of it and practicing Bakasana on your back. In fact almost all yoga arm balances can be practiced while on your back allowing you to strengthen the core as you work your way up toward practicing the actual arm balance.

Coming into Bakasana on your back is very similar to practicing it upright. Start with your heels together and your knees apart. Your back will be flat against the ground. First you will rotate your pelvis up toward the ceiling which will cause your knees to rotate toward your shoulders. Now, as if you were doing crunches, bring your shoulders off the floor and move the torso up toward your knees. Hook your elbows on the insides of your knees and draw your navel down and in toward your spine. This will assist in deepening the fold. Hold the position for anywhere from 4 to 8 breaths, then relax. Repeat the movement 3 to 5 times. Working Bakasana regularly, aside from being a neat trick you can show your Tri-minded friends, will give you the core awareness and integrity that we will need for the next pose in our aero building sequence. There aren't to many issues with practicing Bakasana other than wrist issues and fear of falling so if you have any reservations, try the version where you explore the pose on your back for a while. I actually find that version more difficult. Until next time, train well....

Somebody twittered me the term "Crudavore" today.  Interesting word.  A lengthy description can be found here, but the term generally describes somebody that doesn't eat processed foods.  It's essentially the same thing as a "raw foodist".

I definitely fall in this camp.  I grew up being told by my parents that processed foods were crap, but I wasn't aware that there is a sliding scale as far as what's processed.

You might think that only "junk food" like Fritos is processed.  True, but paleo diet fans believe that even bread is processed food.  You can't find bread growing on a bush and it only comes after the ingredients are processed by man with crushing, grinding, soaking, mixing, baking, and more, making it one of the first processed foods on Earth.  

The end result is bread, which does have lots of calories and helped man get to where he is today, but is also a chief source of wonky nutrition that is giving us excess calories and loads of health problems.  

Some people are having a lot of success with their nutrition by going back to more primal diets which are a better fit for our digestive systems.  Raw foods have the most nutritional potential before they are "processed" away, but the trick is switching over your taste buds to enjoy them.  You also have to change your shopping and cooking habits  (or lack thereof).  

I am enjoying the challenge.  On one hand, it is different, which is fun.  On the other, it's surprising how the mind clings to one pattern, then adopts it, then decides that the new is better than the old when the old was previously judged as the best way just a short while ago.

The most amusing part is that eating like a crudavore feels like a lost art.  It wasn't that long ago that we all ate that way most of the time, but ask a modern American to do it and they wouldn't be able to assemble an entire meal of raw foods before heading to Stop N Go for a mini-pizza.  Just like swimming and running is rarely done by us out of necessity nowdays, eating "old school" style might be a behavior that makes us feel more alive, healthy, and purposeful on this planet.

This article was recently published proving what your mom always said: "Eat more slowly and you'll fill up."  The scientists gave the subjects either 5 minutes or much longer to eat a serving of ice cream.  The ones that didn't have to gulp it down in 5 minutes had measurably higher hormones that signal the brain that you are full.  They also had more full scores on some other tests.

An interesting thing to observe is if you actually have an empty mouth before you take your next bite.  Many of us still have half a bite left in there while we are cramming in a whole new one, myself included.

In the quest for a better power to weight ratio for triathlon, it seems there's an unending array of ways we can eat and treat ourselves better.  Most interesting is that they are almost all common sense; you just have to apply yourself and break bad habits.

Just like you can go overboard with overeating, you can also get too thin and that compromises your performance as well.  For example, Chrissie Wellington has commented that she makes sure she doesn't go below a certain weight because a lack of body fat will sink you in the swim.  This couldn't be more true. The "owner's manual" for greyhound dogs says to never let them swim in deep water because they will sink like a stone.  They don't have enough body fat to keep afloat!