20 Performance Habits Every Athlete Needs - Part 1
[00:00:00] What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the Ubuntu Performance Podcast. We are in season three. We're back with a bang. Episode number one, 10 performance strategies you need. Without further ado, let's get into the show with your host, me. Coach Pat. What is going on everybody, welcome back to the Ubuntu Performance Podcast.
I am absolutely thrilled to be back on the mic. It's been a while since the last episode, over a year in fact, and I have pretty good reason for that. Been traveling. I recently moved to Italy, so I'm recording this podcast from a third country. Season 2, which was very short lived, was recorded from Costa Rica, for the loyal listeners.
And, obviously, Season 1 was from Boston, in Massachusetts. So, I'm here in Italy now, and we're launching Season 3. I'm finally in a place that we can make this a very regular podcast, and it's directed towards anyone that [00:01:00] is aiming to improve their overall performance. Now, a lot of people get this wrong.
They think... When they hear performance, they associate that term with athletic performance, right? And a big part of performance is athletics, sports, gym training, whether you're a CrossFit athlete, martial artist, runner, sprinter, basketball player, soccer player. Whatever your sport, but there are also several other facets of performance being a parent your job They all require a high level of performance to do them correctly to do them optimally and so when I'm talking about performance nutrition, I define it as optimizing performance in a given behavior through the manipulation of the nutrients and foods in your diet Right?
And that includes the timing, that includes the specific foods, the food groups, [00:02:00] that includes of course supplements, right the specific diet you're following, things of that nature. So today, to launch the podcast, I wanted to do a really interesting episode covering one of the posts I recently published.
And it's going to be two parts because my episodes are going to be all shorter than 20 minutes. Okay, so that's going to be a promise. All the episodes are going to be under 20 minutes. I'm really going to try and aim for between 12 and 15 minutes per episode, but today I'm going to split this into two parts.
So it's 20 habits that can transform your performance. And obviously part one, we're going to cover the first 10. Okay, so we're just going to jump into it with a bang. Number one, have clear goals. Okay, so this is the most important and I've put it number one because a lot of times we undertake a new program, whether that's nutrition or training, and we say we're going to improve our [00:03:00] fitness, we're going to improve our strength, we're going to improve our power, but we don't have actual measures to assess our progress.
Okay, so what you need to do is you need to set and identify Two to three clear, tangible goals, and I've recorded episodes on this in the past and there's tons of information on my social media page on this, but your goal should be a SMART goal, right? And the word SMART is actually an acronym, widely used, and it's S M A R T, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Time based, oh sorry R, not T.
R is realistic, like is it a realistic goal, and then T is time based. Okay, so, trying to make sure your goals fit along, like, fit within this structure. From billionaires to professional sports stars, when you hear the interviews with these people, they had a very clear goal in their head. They weren't just aiming for improvements in whatever they were doing.
They had very [00:04:00] specific goals that they wanted to achieve. And so what happens is, every day you wake up, you're visualizing the achievement of this goal. Okay, and your body is following suit. So I think that's the power of having a goal and that extends A lot further than just athletic performance, of course.
Number two is sleep according to you. Okay? So what I say here is no nutrition strategy or supplement will compensate for inadequate sleep as a high performer. However, that's not really the point I'm trying to make in this post with the sleep. I'm trying to emphasize that you should just compare yourself to you.
right? Don't be looking outwards. There's so much information now on sleep. There's books, there's podcasts, we have, you know, very big names talking about it every day on our social media feeds. And what can tend to happen, especially for those that do already struggle with their sleep, is we have this anxiety.
So, you know, you set your bedtime for 11pm. If you're in bed and it's 11. 45, [00:05:00] every minute that you're not able to fall asleep, you're getting more and more anxious about you not being able to fall asleep. That perpetuates and inhibits you further from actually falling asleep, and it's sleep anxiety. So as with regular anxiety, they say it's the fear of being anxious, not being anxious itself.
And so one of the approaches there is to just sit with your anxious thoughts and be okay with them and accept them. And it's the same with sleep. If you struggle with your sleep, accept that and know you have to work on it and know that your sleep isn't always going to be perfect, but you're just trying to improve on what you got yesterday.
You're just trying to improve on last week, on last month. Number three is build a routine. So this is quite self explanatory, but doing the same thing every day can actually make it easier and reduce the willpower it takes to do those behaviors, those health promoting behaviors. If you just have. The same time you go to bed, the same foods you're eating for breakfast.
[00:06:00] I know it's monotonous sometimes, but it can actually make it a lot easier and it doesn't take as much willpower. Number four is adjust your energy intake daily. Honestly guys, this is where my coaching practice differentiates from a lot of people. I will work with individuals. who have a weight loss goal, but that are also very active to actually periodize their week.
So I won't just give them a 2100 calorie goal and that's what you're following now for the week. You know, when you open MyFitnessPal for the first time and you put in all your information, it asks you your weight, your goal weight, how active you are, how fast you want to lose the weight, and then it just gives you this one solitary number and you're supposed to hit that every day.
Well, I make the point that on Sunday, I'm doing little to no activity. I'm walking my dog for about 10 minutes and that's it. But then, come Monday, I'm going boxing, I'm playing basketball for 2 hours, I walk my dog 3 times that day, so I need very different calorie intakes even though I'm trying to lose weight.
Number 5 is to stop underestimating your output. I see this all the time with athletes. [00:07:00] Obviously this is directed at people not trying to lose weight. When recounting your activity, do you just look at the high intensity portion? What about your warm up? What about your stretch? What about the walk or the cycle to the gym?
What about the cool down? You have to account for all of these. I'm not saying you have to quantify them in calories and then eat that back. Just err on the side of overestimating what you burned. Number six is use performance plates. Guys, I'm not even going to talk too much on this. I just made. A pretty stacked graphic on my social media page.
I got almost a thousand likes on it because people found it very useful. Basically, I separate your days into five different types. High intensity, mid to high intensity, mid, low, very low. Basically, sedentary. And then I show you a plate what it should look like for those given days. And basically all we're doing there is we're manipulating the carbohydrate portion, but then as we get to the very high intensity, we're actually reducing the fat portion and the fiber because they obviously take longer to digest and they're not optimal to have in the gut or to be [00:08:00] digesting while we're going into a maximal intensity session.
So definitely check that out. Number seven is accept carbohydrates for the king slash queen that they are. There's a huge narrative out there now, guys, and it hasn't been quashed just yet. It used to be fats, but it's carbohydrates now. There's so many social media influencers out there condemning them, but everyone I work with, with the exception of maybe one or two that really just want to have a higher fat diet, lower carb diet, that's perfectly fine too.
But the majority of those that I work with have actually increased their carbohydrates. Reduce their overall calories, successfully lost weight, optimize their performance, and they are feeling better for it. That's the point I always try to make, that carbohydrates provide fuel most efficiently. The pathway to actually producing the ATP is the most...
Rapid compared to the breakdown and synthesis of fatty acids and of course amino acids that have to be converted to glucose precursors That's a mouthful. You don't even need to worry about that Carbohydrates are the optimal source of energy when you need it in [00:09:00] high demand So if anyone uses, you know the polar heart sensors, so I actually use when I wear it on my arm You can get a really affordable one It's like 90 on the polar website and you put it around your forearm and it you know it tracks the calories and the expenditure and your heart rate throughout your workout, but you know, when I'm boxing, I look at that and it's.
Not that this information is extremely accurate at all, it's intensity based, but it's telling me, you know, less than 20 percent of my energy is, is coming from the breakdown of fats, fat oxidation. The remainder is coming from the breakdown of, well, there's a small portion coming from, you know gluconeogenesis, which is amino acids, but the majority is coming from the breakdown of glucose and the provision of ATP from that substrate.
So it's really important that you give your body enough of that. What I say when people go... Low or zero carb as, as very active athletes. I say you're just making your body do more work. Last three for today. Consume less fat and fiber on heavy days. This is number eight. So this is, I already covered [00:10:00] it.
These two nutrients, I guess you could call fibromasts. an antinutrient, right? Because we don't really digest it very well if at all. These take longer to process through the GI tract and this is not optimal because for some people that produces gas and if there's a lot of food in the system and you're going into a really intense run or a cycle, there can actually be a lot of inflammation caused at the gut, at the site of the cellular lining of the gut.
And this for a lot of people can end up in like diarrhea or having to use the bathroom or having to puke. So we just recommend keeping that really low in the hours before a heavy training or a competition. Number nine is focus on the food. So as athletes. We often become hyper focused on the three macros, carbs, protein and fats.
We know the roles, and so they are on top of our list of priorities. But, we need to get our hands on the food. We need to look at our diet as not just the sum of our nutrients, but enjoyment, celebration, [00:11:00] connection. You know, eating with family members, with friends, with co workers, tastes, ingredients, the spices, the herbs.
So focusing on more than just the nutrients and the macros you're following is really important. And what I recommend there is if you do track your nutrition, take a day or two off it. And if that comes with a lot of anxiety for people, that's, that's fine to stick to your tracking, but I really do recommend trying to come off of that every single day tracking mode, because we start to look at food as just numbers, and it's so much more than that.
Number 10 is make a menu. This is really helpful for a lot of people, and it's basically the more effective version of a meal plan. So what I do when I give someone a nutrition program, right, I'm not a dietician, so I can't actually prescribe meal plans. I'll give them like a sample menu, which has a few different options, just a couple of different options for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And that essentially gives them a choice, but it's a choice that it's only two or three options. They don't have to decide between the thousand healthy breakfast options that are out there. There's a couple of options [00:12:00] that meet their targets. They give them their protein, their carbs, their fats. They make their choice based on their preference that morning.
So I do recommend making a menu. So that's number 10, make a menu. Now, one added point here of why this is so important. It's for your grocery shopping every week. If you have a menu of meals that you know you're going to choose from, it makes that grocery shopping, you know, on Sunday or whenever you do yours, a lot easier and streamlined.
So that's a lot of the feedback I've gotten back from people who actually construct these menus and believe it or not It's a really big part of people's nutrition program is just having their plan in place. Okay guys, that is pretty much it So this is episode 1. I think this is going up on Wednesday as That's my schedule used to be and it will be from now on.
They're going to be short, they're going to be sweet and they're going to be highly informative. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, share it with a friend. That's all I ask of you guys. I don't want any other support except for just sharing it to people that you think could use it. Okay guys, I'll leave it there.
I hope you have a great rest of your week [00:13:00] and we will see each other on the next episode.