TrainingPeaks member Matt Hoover won the grand prize in season 2 of the Biggest Loser by losing 157 pounds, but this past Sunday Matt was transformed into an Ironman when he crossed the finish line in Kona, Hawaii in a time of 17:03:35.

Those familiar with Ironman-distance racing know that official race finishers must complete the 2.4 miles of swimming, 112-miles of cycling and a marathon in under 17 hours. So, sadly Matt won’t be listed as official finisher, but his focus and determination should be an inspiration for millions of people struggling with weight loss.

Matt’s coach, Jim Vance of TrainingBible Coaching, not only coached Matt to improve physically, but also mentally on how to think like an endurance athlete. Jim was also there on race day (and night) nearly every step of the way.

TrainingPeaks interviewed Jim about Matt’s training program and how the two of them made incredible improvements in a relatively short about of time.

TP – How long have you been coaching Matt?
Jim – I started coaching Matt in April, well before we ever got offered a slot at Ironman Kona. We just planned on doing an Ironman this year possibly, if training went well. We were definitely going to do a half though. When the offer came to do Kona, we decided to try it.

TP – What did you primarily focus on when you trained Matt for the Ironman?
Jim – The main focus was just building aerobic fitness. When we first started I knew I needed to get Matt to the start line healthy, and able to make the swim cut-off in order to stand a chance. He picked up swimming so quick, (he swam 1:38 in Kona), that the focus turned quickly to aerobic fitness.

TP – What kind of improvements did you see from Matt?
Jim – We saw some impressive improvements from Matt. We estimated his functional threshold power (FTP*) at the beginning to be around 235 watts, and by the time raceday came, he was at an estimated 310 watts FTP. He also improved his 5K test on the track by nearly 10 minutes.

TP – Are there any lessons you may have learned from Matt that could benefit other athletes who battle to control their weight?
Jim – Matt’s biggest battle with the change to endurance sports was that he was trying to be like a wrestler still, or like someone concerned about losing weight, that he did not want to eat. It affected his ability to recover from workouts effectively, and thus his consistency and improvements. He under-fueled so often, he wasn’t able to lose as much weight as he had hoped. It was tough, because as a coach I was trying to change his mentality and perceptions, not just his fitness.

TP – What role did TrainingPeaks play in your work with Matt?
Jim – TrainingPeaks software was the major communication tool for Matt and I, and WKO+ was the major analysis tool I used in tracking his fitness and even helping me plan his workouts, recognizing his weaknesses.

Watch this blog for an interview with Matt himself tomorrow.

For an entire race report about Matt’s Ironman experience click here.

Click here to read more about Matt Hoover.

Learn more about Functional Threshold Power here.

This week in Toronto, TrainingPeaks representatives and personal trainer Ben Greenfield attended the Can-Fit-Pro conference, a fitness industry trade show in Canada that attracts thousands of trainers, nutritionists, and other wellness professionals and enthusiasts every year. As more and more people rely increasingly on the internet to help them organize their lives, the idea of online personal training is really starting to take off, with many exciting implications for the fitness industry. By using online client management software such as TrainingPeaks, fitness professionals can increase their efficiency, improve client retention, and develop multiple streams of income.

Ben Greenfield, a personal trainer and endurance coach who uses TrainingPeaks to help leverage his time, has found great success creating a lucrative career out of his passion for fitness and training. During a presentation he gave at the conference on the advantages of using technology in his business, Ben explained how he has been able to earn an income from not only face-to-face meetings with clients, but also through delivering online training plans, selling e-books, and marketing fitness and nutritional products online.

“I’m earning money while I’m earning money,” explains Ben, describing how while at the same time that he may be meeting with a client, his online training plans, books, and products are selling themselves. “Every morning is like Christmas – I wake up and check my email to discover that while I was sleeping, other people were looking for ways to get fit, lose weight, and live a healthier life, and I was able to help them do that.”

In addition to Ben’s training plans selling while he sleeps, he has also discovered the power of efficiently managing the time that he spends interacting with each client. By modifying templates that he has already created in TrainingPeaks for other clients, Ben is able to quickly design expert training programs for any goal, from a weight loss program to an Ironman preparation course. He has also saved many lectures, podcasts and phone calls that are available for reference on his website to clients who have questions about their own training and nutrition.

“I’m almost afraid to admit it, but I have found a system that allows me to very efficiently deliver expert guidance to a large number of people, maximizing both my free time and my income,” Ben explained. “If you think about how much I charge each client per month and how many hours I spend per month on each client’s program, it becomes clear that my time is at least as valuable as other experts in their fields, such as doctors, lawyers, and professors. Personal trainers should remember that the service they offer, which is knowledge that people can use to live longer, healthier, more active lives, is incredibly valuable, and they should strive to create business models that allow them to leverage their time and charge a fair price for this service.”

Learn more about how Ben has grown his business, and how you can too, on his website at www.trainfortopdollar.com.

Getting started with routes

To get started with Routes, just click on the Routes section on the left side of your screen once you login.  Note that there are three “Libraries” to use: My Routes, My Published Routes and the Public Route Search. Click the “New Route” button to start creating a route from scratch with the Route Builder. Or, you can use any uploaded GPS workout and save it as a route from the Journal.

Interactive elevation profiles

Something we find very useful is that every route has an interactive elevation profile feature allowing you to highlight a hill and see the summary stats for any given section of the route.  Want to know the grade of that hill you know you’ll be climbing? No problem, as you can see below, just highlight the hill and view the stats on the left. Also note that it highlights the section of the route in the map above the elevation profile.

Route search

We decided that since routes are based on maps, why not build the search based on maps too.  Easily find routes anywhere quickly and easily by just typing your city name. You’ll see the route starting point for all routes and can view the routes on the map. Enable the “search only on map” feature and you can pan the map and see all routes nearby.  The Advanced Search lets you find routes by distance, elevation gain, surface type and keyword.

Route builder

The new route builder is fast, simple and powerful. Use the “follow roads” feature to easily map out a course, with real-time elevation profiles. You can turn “follow roads” off and on at will, allowing you to leave the road and hit the trail.  Perhaps you have built a route but want to slightly modify it? No problem, you can drag any point on the route right on the map to move its position.

Save an existing GPS workout as a route

Any existing workout can be saved as a route. Just open the workout on the Journal, click the Map tab and click Options-> “Create route from this GPS file”.  The route will be saved to your “My Routes” library and you can drag it to the Calendar or edit it at any time.

Reviews and ratings

Leave a comment or rate any public route.  Especially helpful for races and other routes of interest.  Help us build a route system where everyone benefits by making comments like bathroom break suggestions, interesting points along the way, or mindful traffic tips.  Rate any route with an easy 5-star rating tool and searching will improve to show high-rated routes first.

Share your routes and Publish them to the public route directory

We’ve made it easy to share routes by link (URL), email, through Facebook or Twitter. For any route, just click “Share Route” and you’ll get a simple dialog with all the links. This makes it super easy to build a route and send it to your buddies on where the group ride/run will be happening. Note that the pop-up preview window and the full route editor both have a Share Route button.  We also encourage everyone to publish your routes to our public route directory so other community users can benefit from your routes.  Just click the Publish Route link to submit your routes to the public directory. Note that you can see all your published routes in the “My Published Routes” library under the Routes section.

Drag a route onto the calendar

Every route in the system, both in your “My Routes” library (those you build/own) and the “Public Routes” can be dragged onto your calendar for easy scheduling or logging.  Come again?  Thats right, you can simply drag it onto your calendar to log your workout. Want to plan your next weeks workouts? No problem, you can drag routes onto the Calendar in preparation for your training week ahead.

Drag route points to adjust the route

A very nice feature of our Route Builder is the ability to adjust the route by dragging any route point.  For example, you run the usual “3 mil route” around your neighborhood, but decided during the run to extend it down a different street.  No problem, just take the original route, move your mouse over the point and drag it to the appropriate location

Sure, we have a lot more planned for our routes tools, exports, hitory reports and much more are coming down the pike, but we think you’ll really appreciate all we’ve put into the new routes system now.

Ready to try our routes?  Create a FREE TrainingPeaks account now in 30 seconds, login and check it out!

The Gray Institute has selected the online training and nutrition software TrainingPeaks.com to deliver their rapidly expanding library of exercise videos to enable professionals to quickly and effectively design exercise and therapy programs to meet the requirements of their clients and patients.

“We are excited to expand the distribution of our exercise library online through TrainingPeaks.com,” commented Gary Gray, Founder and President of the Gray Institute. “Personal trainers, physical therapists and other professionals now have direct access to our Applied Functional Science techniques in video format delivered together with TrainingPeaks creating the most comprehensive suite of exercises and client management utilities available.”

The Gray Institute Online Exercise Library contains more than 6,000 videos with corresponding images of exercises and movements adhering to Applied Functional Science strategies. Each exercise is accompanied by the proper Nomenclature and a concise description that is easily understood by the end user.

“It is an honor to package software together with the Gray Institute, the leader in educating professionals on Applied Functional Science,” said Donavon Guyot, CEO of Peaksware. “The combination of our TrainingPeaks software with the Video Exercise Library delivers an unrivaled set of tools for professionals wanting to provide the best level of service for their clients.”

The package includes both TrainingPeaks Professional Edition software and the Gray Institute Online Exercise Library for $59 per month (value of $68.95 per month). Learn more and subscribe at www.grayinstitute.com/library.aspx.

How can you cut calories and reach your racing weight without nagging hunger and performance self-sabotage? There are three ways to achieve this balance:

1. Create a small caloric deficit
2. Manage your appetite
3. Make sure you’re getting enough carbohydrate

Let’s look more closely at each of these steps.

Create a small caloric deficit

If all you cared about was losing weight, you could reduce your caloric intake significantly—as much as you could psychologically stand—in order to shed pounds quickly. As an athlete, however, you would by doing this suffer the consequences of incomplete muscle glycogen replenishment between workouts, hence poor workout performance, and inadequate muscle tissue repair also resulting in poor workout performance as well as increased injury risk.

Research has clearly shown that anything more than a moderate daily caloric deficit wreaks havoc on exercise performance. For example, a 2005 study involving Senegalese 400m sprinters showed a significant performance decline in a set of 3 x 250m intervals during Ramadan (a month during which Muslims eat only after sundown) compared to before the holy month.  The reason was clear. Blood tests showed that the athletes were suffering from severe hypoglycemia when they exercised more than 10 hours after their last meal.

A daily caloric deficit of 200-300 calories per day is sufficient to promote weight loss but not so large that it is likely to sabotage your performance, as long as you consume adequate carbohydrate. To create this deficit, record everything you eat and drink in a typical day and total up the calories. Now trim 200-300 of the least useful calories from this list, or replace particular foods with lower-calorie alternatives. For example, replace your turkey sandwich with a chicken salad wrap with more greens than chicken.

Manage Your Appetite

It is not only the total number of calories but also the types of calories you consume and even the timing of their consumption that determine how well your appetite is satisfied. Reducing your total daily caloric intake by 200-300 calories will not necessarily increase your hunger level if you change the sources and timing in ways that serve to better manage your appetite.

Calorie for calorie, foods that contain a lot of water and/or fiber are more filling than foods that contain little of either. Fruits and vegetables contain the most fiber and water and thus provide the most satiety per calorie. This might not sound right until you learn that you’d have to eat seven or eight large stalks of broccoli to get as many calories as there are in a single Carl’s Jr. Western Bacon Cheeseburger. So simply replacing a few foods you currently eat with fruits and vegetables (as much as you want) is a good way to cut calories without producing hunger.

Research has shown that a given number of calories is more satisfying when consumed in several small spread-out meals and snacks than in just a few, especially if the first small meal is eaten early in the morning. So after you decide on a target daily caloric intake, next figure out how to divide it appropriately into a daily eating schedule that includes breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, dinner and possibly an evening snack.

Make sure you’re getting enough carbohydrate

Many endurance athletes do not consume optimal amounts of carbohydrate even when they are not actively pursuing weight loss. For such athletes, a reduction of 200-300 calories per day is likely to exacerbate this inadequacy, resulting in poor workouts and slow recovery between workouts. It’s a good idea to calculate your carbohydrate intake to determine if you’re getting enough, even when you’re just trying to maintain your weight.

When you transition from a weight-maintenance regimen to a weight-loss program, calculate your carbohydrate intake again and shift some of your daily calories from fat and carbohydrate as necessary to ensure you’re getting enough. While fat and protein are important too, endurance training increases carbohydrate needs more than it does fat and protein needs and endurance athletes (in Western countries, anyway) are more likely to come up short with their carb intake than with their consumption of the other two macronutrients.

Endurance athletes are commonly advised to get 60 percent of their daily calories from carbohydrate, but this one-size-fits-all standard does not really fit all. It’s best to measure your carbohydrate needs in absolute terms (grams per day) instead of percentage terms. Click here for specific guidelines.