Today's Top 5 is for every athlete, from first 5K to world champ: five performance hacks you can use to go faster.
If you're on the beginner end, you might be thinking, "I don't need this stuff yet." Wrong way around. Performance isn't about being elite; it's about going faster than you went yesterday. And when you go faster, you build fitness faster. The flywheel spins both ways. Best of all, most of these five work better the newer you are because you've got the most room to gain.
Here are your five, starting with the one everyone should be doing.
1. The performance hack hiding in your pocket.
This week, David Roche (coach, podcaster, running legend) wrote about taking carbs before short workouts, and it's a shift in how most people think about fueling. It also happens to be exactly what I've been doing for the past year, quietly, against conventional wisdom. So against conventional wisdom that I've kept my mouth shut about it. Until now. Nothing like a running legend saying it first (with a real research study to back him up) so I don't have to be the weird one.
The idea: 20g to 40g of carbs right at the start of your workout, not your long ride, your Tuesday intervals. The timing is everything: stretch, warm up, then take your gel and go. Gel, then go to work. Heart rate climbing right after the carbs go in means no sugar crash.
The old thinking: "It's a short workout, you don't need any fuel." I watched a so-called expert say exactly that this week. Not wrong about the glycogen in your tank. But having gas in the tank isn't the same as having your foot on the pedal. It's blood glucose you want pumping, and David's seen it on the track in Boulder, where Olympians take a gel before a session of 200s.
If you do nothing else from this email: gel, then go. It costs you one gel and zero effort, and it's the cheapest speed you'll buy all year.
2. Broccoli for the win.
I know how this sounds. Stay with me, because Nomio is the fastest-growing performance product we have ever launched, and it's not close.
Here's what it is: 6½ pounds of broccoli (yes, pounds) condensed into one 60ml shot from Sweden. The magic is a family of compounds called isothiocyanates, ITCs, that switch on your body's own antioxidant and stress defenses. In training terms: less lactate produced during hard efforts, and a faster bounce-back after them. The pros got there first. Now it's everyone.
One shot, about 3 hours before your hard session or race. Forget the green powders; nothing comes close to this much actual broccoli in one shot, and as a bonus, your greens for the day are done.
3. Would you do anything for performance?
The King of Performance is bicarb. No question, it's the biggest performance gainer on this list, but it comes at a real cost and risk. Albeit a greatly reduced risk.
Here's the deal. Bicarb buffers lactic acid, tempering the burning sensation that's trying to get your body to slow down. Less burn means you can push harder, much harder. It absolutely works. And if you're not taking it, and you're watching the folks you used to crush take your PRs and KOMs, remember I told you why.
Use it on race day, sure. But I think you get more benefit doing it once a week in training. It turns your hardest workout of the week into a race-day effort, cranking up your fitness gains.
The catch: consuming it is rough, to say it best. Option one: you eat a gel like soup to protect these super salty tablets from ruining your stomach. It works, but you're choking it down and it's a lot. Option two, capsules, sounds great, right? Well, it's 18 or more capsules to get to an effective dose. Still the better path in my opinion, and faster.
Then there's the risk of, well, pooping yourself. It used to happen all the time. Apparently it still does. But that risk drops way down if you stick to the level that works for you in training.
Shop Powerbank Bicarb Capsules
4. If you do just one product, make it this one.
The gel at the start of your workout was the first thing to do. This is the second, and it helps virtually everyone who does it: SwissRX Nitric Oxide Pro, our top-selling performance booster. The secret ingredient is Black Garlic (don't worry - no garlic breath). Two capsules, one hour before your workout. What it does is simple and kind of unfair: it increases blood flow to your working muscles, delivering more oxygen. Which means you stay aerobic longer before your body has to go anaerobic at all.
And if you've been reading closely, you can see the whole system now. Think of it this way: Nitric Oxide Pro delivers more oxygen, so you don't build lactate in the first place. When you finally do go anaerobic, you produce less of it, because you took Nomio. And when it eventually starts to burn anyway, bicarb buffers it. Three products, three lines of defense, one result: you hold the pace everyone else is losing.
5. Peptide-powered.
The word "peptide" is having a moment, and I'm a believer, but here's the thing nobody mentions: most of the peptides everyone's buzzing about aren't actually legal at this point. This one is. It's called PeptiStrong®, a peptide derived from fava beans, and I'm a big believer. It has worked wonders for me, and it's the most repurchased supplement we sell, which tells me it's working for other Feed athletes, too.
What does it do? It supports your body's muscle synthesis, the process that kicks in post-workout to recover and rebuild your muscle faster. In my case, I've transformed my physique to gain more lean muscle mass, and I credit it to Synthesis combined with intense gym effort. Because here's the fine print: you still need to put in the work to break down the muscle first, so there's something to rebuild.
We have it three ways: as a capsule in SwissRX Synthesis, inside the Foundation shake booster, and inside my latest daily obsession, the Kyoku Protein Shake.
That's the five. Go faster this week, even just a little and you will make gains.
