Athletes have access to more performance data than ever before.
Heart rate and threshold testing. Sweat rate and sodium testing. Bloodwork. Recovery metrics. Wearables tracking sleep, HRV, resting heart rate, and training load.
Having access to all of this is great. But there’s a problem I see all the time:
Athletes get the data, but they don’t know what to do with it.
You can go through a full performance test and walk away knowing your heart rate zones, threshold, sweat rate, sodium loss, or blood markers, but if none of that changes how you train, fuel, hydrate, or recover, what did the testing actually accomplish?
The numbers themselves aren’t what make you better.
The decisions you make from those numbers do.
Fuel.
Most athletes understand that nutrition is important, but a lot of them still don’t understand how much it directly impacts performance.
Carbohydrates are stored as glycogen in your muscles and liver and become increasingly important as intensity goes up. If you’re consistently under-fueled, eventually your ability to maintain pace, power, focus, and overall output is going to suffer.
Protein gives your body the building blocks it needs to repair and adapt from training.
Fat plays an important role in overall health and provides a major source of energy during lower-intensity work.
The goal isn’t to make nutrition complicated. It’s the opposite.
Understand what your body needs, understand the demands of your sport, and build a fueling strategy around it.
Hydration.
Hydration is another area where athletes tend to rely way too much on guessing.
Some athletes lose a ton of fluid when they sweat. Others don’t. Some lose a lot of sodium. Others lose significantly less.
That’s why copying someone else’s hydration strategy doesn’t always work.
If we know roughly how much fluid and sodium you’re losing, now we can build a plan around your needs and the conditions you’re competing in.
That becomes especially important in sports like Super Motocross, where you’re dealing with heat, high heart rates, repeated bouts of high-intensity work, reaction time, grip strength, and decision-making.
The goal isn’t necessarily to replace everything you lose.
The goal is to understand what you’re losing and replace enough of it to keep you performing.
A Ferrari can’t be a Ferrari on E.
You wouldn’t build a Ferrari, spend years improving the engine, and then expect it to perform with no fuel in the tank.
Athletes aren’t much different.
You can spend years building your fitness, strength, skill, and endurance, but if you show up under-fueled, dehydrated, or poorly recovered, you’re limiting how much of that fitness you can use.
Sometimes the difference between two athletes isn’t who is more talented or even who is more fit.
It’s who is better prepared to use the fitness they have.
Gather – Plan – Execute.
This is where I think the biggest gap exists, and where I come in.
- If heart rate or threshold testing gives us better training zones, those zones should change how you train.
- If sweat testing tells us how much fluid and sodium you lose, those numbers should help build your hydration strategy.
- If bloodwork shows something that needs attention, that information should become part of the nutrition and recovery conversation with the appropriate professional.
The testing is only step one.
Test – understand – build the plan – execute – adjust.
That’s where the value comes from.
I want to take the information we already have and turn it into simple procedures they can follow every day. How they train, how they fuel, how they hydrate, and how they recover.
A coach’s job should be to simplify and guide the athlete’s day. We take the numbers and the data, plan, and guide our athletes in executing said plan. Informing our athletes on the “why” should be a part of that.