by Ben Greenfield | Feb 1, 2010 | Ben Greenfield
Now that you have a good idea of how to teach your indoor cycling class about the basics of carbohydrates and performance, let’s move into the next logical macronutrient: protein.
You’d be surprised at the number of people in your class who have only a very basic understand of protein, and often simply think that it is derived from meat and should be eaten with dinner.
Begin your discussion of protein with an explanation of what proteins actually are: vital components of every organ and action within the human body, without which we would simply cease to function. In the absence of proper nutritional building blocks for protein, the human body will cannibalize it’s own lean muscle mass and organs, and experience a weakened immune system, poor performance, and inadequate recovery and fitness response. Proteins are comprised of amino acids — many of which the body cannot make on it’s own unless complete proteins are present in the diet.
But it’s a myth that you need to get your complete protein from meat.
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by Ben Greenfield | Jan 28, 2010 | Ben Greenfield
Everybody knows that nutrition is important.
Whether a student’s goal is fat-burning or human performance, if the proper fuel isn’t there, the goal won’t be achieved.
The problem is that it can be too easy to feed your students through the firehose on Day 1, scaring them away with big words like “glycemic index” and “periodization”. Instead, why not include a series of mini-lectures in your class, during which you teach your students with a brief 5-10 minute anecdote during warm-up or cool-down?
You can literally take each manageable section of this ten week series on Indoor Cycling Nutrition, and turn it into a ten week nutrition mini-class for your students. This will give you a value-added service that you can feature in your marketing, and give your students both a physical and mental benefit during your classes. I’ll write each article in a manner that allows you to easily a) break information into small chunks so you don’t have to be reading this article off a piece of paper while you’re sitting on your bike and b) easily explain it to your students, most of which will not have backgrounds in nutrition science and physiology.
Without further ado, let’s hop into Part I of Teaching Your Indoor Cycling Class About Nutrition: Carbohydrates.
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