Ever wondered what the pro's eat before, during or after training and racing? Nicki Strobel (Performance Nutritionist) from Mitchelton Scott brings us behind the scenes with one of the biggest teams on the planet
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In today's Roadman Podcast, I want to talk with Nikki Strobel from Michelton Scott. Let's cure that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long chances? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh, and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another roadman podcast. Roadman, it has been one hell of a week. This summit has tested me to the limit. The summit, and don't forget the podcast is daily, so it's the summit and the podcast this week. But the summit has gone off without hitch. The eight and ninth of December are in my rearview mirror two days that I had marked off the the calendar for a long, long time. And look, this so much was a massive, massive success. So thanks to everyone that tuned in. Like it was great to just catch up with some friends, great to make some new friends on it. Like Pete's debt and a Yani Brackovich, Pete O'Royne. I had Sebastian Weber on a Tyler Hamilton, Bill Moran, Dustin Schafer was one of the really interesting ones that I was just fascinated by. I continue to be fascinated by it. I'm definitely going to explore more down this rabbit hole. Dustin Shafer is the Keto Pro and he's the guy behind the scenes who's been designing the protocols for these world tour teams for the last five years, how to use ketones, what ketones to use and when it belts to use these ketones. So I caught up with Dustin Shafer on the summit and it was fascinating. You know what, maybe at some point I'll release that as a podcast episode because I do think it was absolutely fascinating and while it's fascinating at world tour level what I'm equally fascinated by. I've used to work fascinated a lot there in the last 30 seconds but I am okay I'm intrigued I'm not fascinated. What I'm equally intrigued by is the application of key tones for everyday riders because they talk about performance gains, uh, burning body fast which you know great for world tour riders also great for amateurs but really we have a life of the the bike and that's where ketones are potentially very exciting because he talks about improved productivity, improved cognition and improved sleep which I think is something that all of us are striving for. So you definitely haven't heard the last of me digging down that ketone rabbit hole and it's application for everyday folks like me and you. But today seeing as it's so much weak I know we normally only do one interview podcast per week but seen as it's summer week I'm going to go all week with interviews and some of these are just interviews I'm really excited for you guys to hear so I want to get them out to the podcast audience. This one today is Nicky Strobel. Nicky Strobel is the chef and performance nutritionist for the world tour team, Michelin Scott and I just found this interview fascinating for a number of reasons but there's a lot of debate out there about recovery protocols and fueling on the bike. And Nicki puts this to bed and he lets us in on that little key taunting that they're playing around with them but they haven't yet committed to them. It's fascinating, do it is something that's, you know, if it's not on your radar and it's not of as equal importance you're trying and it should be because you know if you put bad fuel into a car it's not going to perform very well and ultimately, you know, we're regenerating at such a rate that your cells are made up of the food you eat. So if you're putting junk in junk out is the all coding term and that's what's going to happen. So this is a super interesting podcast and I hope you enjoy it before I jump into that. Look a big shout out to the patreon instead of already subscribed. And I know it seems like at the moment there's massive momentum with the romance like on podcast. There's the summits and now the daily podcast happy pair around the other day which was super cool by the way. But I've been here before with the A1 show and I know potential for all this to disappear and that's why I'm so thankful for everyone that subscribes over on Patreon especially coming into Christmas now. It's super important to finish out that year's strong. Over on Patreon if you're buying me the price of a beer once and once that really helps support the podcast I'll put the link in the bio and please consider heading over there if you can afford to do so.
Roadman I've pushed it off, fair enough, Let's jump in and have a chat with Nikki Strobop from Michelin Scott. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Nikki, you're one of the guys to make the magic happen behind the scenes. So you might give us briefly what your background is, who you're working with. I'm working with Michelin Scott and well, my official title is Nutrition Coach. I think it is on my contract, but I'm a chef with the team. and also trained nutritionist, so I'm sort of in between. And the background is I'm educated chef from Denmark, then worked with cycling, and then went, well, like once I got into cycling, I saw that, you know, maybe some knowledge on nutrition would be a great idea. So I did a bachelor's in clinical dietetics in Denmark. And yeah, I'm sort of following that road now. So I'm just starting masters also in nutrition, just to sort of build on the practical skills I have and try to combine them with some knowledge. Amazing. So are you how much if a writer will will pick on Chris? Yeah, because he's Irish. If someone like Chris comes in after the off season and he says, well, he's been a heavy off season. I've had too many Guinness and I'm carrying an extra tree four kilograms. Do you have a role in consulting with the writer? Or especially Chris sort of does his own thing and Chris is one of those guys, you know, whenever we ask him to jump on a scale, he'll go on the scale but he won't look at the number. Because I think it gets in his head. And also Chris is just like, well Chris is Irish but he's also Danish. So I know him pretty well from the Danish side. It is a guy, no matter if it's off season or anything like that, he's just training hard always. He just leaves the house and rides out like trades already, what, out the gates? All the other guys hate him at January training camps and stuff like that where everyone, like you said, comes from off season, few kilos too heavy and Chris is just straight out the gates and he's just full power all day. But I guess it's less of a problem than it used to be. I think historically, Reuters came back, Kerry, in more ways, after the off season. Yeah. I mean, at this point in modern cycling, the off season is super short because normally they race until like end of October. And then many of us have to be ready in January again, especially with our team that has a big focus on, you know, Tour d'Anandar, Australian nationals and like cadels and stuff like that. So back in the days it definitely was a bigger problem when the off season was longer. But nowadays it's a pretty short off season. So you know it's hard for them to really do a ton of bad things, But we have some guys that come back too heavy. And at that point, we just need to make a plan with food and their training and try to see if we can get sort of a stable drop in their weight. And do you encourage others to track all their calories with an app like Moi Fitness, Paul? The writers that are into it, it could be a great tool to use. But for some writers, it's just too much work. And they actually tend to overthink it. then it gets in their head. So for some riders we use it, for most riders, we sort of look more at weight. And then if the weight is coming down, then you're doing it right. And then we just go by weight instead of weight and skin falls, instead of actually measuring macronutrients throughout the whole year. Awesome. Is there a wane scale, Stass? You would recommend, or do you use one in the team for doing body fat, or is it calipers? It's calipers. Most of the scales that you get that can do body fat and stuff like that are sort of not accurate. It's just like, stand in front of the mirror. If you look fat, you're probably fat. If you look lean, you're probably lean. It's sort of the same thing. A good set of scales will tell you weight. And then that's it. If you want to go into more details, then you need to get like excess cans and stuff like that that are first of all expensive. and a bit more complicated to actually have access to. I want to break this conversation broadly down into nutrition off the bike and nutrition on the bike.
And because I think most of our audience are going to be amateur riders watching this and saying, OK, what can I learn from the pros? Give us a little peek in behind the scenes. So if we take nutrition on the bike, I suppose, first, let's cover the nutrition on the bike training. So you're not involved with a rider day today because they're maybe away living in Jirona. But when you get together for training, blocks like a training camp, how much of a role do you have in their on the bike nutrition or is that completely down to the rider? That's sort of, you know, it depends on the coach and me. So it's normally the team of coaches. We have a very smart man who actually has a PhD in nutrition nutrition. And then it's me, so all of us sort of group up and make a plan and you know, what do we need to do? But most of the time it's coaches who prescribe, you know, any nutritional strategies that are applied to the training because they make the training and have sort of a broader plan with the training and what they're trying to achieve at different times. So we need to talk broader planning, talk about car regulation on these spins. Yeah. So it's, you know, if they're doing any train low stuff, so where they would start riding fasted or with minimal intake of carbohydrates and stuff like that. But that's mostly the coaches that prescribe anything like that just to make sure that it matches up with their training. Awesome. And so when we get into a race scenario, our races are supposed broadly break down, and stage races are one day races. Is there much of a difference from stage races to one day races? Not really, because on the bike, the limitation when you're on the bike is mostly how much can you actually eat and how much can you absorb while you're on the bike, because even in easier stages in a grand tour, a grand tour, there's always a few stages that are pretty easy, where they just cruise along and you know, just do an easy day. We'll say easy and inverted commas there. Yeah, but even on those days, it's super important to eat and make sure that you feel well on the bike. So our recommendation is to always try to achieve at least 60 grams of carbs per hour. So many gels and stuff like that are 20 grams for one gel, so free gels an hour or you know bottle of any carb mix and a gel or a bath or something like that. Now you look into mix the source of the sugar to increase absorption rates? Yes. As soon as you go above those 60 grams then you need to have a mix of fructose and glucose to actually be able to absorb it because there's a limitation in your gut for absorption of glucose around 60 grams per hour. So how high can you get that absorption by mixing the sugar zone? Well, in the Walter we just did, we had riders who took on 110 grams of carbs per hour with no issues, So that sort of, I would say, you know, I think the maximum that they report from studies and stuff like that is like 120 grams power. So that's the upper limit, but the limitation is always the gut. And if you have any discomfort or stuff like that. So what does 110 grams per hour look like for someone to break it down? Who's not too familiar with grams? Well with the with the new like high energy sports drinks, so like SIS makes, I think this is called beta fuel, there's the Morton, the gel thing, those drinks, they're like 90 grams of carbs in a bottle. So it's actually like it's just one bottle of that and a few Jels and then you're sort of at max but if you do it with your normal regular products, you would have to eat five Jels plus a bar. It is a lot of eating. It's roughly like you need to eat something every 10 minutes. And how much is the breakdown from I know when I use the race, like if I was doing a six, seven, so they stay at race, I couldn't go too heavy on the sports specific stuff like bars, gels, sports mix. I just got a lot of gas drop problems for it. So I typically try to stay at a first half of the stage on more solid foods like rice cakes, croissons, things like this. How much is that still used?
It's still used at every race. We still have riders who prefer solid food and we encourage riders to eat more solid food on easier days just to give the, you know, give the gut a bit of a break from these high concentrated sports, drinks and bars and gels. So every day there's, you know, different cakes. We have rice cakes, like you mentioned, this little sandwiches, stuff like that. And most writers tend to start the stage with that. And then sort of as racing gets harder, they will switch to the more easy, digestible stuff like gels and drinks. And it's stuff like that for viewers tuning in thinking, oh, this sounds cool. Like, but I can't go to my grocery store and boy, your ice cakes. Like, is this something that's achievable for them? Obviously, you're a professional chef. Are they easy to make at home for guys? Yeah, they're fairly simple to make. It's basically a sweet, sticky rice you just make, and you put it in the fridge, and it sets in a few hours, and you can cut it up to little individual blocks and eat it on the bike. You know, a bit of fine-tuning. We made some ones that are a bit too soft and the riders will just throw them at the race cars because they don't want that shit. Sorry, I don't know. Now I'll be a course away. Okay, so a bit of fine-tuning but it's basically just sticky rice or any type of about frisado rice or sushi rice, cooked, we normally do sweet ones. So we use a bit of condensed milk in ours, just to get that like more sticky and sweetness to it. So really simple to make, and everyone can make them at home, and recipes can be found all over the internet these days. And are you putting anything in, whether it's just condensed milk under ice or each ounce of water and flavorings? Yeah, we have like different ones. So we do a lemon peel one, we do one with chocolate, We do something with blueberries, we do coconut. I can start to salivate here. I'm getting hungry. So yeah, we try to mix it up just because if you have to eat it every day for 21 days, it needs to be some variety. And otherwise, you just can't stomach it. And you're individually wrapping these for the writers. Yeah. So we have a pretty low tech system. We basically just use a brownie pan with a set of cutters made for it. So we get the same size every day. So the writers know that if they eat this rice cake, then I'm getting 10 grams of carbs or 20 grams of carbs. How much is that carb intake, personalized per athlete? Well, it's sort of switching more in that direction. On the bike recommendations are general because studies have shown that if you're 80 kilo classic rider or if you're a 55 kilo climber, you can absorb the same amount of carp every hour. So on the bike everything goes in grams per hour, all of our recommendations and then And as soon as you get off the bike, it's obviously based on grams per kilo. We're going more in the direction where we're prescribing carbs so that our riders match the energy that they spend on the bike. But I would have to say, you know, most of our riders are pretty good at adjusting themselves and actually making sure that they maintain weight and that they eat enough during stage races. So the variation nearly comes based on the stage parkour and lint rather than the actual individual rider's weight. Yeah, yeah. Especially when we're talking on the bike, everything is based on the length and the hardness of the stage. And do you look to calculate the deficit? So say you look on a rider has 8,000 kilojoule a day and you know that rider has taken on X amount of fuel during the day. Would you look to calculate that deficit and then replace it after the stage or is that over-tinkin it? We do that with some of our guys. So, you know, as soon as they come off the bike, they let us know how much energy they spend on the bike, how much they aid on the bike and And then we calculate, you know, you should have this for recovery and this amount for dinner that might to replace any deficits they have. So what's the recovery protocol when someone finishes a grand tour stage from a nutrition point of view? First hour is just to get carbs and just to replenish carbs straight away. And that's normally done with very simple sugars.
So a lot of guys tend to go for fizzy drinks or a Coke, a Fanta, something like that. Folds go. Coke and Haribo. Yeah. Exactly. Haribo is a great one. And on our team, there's especially a Haribo called I think it's called Dragibus, which is the one like highest in sugar, especially just colored sugar. And then second hour, you start to add in your protein and then more whole food. So you get some rice, you get some pasta or something like that, something that will fill you up a bit more. And then once you get back to the hotel, have your massage and then you go to dinner and that sort of end up your recovery. I've seen a couple of studies where they talk about adding a little bit of protein into the carb and maybe a four to one ratio. Immediately after stage can help the absorption. Is that like, Valas or is that, you disagree? It's definitely valid. It's well proven that a mix of carbs and protein is beneficial for your recovery, but especially with cycling where you're not loading the muscle in the same way as you would in running and stuff like that, where you have more muscle damage. Protein sort of takes a step down on the ladder of most important things. The most important thing is just to replace glycogen stores. So that's our main goal and that's why the first hour is mainly focused on just replenishing glycogen stores. And when you say reintroduce some protein in the second hour, is that in the form of solid food or is that shakes? It depends. That's a personal preference from the writers. So we have some writers who prefer to have omelets, some like to have, you know, jr. or some leaner meat. And some of them just go for protein shakes. Are you looking to get a specific amount of the grams in? We aim to get a minimum of 20 grams. So you get a minimum dose of 20 grams to really get that protein synthesis going. And then your kind of transition in back to normal whole foods? Yeah, yeah, and that's you know also to get something for the gut to work with you know Make sure that you actually Have some some real foods that will fool you up and you know you get some Benefits from you know some fibers and stuff like that, you know it has to be a balance between performance and General health a writer is no good if they They performed really well one stage, but then the next day they're on the toilet the whole day because they didn't have any fibers and they didn't have any food that sort of got down a bit. Is it, firstly, are all the dinners prepared by you guys? Are you ever lean on local amenities, restaurants, etc.? I mean, especially last year, you know, what, this year, we got our second chef. So we now a group of free chefs. So there's me, another chef that's full time and a chef that we bring in in peak periods where we have, you know, different races, camps and stuff going on. We still have some races where we have to rely on, you know, local restaurants and stuff like that. That's normally the organization of the race. They also provide dinners and breakfast for the writers. And how much input do you have into that menu or the macros on that are pretty much all school eat what the Giro tells you to eat? Like at this point, most of the race organizers are pretty good at letting the hotels know that most teams have special requests. So normally I would send out a menu for the hotels and ask them to cook the menus that I offer them. You know, sometimes you get mixed results. That's just the way it is and there's really no way around it. That's what I mean on the days when you get control of it and you're preparing all the meals. Are you personalizing portion sizes dependent on calorie expenditure that day? Or is it just down to a rotary appetite? Most of the riders just leave it to the appetite. A few riders we give recommendations. We're not really big on weighing up food. Some teams believe in we do everything for the riders, so we basically treat them like robots. When the riders leave this team, they know nothing, and then that's good for that team, I guess, where we're more into educating riders and having riders writers make decisions based on the knowledge that they have. So we prescribe food for the writers so they get an idea of how much do I actually need to eat on a day like this.
If we just ditched it up for them, they would just look at it and they would just eat it and they wouldn't take any note. But with us, you know, just sending them some numbers, they actually have to, you know, played out the food themselves so they get a feel for, okay, this much rice is 300 grams, this is roughly what I need. So when they're at home and they don't want to do it, they sort of have an idea of, okay, I'm gonna have 300 grams of rice, this is roughly 300 grams. And is there any foods that you will avoid for, you know, maybe it's all skill superstitions or if it's like inflammatory reason. So I remember I was writing for a French team And the DS wouldn't let you near bread. He'd be like, no, you'll have bread legs tomorrow. A lot of teams had gluten for, and some teams still are, gluten is sort of seen as the devil. But on our team, if there's no evidence to support it, then it's just, there's no reason to do it. So, you know, on our team, we have Brett with gluten and we do all of sort of all of the forbidden things. There's a few things, you know, we still avoid red meats just because they take long time to digest, they're a bit harder on the digestive system. So just to try and minimize any stress on your digestive system that's already there from, you know, eating gels the whole day and stuff like that. So in stage races, we really avoid red meats and try to keep it to fish, chicken, stuff like that. Is there any micronutrients considerations? Are you trying to add extra magnesium or anything to help sleep or alleviate cramp or anything like that? Not really, like at one point, we try to add a specific amino acids and stuff like that. The truth of it is that they just don't taste good. And it's more beneficial to just eat real foods. There's obviously some foods that we can try and push if there's anything. So like when we do altitude camps, then we try to get more spinach, broccoli, red meats and stuff like that in. So we try to get iron from foods, so we don't have to supplement iron as much as you would normally need to. But other than that, this, not really a lot of things. You know, a few years we did, you know, beetroot was the big thing with the nitrates and stuff like that. We did that, but you know, end of the day, if you have to drink, you know, half a liter of beetroot juice, it's just more comfortable to drink, you know, a little shot of beetroot. Are the guys still doing the shots? Some guys are still doing it, not many, but yes, some guys are still doing it, but mostly around time trial stuff. And is Ruchasthof gone around on time trials like, you know, lactate buffers like bacon soda, things like that? Or is it just not worth the gastro stress? The guys that doesn't have any like gastro problems with it are still using that and it's where we'll prove in that it works to some extent, but again, we're talking 2% maybe, if you're lucky. For anyone watching, if you do take it and it gets the Gastro, it's a nasty experience. You can just, I think it was the Olympics in Sydney where a female time-tiler overdid the baking soda and I think she had to stop at a church or something like that. I'm pretty sure if you go online you can find some good clips of that. Yeah I've had to stop going through French towns like in cafes where I'm like zipping down the speed so I'm just running and the patrons are looking at me going what is going on. I know something that's kind of crept into the pallet time for the last couple of years and I've talked to somebody Yumbo Visma lads and they're using is key tones. Have Do you lot have played around with ketones or what's your opinions on them? Well, we're still looking into it. Let's put it that way. We haven't seen any evidence to really convince us that it's worth it. And especially with the price of it as it is now. We did a bit of testing with it in Australia, but that was a different type of ketones we use there. So we had some really bad results. I'm pretty sure it's a published study, so if you look up Jill Lecky, I can't remember what year it was, but you'll be able to find the studies done on keytones that we did with her.
Yeah, prove it is the company that I'm getting back from a lot of the guys that they're using at the moment. P-R-U-V-I-T. But I think most of the studies that have been done on it have been, the evidence has been, you know, vague and some of the evidence has definitely been cherry picks to get the results that you wanted, especially with the woman who patented the ketones. She did a lot of the studies and there might be a conflict of interest there. So no, we're not using it at the moment. We're still looking into it and every time there's a new study on it, we evaluate and see if it's something that we should use, but at the moment we're not using it. I think it's going to be one of those things that's, I think, live in the consciousness as long as you have riders like Rod Litch kind of champion in it, but maybe it's going to be a long time before it trips down to your average Joe amateur rider. Yeah, and also, you have to remember a lot of the stuff that these guys use is something that they use to get, you know, like SkyPooded Marginal Games, where, you know, if you're just writing your Sunday ride and, you know, that one or two percent, it's not going to make any difference for you. But if you're climbing, you know, LGA's and you can get two percent extra, that actually means that you're going to win the Tour de France, possibly. Yeah, just to finish up on this one, Nick, you just to make a lot of this because a lot of it has been brilliant and it's been great insight into what you guys are doing. To make somebody as actionable, if you had to give some advice to viewers on, because I know a lot of our viewers are struggling to shed those last tree for kilograms because they're so busy between work, training, family. Is there any tips you give to someone for just taking off those last few stubborn kilograms? Again, it's very individual, but a good way to do it is just to try and eat more vegetable protein-based diet, because when you eat, sorry, I'm just getting a bit of wind here. like really try to think about what you eat and there's some studies starting to come out that you know there might also be something about when you eat it so you know meals before bedtime, how do they affect your metabolism and stuff like that. The biggest thing is you know you need to eat less that's the main point you know losing weight is a pretty simple thing you know you you put less in than you put out and there you go. I think that's got a voice because a lot of the time we do over-complicate very simple issues but we can't get away from some real home truths with Taitlanda. You know, whether it's key tones or marriage nuggets around equipment or tires, you still need to go out and put in the long hours and if you want to lose weight, you need to eat less than you born. Yeah, I think you know, I've got a good way to put it in and that's brought up many times. look at it as a pyramid, you really need your foundation to be right and then you sort of build on that. And stuff like key tones and bike hub and stuff like that, that's sort of the very top of the pyramid. So for your average bike rider, it's way more beneficial to get the basics right and really focus on that. And then you can always add on top and yeah. I think that's great advice. Nicky, thank you for joining us and giving up your time. Always. Thank you. Cheers. are advanced. There's meal plans, shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.
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