Friday Reading Report: with vocabulary!

Today’s vocabulary word is ergogenic.  It means performance-enhancing.  Of course, in the context of fitness, steroids spring to mind as soon as we start discussing performance enhancement.  However, that is just one kind of ergogenic substance or process, the pharmacological kind.

Speaking for myself, I could not do without my biomechanical ergogenic products:  my wrist wraps and tennis elbow supports allow me to ride my spin bike and sometimes even my actual bike without hand failure and severe pain and inability to squeeze the brakes.  My fancy bike itself is biomechanically ergogenic, as are my tech fabric exercise clothes.  People who do other sports will recognize their goggles, shoes, racquets, pads, and the like as ergogenic.  Also all those ankle wraps, knee braces, and other supports.

Way on the other end of the ergogenic spectrum, we have the psychological stuff, the visualization, relaxation, and the classic locker room half time speech.

In the middle, we have the key stuff, the physiological and nutritional stuff that makes us go faster and heavier and more beautifully.  Physiological ergogenics, at base, are training practices, the cardio and strength training we do, those pesky intervals, our often-neglected stretching and warm-ups.  As with all ergogenics, at the extremes we can find some shady stuff, like blood doping, but let’s not go there.  We’ll keep on with our well-balanced, varied training.

Well-balanced and varied are the best words to use to describe ergogenic eating.  There are approximately 8 gazillion supplements out there with more and less outlandish claims about what they can do for our performance.  In the absence of an actual deficiency, none of them is as good as a diet composed of a reasonable balance of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat) chosen from many different foods to ensure appropriate amounts of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals).  If we want to get fancy and we are endurance athletes, we can add nutritional techniques like carbohydrate loading, but those of us who do our workouts and get on with our lives don’t need to sort that out.

We all want to perform well.  The good news is that it isn’t that hard.  We get the right stuff, we talk nicely to ourselves, we work hard, and we eat decent food.

Now go play.