6/30/11 Wall Street Jouranl-Tour de France champ a Vegetarian

By REED ALBERGOTTI  6/30/11

To climb the Tour de France's steep mountain passes and cross its scorching plains, cyclists have tried stuffing themselves full of steak and pasta, gulping down wine and cognac, smoking cigarettes, taking amphetamines and, of course, using other drugs during the race's 107-year history. On Saturday, American David Zabriskie plans to try something entirely new: Riding the Tour on a vegan diet.

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Associated Press (Zabriskie); Reuters (tomato); Getty Images (Artichoke, Carrot)

David Zabriskie

Zabriskie's Vegan Menu

Here's what the cyclist plans to eat on race days during the Tour.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with black strap molasses; whole food optimizer; cacao nibs; nuts; cinnamon; two tablespoons of coconut butter; an apple; hemp seeds and flax seeds On-the-Bike Snacks: Six Clif Bar Z bars (vegan); two Clif Bar shot blocks (vegan); two Clif Bar gels (vegan); dates; six to eight bottles of special team race drink On the Bus, Post-Race: White rice with maple syrup and cinnamon; vegan protein shake; two bottles of special team recovery protein drink; goji berries Before Dinner: Vegan protein shake Dinner: White rice or pasta; salad with leafy greens; vegetables —including broccoli, spinach, carrots and beets. Dessert: Fresh fruit and a vegan protein shake before bed

Experts say he is the first cyclist to attempt the most difficult bike race in the world sans meat, dairy or eggs. (He will cheat slightly, he says, because he plans to eat small amounts of salmon two days per week to increase iron absorption).

Cyclists in the Tour de France can burn 8,000 calories a day—so many that some riders, already lean from their training, are unable to eat enough food to keep up with calorie loss.

The conventional wisdom is that eating plenty of meat and dairy provides protein to help cyclists' muscles recover, and that the iron in red meat keeps the body producing ample amounts of hemoglobin, part of the all-important red blood cells that transport oxygen to the muscles. Iñigo San Millán, a sports-medicine professor at the University of Colorado and a former physiologist on Zabriskie's team, calls the cyclist's desire to go vegan "a strange concept." To many
Before last season, Zabriskie, who rides for the U.S.-based Garmin-Cervélo team, was a typical meat-eating athlete, scarfing down whatever he wanted so long as it didn't make him fat. But at the beginning of last season, his team's chiropractor gave him a blood test that screened his sensitivity to certain types of foods. The chiropractor, Matt Rabin, told Zabriskie he had the highest sensitivity to food on the team. Another blood test showed Zabriskie had the highest inflammation of his muscles.

During last year's Tour de France, Zabriskie turned down the red meat being passed around the dinner table because he thought it required too much energy to digest. In the late summer of last year, he began phasing out all meat from his diet and by October, he had also cut out dairy.

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Dave Zabriskie in May.

 

After nine months on the diet, Zabriskie says he's feeling better than ever. He has had some of the best results of his career and says he feels more focused. "I think a lot of people see food in terms of whether it's going to make them fat or make them skinny," he says. "I'm seeing food in terms of how it's going to make me think and will it give me clarity." Zabriskie says he's noticed that even small ailments, like canker sores and a persistent rash he used to get, have all gone away. Even his vision has improved, he says.

This winter, Zabriskie's team director, Jonathan Vaughters, caught wind of his new
Vaughters says he was surprised when blood tests early this season showed Zabriskie's ferritin levels had remained stable on the vegan diet—which means his hemoglobin and red blood cell counts also remained normal. He says he's been pleasantly surprised by his performance. "He's won more time trials this year than he has in his career," Vaughters says. "The proof is in the pudding."

To get guidance on the diet, Zabriskie consulted with Brendan Brazier, a triathlete and author of "The Thrive Diet," a guide to vegan diets in sports that has become something of a bible for the cyclist. Brazier lives near Zabriskie in the outskirts of Los Angeles and began joining him on rides.


MY COMMENTS:

GREAT JOB, I CAN EXCUSE THE BARS JUST FOR YOU AND YOU ONLY. IF YOU NEED 8,000 CALORIES A DAY AND YOU ARE ON THE GO, BARS ARE OK. BARS ARE NOT OK FOR REGULAR PEOPLE WHO HAVE ACCESS TO FOOD. NO SHORTAGE OF THAT IN NEW YORK CITY. IN A 3 MINUTE RADIUS, I HAVE ABOUT 25 RESTAURANTS AND GROCERIES. FOR ANYONE WHO THINKS YOU NEED MEAT, HERE IS YOUR PROOF!

WSJ 6/21/11 Heavy Lifting, No Rest, Candy: the Bulgarian Method

Ivan Abadjiev knows a thing or two about heavy lifting.

U.S. weightlifters haven't won an Olympic gold medal for 40 years. Now they're hoping the Bulgarians can bring them success. Ivan Abadjiev, who lead their national team to multiple championships, is bring his "Bulgarian Method' to a new academy in Danville, Calif.

Bulgaria's most renowned weightlifting coach led his tiny country to a stunning Olympic victory over the Soviet Union in 1972. By the 1980s his country's strongmen completely dominated world competitions, hoisting more than three times their body weight—a feat that has rarely been matched. He's produced champions in Turkey and Qatar—and he even turned around his country's junior national badminton team.

Now, at age 79, the soft-spoken, silver-haired legend who speaks little English is taking on his most difficult challenge to date: Convincing American athletes they can do better. If only, that is, they would only adopt "the Bulgarian method."

Under the Bulgarian method, which Mr. Abadjiev invented, there is no danger of overtraining. The body, if pushed gradually and consistently, will adapt to any level of stress. Practice should ideally consume nearly half of one's waking hours and, most important, there are no days off. The theory is that injury and fatigue are less likely while adrenaline is coursing through the body, stimulating protein synthesis. Junk food is fair game.

By contrast, most American fitness trainers believe peak performance results only from an expertly plotted combination of exercises to build things like endurance, core strength and cardiovascular health—while including periods of stretching and rest. A healthy, balanced diet is essential.

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Brian L. Frank for The Wall Street Journal

Olympic weight-lifting coach Ivan Abadjiev is trying to persuade American athletes to adopt his "Bulgarian method."

For the past six months, Mr. Abadjiev has been spending nearly every morning and afternoon training competitive weightlifters at a new academy here, missing work only when he heads out of town to lecture. A former student hired Mr. Abadjiev to spread his message: Never attempt less than the maximum.
"It goes against everything you were ever taught," says Jacqueline Janet, a 48-year-old personal trainer who swore off jogging, sit-ups and yoga in order to do a monotonous series of lifts, up to five hours a day, with Mr. Abadjiev. She says she's now a believer after recently breaking a national record for her age group in an amateur weightlifting competition. Still, she disagrees with Mr. Abadjiev's "horrible diet" and tosses out his candy and soda.

Last month, Mr. Abadjiev delivered a 90-minute lecture at a collegiate strength-coach convention in Kansas City, Mo., explaining how the Bulgarian method could be applied to college sports. The concept was met with hearty skepticism.

One coach doubted he could "get the guys to buy in" to such a taxing, time-consuming program. (Mr. Abadjiev suggested revoking their personal possessions, like cellphones.) Southern Illinois University's strength coach, Jared Nessland, said after the presentation, "You can't beat the snot out of these kids—they don't have the mental toughness."

But Tommy Lee Barnes, an associate strength coach from the University of Tennessee, was intrigued.

"It kind of made me think, 'Gosh, am I loading my athletes enough?' " said Mr. Barnes, adding that American coaches tend to "lean on the side of undertraining" to account for other stresses in their athletes' lives, like classwork and relationships. "We tend to be on the reserved side, but then again, the American [men] haven't won a gold medal in 40 years."

Bulgaria held its first weightlifting competition in 1946, but the country lost miserably year after year. Then, Mr. Abadjiev, who had spent his childhood working in a basket-weaving factory, earned the country's first weightlifting medal—a silver—in the Tehran World Championships in 1957. Mr. Abadjiev says he began experimenting with his own physical limits in his free time. Reading up on biological research confirmed his suspicions: "You lift more, train more, you get higher results."

Mr. Abadjiev and his followers say the Bulgarian method decreases the risk of injury, since these lifters are acclimated to weights that opponents would attempt only in competition. But some U.S. coaches say Bulgarian-trained lifters have had shorter Olympic careers, on average, than lifters from other countries. There are no comparative statistical data to verify either claim.
Over the years, Mr. Abadjiev's credibility has been undercut as Bulgarians have repeatedly been caught using banned substances, both under his watch and his successors'. The International Weightlifting Federation has warned its member federations against hiring Mr. Abadjiev because of his links to doping scandals, though Mr. Abadjiev says the only drug he ever tried giving his athletes was Albuterol, a medicine asthmatics inhale to clear their airways that wasn't banned at the time.

In 1989, Mr. Abadjiev, resigned from coaching the national team as communism fell. He worked as a locksmith and a security guard to make ends meet. He also coached national teams in Turkey and Qatar and even Bulgaria's junior badminton players before returning to coach the Bulgarian weightlifters for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. There, three lifters returned their medals after testing positive for trace amounts of a diuretic. A Bulgarian court later found Mr. Abadjiev and the athletes not guilty because a Bulgarian drug maker hadn't disclosed the presence of the diuretic in a supplement the team was taking. Nonetheless, the IWF stopped recommending him for coaching positions.

Mr. Abadjiev had been living on his small pension in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia with his wife when he got a call last year from one of his first students, Alex Krychev. A one-time silver medalist, Mr. Krychev had founded a supplement company called CSA Nuitrition and partnered with Swedish barbell maker Eleiko to open its first Olympic training academy. Mr. Krychev hired Mr. Abadjiev to consult.

Mr. Krychev says the Danville academy, which opened in January has two American Olympic hopefuls, Kris Pavlov, a 20-year-old former Monte Vista, Calif., football player who speaks Bulgarian and serves as Mr. Abadjiev's translator, and Sina Abadi, an Iranian high-school sophomore from Concord, Calif., who's ranked No. 1 in the U.S. in his weight class among lifters born in 1995.

In the meantime, Arthur Drechsler, chairman of USA Weightlifting's board of directors, says the Olympics organization is seeking a middle ground. Many American coaches have attended Mr. Abadjiev's seminars, read his articles and even traveled to Bulgaria, "looking for ways to get the same results, but with lower intensity and volume of workouts," he says.Mr. Abadjiev, of course, says that is impossible


SHARI'S COMMENTS:

I agree, would like to try his method, sans the candy. You can workout every day!!! There are no excuses for a day off, even for power lifters. Take off the day because you are busy at work or you have to visit someone in the hospital, that is fine. Don't take off a day because you are afraid you will get too big, doesn't happen!