The Training & Nutrition Secrets Of Tenacious, Tough, Aggressive Professional Cyclist Svein Tuft.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Show, Getting yourself into that zone, or whatever it is for you, that helps you just focus on that one goal for the day, then that's what you need to do. I never have a good result when I'm always forcing and trying to make something happen, whereas if I let go and just go with intuition, then that seems to work the best for me. What starts to happen is you lose your physical power, but you have so much experience and a lot more knowledge at yourself of, like, where to expend that energy so they kind of balance each other out.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And you may remember a guy named Barry Murray who I've interviewed on the podcast before, particularly for the very popular episode we had called Five Simple Steps to Turning Yourself into a Fat Burning Machine, where Barry goes into everything from ketosis to metabolic efficiency to all the things that you need to do to your body to be able to get it into a condition where it can go for long periods of time and using fuel very efficiently. Well, Barry, whose opinion I highly respect, recently contacted me and told me that I must look into this professional cyclist named Swain Tooft, because this guy was doing things that a lot of other people weren't doing. And he was also an older cyclist who had figured out how to get good performance, despite being older than a lot of his professional cycling peers. So I looked into Swain and found out that this guy is known as one of the most tenacious, toughest, most aggressive professional cyclists in the Tour de France. And he. He gets injured, he bounces back. He's got this spirit of against all odds, tenacity, and perhaps most amazingly, he actually began his entry into the world of professional cycling many years later than most professional cyclists even do their first race. So an extremely unorthodo cyclist. And he also has some very unorthodox training and eating methods, too, that I want to delve into on today's show, because Swain is actually my guest in today's episode. He's gotten off his bike at least long enough to join me here in front of the mic. So, Swain, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Thanks for having me. Quite an introduction.

Well, I was actually pretty surprised you got your start into pro cycling, which is a super hard sport, pretty late. How old were you when you. When you actually became a pro?

Yeah, that's. That's a very funny story, but my first races were when I was 23.

Okay. And as a that. And you're getting most pro cyclists starting off about when.

Well, you know, a lot of the European guys are starting anywhere from 12 to 13 years old. They're. They're racing pretty solidly, you know.

Yeah, it would be like a professional tennis player starting to play tennis when they're like, what, like 15 or 16 years old or something like that? Probably about that same corollary. Why'd you start so late?

Well, well, you know, I never grew up with cycling, and I knew nothing about the sport up until the age of 22, 23, and I spent, geez, quite a few years. How I got into cycling in the first place was I really loved climbing mountains. And when I was younger, I didn't. Didn't really have a lot of money, so I bought a pretty cheap bike at like, a secondhand store and started doing trips into the mountains that way. And as soon as I started that, it was like I was hooked. I was hooked on traveling, traveling by bike. And that started basically like a four year journey for me, traveling up to Alaska and down to the United States. I went up to Alaska two times from British Columbia, but it was more of, like, it was more of a lifestyle thing. You know, I would work on the work when I would, like when I could, when I could find some work and building log cabins and all kinds of different jobs.

Were you an athlete leading up to that point, before you got on a secondhand bike and started riding around?

Not at all. I mean, I'd always grown up doing many different things, you know, hiking with my dad and cross country skiing, but nothing like, really nothing serious, you know.

All right, got it. So did you ever get your VO2 max tested or your lactate threshold to just see if this is something that you're naturally good at? I mean, do you. Do you stand out physiologically?

Well, you know, it wasn't until I actually, I did some races, and through some friends, they. They got me into a lab, and that's where we saw some, you know, that I was a little bit different. But before all that, I just I had it in my head that I would somehow become a professional cyclist and I was very, very stubborn. So yeah, I just believed so much that this is, this is what I was going to do as soon as I got a taste for it.

So for people who aren't familiar with like the rigors of training for professional cycling, what would a typical day look like for you? Like a typical training day going into something like the Tour de France?

Yeah, the Tour generally like, you know, two, three weeks before you sometimes will be doing like a touch up race like Tour of Switzerland or Dauphine Libre, which are two very difficult stage races. So that's quite a bit of the, the work should be done at this point. So yeah, I mean training, the training really starts now with the high volume and then you start building into the races. And when the races come, it's actually mostly about recovery. People seem to think like that you're always training these massive miles, but in between the really hard races like Paris, Nice and the classics and all these races building up to the Giro or the Tour de France, you really need to be careful about your recovery in between. But generally the volume now starts building up, you know, four, five, six hours a day. And depending on everyone's different, but there's intensity thrown in there with shorter days and. But generally, you know, the weeks, the hours start really building right about now.

So when you say four, five, six hours a day, is that all on the bike or are you guys doing weights, electrostimulation, like cold heat? I mean like anything aside from spending time just on the bike.

Yeah, so a lot of guys spend time on the bike and you know, as I've gotten older, I've started to really change that whole approach because I really think just excess endurance, workload and all this gets really hard on the body. And I also think like the best you become as a cyclist or the most you ride as a cyclist hours wise, the worse you are at everything else in your life.

What do you mean?

It's. Well, let's just take like the middle of the season when you come out of the Tour de France or something like this. You're at your top fitness for cycling. But if you tried to lift a suitcase and carry it down a flight of stairs, you know, you might just slip a disc or you know something.

You're very, it's just like biomechanically, you're somebody with really strong legs and big lungs, but you're, you've got like the T Rex arms and the bent over back, like that kind of thing. Exactly.

Yeah, your posture is horrible and yeah, you're just very fragile. And yeah, I started to just look at things very differently and you know, obviously that you need to throw in some volume and be ready for some of these grand tours. But I find that more and more as I get older, it's far more important to be doing many other things. So things like weightlifting, hiking in the hills, you know, with a heavy pack, cold thermogenesis, swimming, and just like changing, changing the program so much. So your body's always still adapting and learning new things. I just find this helps you become, for me, you become a much better athlete because you're just more rounded, but also you're far more, less prone to injury. You know, you're just less fragile and you've built yourself up over the, over the winter and now you can handle this huge workload that's required during, during the season.

How do you avoid bulking up, like getting too heavy as a cyclist to have to carry, you know, like, like bigger amounts of upper body muscle up the side of a mountain?

Yeah, that's always going to be an issue. I think, you know, at the end of the day it does come, come down to power, to weight. And I think one of the things for myself, everyone's going to have a different case, but for myself, my job is very different. You know, I'm never gonna be a Tour de France winner, I'm never gonna win a mountain stage. That's just, you know, physiology. And so for myself, it's not such a big, a big thing for me to focus. For me it's more about getting power and just having like working on making a bigger engine. And so things like that become my focus. And you know, a kilo or two here, it's here, there, it's, it's not a big problem.

Gotcha.

Now.

Barry Murray, the guy who's into ketosis and high fat diets, metabolic efficiency, etc. He, he seemed to indicate that you were using like a ketosis based diet for cycling. Is that something that's true? Is that something you've done for a long time? If so, or how are you actually incorporating something like a high fat diet into cycling?

Yeah, so this is always, it's a very tricky subject and something that's going to be different for every person and something that everyone needs to, I believe, experiment with. And yeah, I do dabble in ketosis and high fat diets. I'm a big fan. But for me it's mostly, it's mostly for longevity. And health. I feel much better and I function much better now. When you throw in a Giro d' Italia where you're racing 21 days straight and life is just full gas all the time, you don't really have a choice. You don't have that control, to have that control of your diet or, or your workload because racing is so dynamic and you know, at one point you're barely touching the pedals and then the next point you're, you're sprinting for as long as you can up over a short climb or something. So you're always at the, you're always stuck with the pace of the race and you, you know, like, if you could do something like an ultra marathon or you know, triathlon where you sit at your threshold that you know, you can handle for hours at a time, then I think, you know, it's perfect. But in my job it's, it's quite different. And so for most of my life, I like to live in that kind of high fat diet and somewhat ketosis diet.

So you mean for like, for like the more explosive portions of the race, you don't feel that being in ketosis is going to be helpful for you?

So far for me, I haven't been able to adapt that well yet. Over a six hour race where you have to back it up again the next day. I can't say that it's the number one thing, but my big belief is that the more you train in that, the deeper you go on that the better that system becomes, which ultimately gives you better energy for the final of most races. You know, in the last hour of all these races, that's when all the real hard work's done.

Well, what basically the, the, the deal with that as far as like, like ketosis is concerned is I've heard that a lot of the folks who are competing in the Tour de France are using like, like liquid ketones or trying to elevate blood levels of ketones while also consuming carbohydrates to kind of get the best of both worlds. Is that something that, that you've tapped into at all?

I haven't, I haven't tried any of this. I've heard as, as you have, that this is what's going on. And it's very interesting, but it's nothing that I've experimented with, but definitely it sounds very interesting. And if guys are really, actually able to stay kind of below their threshold and save all that energy, that's really something for the future.

Gotcha. But you have an experiment with ketone salts or anything like that in a water bottle? No.

Yeah. I've kind of just tried to really simplify things actually too, as the years go on, I kind of go full circle, you know.

Yeah. That's something that I've actually been experimenting quite a bit with is being able to go out and do like harder events. Right. Like sprints, Spartans or events that get very glycolytic.

Yeah.

But then do so using cyclic ketosis, like basically getting carbs in, for example, in the evenings or even consuming carbohydrates as the pre race meal prior to these events. But then taking on ketone salts. Right. Like keto canna from Prototype Nutrition or using these pruvit. They're made by a company called P R U V I T. Like ketone salts because once you jack up your blood levels of ketones, you've got fuel for your blood and your diaphragm and your liver, but then you technically have the best of both worlds if you also have topped off glycogen levels. And that's, I think using a lot of these newer supplements or newer ketones that literally allow you to get into ketosis without fasting or without excessive carbohydrate restriction would be kind of like the new frontier, especially for endurance sports. Like you're in like cycling to where it's mostly aerobic, but there's a whole bunch of anaerobic surges during the race.

Yes, yes, no, it's very interesting stuff and I definitely think there's probably quite a few teams implementing this.

So what does your diet actually look like? What would a typical breakfast, lunch and dinner look like for you as a professional cyclist?

I would say it's fairly similar to what you're saying. For me, I always start generally most mornings with just a high fat eggs and an omelet with some cheese and some vegetables mixed in there. Very simple. And then as the day goes on, depending on again, it always depends on what you have for your, for your workload, but generally leading to a dinner with, you know, a bit more carbs, but just very, very simple stuff. Sweet potatoes and stuff like that. Sometimes in the winter, a lot of just intermittent fasting, I'll just skip a breakfast and do some, do some long slow training with that just to tap into just that fat adaptation and. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty, pretty simple right now.

And are you using many, many supplements?

No, again, you know, like as a cyclist and when you're on a team, we have, you know, everything in cycling. It seems to Be about adding things and always trying to new things, which is. Which is very good. But I'm finding again, for myself, like, the best recovery and just the best lifestyle is to really just let your own body kind of struggle and suffer. If I keep adding all these things that are supposed to help me, then I'm finding that, yeah, I'm not letting my body make those adaptations. It's just like if you always keep your house at 21 degrees, you're not really making any adaptations to the environment. Whereas, yeah, if you're always in the cold and you see how amazing it is, your body is so adaptive to these stressors, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of the cold, what about some of these other strategies? I mean, I know that you're definitely, like, considered to be an older competitor. Do you have recovery tools or recovery techniques that you use, like cold, for example, to allow you to bounce back faster? Do you have little things in your toolbox that you would consider to be hacks or extra tools that allow you to be able to stay in the game?

Yeah, for sure. Cold is a big one for me. It's one of those things, once you go down that path, it almost becomes addictive to the point now where almost every day I have to be in the water, be in some sort of very cold environment. I live in the Pyrenees, so that's quite easy. My mornings usually start with just a run, 20 minutes up to a little creek just close to my house. And, you know, I'll spend 10, 15 minutes in there. And it's also a moment to pretty much meditate or, you know, my version of meditation. And I think everyone has their own way. But quite often when you're faced with the cold, you can really tap into that focused thought. And that's. Yeah, for me, that's huge. And, you know, it goes very well in stage races to ice bath, and always trying to expose yourself to the cold. And the big place it really helps is in the early spring classics, when you're racing in northern Belgium and The weather is 4 or 5 degrees, almost on the verge of snow, and you have to spend five to six hours racing out in the cold. And yeah, to be prepared for that, just mentally and physically, that's a huge step up just right there. But, yeah, I'm finding also my recovery techniques would really start to become more simplified. And I'm finding that that really comes down to your environment. And, you know, I think that's one of the things I can really respect about you. You've changed your life to build a place that. An environment that's conducive for your family's health, that's something that I really, really believe in. I think that's probably the most important thing, actually. Before we talk about nutrition and all of these other techniques, if your environment is no good, then you're really up against the wall and you can do all the tricks in the world and all the best nutrition in the world. But if you don't love where you live and it's a poor environment for your health, then, yeah, you're really going to struggle, I think.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in addition to cold, are there any other protocols that you personally use?

Yeah, again, it kind of goes back to the lifestyle I've created. You know, a home that I really love, but also just the mountain environment I really love. So when I. One of the hardest things is when you're on the road, like I said, you're kind of at the. You're at the call of the team, and basically it's up to them. You know, the hotels where you stay, the food that you eat and all these things. So you have to really let go. But the one place you do have that good control is at your home. And one of my favorite recovery techniques is, again, very simple. But this is what really helps ground me and kind of is a reset for when I come home from a really hard race and you're pretty hammered. I just go. I go walk up in the hills in the sun, you know, just try and soak up as much sun as I can, sit there and just have like a. Almost like a mental shutdown where you just sit there and it's like a meditation of sorts. And, you know, for me, that's been the best thing. After all these years of trying so many different things, it's. It's so simple. But I'm finding the more simple it is, the. The better it is for. For me, anyways.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, as an older competitor, what kind of things do you think that. That you tend to have to fight an uphill battle against when it comes to the world of professional cycling?

Yeah, that's a funny one, because I always think about that. What starts to happen is you lose your physical power, but you have so much experience and a lot more knowledge at your side of where to expend that energy. So they kind of balance each other out, if you're smart about it. Yeah, I would say you just. Over the years and years of doing this, it's way easier to just see where People are going wrong or what you actually really need to focus on. When I was younger, you would just struggle with that because you're running on insecurity. Everything was based on, you know, you were never doing enough work or you were never good enough or whatever was going on in the head. And now I just have that.

Just.

That knowledge that, you know, everything's gonna be alright, do the work and you know, always, it always pays off, you know, and that's for me probably the biggest thing. But you know, there's many other things like I said, like understanding how important environment is.

Yeah, like air, water, sunlight, stuff like that.

Exactly. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now how about like cycling is very mentally challenging. I know there's a high amount of pain tolerance that's required. Do you do things like meditation or specific forms of mental work to allow yourself to be able to prepare for that?

Yeah, for sure. It's, you know, as, you know, probably with an ironman, it's the preparation that goes into it all on that day. It can be pretty stressful, you know. And I find, you know, for something like a time trial, which is a very similar, similar event to an ironman, your whole approach to the day is so crucial and getting yourself into that zone or whatever it is for you, that is, helps you just focus on that one goal for the day. Then that's what you need to do. And I'll tell you, like the days that go really well, it's like you can't even, you don't even, you can't even explain how it felt because it was. Yeah, you were just so driven on that one thing and you couldn't, you had no chatter in your brain. Right.

It's like you're in the zone.

Exactly. Yeah. And the days that for me that I, that I struggle is when I have that voice just constantly going and you know, you just know it's not going to be a good day out. So yeah, tapping into some meditation and more for me it's like visualizing how I'm going to approach the day. Not necessarily the effort because the effort is as you know, it's pretty much the same. You're trying to go on your limit for whatever distance or whatever event you're doing. And yeah, I find that it's how you're going to approach that day and how you're going to look at that effort and basically how you back up every time you think about it, every time you talk about it. It's so important that it's like a positive energy and that you're just so sure of yourself.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But have you ever experimented with like transcendental meditation or progressive neuromuscular relaxation or any kind of specific, like visualization or meditative techniques?

Nothing really specific. Like I said, I think meditation is going to be different for everyone. And it is something that is, I believe, very difficult for a lot of people to just take the time to do. So anytime you just taking the time to try it, it's gonna get better and better and better. And for me, that's all I can say is like, it's, it's a very simple approach, I think, but each time I do it, I feel like, okay, I'm understanding a bit more. And it's, it's something that is more for your lifetime, for your longevity for the rest of your life to practice.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So what kind of things do you think in terms of professional cycling especially are when it comes to like physical or mental training, things that people should be doing more of, things that you think people don't do enough of? Or would it just be these environmental considerations that you've talked about?

Yeah, those are, those are big. But I truly believe a big, you know, a lot of these endurance sports, they're such type A personalities and there's always these types of people that can really push themselves and this is great because this is what allows them to do well in these types of events. But I really am starting to learn that I think most of it's done in excess and most people are on their limit and you know, I see a lot of other riders and friends that I than I have in professional cycling and quite often they're just on their limit and you know, it's not necessarily the most healthy thing. And I believe personally that you can balance this out in your life by doing many other things. I know this is something you've dabbled with where you've just cut back on the hours and really you see that one, you feel a lot better in general life because that's important. I think your body's a lot stronger, but also you don't see this massive performance drop that everyone seems to be so afraid of. And I just think this obsessive compulsive way of training that people have gotten into, it's just too much and it always leads to some kind of blow out down the road or some sort of health ailment, you know?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. What about you? Do you have like special routines or special habits Each day that you do that you consider to be crucial routines or crucial habits in your life that are just must dos every morning when you wake up.

Yeah, I mean, over the years, for sure, I've definitely, definitely have had those. You know, getting into the creek, like I explained before, that's definitely something I love to do. But I've really started to work on myself with that because I do have that type of personality that would say I have to do this and I had to train that. And it just seems like really, in the last year, I've kind of started letting go of the have to do things and just kind of going by feel based on what I know works well and just how I'm feeling at that time and just staying away from have to's because it seems like we have a lot of those in our lives. And, you know, I just, I find I put myself in a bad state when I'm always trying to force things. You know, I never have the good result when I'm always forcing and trying to make something happen. Whereas if I let go and just go with intuition, then that seems to work the best for me. So, yeah, it's kind of a bad answer to that question, but yeah, yeah, I hear you.

But that creek is a must do, huh?

Yeah, for sure. It's. And, but that's, you know, it's like, it's almost addictive. And it's weird because, you know, sometimes you wake up, you're still warm, and you're the idea of going out and running in the snow and, you know, sometimes minus 5, minus 10, and it doesn't sound great. But what's amazing is every time you go out, you just feel awesome and you're so happy you did it. So again, that's one of those things that I think it's always going to be a part of my life.

Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Well, if people wanted to ask you questions in the comments section for this episode, would you be open with folks, kind of running a few things by you as far as some of the things that you've talked about today?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Okay, cool.

Awesome. Well, folks, here's the deal. If you want to ask Vain a question or basically you want to know a little bit more about some of the things that he's touched on, everything from ketosis to cold thermogenesis to some of his training techniques, you can visit the show notes for this episode. And you get there by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tooft because Swing's last name is easier to pronounce than his first name. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Toofed that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com it's Tuft. Tuft. Sorry, but I like Tuft. It sounds tough. T u f t BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tuft and when you pop in there, you can basically ask your questions right there in the comments section. In the meantime, Swain, thank you for coming on the show and for sharing some of the stuff with us.

Thank you. Thank you, Ben. And thanks for having me. And could I mention one last thing?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. You mentioned earlier that I'm friends with Barry and I was just up in Ireland just recently and doing some runs with him and swimming in the Irish ocean there. And really seeing this is a guy who has some real skin in the game. And Barry and I are kind of working together to try and put together some camps in the future where we be working on these ideas that I'm talking about. And yeah, we just kind of feel the earth type of camps where you're taking athletes kind of out of their normal environment, away from all the devices and all of this other stuff, this distraction and just kind of working on these, these, these very simple techniques. These simple things are hard to do because you have to, you have to commit to changing your environment completely.

So I like it. I like it. And is that, that's something that you're going to do in Ireland?

You thinking it could be yet Ireland or in Andorra, but we haven't come up with the complete plan yet, but it's something we're working on for the future, the near future, anyways.

Gotcha. Cool. Cool. Well, yeah, what I'll do. Is there like a specific URL or specific contact you want people to use if they're interested in doing that?

Yes. We'll talk to Barry and he'll have something set up.

We'll put a link in the show notes for you over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tufts all right, well, Swain, thanks for coming on the show. And again, if you're listening in, you have questions for Swain, head over to the comment section, leave them there, and either he or I will jump in and reply. I'll talk to you later, man.

Talk to you later. Thanks, Ben.

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