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  • Big Ride Day
    Matt Hart
    (22/07/2008)

    This section of the TORQ website has stayed stale for long enough. We have a huge amount of material to use here at TORQ, because of my journalistic exploits, but finding the time to get it up onto the website has proved, well, not very easy. Perhaps we should develop and sell fewer products. Anyway, I’ve found a window of opportunity and I’m going to seize it with both hands. This article (and the ones to follow) were originally written for Singletrack magazine and the style is somewhat ‘relaxed’ and ‘not overly serious’ so please enjoy reading them, glean the important information and don’t be too shocked if I rabbit on about a load of unecessary stuff!

    Oh yes, this article was also published in ‘Bicycling Australia’.

    Nutrition Performance Published Article
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  • The Cardiac Drift Phenomenon
    James Beckinsale
    (18/07/2006)

    Introduction
    You may be thinking about your first ultra endurance event*, ironman triathlon, adventure race, Etape or ultra marathon. Amazing, that just off the top of my head I came up with quite a solid list of events, which are designed to test the limits of human endurance. What’s even more amazing these events are not just completed by superhuman beings, they are completed by you and your buddy in the office working 40–50 hrs a week and hey, no afternoon snoozing! That’s superhuman.

    *Ultra endurance is determined as an event lasting longer than 4hrs.

    Performance
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  • HMB for muscular strength, density and power.
    Matt Hart
    (22/03/2004)

    HMB (Beta-hydroxy beta-methylbutyrate) is a metabolite of the amino acid Leucine. This means that it is a natural bi-product of the breakdown of leucine, a constituent of normal dietary protein. Small amounts of HMB are found in certain foods like catfish, alfalfa and it is a natural component of mother’s milk, but generally speaking it’s pretty scarce in the average diet. HMB was first discovered in the 1950’s and has been studied for several decades, but only really became popular as a sporting supplement in the mid 90’s.

    Nutrition Performance Product Update
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  • 'D-RIBOSE' - it'll knock your socks off!
    Matt Hart
    (12/06/2003)

    There’s an amazing new supplement on the market and it’s called ‘D-Ribose’. Amazing – why? I’ve spent the last 18 months carefully examining the literature and reading every morsel of information I can find on the subject - and it appears that this little sugar will allow you to train harder, for longer and recover 300-400% quicker!!! Hence, the emergence of TORQ ribose and TORQ bar. Most of my riders have been using TORQ ribose over the winter months and have found it highly effective during periods of heavy high load training and ensuring a peak for races. If you find these claims difficult to accept, read on and I’ll convince you. There are many supplements out there that manufacturers claim will work, but don’t – this certainly isn’t one of them…

    Nutrition Performance Product Update
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  • Fast Food 3
    Matt Hart
    (24/04/2003)

    Continuing on in our fast-food series, here’s fast-food number 3. No, we’re not talking about MacDonald’s or BK, there’s a different meaning here. For a food to be fast it must contain bags of carbohydrate with as little fat as possible. A moderate amount of protein wouldn’t go amiss either (this tends to happen as a matter of course), but basically the higher the carbs and lower the fat the better.

    Nutrition Performance
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  • Borg Scale gets ‘thumbs up’.
    Matt Hart
    (13/03/2003)

    For the unaware, the Borg Scale has been used in exercise physiology laboratories and by coaches for years to assess an athlete’s level of exertion whilst they’re exercising. The Borg Scale is often referred to as RPE (Rating of Perceived Exertion) and is entirely subjective. Quite simply, when an athlete is being tested in a laboratory setting, they are asked to pinpoint how hard they feel they are working by giving the examiner a rating from a chart that is presented before them. The original Borg Scale has 21 points of exertion ranging from 0 (at rest) to 21 (maximal). These were adapted later on to produce a 15-point scale called the ‘category scale’, strangely ranging from 6 to 20 and the ‘category-ratio scale’ ranging from 0-10. The later scale has a point beyond 10, which is deemed ‘maximal’, really giving it 11 points (see picture below).

    Performance
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