On The Water

       A multi-dimensional n-of-1 study ~ Have you ever wondered what it feels like to spend 2 months sleeping at 11,000ft in an altitude tent set-up in your bed, while living and training in your everyday environment at sea-level? And more importantly, does it really do any good to you or is all the hype just a placebo effect? Well ... I decided to answer those questions through a personal study designed to recapitulate the standard performance high altitude protocol (ref. [1]) and extend it by one more month. In this post, I will try to describe the process, what I experienced and what really changed in my physiology throughout a 13-week long experiment. To give you a sense of the magnitude of this study, it entailed tracking and analyzing over 5,000 data points for 90+ days. The data collection included most physiological parameters previously reported in scientific literature that change with high altitude exposure. To make things exciting and get rid of the thri...

Speed training is an essential component of performance in many racing sports but it is often butchered. Ideas, methods and personal opinions of training schemes and speed training methods that are not supported by science or consistent results are still far too common. I thought it may be fun to outline below a few myths related to endurance and speed-endurance in sports including kayaking and how these may actually block you from progressing and getting faster. Myth 1 : Higher average speed at training days or races means you are getting faster Being able to generate faster speeds for a longer time may increase your average speed or even top-end speed on a training day or during a race. Observing such metrics is not a bad idea, however, these should be put in the right context and within a carefully outlined training plan. They should be part of monitoring progress in the long haul and not be indicative of performance (either personal or boat-specific) during random training days or...

"The unexamined life is not worth living" ~ Socrates [The pursuit of knowledge and wisdom through questioning, logical argument, examining and thinking] Lately,  I have been observing how people, including my own self, react to criticism, disagreement and challenging expressions. There is always an embedded instinct that drives a strong defend to our beliefs as those beliefs are attached somehow to our egos, self-worth and self-existence. When these beliefs get occasionally challenged, we feel exposed and vulnerable. Being wrong is scary. And it is our reaction to vulnerability and fear that drives our forces to either accept criticism - even if that seems to us fundamentally wrong - or reject criticism - even if that seems to us fundamentally right. Learning something from scratch at a later age can be exciting but also challenging. When considering learning a new sport as a former athlete coming from a different sport, things can get more complicated. We are not talking her...

Have you tried to run immediately after a tough weight lifting session? Or, have you tried to lift heavy after a long run? It's pretty tough when you do it for the first time, whether you are a runner or a weight lifter or just a fitness pal. There is more to it than just being a difficult workout and there is a reason why weight lifters do not enjoy "cardio" workouts or why runners do not enjoy spending much time in the weight room. This is because our muscles utilize different metabolic systems to produce energy during an activity depending on the duration and the intensity of the activity. Jumping from one system to another is not a smooth transition. During a workout, our muscles utilize a various avenues to seek energy and do the job we are asking them to do. Depending on how hard or how long we ask them to perform, they tap into the following three energy paths: ATP-phosphocreatine (ATP-PC), glycolysis and aerobic metabolism or a combination of those. Typically, for...

  “Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?” Robert Luis Stevenson - British author Sports and modern society have made us believe that winning promises to give more than it can actually deliver. And this is because we are probably focusing on the wrong aspect of winning. We view winning as an end-result but fail to take a deeper look at the process. Does winning medals alone bring success, recognition, admiration, fame, money, and personal happiness?  How do we feel when an Olympic athlete fails to make the finals? And how does it even compare when one loses a gold medal by a few hundreds of a second?  Does falling short by a lot or by a tiny bit make some athletes losers and less worthy of our admiration?  I am not trying to take away the crowns from Olympic gold medal glory or from achieving a challenging goal. And because I believe that "winning is everything", I will never be at ease with giving away participation medals to everyone completing a...

The human body has unlimited potential. We are lucky enough to live in an era where sports physiology has been studied and applied for a long time and has demonstrated with scientific rigor how exercise duration, intensity and frequency can affect muscle composition, capacity, efficiency, energetics and ultimately, human performance. Kayaking shares many aspects with swimming because they are both highly technical sports and require a vast cardiovascular capacity and engagement across all types of muscle fiber no matter the distance or duration of the event. In terms of performance, there is always a fine balance between technique , muscle development (and proper engagement) and cardiovascular ability . The holy triad of any sport as I call it, gives us the opportunity to continue to grow as athletes in any and all of those three aspects continuously. All three are tightly interconnected and while during specific training periods we may focus more on one or another, they all deserve at...

I grew up in Greece, in one of the oldest and more traditional societies in Europe. Exactly where big changes rarely happen in people's lives. In Greece, you grow up in a house or apartment with your parents and siblings, and with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins around and on top of each other. You finish school, go to a technical or academic college nearby, specialize in an area, get a job, get married and live with spouse and kids in the same town you were born or maybe in a town a few miles away. And although this is a lovely way to lead a life, offer to the society, feel secured and beloved and maybe do great things, it is very limiting and can be truly unbearable for the more curious, adventurous and rebellious mindsets.  At the age of 23, although full of passion and restlessness, I wasn't quite en route to start a revolution but at the same time, I felt I couldn't quite fit in such a culture. I was constantly judged and rejected within my family, my schoolmat...