4-time Olympic medalist Brendan Hansen and 7-time Olympic medalist Aaron Peirsol share their nutritional strategies that helped them win gold
7-time Olympic medalist Aaron Peirsol and 4-time Olympic medalist Brendan Hansen flew to southern California to meet and greet customers at Lindberg Nutrition store in Torrance, California. They signed autographs, greeted their swim fans and talked about their eating, training and nutrition regimen that helped them win gold.
Aaron and Brendan were part of the world record-setting 4x100 meter medley relay team along with Michael Phelps and Ian Crocker that won a stunning victory at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Aaron and Brendan trained with Pure Sport Workout and Recovery nutritional performance sports drinks for the two years prior to the Olympics and relied on the performance benefits as they made their bids for gold medals in swimming at the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.
Both products were created by Dr. John Ivy, renowned Chairman of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Texas at Austin. They feature a complex fuel that sustains you--with slow-burst energy, not like sugar’s rush and crash. A 2.67:1 carb to whey protein ratio provides a patent-pending one-two punch.
During their visit, we spent some one-on-one time with Brendan and Aaron and asked about what they did nutritionally to prepare and compete in the Olympics.
Brendan Hansen
Born: August 15, 1981 in Havertown, PA
Height/Weight: 6'0" / 190 lbs.
Residence: Austin, TX
Olympic Medals: 2 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze
Editor: You’re arguably the best breast stroker in the world. In qualifying for the Athens Olympics you set world records in both the 100 and 200 Breast. In Athens, you collected a silver medal in the 100 Breast, a bronze in the 200 Breast, and a gold in the world-record setting 400 Medley Relay. Then you followed up with more medals in Beijing in 2008. Every year all sports including swimming get more competitive. What prompted you to start using a workout and recovery drink like Pure Sport?
Brendan: It was 2006, my college professor, Dr. Ivy, at the University of Texas, who invented Acellerade, came up to us swimmers with a product that he didn’t even have a name for. He said I would like you guys to try it. He knew we were a good focus group, because at this time, we’re two years out from the Olympics, we’re training for the Olympics, we’re high endurance athletes, extremely fined tuned, and know what is going to affect us and how it is going to affect us. So we were part of that focus group for almost two years. Soon we realized that we were doing things in a workout that we never could do before. We were getting to levels of fitness that we never thought possible. Never being sore. Recovering faster. Being able to work harder today than we did yesterday. And in swimming, that’s the only way you get better. When you’re talking hundredths of a second between you and the next person or gold or silver or whatever it may be, you’re always looking for that competitive edge. And this for me was the biggest change, other than starting to lift weights and undergoing the rigorous frequency of college training.
Editor: Back then, did you have both the Workout and Recovery formulas to experiment with?
Brendan: Yes, we did have the Workout and the Recovery formulas.
Editor: Has the formula been modified since the early versions you drank?
Brendan: Yes, but only the taste. We found a way to make it taste really good. When people try it, they say, “Really, there’s protein in this?” When you taste protein drinks, you normally get a chalky taste and it’s extremely hard to get protein in there without that taste. But the protein it contains is extremely important.
Editor: Can women or kids drink Pure Sport or is this just for serious, competitive athletes?
Brendan: Dr. Ivy is constantly testing it on athletes and he’s finding that women are benefiting from the protein, maybe more so even than men. Us guys usually eat protein all the time, but women tend to shortchange themselves of the protein and that’s why women are benefiting from it. What I love about the drink is there’s no age group that it’s limited to. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me today in your Lindberg store and say, “My kid is seven years old. Can he take the drink?” I say, “He drinks Gatorade, right? This is the healthy alternative to Gatorade – one third the sugar, half the calories, they’re not going to spike their blood sugar and that’s why Pure Sport is huge right now in soccer and lacrosse. There’s no caffeine in Pure Sport. If your body is like a $100,000 sports car – well, this is the fuel for your $100,000 sports car.
Editor: So take me through a typical day when you’re in training. What you have in the morning, what solid food you eat, when does the drink come into play?
Brendan: For me, before the morning workout is the hardest for me to take solid foods. I’ve always found that any kind of food I eat, the sugar in it will spike my blood sugar and I’ll get light headed and won’t be able to practice. I get up in the morning at 5:30 a.m. and I’m in the water by 6 a.m. I swim from 6 to 8 a.m., two hours of hard aerobic training, but at the same time it’s like I’m struggling to get down scrambled eggs or any kind of breakfast food, for that matter. So here’s what I do. When I wake up, I make a Pure Sport Workout shake and I start drinking the Workout shake about 30 minutes before my workout. I drink Workout all the way through the two hour workout, and then drink a Pure Sport Recovery shake and then I go and eat.
Editor: So during the two hour workout are you continually sipping it?
Brendan: Yes, between sets and between laps.
Editor: Do you add fruit to it or anything else?
Brendan: I don’t add anything to it at all.
Editor: Do you mix it into water or juice or milk?
Brendan: Just in water. And the Pure Sport Recovery formula is used the exact same way. The key to recovering from a workout is to drink the Pure Sport Recovery formula within 15 to 30 minutes of your workout. That’s when your body is more efficient in using the protein. Everyone on the team is religious about taking the Recovery formula 15 to 30 minutes after the workout. And then most of us go and grab a bunch of breakfast tacos or sandwiches.
Editor: Do you keep a premade Pure Sport Recovery by the side of the pool or do you have a shaker bottle with the dry mix in it and then add water after your workout?
Brendan: We all have tubs in our lockers and once you’ve mixed the drink, it’s mixed completely. It never settles out. So what most of the guys do is they’ll mix their Recovery drink before workout so it’s sitting there when they get out. It’s sitting in the refrigerator and they just slam it down and then they’re good to go. And that’s pretty much how that works.
Editor: What about your training and nutrition in the afternoon?
Brendan: In the afternoon we’re in the weight room from 1 to 3 p.m. and then we’re back in the water from 3 to 5 p.m. You can drink Workout whenever you want during that period of time. And then we drink the Recovery formula again after our workout. So I’m getting 32 to 40 grams of protein just from my drink. And then I’m also getting the carbohydrates to fuel me through. And what I found is, it’s almost a preventative drink. It’s preventing you from breaking down your muscle. For me training is never a question of motivation. There’s always the question in my head if I train too hard, am I going to be able to bounce back and be ready for these meets and stuff. So the overtraining dilemma in my head, of how hard I was working and am I going to see the benefits of this, was never a question once I got on Pure Sport.
Editor: Before lifting weights from 1 to 3 p.m., do you eat a regular lunch or drink a shake?
Brendan: The only time I eat solid food, pretty much, is right after my morning workout, right before a weight workout, and then about 20 to 30 minutes, maybe 45 minutes after my 3 to 5 p.m. afternoon workout. So we were averaging 6,000 to 7,000 calories a day.
Editor: Wow!
Brendan: I mean that’s a lot. And then on top of that we were swimming 10 times a week, lifting 5 times a week. The funny thing is people say, “Well that’s great, you have that ability to burn all that energy.” Pure Sport is still less calories that any other sports drink out there. None of us can afford to gain weight. Because if I have to swim a 200 breaststroke with an extra ten pound plate on my back, it’s going to affect my outcome of the swim. So weight for us is extremely important, even though most people don’t know that. They look at us and say, “You don’t need to worry about your weight.”
Editor: With your long workouts, you obviously deplete your glycogen levels.
Brendan: Absolutely.
Editor: You can’t restore your glycogen levels in 24 hours. Sometimes it will take as long as three to four days to bring it back up to 100%. Is this what you experience?
Brendan: We take Recovery to shorten this glycogen rebuilding time. The Recovery formula is a little higher glycemic so it’s going to spike your insulin levels to help shuttle glycogen back into your muscles quicker so you can recover quicker.
Editor: So I presume before competition, you’re kind of dialing back your pre-contest workouts to preserve muscle glycogen. Before a meet, do you stop training the day before, two days before?
Brendan: Before a meet, you’ll taper down your workouts to allow your body to recover faster. So you’re not putting as much stress on your body. But my appetite or my diet never changes at all during that period of time. So what you end up doing is just allowing your muscles to rest up.
Editor: How about off season? Is there ever anything such as an off season for you?
Brendan: No. Unfortunately, swimming is 12 months out of the year. I’m taking the year off this year from competitive swimming. Right now I’m running 30 miles a week and biking 100.
Editor: That doesn’t sound much like taking the year off!
Brendan: Well I’m really enjoying doing something other than swimming. And what I found is that when you approach anything the way I approach swimming – work ethic, nutrition, everything else, I’m successful. I’m leading the pack in my bike group. I went from running a 48-minute 10k to running a 43-minute 10k. So I’m getting down there to where I maybe doing a tryout here in the next few months. And so good nutrition is not a sports-specific deal, by any means.
Editor: What would you say to a junior high kid besides trying to eat right and things like that? 
What do you think is the most important thing for them?
Brendan: I think the most important thing is to be comfortable with your body. Be able to do push-ups with your own weight. Be able to do a dry land workout where all you use is your own weight or a ten pound medicine ball. I get these kids that get the wrong advice about throwing up a lot of weight, or doing something in the weight room, or training hard. If you asked Aaron and I when we really got serious about swimming was in junior high. But Aaron never lifted a weight until he was in college. And all I did was push-ups, sit-ups, squats with my own weight, jumps, polymetrics-type stuff. Those are the kinds of things that are going to allow you, if you are a uncoordinated kid, to develop hands/eye coordination and that kind of stuff. It’s definitely going to help in all of your other activities. And those are just drills. It was the little things that I did outside the pool that made me successful in my sport. And those little things are things that a lot of people overlook. But the 1% of athletes that are successful, the ones that win gold medals, they’re the ones that look at those little steps. Because that’s what separates them from everyone else.
Editor: If you think back to high school and your college days, what were some of the things that your fellow athletes did wrong, that you felt that hindered their performance? What separated the better swimmers from the ones that weren’t quite as good?
Brendan: I think it was just the lack of knowledge and I was, I’ll tell you right now, I was one of them. I never went out and found a nutritionist or asked someone about what my body really needed. And the crazy thing is, those adolescent years, that’s when your body is changing the most. That’s when you can make the biggest change, because you really build your aerobic base as an endurance athlete at those ages. And you really can’t change it once you get older. So what I found is that a lot people are just kind of hearing word of mouth, instead of hitting the books or going online and finding out the answers and finding out the solutions to these problems and questions that they have, and then asking the right people, instead of asking their fellow peer.
Editor: When do you think you really became the complete athlete?
Brendan: I don’t really know. When I was younger, I wasn’t so focused on nutrition, I was more focused on other things. It wasn’t until I got really serious about swimming and really started to think about all the factors that go into me being successful. I was probably in my twenties before nutrition became one of the factors I focused on.
Editor: Great having you here today! Looks like you have a line of fans that are waiting to get autographs and ask questions.
Brendan: Thanks for having me come to your Lindberg store in Torrance and sampling out our Pure Sport drinks. If your athlete-type customers start using it with their training program, I guarantee they’ll improve their performance, whether it’s in the pool or running or on a bike. Great store!
Aaron Peirsol
Born: July 23, 1983 in Orange County, CA
Height/Weight: 6'4" / 185 lbs.
Residence: Austin, TX
Olympic Medals: 5 Gold, 2 Silver
World Records: 3
Editor: It’s great to have you here today.
Aaron: It’s nice to be here. I now live in Texas, but I grew up just south of here in Newport Beach. So California is my second home.
Editor: Aaron, why don’t you take me through a typical training day. What do you eat, how do you train?
Aaron: I wake up around 6 a.m. I eat a bowl of cereal, usually something with just carbs. It’s pretty simple. I also drink a smoothie that’ll I’ll make, like a fruit smoothie, something like that.
Editor: Do you put any protein powder in your smoothie?
Aaron: No. Not before practice. And then when I get to the pool, practice starts around 6:30 a.m., I will drink the Pure Sport Workout formula. I put a couple of scoops into about 24 ounces of water and that more or less gets me through the workout with the protein that I need. After my workout, I’ll take the Recovery drink from Pure Sport. Then I go home, whip up something with a lot more protein, something like eggs, rice and beans. Something, you know, nice and hardy. Then we go back to our practice facility for lunch, usually have a couple of sandwiches, some fruit and more or less just try to eat a lot. We realize that a lot of the way to get in shape is coming from the way we work out. It’s not just going to be what we’re taking. But what we’re taking is going to enable us to come back the next day and maintain what we have. It’s more or less just trying to keep going. And so we go to practice around 1:30 p.m. Go lift for and hour and a half. And then go swim for two hours from 3 to 5 p.m. in the pool.
Editor: Do you take anything while you’re weight training?
Aaron: The whole time I’m in the weight room I’m using the Pure Sport Workout drink as well. I’ll drink about 24 to 30 ounces in the weight room. When I get to the pool, I drink about 24 to 30 more ounces at the pool. So I’ll have to make the drink a couple different times. After I get out of the water, I head home and make a meal, something really hardy like chicken, fish, some vegetables. I eat pretty much until I’m full. All in all, it’s very healthy. By no means am I completely strict about what I eat, but I do eat healthy. I’m not adding up how many calories I’m taking. I more or less go off of, you know, have I eaten enough and should I eat more. Will this last me through the day?
Editor: Do you drink any sports drinks?
Aaron: We tried to stay away from sugar drinks, because we knew we would bonk a lot easier with those. The added protein and carbohydrates from the Workout drink actually helps us maintain during those two-hour long practices. Before that we just drank water.
Editor: Do you have any nutritional advice for the junior high or high school athlete trying to get a scholarship?
Aaron: If you’re doing a sport that’s more of an endurance type sport, the best thing I can say is to stay healthy, of course. I’m not going to say don’t eat anything like…you want to eat occasionally a red meat. You want to eat chicken, you want to fish, vegetables, you can name them all. I grew up eating healthy. Not using a lot of butter and just kind of being smart about it. Everyone knows how to eat well. I do firmly believe that. Everyone knows what a good meal consists of. But it’s staying away from those things that you kind of crave to have. Stay away from the fats. Stay away from the soft drinks. Stay away from the junk food. That, in and of itself, you’ll notice a huge difference in your quality of life.
Editor: When you were in the Olympics, were you in the back locker room sipping shakes between some of your heats?
Aaron: Yes, or eating a bar or something like that, if there is no food around. We realized it was important for us just to try to keep something in us. Not all the time did we have food, so we’d eat a bar or we’d mix up some Pure Sport. And that would be more than what was necessary. But by no means does anything replace food. Nothing can. There’s no supplement for food. There’s no multi-vitamin that is going to replace fruits and vegetables for the day. So, ideally you’re getting that stuff from the food you eat. That’s not always possible. I guess a lot of people feel like they need more of those certain things and multi-vitamins may become necessary. But I feel like I’ve done plenty fine with the way I’ve done it.
Editor: Sounds like you have! Thanks for telling us how you’ve combined nutrition and training. I hope it’s helpful to others. And thanks for coming in today to meet our customers and sign autographs.
Aaron: Thanks for having me here!
