Team USA Bobsledder Kelsey Kiel Showcases Full Day of Training and Nutrition
With the 2021 NOBULL CrossFit Games approaching, the Morning Chalk Up reached out to multiple top-level CrossFit athletes to create a video series that digs deeper into their approach to fitness and nutrition. Cole Sager, Alison Scudds, and Kelsey Kiel all responded and provided insight into their training and daily eating routine.
Remind me: A three-time CrossFit Games athlete in Team competition, Kiel posted a career-best finish of ninth in 2018 with CrossFit Invictus Back Bay. She has now shifted her focus away from competitive CrossFit in order to represent her country. Kiel is a member of Team USA’s bobsled squad, forcing her to make adjustments to her training and nutrition.
- “Because my training has definitely shifted from, obviously, CrossFit to now bobsled, the basics are the same,” Kiel explained. “But how I go about my food and my nutrition has had to change a little bit.”
- “With CrossFit, training hours a day multiple times a day, I was just expending so much more energy. So I was eating more when I was training for CrossFit.”
Fueling up: While Kiel has shifted her training style and put more of an emphasis on her explosiveness, she hasn’t forgotten the key factors that made her successful in CrossFit. She puts an emphasis on eating to provide fuel for her training sessions.
- “Essentially, it’s still the same in regard to making sure that I’m feeling fueled for training sessions, whether it’s in the weight room,” Kiel explained. “So I’m still lifting. The focus is different than when I was CrossFitting. Now it’s about maintaining strength and working on my explosiveness.”
- “Or if it’s fueling up for a session at the track, just making sure that I’m feeling good for my sprinting sessions as well.”
Time to work: Kiel did not fully detail her exact workouts as she trains for her bobsled career. Instead, she showed a montage of some of her work. She did some bench press reps, Bulgarian split squats, back squats, and sled pushes among other exercises. Kiel also spent time at the track sprinting and at the training facility pushing a bobsled down the ice.
A healthy dinner: With her training sessions done for the day, Kiel focuses on healthy, low-fat foods for her dinner. Like Alison Scudds and Cole Sager, she relies on Trifecta to provide ready-to-eat options that help her achieve goals and properly fuel her body.
- “Some of the things that I have in my fridge — the go-to’s — are the Trifecta white rice,” Kiel said. “It is my favorite. It is so good. I am doing the white rice. I finished it all. Then I do the Trifecta cod. It’s a super low-fat option, and it’s delicious.”
- To take the dinner to the next level, Kiel adds a lot of vegetables. She makes some broccoli in the air fryer and then steams some artichoke hearts to the point that it’s easy to pull apart and dip in butter.
A hearty dessert: Prior to turning in for the night, Kiel works in a dessert. She thinks outside of the box for this final meal instead of simply grabbing a pint of ice cream. One of her favorite options is actually something that Trifecta prepares for breakfast.
- “Probably one of my favorite things from Trifecta — the cinnamon walnut loaf,” Kiel said. “It says ‘breakfast’ here, but I literally use it as dessert. It’s so good. It kind of tastes like a muffin.”
- “I heat it up. I weigh it out, and I put it in the microwave. Sometimes, I’ll put some cinnamon on to make it more cinnamon-y on the top. Again, like the best dessert ever!”
Bottom line: Kiel has shifted her focus to a new form of competition after heading to the CrossFit Games three prior times. The change does not mean that she is done lifting or focusing on her nutrition. Instead, she is taking things she learned during her CrossFit career and adapting them to fit with her current training style.
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