Strength Basics

Getting stronger, fitter, and healthier by sticking to the basics. It's not rocket science, it's doing the simple stuff the right way. Strength-Basics updates every Monday, plus extra posts during the week.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Article Review: Explosive Nutrition I

I caught this article, Explosive Nutrition: Part I over on Elite FTS.

I thought it was a very interesting look at carbs vs. fats for explosive energy. Basically, energy during a workout or during sport.

If you look at the chart in the article, you'll see that the body metabolizes fat into energy and carbohydrates into energy along the same path. They converge at a common point along the chain, and get used as energy. If so, why would you want carbs for fuel?

The article quotes a lot of research that suggest that despite the convergence, carbs are more efficient and effective fuel sources for explosive sports performance. That is to say, fats will work as fuel but you'll miss out on hitting maximal performance.

I also thought the idea that you should "fuel up" 90 minutes before a workout with carbs to be interesting. I'm trying an experiment right now on myself that varies from this - low carb except my during-workout and immediately post-workout shakes. The goal is fat loss with minimal negative impact on performance. If this article is right, this isn't going to work as well as I'd hoped. I won't maximally use those carbs I ingest during the workout and then I'll mostly burn up those stores with my cardio and MMA workouts in between the workout days.

It might be interesting to try a pre-workout shake 90 minutes before, and then a peri (during) and post-workout shake to recover from the workout. I may consider this, based on this first look here. But I tend to train somewhat poorly on a full carb load - eating closer than 2 hours before my workout has always left me feeling less than raring to go.

Still I thought the article was very interesting, and I'm going to revisit it from time to time as I work on my workout nutrition.

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