Fueling Workouts With Carb Drinks

What about carb drinks for your workout? Carbs get a lot of bad press. For example, they can be “easily stored as fat”. Or “higher-fat, lower-carb” diets are the cure-all for the insulin-insensitive.  Let me just say here and now that the demise of carbohydrates is premature at best. Carbohydrates are the number one fuel source for high-intensity exercise. And, ingesting carbs during exercise can definitely help your workout!

Carb Drinks & Endurance Exercise

Isopure Liquid

Exercise lasting more than a couple hours is limited primarily by carbohydrate depletion and dehydration. Ingest a carb source during prolonged exercise. You’ll delay fatigue and enhance performance. But what about high-intensity, intermittent exercise? Such as sprinting, soccer, football or resistance training? Most of us don’t lift weights for more than two hours, right? Our fatigue isn’t entirely due to glycogen depletion or dehydration.

So How Can Consuming A Drink Containing Sugar Help?

Investigators at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, tested the effects of carbohydrate feedings during intense intermittent cycling. Or, sprint cycling. It was designed to induce fatigue within 40-60 minutes. They used a double-blind protocol. Physically active but untrained men and women ingested either a placebo or an 18%-carbohydrate solution. This solution was approximately 47 grams. It was given immediately before exercise. A 6%-carbohydrate solution (approximately 16 grams) was given every 20 minutes during exercise.

The volume of fluid ingested was 4 ml per 2.2 pounds (1 kg) of bodyweight. The exercise bout consisted of one minute of high-intensity cycling. There were three-minute rest between bouts. Subjects performed this “sprint cycling” regimen until they could no longer maintain the same revolutions per minute.

Carb Drinks Study – Results

For the carb group: Plasma levels of glucose and insulin were higher 30 minutes after exercise and until fatigue. The ratings of perceived exertion generally describes how hard the exercise feels to the subject. In this case they were less in the carb group. More importantly, the average time to exhaustion was much longer in the carb group. In fact, they exercised approximately 50% longer than the placebo group. That’s about 90 minutes vs. roughly 60 minutes.

Crab Drinks – Important For Bodybuilders

The benefits of ingesting carbs aren’t limited to marathoners. They are also quite important for us anaerobic guys and gals. Are you looking for that extra edge or energy boost? It may be worthwhile to sip one of the various sports drinks available. Some guys like to dilute a non-carbonated soft drink in half. This probably works just as well as a sports drink. The only type of sugar you should stay away during exercise is fructose or fruit sugar. For some people, fructose may cause stomach upset. It probably doesn’t offer any advantages in the performance arena either.

Check out carb drinks here: Carb Powders and Waxy Maize – I’ll Pump You Up (illpumpyouup.com)

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *