During workout Nutrition

Have you ever found yourself becoming increasingly lethargic within the first 30 minutes of a workout? Your muscles don’t feel tired, yet you have an unexplainable feeling of weakness?
This is most likely down to your pre and during workout nutrition. During workout nutrition is often overlooked, however without it training can be very counter productive.

So lets go into an overview of what your body is doing during exercise. Your body can use three different types of energy source these are; Carbohydrates, Fats and Proteins. So what do they do?

• Carbohydrates – They come in two forms, complex and simple. A complex carbohydrate is found in foods like bread, they are long chain and give a sustained energy release over a longer period of time. An example of a simple carbohydrate is Glucose that gives the body an immediate energy resource.
• Fats – Fats are much more complex molecules, they take longer to break down so withdrawing energy from them takes longer. The energy per gram of fat is however much greater than that of a carbohydrate.
• Protein – It might be seen as something that your body shouldn’t be burning. The amount consumed does vary upon the type of exercise you are performing. Very high intense workouts like running at 80-95% of your maximum heart rate and a (HIT) session use more, and less intense workouts such as cardio training burn less.

So what do you need to consume during your workout to keep you energy up?

As a rule of thumb you want to be consuming a bit of each of the three energy sources. You can get your carbohydrates from most energy drinks, which will contain complex carbs in the form of maltodextrin and simple ones in the form of glucose. I then recommend Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAA’s) to help replenish protein losses and aid recovery. I also eat protein flapjacks, they contain just a small serving of protein and some fat that gives you all the energy you need. These can be made at home using a simple flapjack recipe and then adding some whey protein powder.

When I train no matter what sort of exercise I will take a Flapjack, Energy drink and BCAA’s. I could not imagine training without them the difference is astonishing. I use CNP protein flapjack and PHD battery, as i find they are the best value for money and taste great.

I hope this helps you in your discipline, and please don’t hesitate to leave a question in the comments.

Cheers Will.

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