It's common knowledge that, for good sports performance, the intensive training must also be accompanied by specific dietary care.
The athlete should adopt specific nutritional strategies before, during and after training, in order to optimise the results, promote adaptation and recovery processes.
In this regard, Carbohydrates play a major role. The recommendations for ingestion of carbohydrates should be based on the intensity of the exercise done and can vary from 3 to 5 g/kg of weight/day, in the case of low intensity exercise and up to 8 to 12 g/kg of weight/day, in the case of very high intensity exercise.
The recommendations point to an ingestion of 1 to 4 g of carbohydrates/kg of body weight, which should be consumed 1 to 4 hours before exercise, as its availability as substrate to the muscle and central nervous system becomes limiting in training or competitions lasting more than 90 minutes.
During training, the ingestion of carbohydrates can increase sports performance by helping to maintain blood sugar and high carbohydrate oxidation rates, saving liver and muscle glycogen. However, it is known that carbohydrate oxidation is limited by intestinal absorption and, in order to increase the absorption rate, different types of carbohydrates should be used (such as glucose and fructose), which are absorbed by different carriers.
Apart from actual ingestion, gargling carbohydrates appears to be sufficient to obtain the same benefits in sports performance.
After training, the ingestion of carbohydrates is the most influential factor in restoring glycogen reserves and, consequently, recovery. The simultaneous ingestion of proteins and carbohydrates enables increasing the efficiency of the storage of muscle glycogen, probably due to stimulating greater insulin secretion.
Examples of products that can help you to maximise your sports performance:
