Taken together, this highlights the importance of maintaining carbohydrate stores before, during, and after exercise. This is crucial in longer races like marathons, ultramarathons, and middle or long distance triathlons and duathlons.

Read more about carbohydrate loading for endurance. Whilst this is less important than when racing; low levels of muscle glycogen will impact training. Here, consuming carbohydrate a few hours prior to training can be beneficial.

Maintaining muscle glycogen levels is essential before more intense training sessions. And low levels will impact the quality of these sessions, and increase the stress placed on your immune system. In order to maintain adequate levels, endurance athletes must regularly consume carbohydrates — especially after exercise.

Why consume several smaller meals? Read more about consuming carbohydrates after endurance exercise. If you want to race to your full potential, then consuming carbs during exercise makes a massive difference. This delays the point of muscle glycogen depletion; allowing you to race at higher intensities, and exercise for longer, before fatigue sets in.

The most common approaches involve consuming energy gels, drinks or even energy bars or food like bananas during exercise. Not only will this allow you to test different gels, this will actually train your stomach to be more efficient at digesting gels during exercise.

Interestingly, research has shown that consuming nutrition during training can improve race day performance. I examine this in greater detail in this article: nutrition training for endurance runners. Read more about carbohydrate during endurance exercise.

As I mentioned earlier, fat metabolism provides a significant amount of our total energy needs, especially during low-moderate intensity exercise. Even the leanest athletes will have more than sufficient fat reserves to fuel low intensity exercise for extended periods.

In fact, just 1kg of body fat will provide enough energy to run around 3 marathons. That said, there is some evidence the consumption of a high fat meal prior to exercise when muscle glycogen stores are already full may benefit prolonged endurance exercise. This is due to increased levels of free fatty acids in the blood.

Read more about fat intake for endurance athletes. In order to improve fat metabolism, some athletes deliberately train in a fasted state. This normally involves training early in the morning without breakfast.

By doing this, athletes are training in a semi-fasted state. This training method is still controversial, particularly as it can lead to increased rates of muscle breakdown during exercise.

It can also place greater levels of stress on the immune system. With this in mind, you must increase intake after exercise to balance the reduction in calorie intake through fasting. This follows a similar theory to periodised training, i. specific nutritional approaches for certain blocks of training.

As an example, an athlete reduces their carbohydrate intake but maintains their total calorie intake by increasing the proportion of calories from fat and protein.

We believe this approach to benefit fat metabolism and may lead to reductions in body weight that may be helpful to endurance athletes. Unlike fats and carbohydrate, our body does not store protein specifically for use during aerobic metabolism.

Most of the protein within our body is present within our muscles. These amino acids are present in small amounts in your blood, with larger amounts within your muscles. In order to metabolise protein, your muscle cells must either utilise the free amino acids that are circulating within your bloodstream, or breakdown muscle protein into amino acids.

In fact, we can metabolise the branched chain amino acids BCAAs and the amino acid alanine. This has led to the addition of BCAAs to energy drinks. This may benefit aerobic metabolism, spare muscle glycogen levels, and help to reduce the rates of muscle breakdown when exercising.

This can have a negative effect on strength, recovery and exercise performance. Whilst BCAAs can benefit endurance athletes by decreasing muscle damage and muscle breakdown; consuming too much during exercise can lead to an increase in ammonia production.

Home Nutrition For Endurance Athletes Endurance Nutrition Basics. Endurance Nutrition: Basic Principles and Strategies Whether your focus is running, cycling or swimming, endurance training places unique stresses on your body.

Endurance nutrition: increased calorie requirements During endurance exercise, calorie expenditure rises significantly. How many extra calories do endurance athletes need? Your bodyweight — a greater bodyweight increases work rate and calorie expenditure.

Energy requirements of elite endurance athletes Among top level elite endurance athletes, the calorie requirements can jump significantly. This can have several negative effects, including reduced performance during training and racing, and increased risk of over-training and illness.

Whether you are a competing athlete, a weekend sports player or a dedicated daily exerciser, the foundation to improved performance is a nutritionally adequate diet. Athletes who exercise strenuously for more than 60 to 90 minutes every day may need to increase the amount of energy they consume, particularly from carbohydrate sources.

The current recommendations for fat intake are for most athletes to follow similar recommendations to those given for the general community, with the preference for fats coming from olive oils, avocado, nuts and seeds.

Athletes should also aim to minimise intake of high-fat foods such as biscuits, cakes, pastries, chips and fried foods. After absorption, glucose can be converted into glycogen and stored in the liver and muscle tissue. It can then be used as a key energy source during exercise to fuel exercising muscle tissue and other body systems.

Athletes can increase their stores of glycogen by regularly eating high-carbohydrate foods. If dietary protein intake is insufficient, this can result in a loss of protein muscle tissue, because the body will start to break down muscle tissue to meet its energy needs, and may increase the risk of infections and illness.

Current recommendations for carbohydrate requirements vary depending on the duration, frequency and intensity of exercise.

More refined carbohydrate foods such as white bread, jams and lollies are useful to boost the total intake of carbohydrate, particularly for very active people.

Athletes are advised to adjust the amount of carbohydrate they consume for fuelling and recovery to suit their exercise level. For example:. A more recent strategy adopted by some athletes is to train with low body carbohydrate levels and intakes train low.

There is accumulating evidence that carefully planned periods of training with low carbohydrate availability may enhance some of the adaptations in muscle to the training program. However, currently the benefits of this approach to athletic performance are unclear.

The GI has become of increasing interest to athletes in the area of sports nutrition. However, the particular timing of ingestion of carbohydrate foods with different GIs around exercise might be important. There is a suggestion that low GI foods may be useful before exercise to provide a more sustained energy release, although evidence is not convincing in terms of any resulting performance benefit.

Moderate to high GI foods and fluids may be the most beneficial during exercise and in the early recovery period. However, it is important to remember the type and timing of food eaten should be tailored to personal preferences and to maximise the performance of the particular sport in which the person is involved.

A high-carbohydrate meal 3 to 4 hours before exercise is thought to have a positive effect on performance. A small snack one to 2 hours before exercise may also benefit performance. It is important to ensure good hydration prior to an event.

Consuming approximately ml of fluid in the 2 to 4 hours prior to an event may be a good general strategy to take. Some people may experience a negative response to eating close to exercise. A meal high in fat, protein or fibre is likely to increase the risk of digestive discomfort.

It is recommended that meals just before exercise should be high in carbohydrates as they do not cause gastrointestinal upset. Liquid meal supplements may also be appropriate, particularly for athletes who suffer from pre-event nerves.

For athletes involved in events lasting less than 60 minutes in duration, a mouth rinse with a carbohydrate beverage may be sufficient to help improve performance. Benefits of this strategy appear to relate to effects on the brain and central nervous system.

During exercise lasting more than 60 minutes, an intake of carbohydrate is required to top up blood glucose levels and delay fatigue.

Current recommendations suggest 30 to 60 g of carbohydrate is sufficient, and can be in the form of lollies, sports gels, sports drinks, low-fat muesli and sports bars or sandwiches with white bread.

It is important to start your intake early in exercise and to consume regular amounts throughout the exercise period. It is also important to consume regular fluid during prolonged exercise to avoid dehydration.

Sports drinks, diluted fruit juice and water are suitable choices. For people exercising for more than 4 hours, up to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour is recommended.

Carbohydrate foods and fluids should be consumed after exercise, particularly in the first one to 2 hours after exercise. While consuming sufficient total carbohydrate post-exercise is important, the type of carbohydrate source might also be important, particularly if a second training session or event will occur less than 8 hours later.

In these situations, athletes should choose carbohydrate sources with a high GI for example white bread, white rice, white potatoes in the first half hour or so after exercise.

This should be continued until the normal meal pattern resumes. Since most athletes develop a fluid deficit during exercise, replenishment of fluids post-exercise is also a very important consideration for optimal recovery. It is recommended that athletes consume 1. Protein is an important part of a training diet and plays a key role in post-exercise recovery and repair.

Protein needs are generally met and often exceeded by most athletes who consume sufficient energy in their diet. The amount of protein recommended for sporting people is only slightly higher than that recommended for the general public. For athletes interested in increasing lean mass or muscle protein synthesis, consumption of a high-quality protein source such as whey protein or milk containing around 20 to 25 g protein in close proximity to exercise for example, within the period immediately to 2 hours after exercise may be beneficial.

As a general approach to achieving optimal protein intakes, it is suggested to space out protein intake fairly evenly over the course of a day, for instance around 25 to 30 g protein every 3 to 5 hours, including as part of regular meals. There is currently a lack of evidence to show that protein supplements directly improve athletic performance.

Therefore, for most athletes, additional protein supplements are unlikely to improve sport performance. A well-planned diet will meet your vitamin and mineral needs. Supplements will only be of any benefit if your diet is inadequate or you have a diagnosed deficiency, such as an iron or calcium deficiency.

There is no evidence that extra doses of vitamins improve sporting performance. Nutritional supplements can be found in pill, tablet, capsule, powder or liquid form, and cover a broad range of products including:.

Before using supplements, you should consider what else you can do to improve your sporting performance — diet, training and lifestyle changes are all more proven and cost effective ways to improve your performance. Relatively few supplements that claim performance benefits are supported by sound scientific evidence.