Diet will affect human health, and of course it will also affect athletes' training and competition conditions. Whether international or domestic, many famous professional athletes have sports nutrition experts to guide them or prepare the food they usually eat.
The job of nutrition experts is to ensure that athletes can maintain good nutritional and physical and mental conditions during daily training or competition, so that they can have better physical fitness to receive training or create better results.
As a running enthusiast, you should have some understanding of sports nutrition and apply it to daily life and training, so that the training effect can be more breakthrough, and at the same time, through appropriate nutritional concepts To avoid unnecessary training injuries and physical and mental fatigue.
1. The relationship between carbohydrates and exercise ability
Carbohydrates are the main components and main energy supply substances in the structure of living cells, and have an important function in regulating cell activities.
Early research on diet and exercise performance was discussed by European scholars more than fifty years ago. They found that the amount of carbohydrates (sugar) in food would affect exercise performance. The performance of endurance events is directly proportional to the carbohydrate content in food. The energy (like glycogen) present in the body is related to diet, and it is also related to exercise ability.
But unfortunately, the human body can store not many carbohydrates, only 600 to 800 calories, which is about half of the carbohydrates obtained from food every day. If you run at a marathon pace and can only use carbohydrates as energy, the energy stored in your body will be used up after only 70 to 80 minutes of exercise.
If the glycogen content of the muscles in the body is used up, there will be a "hitting the wall" phenomenon, that is, the muscles will feel pain, heat, fatigue and weakness, so the ability to exercise will be severely limited. . After a period of endurance training, the rate at which the human body uses fat as energy during exercise will be relatively higher than before training. This adaptation to training will cause the rate at which glycogen in the body is consumed during exercise to be relatively reduced. Therefore, It will have the effect of preserving glycogen, which is beneficial to sports performance.
When the human body is exercising, the energy generated must match the calories consumed. When engaging in low-intensity exercise, such as jogging or brisk walking, the calories your body needs are mainly produced from fat and carbohydrates. However, when engaging in intense exercise of maximum intensity (such as marathon, long-distance cross-country), the energy demand is large and must be supplied instantly, so only carbohydrates can quickly generate energy and be used, and fat is rarely reused. Therefore, when The more intense the exercise, the faster the body's glycogen storage will be used up.
2. The necessity of maintaining glycogen levels in the body
When engaging in exercise, carbohydrates are always reused. The longer and more intense the exercise, the more reliance is needed on the body’s glycogen content. Carbohydrate stocks.
Every time you engage in exercise, the content of muscle glycogen will decrease. Since the content of glycogen in the body is limited, you must try to recover the muscle glycogen after each training or exercise, otherwise the glycogen in your muscles will drop when you train again next time. , the glycogen content in the body will be lower than normal. In this case, the quality and quantity of exercise training will be compromised.
After a long period of intense exercise, it takes at least 48 hours to fully restore the glycogen content in the muscles. Some very intense exercises may take longer to recover from. Cell damage caused by intense training. It will also affect the recovery or re-formation of glycogen. For example, after running a marathon, it takes about seven days or more to restore the glycogen content in the muscles. Regardless of how many carbohydrates are consumed during this period.