Fueling For Performance

CrossFitMobJournal:

 

Topic: Fueling for Performance

 

When we think of reaching our fitness goals we usually think of two things. Exercising and nutrition, but for many of us we tend to forget about the nutrition aspect of our fitness. In fact nutrition can represent nearly 85% of our progress.

 

In this article we are only addressing the need and when to properly fuel for performance. We are excluding the area of diets and meal plans in this article.

 

For those of us beginner, intermediate, or even seasoned athlete we can all agree that we must eat/drink in order to be able to function at 100%. This goes especially if you are training in the morning versus later in the day.

 

Lets take for instance the snack before a training session. "Should it be consumed or not and how long before the session should it be taken?". In general it is recommended to consume some protein and healthy fat 30 minutes to an hour before hand. This obviously depends on if you have a specific diet and/or meal plans that you follow.

 

There is nothing worse than "tanking" a workout because of not having enough energy to do something. This recommendation not only supports the need to fuel, but it also helps us not reach the limit of where we can hold down our food. This is a possibility for many of us. The dreaded meeting with "Pukie" as Coach Glassman says. Since we are consuming a light snack 30 to 60 minutes before we train, we are allowing our digestive system to break down our nutrients with an adequate amount of time. This will further allow us to reach a balance between the amount of nutrients ready to be digested and those that are already in our blood stream.

 

If we were to look at the possibilities of not eating food before training lets say from a couple hours to even a full night before, we can see some negative outcomes. We could become dizzy and light headed depending on the intensity of the training. We could also potentially work a different energy system than which we wanted to target and potentially failing at movements in which we are capable of achieving as well.

 

In conclusion you can see the need to fuel for our performance does play into our ability to reach our goals and possibly those PR's. Just note that these possible side affects may not occur with everyone since our bodies do respond very differently. Try it out and tell us if it helped you perform at an improved level or if it potentially decreased your work output.

-Christopher H

 

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