Category: Science

Beetroot for Performance?

Make sure you check out the first part of our Beetroot blog!

To get the required amount of nitrates for performance improvement, you’ll need between 1-2 concentrated beetroot shots for each session depending on your size. At the time of writing, you can get a shot for €1.50-2 each depending on whether you buy in bulk. 2 shots (about 800mg of nitrate) significantly lowers the amount of oxygen your muscles need for moderate intensity exercise. However, about 1 shot all that’s needed to max out the benefit in terms of time to exhaustion in a time trial by about 12-15% over placebo. The improved time to exhaustion is reasonably consistent across cycling and running at high intensity. That’s also consistent with other research showing a 1-2% improvement in time trial performance over various time trials.

1-2% you say? That’s hardly worth mentioning! Why not just get a carbon fibre bike? Race wheels? Wind-tunnel testing? Those Nike shoes they used in the Breaking 2 attempt?

OK, let’s assume you exercise 4 times per week and you ingest 1 beetroot shot per session plus 1 extra for your weekend session as a ‘just in case’ – that’s 5 shots per week giving you €10/week or €520 per year for a consistent 1-2% improvement in endurance performance.

Wind Tunnel

An enthusiastic cyclist could go for wind tunnel testing which will set you back around €500-750 per hour (you could need 90-120 minutes) and might give you a slightly better than 2% improvement in your time trial performance. The benefit of this assumes you can hold that ‘ideal position’ during a race, it might be too uncomfortable.

Race wheels will do something similar when compared to bog standard factory wheels, but they cost around €2,500, give or take.

A carbon fibre bike compared to a steel frame?

Well, that works out at about 2.5 seconds quicker per 500g weight reduction on a quad-burning 7% incline – which most of us won’t do very often! What does that mean? That means you could spend thousands more on your bike, and it absolutely definitely will save you time in the Alps. Or, over a year, you could spend €520 on beetroot concentrate and the extra €2,000-3,000 on a gym membership (about €700/year), a personal trainer (about €700 for 10 sessions), a nutritionist (€350 for a few assessments) and lose more weight while also boosting your health and performance.

Nike’s Vaporfly 4% shoes?

They claim, in a Nike funded study, to improve running efficiency by 4% by returning more energy in each stride. That’s assuming you’re one of their testers already able to run 10k in less than 31 minutes. A 4% boost in running economy should translate from a 2:05 marathoner cropping that right down to just over a 2-hour marathon in his new shoes – but that’s not what happens; so whatever we’re missing in the puzzle there, a couple hundred euro for new shoes doesn’t equate to 4% improvement in real life.

The Winner!

So, in the grand scheme, beetroot juice looks pretty attractive as a dietary performance enhancement.

Hang on! I’m really into this so I’ve tested my performance with and without beetroot and I’m no faster after beetroot!

That’s an interesting point. Some research has shown that, while runners in a time trial performance run at the same speed regardless of beetroot ingestion over most of the trial – as fatigue sets in over the last mile, the beetroot fuelled runners maintain their high pace while the beetrootless runners slow down. RPE also seems to be lower at the beginning of the effort. So while it’s possible that you’re not going faster at max effort, you’ll feel more comfortable and hold that pace for longer.

We hope this helps with Your Personal Best!

Why are athletes drinking beetroot juice?

Beetroot has quickly become a staple offering of health food stores in the form of juice and juice concentrate. We feel like beetroot concentrate shots have gone mainstream. Will this go the way of protein bars? Will everything become beetroot enriched? Beet-milk, beet-porridge, beet-beer?!

While we like to go into some depth in our articles, we also aim to keep it relevant so that you can take what you read and bring it straight into your next training session. So, feel free to skip straight to our Sprint Summary!

Do beetroots improve my athletic performance?

Yes! Beets make you a more efficient athlete in a few different ways. Beetroots stimulate the muscle’s ability to contract and shorten. Secondly, nitrite seems to make your mitochondria function more efficiently. Third, nitrite may increase blood flow to the working muscle, especially for sprint (type II) muscle fibres. Regardless of the mechanism, the athletic performance boost granted by beetroot is well documented.

How do beetroots make me a more efficient athlete?

Beetroots are awesome! They are riddled with nitrates. Nitrogen and oxygen in the form of NO₃ (Nitrate) is found in very high concentrations in beetroot. When you eat nitrate rich beetroot, about 25% of the nitrate enters the salivary gland circulation – your saliva is loaded with nitrate! Then, bacteria in your mouth change it to NO₂(Nitrite), which is mostly what you absorb into your bloodstream. Finally, some tissues, particularly your oxygen hungry working muscles, can change nitrite into nitrous oxide (NO). That’s it; 3, 2, 1, go – nitrate, nitrite, nitrous oxide, boom!

No, this doesn’t make you go faster like pushing a red nitro boost button in The Fast and The Furious movies! While we don’t have a total grasp on what happens with NO in the body, we know that your muscle mitochondria waste less energy after eating nitrate rich foods (actually, they improve oxidative phosphorylation efficiency, wasting fewer protons if you want us to be precise). Mitochondria are basically your cellular engine, that’s where your energy comes from by using up the oxygen you breathe, combining it with nutrients from food and ultimately releasing energy. That energy goes into making ATP (your body’s universal energy molecule or currency), which makes your muscles move!

Basically, beetroots make your cells even better at doing what they already do. It’s like oiling up your bike chain!

Tell me more about what’s going on and why this is good!

Beetroot and nitrate supplementation allow the exercising muscles to maintain effort while using less oxygen and even prolonging the amount of time you can exercise. So, oxygen consumption drops while the performance of the working muscle stays the same or improves. Normally your performance drops when you can’t use, or don’t have, enough oxygen. With enough nitrate however, you use less oxygen, make the same amount of lactate, and exercise at high intensity for longer!

As a real-world example of this in nature, Tibetans living for generations at high-altitudes have nitrate levels in their bloodstream ten times the level of the rest of us living at sea level. This appears to contribute to their ability to exercise effectively at such high altitudes where there is less oxygen around.

How much? How often? How long before I exercise?

When?

• The performance benefits can be seen as early as 2.5 hours after ingestion of beetroot juice, other studies have looked at several days of consumption prior to testing – both show beneficial effects.

How much?

• Let’s go by the nitrate content, you’re aiming for around 400-500mg of nitrate for an average person, which is what most beetroot concentrate juice shots aim for. That’s 0.1-0.2mmol/kg (6.4-12.8mg/kg) of nitrate.

What’s that in numbers of whole beetroots?

• You’ll need to chow down on nearly half a kilo of beetroots for that much nitrate – that’s why the concentrated forms are popular. The good news is the nitrates seem to survive cooking if you want to have the full veggie-fest.

Is more better?

• You may need more than 400mg if you’re a heavier individual. If you go toward the upper end of the per kilogram range, you will probably see more benefits in some aspects of performance but not all of them – time to exhaustion and time trial performance seems to plateau earlier.

Tip: Be careful – not all beetroot juices and powders are equal. Some have very high levels of nitrates, and some have very low levels. There are only a few that have the nitrate level clearly labelled.

Will I tolerate it ok?

Most studies report no significant GI side effects from ingesting beetroot before exercise. Well, aside from red urine and stool – be warned and don’t let that surprise you!

Can I have something else? I don’t like beetroot!

Unfortunately if taste is your issue, it’s difficult to get other concentrate juice drinks!

For commercially available drinks with nitrate rich contents, beetroot shots are best, beetroot juice second, then vegetable juices, and the fruit juices. These results don’t change with price, processing or storage of the juices, just what they contained. Beetroot juices maintain the highest total antioxidants and polyphenols after digestion – up to 5 times higher!

But you can try getting 400mg nitrate from:

• Cooked Beets: 2.5 cups
• Uncooked Beets: 2 cups
• Swiss Chard (Uncooked): 3 cups
• Basil (Uncooked): 3 cups
• Butterleaf Lettuce: 3 cups
• Arugula: 3 cups

I heard something about beetroot and my blood pressure – is that important?

Research shows that nitrate ingestion consistently reduces blood pressure, usually hitting its greatest effect 3 hours after eating/drinking beetroot and returning to your baseline blood pressure after 24 hours.

In case you’re curious about the numbers, the effect seems to be a reduction in systolic and diastolic blood pressure of up to 10 and 8 mmHg respectively after 3 hours. If you’re not sure what that means, it’s similar to what is achieved with some blood pressure medications (it’s worth noting here, some blood pressure medications have other beneficial effects aside from just lowering blood pressure). The blood pressure effect increases with the amount of nitrate you ingest.

Is that amount of nitrate safe?

For raw inorganic nitrates the upper acceptable limit set by the WHO to avoid health concerns is 3.7mg/kg (about 250mg for a 70kg individual). Vegetable form nitrates, however, appear to avoid the health problems associated with raw nitrates.

Most studies on performance use 350-475mg of nitrates per day which is about double the WHO recommended limit. Nitrate supplementation appears to be healthy from whole foods.

Is it healthy then?

First, we need to mention some little gremlins called reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS). RONS cause oxidative stress – that means RONS react with proteins, lipids, even DNA causing them to malfunction. We can all agree we want less stress of any kind but this one sounds particularly bad. Oxidative stress can cause premature cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurological decline and other kinds of cell dysfunction. Protecting yourself against reactive oxygen and nitrogen species is a key part of maintaining optimal health.

Your diet, if it is antioxidant heavy, can help soak up RONS. The good news is that beetroot juice is full of antioxidants, as well as lots of other good stuff like zinc, B6, calcium, magnesium, folate, iron etc. Specifically, beetroot juice contains polyphenols – sounds technical but bear with us and it’ll all make sense. Betalains give beetroot it’s colour, aside from being a funky way to make a mess on the couch they are great antioxidants sacrificing themselves against the harmful RONS so that your cells keep functioning optimally.

But the question is, how useful are the antioxidants in beetroot juice/shots for your body? Do they survive digestion to make to the useful sites? The answer is yes! Thank goodness for convenience! In fact, the beetroot shots are around 2-3 times higher in usable antioxidants than regular beetroot juice, vegetable juices, or fruit juices after digestion (up to 5 times higher in some products).

I want antioxidants in beetroot juice form – what’s the summary?

Beetroot shots are best, beetroot juice second, then vegetable juices, and the fruit juices. The nitrate in beetroot juice improves exercise performance in both your maximal effort in a time trial and in your time to fatigue. 1 or 2 shots are needed about 2-3 hours before exercise.

Read on to Beetroot blog 2 for more!

All of us on the YPB team have a passion for organic, plant-based, delicious food that can fuel your exercise all day long and promote optimal muscle recovery and strengthening.

We investigated the best mix of plant-based protein sources so that you could have the benefits of plant over animal sources without sacrificing taste or performance. Our mix of pea and rice based proteins are perfectly blended to satisfy a complete essential amino acid profile similar to that found in whey protein. So your muscles will have all the building blocks they need to grow stronger than ever before after a tough session.

In the past, animal sources of proteins have been superior to plant proteins for muscle repair in lab studies. They have also tended to taste better. However, as the vegetarian, vegan and flexitarian choices have gathered momentum, we have been working harder and harder to push the limits of what is achievable to bring you the best without compromising on your performance or personal choices. So while vegetarian diets for strength and power athletes have involved sacrificing some hard earned gains from each training session in the past, YPB After bars make that a distant memory.

How Much Protein?

Amino acids in the food you eat are responsible for triggering protein synthesis in your muscles. Leucine is a particularly potent signal for this process, which is why you might read about leucine content on some performance supplements. Muscle synthesis continues for 1 or 2 hours once triggered, then switches off until it’s needed again. You can trigger it again of course, and that’s where we get into quantity and frequency of protein intake.

In general, your ability to stimulate muscle protein synthesis peaks at around 20-25 grams of protein every 3 hours after a tough session for up to 12 hours. Additional amounts of protein and carbohydrate will help further but mainly stimulating an insulin release which inhibits normal muscle breakdown after activity.

At YPB we believe in the role of whole food to deliver the best performance and health for your body. We have prepared our YPB After bars with 10 grams of plant protein and 25 grams of carbohydrate to optimise your initial recovery. We recommend you use this as a stepping stone toward getting further fuel from your regular diet. We’re working hard to bring you a plant-protein powder with 25 grams of protein soon! It’s delicious already, but we want to make it perfect!

Tip: Optimize recovery by eating 20 grams of protein immediately after exercise and every 3 hours for 12 hours. That’s the same as1 YPB After bar and a typical soy yogurt. If you did a very tough session or you know you won’t get a chance to eat again for a while (in the evening) then you will be better served having up to 40 grams of protein in one go.

Tip: Unlike with carbs or fat which get stored when eaten in excess, you can ingest far more protein than your body can use for muscle synthesis. You just divert it the excess protein to other metabolic pathways, but don’t waste your time eating lots of protein products which are hyped up at the moment, the quantities needed to optimize the benefits are relatively modest.

Animal vs Plant-Based Protein

Animal and plant-based proteins differ in their amino acid profiles. Animal sources are usually complete in that they have all essential amino acids. Taken separately, plant proteins do not have all the essential amino acids – that is why YPB After bars contain a blend of plant proteins.

Those who advocate in favour of animal-based protein sources like dairy and meat point to several well studied positive effects. The YPB Team don’t dispute the advantages listed below, however just as you don’t know what a whole plant looks like by studying a single of its cells, there is more to protein sources than their use to build muscle.

Bio-availability: First, the bio-availability of animal proteins is greater than that of plant-based protein, meaning more of what you eat is absorbed for use by the muscles. So, animal proteins are more readily used by your body after you eat them. However, when plant-based proteins are blended to form a complete amino acid profile (as in YPB products) that gap is closed and plant-proteins have comparable effects to animal sources.

Leucine: One of the main amino acids to trigger growth of muscle proteins is called Leucine. Some animal proteins contain greater concentrations of Leucine than plant proteins – this is a general guideline but not always true, in fact some plant protein sources are very high in Leucine and other amino acids that are beneficial for muscle protein synthesis.

However, crucially this is not the full story as muscle protein synthesis is not the only effect that proteins will deliver when you eat them. Consider the general health and wellness effects, cardiovascular protection, cancer risk reduction, and societal, ethical and resource consumption effects of plant over animal protein sources. These are typically neglected when one is highly focused on the single goal of maximal and speedy stimulation of muscle protein synthesis at the expense of all other goals.

Acid-Base Balance: One of the main reasons YPB opts for whole foods and plant-based foods are for the many subtle and complex holistic benefits on your body. Similarly, one of the many reasons we opt for plant protein sources is that is that plant proteins have a beneficial effect on your bodies acid-base (pH) balance. This is well studied and not to be underestimated.

Plant proteins, unlike animal sources, do not contain sulphur. Sulphur in animal proteins forms an acidic metabolite. Acid lowers the pH and necessitates the use of acid buffers like calcium, with potential leaching effects on the strength of your bones over years, not to mention cardiovascular effects and obesity links. That acidic effect is also blamed by many athletes, particularly endurance athletes, for blunted performance due to combined exercise and diet induced acidosis. It is also blamed for poor recovery over prolonged periods. Plant proteins, on the other hand, yield an alkali effect – opposite to the acidic animal protein effects.

There are many other links made in studies like The China Study highlighting the link between animal proteins and different kinds of cancers – this is a topic we will return to in a specific and more detailed blog. Additionally, we have not discussed wider geopolitical implications of heavy dependency on animal proteins, this is also best left for another day! For now, thanks for reading and we hope you agree with our choice to pursue only plant based protein sources so you can get on with Living Your Personal Best!

We hope this information helps you get the most out of your sport and exercise! 

When you exercise your muscles are turning fat and carbohydrate into forward progress. If you’re pushing hard, that shifts to mainly burning carbohydrate. Most of us will run out of carbohydrate after around 2-3 hours of exercise depending on the intensity. Then you only have fat left. While we think of this as “hitting the wall”, it is actually a more gradual process and your performance decreases over time. You avoid this by ingesting carbs before and during exercise. It follows that how hard and how long you can exercise may well be determined by your gut’s ability to absorb carbs to send to the working muscles.

So training your gut allows you to absorb more fuel and reduces that fullness feeling by teaching your stomach to empty faster – giving you a more enjoyable session or race. Your gut needs practice!

If you try to eat 2-3 bars per hour on race day without practice, you risk putting your gut under stress and not being capable of handling it. You spend so much time training your muscles, heart and lungs; when you also include your gut in the training programme you will perform better and reduce the risk of a GI problem ending your race early.

How do I train my Gut?

We take a practical approach to training, whether it’s fitness or nutrition training. There are so many variables to take into consideration that any plan must be flexible and personalized. That said, just as with your muscles, your gut can be prepared to handle what a marathon (or whatever event you are doing) will throw at it.

If you have a race coming up, we strongly recommend you start getting used to your race nutrition plan by practicing it in training from at least 2 months beforehand – that means eating as though it’s race day in all of your key sessions. At YPB, we do cyclical training of our GI systems just like with regular training plans – sometimes we back off, other times we really work at it. Just take a minute to think whether you’re doing an easy or a hard session and try this as part of your training…

Eating on Easy Days

On easier days when training is not so focused on building speed or distance, feel free to see how your body handles fat as a fuel source by cutting back, but not eliminating, carbs during your session. The exercise intensity will have to be low but these easy days will allow you to retain and develop your ability to burn fat.

Eating on Harder Days

On other days when you train hard or work on your longer sessions, quality of the training is important and this is the perfect chance to train your gut to perform just like you will on race day. These are the days we try to work toward 90+ grams per hour of carbohydrate for sessions over 2 hours long. That’s approximately 1 YPB During bar every 20-25 minutes.

You may not be able to do that straight away, but your GI system will learn to deal with it. This is how elite level athletes can consume such high volumes of energy on the go in races like the Tour de France – they had to work on it just like the rest of us.

Tip: It is up to every athlete to work out that balance between GI comfort and the maximum amount of carbohydrate you can ingest. We all know those lucky people with iron stomachs, however some of us have a low threshold for stomach cramps.

At YPB, we’re always working hard on new solutions to allow us to work out this balance for you – we’re excited to bring you new solutions that will help you with living YPB!

If some carbohydrate is good, is more better?

Research is increasingly clear that carbohydrate intake is linked to better performance in what is called a ‘dose-response relationship‘. That means more carbs yield a better exercise result. That’s why we advocate for nutrition training being a crucial part of your performance! If your gut can learn to absorb more energy on the go, then you will improve your athletic performance.

Your gut can absorb up to 60 grams per hour of a single carbohydrate (like glucose). Eating more isn’t necessarily a good thing, in fact you could get cramps and other problems from carbs pooling in your gut. That’s why YPB bars have multiple carbohydrates (a combination of glucose and fructose among others). That allows you to increase your gut’s capacity to absorb energy so you can keep exercising faster for longer.

Tip: Be flexible with your nutrition plan. If you feel like food and drink is pooling in your stomach, ease off the intensity and slow down your intake to allow your gut to catch up before hitting the gas again.

What kind of carbs?

Your gut will learn to digest and absorb the carbs you train with. So, if you train with only glucose or only fructose, your tummy will get better at handling them but not any other sugars. What this means is that, to get your best, you should train with the exact nutrition bars that you will race with. This reduces your chances of an upset GI system and maximizes your performance.

Don’t Forget Fluids!

Remember to drink water along the way, this will help your gut absorb the energy from your bars by speeding up how fast your stomach empties into the rest of the GI system. Combining adequate hydration with optimal carbohydrate intake improves performance. Avoiding water while eating can contribute to GI distress for some athletes. This is particularly important in the heat as you lose more fluid through sweat.

But Remember

With gut training just as with your fitness, you lose what you don’t use. If you regularly train with very low carb intake, or keto-training, then your gut will learn that routine. Then, if you try to force carbs in on race day, you run a high risk of not being able to handle the strain and suffering GI distress. Athletes training “low-carb” are more likely to get stomach problems on race day.

Thanks for reading! We hope this is helpful to get you to Your Personal Best!

At YPB we believe in more than just enjoying your exercise and performing well. We are also in pursuit of longevity in our sport. That is why we chose to make our products with wholefood, plant-based ingredients and – as much as possible – from certified organic sources. But why?

There are lots of reasons – at YPB we have made our decisions on health, moral, ethical, sustainability grounds. Best sports nutrition evidence supports that the majority of dietary carbohydrate should come from whole grains, vegetables, fruits, etc. But for now, let’s talk health promotion!

There’s more and more research going into supplements and diets and how they affect our health. What we’re learning is that non-vitamin and non-mineral antioxidants (e.g., phytochemicals) in our food are responsible for the majority of antioxidant effects in our diet. In general, people who have diets rich in phytochemical-containing foods (fruits, vegetables, whole grains etc.) enjoy better health with lower risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and arthritis.

What about antioxidant supplements? Unfortunately, it seems these don’t have the full picture. While antioxidant supplements may give some benefit, scientific research proposes that any additional micronutrients should be just as the name suggests, supplemental to and not substituted for, a plant-based diet.

That means real food is better than the supplement containing the same stuff. 

To explain just a little more on this, free radicals are chemicals that cause damage to your body’s cells. We all make free radicals all the time as part of normal metabolism, but your body also has ways to mop them up as soon as they are created. Antioxidant vitamins (C & E), carotenoids (give fruit & veg their colour), and minerals needed for antioxidant enzymes (zinc, magnesium, manganese, selenium) are essential in limiting free-radical reactions and the damage they can cause. Unfortunately, trials on supplemental antioxidants have struggled to show reduced risk of common diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

The evidence still supports a healthy overall diet as your source of antioxidant nutrients.

What about fibre in wholefood?

We all know that increasing the fibre in your diet is good for you. However, some people worry that eating foods rich in fibre might upset their stomach during exercise. That’s based on what we know about the GI system and what we think might happen while you digest it, but what we predict isn’t always the whole story.

Research on people doing intense, endurance exercise compared raisins, which are rich in fibre, to high-end energy products without fibre. There was no difference in exercise performance or GI problems between the groups; that’s great news! But just in case, YPB bars deliberately contain slightly less fibre than found in raisins, so they shouldn’t give you an upset stomach while you exercise and now you can get more fibre while you live Your Personal Best!

Which kind of energy? Chewies? Bars? Drinks?

Generally, you get more carbohydrate out of bars because they are denser. They’re also easier to eat on the go – we asked our YPB community what you wanted and that’s what you said! So we started with our YPB bars – we have more stuff on the way, shhh!

Regardless of the form, one of the problems we and others have found with a lot of sports nutrition companies is that it’s difficult to figure out how much carbohydrate you’re really getting. That’s where our personalisation comes in and we can recommend exactly what you need for each session.

Unfortunately, many sports nutrition products out there contain mainly glucose and don’t have a blend of carbohydrate sources. By using natural, wholefood ingredients in our bars, we are able to supply your body with a diverse array of carbohydrate sugars (specifically fructose and glucose mix). That means you can absorb greater amounts of carbohydrate more quickly throughout your session, with a lower risk of GI distress.

For more practical tips read on to the fourth and final Carbohydrate blog post!

Fuel Before Exericse

How can YPB help if you’re an early bird? When you wake up in the morning, your liver is virtually depleted of glycogen (carbohydrate energy); you used it all up during the night! If you exercise before eating in the morning, you’ll probably find you can feel a little sluggish. You might not even get out the door! If you don’t have time to eat breakfast first, then the YPB Before bars are a handy way to give you an energy boost 15-30 minutes before you start to boost performance. Maybe have a tea or coffee with it to make a great morning exercise routine.

Tip: if you get stomach problems when you exercise after breakfast, try avoiding dairy and see if that helps!

Just like with early morning training, you might prefer to train during lunch time or after work. The YPB Before bars are perfect for that energy top up about 20 minutes beforehand. Many people get an energy dip and feel exhausted if they eat about an hour before exercise. That’s a normal reaction and is due to your blood sugar dropping. Try eating either 2 hours or 20 minutes before exercise instead.

Tip: If you start a training session an hour or so after eating and you feel that energy dip making you want to stop, try adding in a few short sprints toward the beginning of your session. The high intensity effort triggers a rise in blood sugar.

During Exercise

Our recommendations for optimal carbohydrate intake depends mainly upon the duration and intensity of the exercise. The longer your session and the harder you push, the more carbohydrate you will need in order to maintain and optimize performance. There are two key principles to keep in mind:

You can burn carbohydrate faster than you can ingest it so the longer your planned session the more you should be eating right from the beginning – do not wait until you feel hungry or tired, at that point it’s already too late.

Our recommendations assume you want to maximize performance toward your personal best every day and feel great, not just eat enough to avoid hitting the wall or feeling hunger pangs.

Quick Training Sessions <30min

You don’t need any carbohydrate for these sessions, even if they are high intensity. You might want to bring something with you if you are exercising from a fasted state such as in the morning before breakfast. However, you should still aim to take in carbohydrate and protein for recovery afterwards to get the best out of your training.

Tip: If you want to make this session feel easier and push yourself harder, take a small amount of carb in a bar or sports drink. Once your brain tastes the incoming energy it knows it can relax and lets you push harder and with reduced sense of effort.

Most of Your Training: 30-75 min

Most of us tend to do sessions in this bracket, maybe longer at the weekend. You will perform better by taking in some carb, even if it’s just a small amount like 20-30 grams, or one YPB During bar. If you are exercising hard, it follows that you will probably need more carbohydrate as your session progresses. Approximately 30-40 grams of carbohydrate should be enough if you’re pushing hard for 60-75 minutes.

Tip: 1 YPB During bar if you’re closer to 30 minutes, 2 YPB During bars if you’re closer to 75 minutes and working hard!

Even Longer Training Sessions: 75 min +

If you are doing a session between 1-2 hours in duration, you will likely need 30 grams of carb per hour. That means, for a 2-hour session of moderate intensity, we recommend up to 3 YPB During bars (1 every 40 minutes), 2 might be enough if you are very metabolically efficient or exercising at lower intensity. This level of carbohydrate will improve your performance so that you are exercising as hard as you can and not wasting that determination.

Tip: 1 YPB During bar every 40 minutes for these sessions and you’ll be getting just the right fuel to squeeze the last bit out of this session!

Over 2 hours

Once you go over the 2-hour mark, we increase our carb intake to 60 grams per hour. That is 2 YPB During bars per hour. While this may seem like a lot in the first hour of the session, this is the level required to optimize your performance toward the end – you’re planning ahead with carbs in the fuel tank that you’ll need later.

Over 2.5 hours you should increase further to 90 g of carb per hour if you can. At this point, training your gut (blog 4) becomes crucial. If you also plan on racing in events over this duration (marathon, cycling, triathlon) you can benefit enormously by encouraging your gut to learn how to handle and absorb this level of carbohydrate without distress.

Getting more from your gut: For some athletes with “elite” trained guts, it is possible to absorb carbs at up to 105 grams per hour during very long endurance events! One of the benefits of using wholefoods here is that they naturally contain a mix of carbohydrates which your gut is able to absorb much faster compared to single concentrated sugars, like glucose only for instance. Getting to that level of gut superiority takes determined practice but will pay off enormously in longer training sessions and races with outstanding performance and constantly high energy levels.

Thanks for reading! For more information on why we use wholefood in YPB bars read on to the next blog!

Carbohydrate and Performance – The YPB Way

Your body is a genius at absorbing, storing, and utilising energy! Carbohydrates and fats are your two main sources of energy. Fat is great for getting you through gentle intensity exercise like a brisk walk or hike, but your body can’t break it down fast enough when you push harder. Carbs release energy quickly, they are what let you achieve your personal best. Carbs deliver the crucial energy for you to excel at high intensity and can be easily replaced on the go while you exercise.

Think of it like traveling by boat or by jet plane; they’ll both get you there but only one is built for speed. Even if you’re very lean, all of us carry lots of energy in our fat that could theoretically get you through even the longest race (fat isn’t a dirty word in metabolism; it’s a happy, useful little organ!). However, while a boat can go on for days or weeks, a jet plane only has one quick trip in it before refuelling. Your carbohydrate stores don’t last long, typically you will run out after 2-3 hours of exercise, much faster if you exercise in the morning without breakfast.

“The Wall”. If you’ve hit the wall you have experienced carbohydrate depletion – it was awful wasn’t it?! Just like you can’t let a plane run out of fuel early, proper planning is needed to make sure you keep your carb fuel tank topped up. That way, your muscles are primed for performance and you can focus on living your personal best every day!

Carbohydrate Stores

Your body stores carbohydrate as ‘glycogen’ – a string of glucose all stuck together, think of grains of sugar when they form a clump. You break that back down to glucose when you need to use it. If you start training with low levels of glycogen then you’ll run out of energy much earlier. So, we want you to have lots of glycogen ready to go for every session (unless you are specifically training periodically in a “glycogen-depleted” state which we’ll talk about in a future blog post).

If you’re preparing for a race, you can eat extra carbohydrates in the days before to build up your stores, affectionately referred to as “carb-loading” at pre-event pasta parties! But no matter how well you fuel up, you burn through your glycogen stores every time you exercise. If you train several times each week or every day, your glycogen stores gradually decreases until, at the weekend, you’re too tired to do any quality training. Further, you will feel a lack of motivation, low mood, fatigue, and disinterest in your sport. Fortunately, this is easy to overcome with a personalized nutrition plan. 

During and after exercise, your body is primed and ready to keep you fuelled up. That readiness to use and store carbs goes away very quickly after you stop exercising. What this means is that you want to start preparing for your next session before you finish the current one. You can do that by eating carbs toward the end and in the 30 minutes after a training session – during this time your muscles are like carbohydrate sponges working hard to recover stronger than before. If you eat during this golden carb window, your body will be in peak form for recharging your glycogen. If you miss that window by waiting a couple of hours before eating carbs, no matter how much you eat you will not be able to recharge your glycogen stores as effectively in the following 24-36 hours. That’s where your YPB After bars fit in, as well as providing you with high quality plant-based protein your muscles need to repair and build after a tough session.

Can YPB help improve my performance?

There is a mountain of research concluding that eating carbohydrate during exercise improves your performance. In fact, the more carb you eat, the better your performance in longer events like a half marathon or longer. Take marathon and ironman triathlon for instance, the fastest finishers tend to be those who eat the most carbohydrate during the race. But that doesn’t happen by accident, you have to train your gut (blog 4 on carbs) just like you train your muscles. YPB offer you a personalized plan to get your sports nutrition just right, giving you the chance to reach your best.

YPB bars give you the fuel you need when you need it.

Keep it simple

What does eating the right amount of carbohydrate during my training do for me? All good things!

• Increases the amount of time you can exercise
• Makes your exercise feel easier or reduces the sense effort required to keep going
• Improves coordination, skill and form during the session – really important for skill sports
• Slows down muscle glycogen (carb) use so you have more in the tank for later and, most importantly, you recover faster for the next session when you can smash it again!

For further helpful and concise information read our Carbohydrate 2 blog post!