Nutrition

Carbohydrate and endurance:

too much of a good thing?
At a glance
This article:
l Provides a brief overview of carbohydrate drink/gel benefits when taken
during exercise
l Explains why the accurate calculation of carbohydrate intake is
necessary for optimum performance
l Provides a number of practical recommendations for athletes seeking
to optimise their carbohydrate intake during exercise
Consuming carbohydrate during endurance
events is a proven way to help delay fatigue and
enhance performance. But, as Andrew Hamilton
explains, new research shows that while some is
good, more might not be better...
The past fifteen years or so has seen an explosion
in the range and availability of sports nutrition
products, helped, of course, by the rise and rise of
the internet. But thumbing through some of these
nutrition adverts the other day, I found myself
thinking in rather Churchillian terms: Never in
the field of human endeavour has so much
Figure 1: Progressive glycogen depletion over 3
days of exercise(5)
120
100
Muscle glycogen (mmol/kg ww)
nonsense been written by so many marketing
executives with so little evidence to back it up!
Quite apart from the fact that some of the products
on offer have pretty much zero peer-reviewed
scientific evidence supporting their efficacy,
theres also the issue of cost; many are exorbitantly
expensive money that could be better spent on
ensuring a top-quality diet in the first place.
For those who are sceptical of such products,
however, the good news is that theres one sports
nutrition supplement thats been 100 per cent
proven in hundreds and hundreds of top-quality
scientific studies to enhance endurance
performance in sports such as running, cycling,
rowing, triathlon and swimming - the humble
carbohydrate drink.
Regular readers will already know that the
reason for the benefits of carbohydrate use during
exercise is very straightforward; muscle
carbohydrate (glycogen) is your bodys premium
grade fuel, especially when muscles are working
hard ie during intense training or a race.
However, because muscles can only store around
two hours worth of glycogen and because even
mild glycogen depletion is known to impair
performance(1,2), using carbohydrate drinks to
replenish carbohydrate on the move (or, at the
very least, slow down the rate at which your bodys
stores of muscle glycogen are depleted) helps to
delay the onset of fatigue, prolongs the time to
exhaustion and by doing so, improves
performance (3,4) . Using carbohydrate drinks
during training (and immediately after) can also

help prevent the day-to-day reduction in muscle

glycogen that tends to occur over a period of
80 consecutive high volume/hard training days(5) (see
figure 1).
60
How much carbohydrate do you
40
consume?
Many of you reading this will of course already be
using carbohydrate drinks (or gels) during training
20 Training bouts (2 hours) and racing, so heres a question for you: during
training or competition, how much carbohydrate
0 do you consume on average per hour? From my
experience with athletes, the typical answer to this
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0 12 24 36
Time (hours)
The solid line shows a progressive drop in muscle glycogen when the
moderate carbohydrate diet is not supplemented, leading to significantly
reduced performance The dotted line shows how glycogen levels are quite
well maintained over three days of two-hour training bouts when a typical
moderate carbohydrate diet is supplemented with additional dietary
carbohydrate. The use of carbohydrate drinks during training can help
ameliorate this effect.
48 60 72
question tends to be along the lines of I take
around three or four gels per hour or I make up
my drinks according to the manufacturers
directions and drink around x mls per hour. The
problem is that these answers reveal how much of
a particular product is being consumed but it
doesnt tell us (and many athletes dont know) the
actual amount of carbohydrate consumed (in
grams) per hour something that, as we will see
shortly, is extremely important. Box 1 below

10
Nutrition
Box 1: Carbohydrate counting conundrum
Why is simply keeping track of your gel or carbohydrate drink volume
intake not enough for accurate carbohydrate counting? Well, pick up any
gel and youll see a wide variation in carbohydrate content per sachet or
per 100g of product. For example, some gels contain quite a bit of water,
which means that even the relatively large sachet size might provide less
than half the amount of carbohydrate found in a smaller sachet of more
concentrated product.
The same goes for carbohydrate drinks: following the manufacturers
mixing directions doesnt always yield a standard concentration in terms of
grams per litre. And even if it did, many athletes like to tweak the amount
of powder they add to water according to their taste preferences ie make
their drinks a little more concentrated or dilute than standard. What this all
means is that for you to know how much carbohydrate youre actually
consuming each hour, you need to check those labels. In the case of gels,
you need to see how many actual grams of carbohydrate each gel sachet
contains and then multiply by the number of sachets consumed. In the
case of carbohydrate drinks, you need to ignore the volume consumed but
instead concentrate on how many grams of carbohydrate youre adding to
your sports drink bottle with each scoop of powder then make a record of
how many bottles (or part bottles) you consume.
explains why this is the case.
Why does the actual amount of carbohydrate
grams consumed per hour during exercise matter?
Well, numerous studies into carbohydrate use
during endurance exercise have shown that to
Too much
obtain the benefits that carbohydrate carbohydrate
supplementation can bring, you need to be could be
consuming enough carbohydrate to make a
difference. The scientific consensus is that for
counterproductive
drinks based on glucose/maltodextrin employ a
carbohydrates, this equates to around 60g per carefully measured
hour(6-9). For drinks that are based on a combination
of glucose and fructose (sometime dubbed 2:1 or
approach
multiple transporter drinks), the studies show that
this figure rises to around 80g per hour (see box 2
for an explanation of why this is the case).
Box 2: Two sugars are better than one
Dubbed multiple intestinal transporter drinks, glucose/fructose drinks
are formulated with fructose and glucose rather than just glucose. The
benefit of having a drink containing two sugar types rather than just one
is that the maximum rate at which your body can absorb carbohydrate is
increased from around 60g per hour to 80g per hour. This is because
each sugar type uses a different route from the intestine into the
bloodstream with a blend of two sugars, there are, in effect, twice as
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many routes for the sugars to reach the bloodstream, and, ultimately, a
faster rate of carbohydrate absorption means more carbohydrate for
those working muscles, which means, theoretically at least, you can
work longer for harder. Research shows that glucose/fructose drinks are
effective; a recent study on cyclists showed that a glucose/fructose drink
substantially improved race times, with cyclists recording on average a
1.8% faster time compared to the glucose-only drink. Even better, the
glucose/fructose drink resulted in a reduction in abdominal cramps(10).
These findings have also been supported by other studies.
11
Sledgehammer or calculation?
For sportsmen and women who want to ensure
they get enough carbohydrate on the move to
provide the benefits outlined above, there are two
possible approaches: the first is to do some quick
sums on carbohydrate contents and tailor your
drink/gel intake accordingly so that you obtain the
recommended 60/80g per hour. The second is
simply to consume quite large amounts of
carbohydrate regardless so that, even if you exceed
these guidelines, you know that youre at least
getting the sufficient amount something of a
sledgehammer approach. However, while this
seems a simpler approach, brand new research
suggests that using a carbohydrate sledgehammer
to crack a performance nut may not be
recommended for optimum performance(11).
In the study, US scientists studied 51 cyclists and
triathletes who completed a number of cycling
trials. Each trial consisted of a two-hour constant
load ride at an intensity that corresponded to 95%
of that required to produce a blood lactate
concentration of 4mM (ie very hard). This was
immediately followed by a computer-simulated
20km time-trial, which subjects were asked to
complete as quickly as possible. Twelve identical-
tasting 2:1 glucose-fructose carbohydrate drinks
were tested in a double-blind fashion - ie neither
the subjects nor scientists knew which drink was
being consumed during any particular trial.
However, the drinks differed in that they provided
the subjects with the following range of
carbohydrate concentrations: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60,
70, 80, 90, 100, 110, and 120g per hour when
consumed at a rate of 1 litre per hour. In addition,
the subjects also performed one trial taking a
placebo drink, which tasted identical but contained
zero carbohydrate.
What the researchers discovered was that
(unsurprisingly) as carbohydrate intake in grams
per hour rose, so did performance. However this
upwards performance trend only occurred up to
an intake of 78g of carbohydrate per hour. After
that, progressively higher intakes resulted in less
performance gain than that observed at 78g per
hour see figure 1 although these higher intakes
were still better performance-wise than the
calorie-free placebo.
As for why this trend may have occurred, the
researchers were reluctant to speculate. However,
its possible that at higher concentrations, the
carbohydrate was less rapidly absorbed from the
stomach, which meant the rate at which the
muscles could absorb the ingested carbohydrate
was reduced. Another possibility is that at higher
concentrations, gastric distress occurred, reducing
the athletes ability to perform. Regardless, what
these results seem to indicate is that if youre
seeking optimum performance gains when you
take carbohydrate drinks and gels during exercise,
a (quite literally) measured approach is needed,
because guesstimating will likely mean you
Nutrition
Figure 1: Change in performance gains with
varying carbohydrate (glucose/fructose) intake(11)
5
45
4 tests was different. In the scientific test, they
Performance increase %
35
3 This comprised of 250mls of fluid every 15 minutes
25
2 blend) and 5mg per kilo of bodyweight of caffeine
15
1
05
0 cyclists performance in the two trials.
0 20 40 60 80
Carbohydrate intake (grams per hour)
As the grams/hour of carbohydrate consumed, so did performance gains
but only up to 78g/hour, after which the gains diminished.
consume either less or than the ideal amount, both
of which could hinder your performance.
More evidence for a calculated
approach
Everybody is unique and that applies to sportsmen
and women too. That being the case, its natural to
assume that while the studies like the one above
make for interesting reading, its not possible to be
completely prescriptive about optimum
carbohydrate intake because biochemical
individuality means that every athletes needs are
slightly different. In short, is the appliance of
science approach really that much better than
doing your own thing? However, while an
instinctive self-chosen feeding strategy during
exercise is popular with many athletes, the
evidence suggests that its not as good as relying on
science and calculated energy intakes.
To illustrate this, another very recent study by
scientists from Martin Luther University in
Germany looked at whether a scientifically
applied nutrition strategy could improve
performance when compared with a self-chosen
nutrition strategy in trained and experienced
cyclists(12). In the study, the researchers wanted to
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find out if the scientific and calculated approach to
nutrition really could enhance performance over
the cyclists own nutritional approaches by
comparing the two in a laboratory time trial after
an extended session of endurance exercise. To do
this, 18 endurance-trained cyclists (16 male and
two female) were tested twice in the lab. The two
tests were identical and consisted of the following:
l A warm-up followed by a maximal oxygen
uptake test;
12
l After a 30-minute break, a 2.5-hour endurance
ride on a bicycle ergometer at 70% maximal
oxygen uptake (moderately hard);
l After 5 minutes of rest, a flat-out time trial of
40 miles.
However, what the cyclists ingested during the two
consumed what the researchers had recommended
based on a consensus from recent scientific findings.
formulated to provide 60g of glucose and 30g of
fructose (ie 90g of a so-called 2:1 carbohydrate
per hour. In the own strategy trial, the cyclists used
their own chosen strategy one that they believed
worked best for them based on their previous
experiences. The researchers then compared the
100 120 140 When the data was analysed, it became clear
that when the cyclists followed the scientific
strategy given to them by researchers they
performed much better. Compared to using their
own self-chosen strategy, the scientific strategy
enabled the cyclists to complete the time trial eight
minutes faster (128 vs. 136 minutes) and with a
significantly higher average power output (212 vs.
184 watts) a very big improvement in times and
power outputs of 6.3% and 15.2% respectively.
Whats also interesting to note here is that the
carbohydrate intake given in the scientific
strategy is slightly higher than the widely accepted
optimum figure of 80g per hour for 2:1
carbohydrate drinks. But in this study, caffeine was
given in addition to carbohydrate. Why should that
make a difference? Well, theres some evidence
that co-ingestion of caffeine with carbohydrate
can actually further enhance carbohydrate uptake
While an
instinctive self-
and utilisation by muscles, which would mean
ingesting a little more could confer extra
performance benefits.
chosen feeding For example, in a study last year by British
strategy during scientists at John Moores University in Liverpool,
researchers discovered that adding caffeine to
exercise is popular, post-exercise carbohydrate recovery drinks taken
its not as good as by runners improved their subsequent high-
relying on science
intensity interval-running capacity (13) . They
speculated that this was because the added
caffeine helped the runners muscles to absorb
carbohydrate more efficiently, leading in turn to
higher rates of post-exercise muscle glycogen
synthesis. But of course this same principle could
also improve carbohydrate uptake during exercise.
Summary and recommendations
The conventional view of carbohydrate intake
during exercise has tended to be one of getting as
much in the body as possible in order to slow down
muscle glycogen losses and maintain performance.
And for many athletes who routinely under-
consume carbohydrate, this is perhaps pretty
reasonable advice. However, recent research
Nutrition
suggests that because too much carbohydrate could
be counterproductive, a better way is to employ a
carefully measured approach, aiming for close to
80g per hour when consuming 2:1-type
carbohydrate drinks, perhaps with the addition of
caffeine too. The box below provides some
practical recommendations.
Andrew Hamilton BSc Hons, MRSC, ACSM is a
member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the
American College of Sports Medicine and a
consultant to the fitness industry, specialising in
sport and performance nutrition
References
1. Acta Physiol Scand 1967; 71:129-139
2. Oxford Textbook of Sports Medicine, 2nd edn. New York:
Oxford University Press 1998
3.J Appl Physiol. 1994; ss76(3):1014-9
4. J Appl Physiol 2004; 96: 12851291
5. Adapted from Int J Sports Med 1980; 1:2-14
6. Med Sci Sports Ex 1993; 25:42-51
7. Int J Sports Med 1994; 15:122-125
8. Med Sci Sports Ex 1996; 28: i-vii
9. J Athletic Training 2000; 35:212-214
10. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2012 Apr 3
11. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2012 Sep 10. [Epub ahead of
print]
12. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2012 May 16. [Epub ahead of
print]
13. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2011 Oct;21(5):410-6
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Practical implications
How to apply these findings to your own
training:
l When choosing a carbohydrate supplement,
choose a 2:1 glucose:fructose type. The
evidence strongly suggests that these types
offer superior performance benefits over
glucose-only drinks;
l If you use carbohydrate gels, note the grams
of carbohydrate per sachet and work out how
many sachets it takes to deliver 80g aim to
consume this number per hour;
l If you use carbohydrate drinks, calculate how
many grams of carbohydrate each of your drink
bottles contain when mixed according to your
personal preference then calculate how many
bottles per hour you need to consume to deliver
80g/hour;
l If you use a combination of drinks and gels,
keep a track of the total carbohydrate consumed
per hour (aiming of course for 80g per hour);
l If you use carbohydrate-protein energy drinks
(typically containing 4:1 carbohydrate:protein),
remember that only 4/5ths of the powder you
scoop into your bottle is carbohydrate so scale
your calculations accordingly;
l Taking caffeine with your carbohydrate drinks/
gels may enhance carbohydrate utilisation
(allowing you to consume slightly more than 80g
per hour) and also speed up recovery when
added to post-exercise drinks.