Nutrition during workout

[Boomwhacker1]

Hi there,
I’m new to the forum, and fairly new to USRPT.
I’ve been swimming USRPT sets for the last 3 weeks (4 sets a week), and my times are coming down already. I’m seeing fairly big improvements and I’m very happy.
I have a question about using a sports drink during the sessions.
Most of my sessions are only an hour long, so I’m guessing I don’t really need any glycogen replacement, however, If I choose to sip on a drink during the session, is that detrimental in any way to the purpose of the session?
Any wisdom, most appreciated.
Steve x

[ryanupper]

I’m not a nutritionist but I conduct research.

If you are trying to lose fat weight it’s generally better to drink water so that additional glucose in the bloodstream comes from existing storage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidative_phosphorylation

If not, drinking glucose (gatorade, etc.) during a workout has been shown to increase the longevity of the workout. Endurance cyclists went hard for 3 hours then the control went about 10 minutes longer after a break and the glucose supplemented group went about 26 minutes longer. http://jap.physiology.org/content/61/1/165.short

Depending on your intensity (closer to 100% affects glycogen usage) it is very beneficial to drink glucose after a workout to resynthesize glycogen. Immediately after results in a 4x regeneration rate versus water. This may be important if you are doing other things during the day (gym, run, etc.) but not a big deal if you workout once a day. Just eat at your normal meal time. Glycogen takes 24-48 hours to fully recover. http://jap.physiology.org/content/42/2/129.short

Ryan

[Amsepamse]

For one hour workouts in USRPT format, you should not need carb supplementation. The whole idea with USRPT is that glycogen depletion should not be determining your ability to perform the work (unlike “traditional” training, where glycogen depletion is the outcome of high volume training).
Drinking water between sets should be sufficient for you.

[ryanupper]

@amsepamse

Correct. Glycogen will probably be used during sprints, especially if you get into the 20-25 yard distance. But, it shouldn’t be depleted to the extent hard volume swimming or weight lifting depletes storage. It’s good to understand that once you start using local muscular glycogen (probably after 4-6 seconds of sprint surface swimming) it’s not regenerating much until the workout is over.

The glycogen sparing mechanism in USRPT is the time standard. Maintain the target pace time and, when you fall out of a small error window, stop and take a break. Holding 35s then falling back to 39-40s and continuing to swim to “make the set” is where the glycogen depletion happens. For the sprints, the standard is no slower than .3 seconds of daily best time. Trying to “sprint” during local muscular fatigue burns up the local glycogen storage. Glycogen stored in one muscle can’t transfer to another; only liver glycogen can re-enter the bloodstream.

Ryan

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