Eat your carbs in the 2h after exercise to optimize recovery

🍝 Why is it advisable to eat your carbs right after exercise for optimal recovery? 🔥

📉 During strenuous exercise, you will deplete your glycogen stores. You can see glycogen as super fuel that drives high-intensity muscle contractions. A multitude of studies have shown that when people start exercise with high glycogen stores, performance is optimized.

📈🔁 So, to recover well for a workout the following day (or within a couple hours) you want to replenish glycogen stores a quickly as possible. How? Simply by eating carbohydrates, for instance 2-4 g per kg bodyweight. Interestingly, you want to eat those carbs within the first two hours after exercise, because at that point the abilitity to transport glucose from the bloodstream to the muscles is optimized via GLUT4 [slide 2].

📖 Want to read more, read this gem from Erik Richter and Mark Hargreaves that goes into the detail of glycogen, exercise and GLUT4 transport

PMID: 23899560

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00038.2012?rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed&url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org

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#exercise #GLUT4 #glycogen #training #wod #crossfit #cycling #biology #transport #datafirst