⛽️ Get More Energy for Endurance Events 🔋
Understanding where your energy comes from, the cost of that energy, and how to train to utilize it more efficiently!
In this chapter we’ll touch on a few subjects that will help us understand where our energy comes from in endurance sports and why it matters so much. These subjects are lactate and carbohydrate vs fat utilization. But before we do that, let’s look back at the overall demands of sport day that we mentioned in reverse engineering our goals:
How much energy is needed & where does it come from?
How much lactate is produced as a result, and how many of the accompanying hydrogen ions can I shuttle back or tolerate as my muscle pH changes?
How many times does my muscle contract and is my neuromuscular system able to support this without cramping?
How much water do I lose through and am I replacing enough of it?
What is the impact on muscle tissue, connective tissue, and bone tissue and am I able to tolerate these?
If we think about these in a slightly different way, we can see they are the primary reasons that athletes bonk in a race.
Not enough energy (or poor pacing and/or poor fueling: too little and too much → gut distress a major factor as well!)
Muscle fatigue (poor pacing)
Muscle spasm cramping
Dehydration (also can lead to cramping)
Muscle damage
Many of these are intertwined with each other, but we can separate them out and attempt to isolate them in our focus when building our plan. Today, we’ll cover the first two bullet points.
Understanding Energy For Endurance Athletes:
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