Sport Nutrition Education Series Sport Nutrition Education No. V - Maximise Your Energy Store for Competition
Carbohydrate is the source of energy for an athlete, like gasoline for an automobile. Carbohydrate is metabolised into glucose in the body. Glucose maintains blood sugar at normal levels, is the energy for the brain and can be stored as muscle glycogen. Athletes can maximise muscle glycogen storage by increasing dietary carbohydrate intake. This is called "Carbohydrate Loading". Carbohydrate loading is suitable for events which last longer than 90 minutes, like cycling, marathon, triathlon, and events which have more than one game in a day, especially those which game time is long or unpredictable, like windsurfing, badminton, soccer, squash, tennis etc. However, carbohydrate loading is not suitable for short and power-related events, like short putt, high jump, sprint, weight lifting, shooting, bowling etc.
A sedentary person has 13 grams of glycogen per kilogram muscle, but an athelte can have 32g glycogen/kg muscle. Carbohydrate loading can increase glycogen storage to 35 - 40 g/kg muscle. For example, a male athlete who weighs 68 kg would have:
Three days before the event, dietary intake of carbohydrate should reach 9 - 10g/kg body weight/day. For example, an athlete weighing 60kg needs to consume 540 - 600g carbohydrate. At the same time, training needs to be decreased to lower energy expenditure in order to maximise stores, or else muscle glycogen will be used during training and defeats the purpose of carbohydrate loading. Training adjustment should be decided by the coach. However, glycogen will be stored in exercising muscle group, therefore, a long distance runner should not be swimming three days before the competition. A sample diet which consists of 550g carbohydrate and 2900kcal (suitable for an athlete weighing 60kg) :
The following are examples of food containing 10g carbohydrates. Athletes may combine these in order to achieve the goal of carbohydrate loading (9-10g carbohydrate/kg body weight/day):
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