The problem with metabolic wards is well…they are metabolic wards, but as an athlete would you pay $3,000 dollars a month to live in the Costa Rican Rain Forest, eat organic locally sourced meals prepared for you fresh every day, train four times week, and be surrounded by science so that you can further individualize your approach and likely the approach of many others?
Would you pay for someone else to do this?
It’s coming. It’s not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.
Trump is now president. I am not going to comment on politics via facebook and I am not an expert in these matters, thus my opinion is just noise.
YET
“Trump will be the first anti-science president we have ever had.”
-Michael Lubell
What this means to funding, we do not know. What this means for academics, we do not know.
BUT what can we do?
Those who care about science and research must start to sit with this question.
I have so many hypothesizes I want to investigate and nearly all of them revolve around the interplay between, diet, exercise, health, and performance in trained populations.
Any grant I wrote would have a very low likelihood of being funded anyways because it is not related to a disease. Yet, I cannot in good conscious sit on the sidelines and quote research all day. That stream of publications may dwindle and become even more disease based as for-profit companies (think pharmaceuticals, supplements, and Coca-Cola) and private interest groups become the primary funding source.
It’s been a year and a half since my prospective metabolic study on eating frequency ended and the desire to collect data and live in the trenches is back.
The only option I have left is to crowd-source and get creative. Luckily, I live in the jungle.
The primary question I have boiling up inside of me right now is a simple one.
How much carbohydrate does an athlete need to fully replenish glycogen stores inside of 48 hours?
You would think we would have this answer in a ton of different contexts, but all we have is speculation and nothing on carb rotation/cycling and glycogen endpoints, which is a strategy very commonly used in practice.
We have a lot of research on the ideals and more and more in resistance training, but literally nothing on the minimum.
Schoenfeld and other review papers have the low end of the carbohydrate threshold at 3 g/kg – 200 pound male ~ 275 grams a day ~ 30% of intake.
Phillips has it at 4 g/kg – 200 pound male ~ 365 grams a day ~ likely >40% of intake
And then your big position stands will generally be around this and then ramp up depending on activity. Most in the general population would think these carbohydrate numbers are very high, but in recent sports performance history 3 g/kg is pretty damn low. This thought process stems from the recent infatuation with ketogenic and very low carbohydrate protocols which are probably very appropriate and safe for those not exercising intensely.
Yet, the fastest way to overtrain an athlete is likely to underfeed (kcals and/or carbohydrates) and deprive them of sleep. So this information is crucial especially for athletes playing sports that are high intensity and very glycolytic AKA all the cool ones except weightlifting and golf*.
Go Packers.
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