Aidan:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I’m here with my co-host, Leah Higl. And, this is episode 213 where we’re going to be talking about pre-workout nutrition. And, we have obviously spoken about pre-workout nutrition a fair bit before in different ways. With this one specifically, we’re just aiming to go a lot more in depth on a lot of stuff. So we’re going to be talking about a range of things.
This includes the purpose and goal of pre-worker nutrition for different situations, just to give background context. Then we’ll talk about specific nutrients and some outside the box approaches, timing. We’re also going to cover reactive hyperglycemia, how fatless phases fit in, and then also some thoughts on faster training as well. We’re going to jump around a little bit and won’t necessarily go through systematically with this, but we’re going to try and cover everything I just mentioned there.
Leah:
Ultimately, the goal of pre-workout nutrition is to A, provide energy for performance, improve strength, endurance and focus. Maybe all three, maybe there’s more of a focus on one or the other. Reduce muscle breakdown and support better recovery. Now, a lot of this is obviously physical, but there is also some less tangible stuff in here as well.
So, for example, somebody could theoretically feel more energetic, more focused, with an approach that isn’t the quote-unquote like gold standard. So there may be this kind of like, yes, this is the gold standard, but let’s kind of meet in the middle between what is the gold standard and what actually feels good for that person on an individual basis. So, ideally we’re using a bit of a combo of both theory and personal trial and error here as well.
Aidan:
Personally, I think the majority of people would benefit from some form of pre-workout nutrition. If somebody was really into fasting, they might take a disagreement to that. But, we’re going to talk about that later. So, we’ll just address that separately. Even for people who are in a situation where food doesn’t sit well for them or it’s super early or anything like that. I do still think that there is often some form of pre-workout nutrition that can work, even if it’s just a very reduced form.
We will specifically be talking about the differences between pre-workout nutrition for lifting and endurance and how much it matters, especially in relation to intensity and also duration. And then the range of benefit for performance. We’re also quantify a little bit or how much it matters, but it will obviously differ to there as well.
And one thing that I do think is well worth factoring in is that performance also implies that you’re reaching a threshold of intensity where we can actually see differences based on nutrition. But a larger difference is often seen in RPE, like rate of perceived effort. So even if you’re doing something that’s like not at maximal intensity to where you see performance improvements, it still feels easier in some cases.
Leah:
Moving on to discussing the timing of pre-workout nutrition. There are a multitude of ways you can actually approach this. If you are still two to four hours out from your training session, you may look at having a full meal that has a good source of carbohydrates and then maybe more of a primer as you get closer to your session. Or potentially, you are just relying on that meal a few hours prior.
You could also do something just within the 1 to 2 to 2.5 hours before where we’re thinking, okay, maybe it’s not a full meal that’s like high in fats and fiber and all these things that slow digestion and can sit more heavily in the stomach. But, maybe we’re going like a light meal or snack. So, something like a banana smoothie, for example, in 90 minutes, two hours before the session. And then that’s what’s fueling us through.
And then there’s also the option of doing just a quick digesting carb within an hour of the session or within like 30 to 60 minutes of the session. So something that is, again, very easy to digest. The glucose/carbohydrates are ready to access pretty quickly. So, this could look something like rice cakes with jam or honey, fruits, bananas, dried fruit, apple juice, a sports gel or something like that. And depending on the individual situation, you may want to do just one of these, a combination of these. Like for example, if you’re training first thing in the morning, you might not have a whole ton of time to digest something.
So you might just do the quick-digesting carbohydrate snack about an hour beforehand. As opposed to if you’re training in the afternoon, you might do a large high-carb meal for lunch, followed by a primer or something lighter that’s also high-carb as you head a little closer to the session. For some people, they are going to need to adjust the timing based on how they feel. So, looking at my clients, some of my clients can have just a ton of carbohydrates, like a ton of food, like an hour before their session, and they feel great. They feel fine, no issues.
And then some people eat something similar like two hours, two and a half hours before their session. And they’re like, oh, that was too much. I don’t feel good. And whilst I would say like, if you are struggling to even tolerate like a small amount before your session, timing is one. But, you can also do a bit of gut training there, which we will touch on to tolerate larger amounts. But, it’s really just finding this like sweet spot. This goldilocks zone between what is like the gold standard and what feels good for you.
Aidan:
I don’t think I’ve got anyone from Run Club who listens to this podcast. But, my flex recently has been in this marathon block, I’ve been doing five Ks of Run Club, then everyone will go get coffee and stuff like that. And then I eat breakfast, and then right after I go and run another 10K.
Leah:
That’s crazy.
Aidan:
Like PB’s doing that. And everyone’s like, how are you doing this? It’s like a superpower. We’re going to spend a bit of time talking about carbs now. And this is largely because it’s the most well-documented aspect of pre-workout nutrition. Anecdotally, based on research, there are just so many things we can talk about here. And glucose is the best fuel source for exercise above a certain intensity. And glycogen is our storage form of glucose. In the lifting space, occasionally, research has pointed to highlighting that pre-workout carbs don’t matter.
We’ve added some of that research in the show notes if anyone’s interested, but there is a lot of nuance there. The range of benefit differs and for both lifting and endurance from the carb perspective specifically, the closer you are to the following situation, the more likely it is that carbs pre-workout are likely to help specifically even from that research standpoint where they’re literally measuring performance. So the closer you are to this situation.
One, the session is long. Two, the session is intense. The session is specifically targeting the same muscle groups for a long duration. For example, if you’re doing a really long leg session or something. Four, you have low baseline glycogen stores prior to pre-workout nutrition. And then five, if you consume the carbs, it will sit well and feel good when you are training. So, the closer you get to that description, the more likely it is to help. Let’s say you went really far from that description.
You’re doing a short session, you’re not training hard. You’ve had heaps of carbs the day before or something like that. Obviously, it’s not really gonna matter. And that’s really relevant for lifting. Like if you were doing a 45 minute full body workout, it’s less likely to matter than if you’re doing like a really long heavy leg session in the morning or something like that.
So, whilst in strength sports, the research on like performance outcomes around pre-workout nutrition, pre-training nutrition is a little bit more mixed. If we look at the endurance space, it becomes a lot less mixed and a lot more clear in regards to its benefit. So an acute intake of carbs before exercise very consistently increases performance.
Assuming that the duration and intensity is high enough like Aiden said if you have a very short session, that’s not very high intensity, it’s unlikely to have as much of a positive impact. As opposed to you having a quite long session or a very intense session. An absolutely underrated piece of the puzzle here is that having this more structured gold standard, like pre-workout nutrition, pre-training nutrition is that it can significantly reduce the rate of perceived effort.
So even looking at your train high, sleep low type research where they’ve got two groups of people going into the same sessions, which are often like they’re often testing this in lower intensity sessions intentionally. But, we’ve got maybe a group of people that are going in well-fueled, high carb, and then people that are going in under-fueled without carbohydrates coming in before the session.
Even though both of these groups may hit very similar paces or like performance outcomes, the self-reported rate of perceived effort or exertion tends to be noticeably higher in the people that didn’t have the higher carbohydrate intake leading into the session.
Aidan:
Another relevant point on this pre-workout nutrition stuff is reactive hypoglycemia. So, where this first kind of piqued my interest in it, was before I got into nutrition myself. When I was younger and like into sports and stuff like that, somebody who I trusted on nutrition said something along the lines of “eating simple carbs before exercise leads to a spike and then a crash in a way that hurts performance a lot.”
And as somebody who didn’t want to hurt my performance and somebody who took that advice seriously is like, I guess you shouldn’t do that then. And then I just believed it, didn’t really question it. And then as I got into the evidence-based world later on, so a lot of people talking about carbs pre-workout, including simple carbs.
And it kind of clicked to me being like, firstly, I have just heard one guy saying this, I just kind of trusted them. Like maybe I’ll look into this again. It clicked for me that maybe this reactive hyperglycemia thing wasn’t such an issue at a large scale. And obviously the first thing I did was just look at research specifically on pre-workout carb research. Cause I was like, I don’t want to zoom in too close. Like I don’t want to like look for reactive hyperglycemia. I just want to look at like, does pre-workout simple carbs help performance or harm it? Because the claim was it harms performance a lot.
Sure enough, most of the research leaned in favour of pre-workout carbs still. So I’m like, if this issue existed, it can’t be relevant at a large scale on average, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing this. But of course, that still leaves individuals and individual like outcomes. In one of our recent podcasts, the insulin one we just did, we did talk about reactive hyperglycemia. This is a thing and it is a thing that matters for sure.
I just think like at the broad population level, not a huge thing. So there’s definitely stuff in there though.
Leah:
Yeah, like clearly people who do experience reactive hypoglycemia in a way that does hurt performance. Like that is something that might happen for sure in real life. But, this is probably the minority of people on average and most people aren’t going to experience this. Although, it definitely does exist.
A lot of the people that do notice symptoms that line up with hypoglycemia when they do go to check this with something like a continuous glucose monitor, it is confirmed. So that’s why we do know it does exist. It just seems to be not something that is highly prevalent as something that is like across the board, a major concern.
But with the rise of continuous glucose monitors, particularly in sport, we’ve noticed that reactive hypoglycemia again, is not that common. We’ve got, you know, quite a lot of athletes jumping on board with like, yeah, let’s do these like blood glucose monitors, just have them on. And we’re noticing that yeah, it’s not something that is an overly concerning problem. To add extra complexity here, there is a possibility that some people technically do have reactive hypoglycemia.
So, it is something that they genuinely do experience. And pre-workout carbs either have a neutral or positive impact on performance still. So, even if there is hypoglycemia taking place, there are still circumstances where having that pre-workout nutrition is still ultimately beneficial to performance. So our two cents here would be to not actively consider this as an issue just given the research in the space. And I wouldn’t test unless you have already identified symptoms within yourself that you feel are harming performance. But overall a really interesting space.
Moving away from carbs and talking a little bit about protein. So protein pre-workout doesn’t directly or necessarily help with performance in a session. It does have the potential to help with muscle protein breakdown during the session and muscle protein synthesis after though. It’s just the timing of it doesn’t necessarily need to be pre-training. So the anabolic window isn’t this like super magical thing, but it’s probably a good idea to have protein sometime around your training session. So, this could be before, it could be after, it could be a bit of both. It just makes sense to have something in like the three to four hour window around your session to have a good dose of high quality protein.
Particularly for lifters, this makes sense essentially. If you’re wanting to build muscle, it makes sense to be a little bit more on top of this. But for endurance athletes, particularly over long durations, there can be a bit more muscle protein breakdown than ideal. So, protein maybe kind of spread through pre and post training could potentially help reduce this a little bit. So there are maybe some extra considerations there.
Just be a bit cautious with having too much protein before a hard training session, just due to potential issues with digestion. And ideally you’re wanting to go into your sessions, ultimately feeling good.
Aidan:
The last macro we’ll talk about is fat and similar thing there where you probably don’t have too much fat right before performance. Just because it could slow digestion cause issues there as well. It also won’t directly fuel performance when consumed pre-workout. Because even if you are burning through fat, we basically have an unlimited source there. And if anyone wanted to dispute that, the point I would make is that each kilo of body fat contains 7,700 calories, roughly. And so likely you’re not burning that much in a session. Because even if you’re like shredded, you have more than enough fat to fuel a workout or a session.
From the other angle where I’ve talked about having it too close to a session could potentially cause issues. I have actually seen a few athletes, rare, but I’ve seen a few who’ve used this to their advantage where maybe they, for whatever logistical reason, have had to have their last pre-workout snack or meal a little bit further away from their training session than they want to. Adding some fat to it can kind of slow digestion a bit so that they feel better when the session starts as well. So it could be used that way, but that’s a pretty niche application.
Leah:
Now moving on to other nutrients and components, we have a few things we do want to cover. And the first one I’m going to chat a little bit about is sodium intake. So sodium is very much a case by case basis. But, I think it is worth exploring, especially like anecdotally working with my own clients. Client who have genuinely experienced a really big improvement in performance by having some level of sodium in their pre-training meal and prioritising that.
In most cases, I’m going to recommend this to people that are more so describing symptoms like lightheadedness or dizziness when training. Particularly if they do have a lower than ideal salt intake. A good example here would be some of my athletes are particularly whole food focused. They don’t eat a lot of more processed foods. So, and they may not add a ton of sodium or salt to these foods as well. So they’re just generally not getting a whole lot of salt in.
For those people I am like, yeah, maybe we try some like salt tablets or adding salt to that pre-training nutrition snack or meal and see if that does help. The other application is my clients that do have POTS. So, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and that is particularly helpful for those particular people. And then salt can also help with hyperhydration.
So, not only kind of increasing blood volume to get rid of symptoms like the lightheadedness and the dizziness. But, also just generally to hydrate ourselves more effectively. And this is relevant for people who often end up dehydrated during their training session. So, maybe they don’t have a whole ton of access to fluids while they’re training, maybe their sweat loss is really high.
And just for whatever reason, maybe they’re training in very humid environments. If they can’t replace much of that fluid during the session, it might make sense to go into a session a little bit hyperhydrated.
Aidan:
Cool. I reckon we go through the next, cause we’ve got a few left we want to cover. But, we don’t want go too long. So, we’ll go through these quick. With caffeine, caffeine is another one that pre-workout can improve performance. If you have quite high dosages of caffeine, it could improve performance kind of directly. If you had low dosages of caffeine, it might just reduce the rate of perceived effort.
And obviously there’s individual variation where one person’s high dosage might be great for performance to them and somebody else, could leave them feeling very anxious with a very elevated heart rate. So individual variation there. And I’m also obviously not big on having it late in the day due to the impact on sleep, probably having more negatives than the upside of it.
Leah:
A little bit more of a niche one to talk about is glycerol. So, it’s like rare, it’s a bit outside of the box, but like sodium, glycerol can help with hyperhydration. Particularly if you do the combination of the two, that can be very effective. It has pretty niche applications, but it can be very relevant to specific situations where dehydration is more of a risk.
Aidan:
Another niche one is beetroot juice and nitrates. And part of why we’re talking about niche ones as well is just because otherwise you could just massively simplify down to macros. And we’re talking about some niche stuff just to be like, hey, there’s actually more you can do. And these are just some examples. So, beetroot juice and, and all other forms of nitrates can improve performance by helping with blood flow, vasodilation.
And for endurance, this is pretty self explanatory. There is a reason why people have done blood doping or EPO or other things. This is just like a legal and less effective version of that. It still does help though. It could also help with gym performance for higher rep sets. Hard to say how much that translates to improve progress over time. But, it can still help with that and getting a better pump as well. And potentially maybe even joint pain a little bit. There’s not a heaps of research on that, but at this stage of research we do have is looking at mildly positive.
Leah:
In the context of fat loss phases, pre-workout carbohydrates specifically can be a little bit of a conundrum. During a deficit, carb intake is often lower, and since carbs are lower, there is less room for pre-workout nutrition to be a part of that overall daily intake. But on the flip side, the conundrum comes from the fact that pre-workout nutrition is even more beneficial when you’re in this under-fuelled state by being in a deficit.
And that’s because glycogen is often lower. So, we don’t have as full of a tank to work with and we often don’t feel as good. And eating before could help with both of these things. So, obviously carb availability and us feeling better and more energised moving into the session.
Ultimately, what we would recommend doing here is just redistributing your carbohydrates in a way that makes sense around your training session. So, maybe you’re prioritising carbohydrates pre-training and then lessening your carbohydrate intake somewhere else. A common example here could be maybe you are training in the afternoon, so you have a particularly high-carb lunch and a good pre-training snack mid-afternoon. But, maybe your dinner is a little bit lower-carb just to make up for the fact you’ve put it in the earlier half of your day.
Aidan:
And the reason we’ve left fasted training towards the end is because I don’t actively see it improving anything. And the two things people would point to are fat burning or adaptations for endurance athletes. With the fat burning or fat oxidation, technically it is higher. But, it doesn’t actually lead to more fat loss over time if all other variables are the same, like the total amount of exercise is done and the total nutrition intake across the day is the same. It doesn’t lead to further fat loss.
So there’s no reason that session needs to be done fasted. You could talk to the adaptations that occur in endurance athletes. There are very much real adaptations that occur. But, if we look at the research, and we have a decent amount of research at this stage now, it hasn’t translated to improve performance. And for every anecdote you could point to of people who’ve had success with approaches like this, there are way more success stories of people on high-carb diets who are fuelling their sessions with carbs as well.
So the flip side of that though is it’s also fine to do it. For example, if somebody has a random zone to run or something like that, and they just want to do it fasted. In many cases, that’s fine. That’s not going to make them a worse athlete either if their total nutrition and training is the same.
The only hesitation I have with saying that is I don’t want to be out there being like, it’s fine. Anyone could do it. And then risk somebody listening to that who probably shouldn’t do that. For example, if somebody has a history of disordered eating, I’d chang my stance. I’d be very cautious of this. I probably do not recommend this.
If somebody is suffering from hypothalamic amenorrhea or RED-S, potentially low energy availability, I probably wouldn’t do it either. Because maybe the inherent act of training fasted might be detrimental or at the absolute minimum, takes away from the opportunity to get enough total food in, which would probably help in all of those situations.
So, it’s fine under certain circumstances, at worst it just reduces your ability to perform at an optimal intensity for higher intensity type stuff. And there could be other downsides as well.
Leah:
Ultimately, it’s about balancing what is going to be best for performance with personal preference and finding what actually works for you and in the context of what you are trying to achieve. There are a ton of different ways to do pre-workout nutrition. There’s not just one correct way. So finding what works for you and then doing that is kind of the ultimate recommendation.
Aidan:
This has been episode 213 of the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. As always, if you haven’t already, if you could please leave a rating or review, we would massively appreciate that.