 What should you be eating before, during and after your ride to maximize your performance and recovery? Today I'll be jumping into the science to answer this question and I'll also touch on some additional nutritional considerations. Like should you be drinking beet juice? Does caffeine improve your performance and how much do you need? And will antioxidants improve your recovery or undermine your adaptation? So be sure to stick around for that. Welcome to another video. My name is Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at CTS and for weekly training, racing and gear related videos be sure to subscribe. And if you have a training question or a topic you'd like to see me cover in a future video be sure to leave it down in the comments section below. I do my best to get to all the questions in the comments. This video is sort of a part two to my everything you need to know to become a faster cyclist video. In that video, I reviewed my best training tips from the past year. That video was all about training but the next biggest component is your nutrition. So in this video I'll be covering my best nutrition advice from the past year as well as covering quite a bit of new stuff. Let's start things off by taking a look at what the science has to say about what your pre-ride nutrition should look like. In this review on endurance athlete nutrition they recommend one to four grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight in the one to four hours before a race to top off glycogen stores. This recommendation was echoed in this review on fueling the triathlete. They go on to say that athletes should consume smaller portions of solid food closer to the event and larger portions when more time is available for digestion. Likewise, foods that are carbohydrate rich but low in fiber or residue, low in fat and low to moderate in protein may be better tolerated pre-competition due to the more rapid gastric emptying. You want your pre-race or ride meal to be consumed one to four hours before the start. The closer to the start you are the smaller the meal will have to be so keep this in mind for an early morning start. Also keep in mind that due to GI problems some people may have to eat four hours out while other people can get away with eating sooner. This may take some experimentation to find out what works best for you. You should eat enough at this meal to be satisfied but not enough to be full. You don't wanna be showing up at the starting line with a full stomach but you also don't wanna be hungry. This meal should also consist primarily of easy to digest carbohydrates. You're gonna see a theme throughout this video and it's carbs, carbs and more carbs. Despite the bad rap that carbohydrates have gotten from fad diet books and your gym bro friend who's trying to look shredded for the summer they are your fuel source as an endurance athlete and have a huge impact on your performance. Let's talk a little bit about carbohydrate loading. You may have heard that eating more carbohydrates in the days leading up to an event can lead to better performance and this is true at least for longer events. Going back to the review on endurance athlete nutrition for events lasting greater than 90 minutes glycogen supercompensation or carboloading in the preceding 36 to 48 hours may help improve performance by two to 3% and it doesn't appear that carb restriction or intense exercise is necessary before carb loading like was previously thought. Proper carbohydrate loading requires consuming more carbohydrates than you might realize. The recommendation is 10 to 12 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight per day. For your average 70 kilogram rider this ends up being around 3000 calories worth of carbohydrates a day. However, as an endurance athlete you probably already consume 3000 to 4000 calories or more a day. So if you make sure that most of that is coming from carbohydrates in the day or two before a long event that should be enough. Before we move on let's talk about beetroot juice which has been made popular in the endurance world because of its performance enhancing properties. If it does work then it needs to be part of your pre-ride nutrition strategy not during. This study on dietary nitrate supplementation on time trial performance tested beetroot juice versus nitrate depleted beetroot juice nitrates being the organic aid two and a half hours before a cycling time trial. They found that TT performance improved by 2.7% in the beetroot juice group. This systematic review looking at many studies on beetroot juice and endurance performance came to a similar conclusion finding that beetroot juice may have ergogenic effects. Interestingly these benefits may not apply to highly trained or elite endurance athletes though. So if you're gonna give beet juice a try what are the recommendations on when and how much of it you should consume? Intake of beetroot juice should be initiated within 90 minutes before athletic effort since the peak value of nitrates occurs within two to three hours after ingestion. At least six to eight millimoles of nitrate intake is required which can be increased in athletes with a high level of training. It's also important to know that the effects of beetroot juice may be mitigated when taking it with caffeine. This is where things get a little tricky because caffeine is a performance enhancer as well as we'll get into in a minute and if beet juice already has little effect on you because you're well trained then I wouldn't hold off on caffeine to see a bump from beets. Although this certainly isn't a reason not to try beet juice because trying it certainly couldn't hurt. Also keep in mind that beets aren't the only source of nitrates in your diet. Many leafy greens also have high levels of nitrates and actually the highest levels come from arugula. Hey man, peeing red is normal right? After drinking beet juice? Yeah it turns to your urine red. Nah man I don't drink beet juice that stuff's disgusting. I'm just talking about in general my pee's been red lately. Maybe it's from all the hypergain bees mode products. All right let's move on to what your nutrition should look like on the bike. This is a tricky one because everyone has different fueling needs. A study on marathon fueling techniques stated that regardless of what research demonstrates or how complex a formula may be each athlete must be treated as unique and endless lists of factors all affect fueling needs. Unfortunately no clean clear universal formula exists to calculate such precise expenditure. Some people need more calories than others some can only handle liquid nutrition while others would do better with solid food and others develop gut issues when they're riding or racing. All of these factors means you can't make a one size fits all nutrition recommendation that'll work for everyone and you're gonna have to do some experimenting to see what works for you. With that being said there is some science on optimal carbon take and that's a good place to start. Again your source of fuel as an endurance athlete especially while you're actually riding is carbohydrates but exactly how much carbohydrates you need. This review article and carbohydrate intake during exercise performance found that one gram per minute or 60 grams per hour is the limit of how much fast carbs can be absorbed even when large amounts of carbohydrates are ingested. So it sounds like you want 60 grams per hour right? Well not so fast because there is a way of increasing the absorption rate. If you're doing a long rider race and running out of glycogen or bonking could potentially be an issue. Combining different carbohydrate sources such as glucose and fructose have been shown to increase carbohydrate oxidation rates by 20 to 50% because fructose can utilize a different transport pathway. This review confirmed these findings stating that a two to one multidextrin to fructose ratio appears to be optimal and benefits endurance performance. If you combine 60 grams of multidextrin with 30 grams of fructose then you could potentially bump that absorption rate from 60 grams per hour to 90 grams per hour. This isn't so important if you do shorter events like under two or three hours where 60 grams per hour or even 30 grams per hour is fine. But if you do ultra endurance events then you may want over 60 grams per hour and this becomes important. Make sure that your drink mix or other fuel sources have a two to one multidextrin to fructose ratio. You wanna practice your nutrition strategy and training not only because you wanna make sure that it works well for you but also because you wanna train your gut to better tolerate high loads of carbohydrates. From this article on training the gut for athletes it is clear that nutritional training can improve gastric emptying and absorption and likely reduce the chances and or severity of GI problems thereby improving endurance performance as well as providing a better experience for the athlete. Again, you can do this by practicing your nutrition strategy on the bike but also by regularly consuming a high carbohydrate diet. Another important consideration for on the bike nutrition is caffeine consumption. Does caffeine improve your performance and if so how much do you need? This study tested cyclist one minute max power output after consuming five milligrams per kilogram body weight of caffeine or a placebo. The caffeine ingestion resulted in a 45 watt increase in power over the placebo. The caffeine group actually showed a lower rate of perceived exertion and a higher blood lactate leading to the conclusion that caffeine's beneficial effects may be in lowering RPE. These findings were backed up by a meta-analysis of 40 double-blind studies looking at caffeine ingestion. They concluded that caffeine was beneficial showing a 12.3% increase in test outcomes but especially for endurance performance over high intensity. So caffeine will improve your performance and it should be part of your race nutrition strategy but remember that more isn't necessarily better. Research shows that the benefits of caffeine taper off around three milligrams per kilogram of body weight making sure that your gels or drink mix have caffeine in them and that they add up to that three milligram per kilogram body weight upper limit should be sufficient. Let's now move on to your post ride nutrition which can have a big impact on your recovery. Remember that the quicker you get in food after a ride, the better. From this article on glycogen resynthesis after exercise they stated that to maximize glycogen resynthesis carbohydrates should be consumed immediately after exercise and if you wait two hours the rate of glycogen resynthesis is reduced by 50%. Once you get the timing down the question then becomes what should this meal consist of? The answer again is carbohydrates. In this study on carbohydrate and protein intake they had three groups. One that consumed carbs and protein. One that consumed the same amount of carbs as the first group but without protein and one that consumed just carbs but matched the calories of the first group. Following recovery subjects ran to exhaustion at 70% of maximal oxygen uptake and here's what they found. Carbs plus protein performed better than the same amount of carbs without protein. However, when they equalized the calories the carb only mixture actually performed the best. The study concluded that the inclusion of protein in the solution was no more beneficial than when ingesting a more concentrated carbohydrate solution of equivalent energy content and further research confirms these findings. This doesn't mean that protein doesn't have its place it certainly does and athletes need more protein than the general population. However, when you get back from a ride your focus should be on carbohydrates not protein and you certainly shouldn't be reaching for a protein only supplement. A systematic review on the effects of protein supplements for recovery found that high quality and consistent data demonstrated there is no apparent relationship between recovery of muscle function and ratings of muscle soreness and surrogate markers of muscle damage when protein supplements are consumed prior to during or after a bout of endurance or resistance exercise. And in fact it may be better in general to stick with whole foods instead of supplements anyway. From this paper on basic recovery aids eating whole foods seems to be as beneficial as consuming specifically engineered recovery foods or beverages. Many of the commercial calorie replacement products are quite expensive and are not any better than whole foods. Additionally they are typically dense in macronutrients but poor in micronutrients. And these micronutrients found in whole foods aren't just good for your health but may further assist with recovery as well. Studies looking at tomato juice, lemon, cherry juice, blueberries and more have found that the antioxidants in these foods reduce cellular oxidative damage without blocking the cellular adaptive response leading to aided recovery. The key there was without blocking the cellular adaptive response. Large doses of supplemental antioxidants may have this very effect. For example in this review on vitamin C supplements effects on performance the authors found that vitamin C supplements actually impaired performance in three human studies. The authors went on to say that large doses of vitamin C appear to reduce the training induced adaptation. Scary stuff for sure but if you get your antioxidants from whole foods you avoid this problem. At the end of the day the general take home that you should get from this video is that you wanna fuel yourself with carbohydrates before, during and after your rides. The general rule is an easily digestible mostly carb meal one to four hours before. Carbs intermittently during anywhere from 30 grams to 90 grams depending on how demanding and how long the ride is. And then a high antioxidant high carb meal as soon as you get back. There are exceptions to this rule like with fasted training where you may choose to ride in a low carbohydrate state in order to improve your body's ability to use fat as a fuel source which will preserve your glycogen stores for long races. However, you would wanna do these rides on low intensity days. High intensity days and races need to be done in a carb fed state in order to maximize performance. I do wanna make one announcement before I end the video. I've gotten a ton of requests from you guys to start making training plans, so here they are. I've just opened up a store on training peaks with plans and I do plan on adding to the store so I'm open to suggestions. If you don't see something on there that fits your needs let me know and I can work on it. Also now through the end of December if you use the code YouTube you can save 15% on any of the training plans in the store. Hey man, you're gonna let me write some of these training plans, right? Yeah, sure, whatever. Thanks for watching. I hope you guys found this information helpful and if you like this video be sure to give it a like, share it with a friend and subscribe and if you wanna be notified every time I put out a video be sure to hit the notification bell as well.