 Gels versus bars while on the bike riding. Have you ever wondered which one is best for cyclists? If so, stick around. So welcome back or welcome to the 16th edition of the RCA Training Tip Show. In today's video, we're joined by an expert sports dietician, Steph Cronin, who has a background as an endurance athlete representing Queensland in surf lifesaving for a number of years before turning to sports nutrition, where she now consults to some major Australian organizations, being Swimming Australia, the Australian Paralympic team, and the high performance department at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, all while working with a number of road cyclists in her private practice, Perform Dietetics, which I'll link to below. For this discussion today, we're gonna focus on Gels versus bars, as you know. Not sponsored, I bought these from the local supermarket, but I will have Steph on the channel covering a number of topics over the next few weeks. So if you get value out of this discussion today, don't forget to like the video. And if you already haven't, please subscribe below and hit the bell to ensure you get notified of when videos go live. Now I know what some of you may be thinking before we get into this video. What about the humble banana or the wonderful watermelon? And while there's nothing better than natural, in my opinion, the practicality of bars and gels for longer days in the saddle, you just can't beat it external to liquids, which we also touch on in this video. So let's get into it. I've got a couple of different things here for you. I've got a gel and a bar. So I hate gels myself. I'm hoping you're gonna say bad things about them. Well, what do you recommend? Again, this is why seeing an individual, seeing, sorry, a professional and getting an individualized sort of training plan is really important because there's no right or wrong hands here, there's pros and cons to both. So it really depends how many carbohydrates you're having per hour. As I said before, your efficiency as an athlete is meaning that you probably don't require as many carbohydrates to push at the same intensity. In saying that, we know from all the research that hitting 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour as an elite cyclist is gonna be what provides them the fastest times. So that's not to say that your weekend warrior should be hitting 90 grams of carbs per hour. And it might not be every session that you're trying to aim for that. So it could be, if we're talking about sessions that we're gonna include some fuel, it could be 30 grams of carbs per hour, it could be 60 grams of carbs per hour, it could be up to 90. It's gonna depend on the type of session, what you're trying to get out of that session. Do you like eating beforehand? So are we gonna take into consideration breakfast before that or an afternoon snack or a pre-training snack before that? The size of the athlete you are as well. So someone who's 50 kilos is obviously gonna require different carbohydrates to someone who's not T kilos. Bigger athlete needs more fuel to push those muscles. In terms of what to use, look, 26 grams of carbs and this is gonna be 34. So difference is that... That's gonna be a lot easier to consume, isn't it? This is a lot easier to consume. It's also a lot higher risk in terms of gut upset. So what you need to be mindful of with gels is that you need to take about 300 mils of fluid with every gel. It's a very highly concentrate, you know, this is equivalent of two slices of bread worth of carbs in this gel. Yes. So we put a gel into your stomach when you're exercising and when you're riding. The blood that's generally circulating to help with digestion is then obviously circulating your muscles more so. So when you put in a really highly concentrated amount of carbohydrates into your gut without fluid to dilute it, it's gonna panic, it's gonna start spasming and you're gonna get gastrointestinal symptoms or you could, you're gonna be at higher risk. So I've done an event called the Three Peaks Challenge and everyone tries to enjoy a beer when they complete it because it's a very tough event. And the year I did it, I had a couple of mates that didn't want to be at all because it had too many gels and they had a crooked gut. So that would have been from not the gels themselves but not enough fluid intake. Potentially both. And again, it depends if they've used it. So with any sort of event, you've got to practice what you're gonna use. You know, don't rock up to an event, not having trained. Same with your sports nutrition is you don't rock up to race day, not having trialled any of the products that you want to use on the day. So it's called gut training. So just like we train our muscles, you can train your gut to tolerate different foods and certain amounts of carbohydrates. So really, really important part of racing is that gut training. Interesting. So if you were doing the Three Peaks in preparation that 12-week block, you should be going out and having gels during your bigger eyes. Absolutely, yep, yep. And it's, again, practicing. So if someone's starting out and the goal is to get them to 90 grams of carb per hour, we wouldn't start that on session one. It would work our way up to it because your gut has to learn how to tolerate that much carbohydrate. So again, this is super easy. You can get it in within 30 seconds. Yes. A bar as such, that's gonna take a lot of chewing. Some people choke. A lot of breathing. You've got to have a little bit more concentration opening that packet, chewing that while you're cycling. So some people prefer a bar. Some people prefer a gel. Gels also may contain electrolytes. So sodium in particular, it might contain caffeine. So it's depending on what we're looking at, what you're trying to get out of, what's your preference? Do you want to use one or the other? Do you want to use both? Do we want to include some liquid carbohydrates in there as well? Because we need to make sure that hydration is still an important factor. The other thing to be mindful of is this is gonna provide much quicker energy than this will be. So if you're looking for a boost, that's gonna provide that. This is gonna be more longer lasting. And again, as I said, there's a significant difference in your carbohydrates there. So two of these over an hour will give you 70 grams, but there's not many people that are gonna want to eat two of these per hour over a five hour ride or whatever. In saying that, there's obviously having two of these an hour is gonna get you to 50 grams or 52 grams per hour. You got a long, long ride ahead of you. It's a lot of gels and there's something called flavor fatigue. So by the end of that, you're gonna be so sick of having gels that you're probably not gonna have any of it. And then you're gonna probably hit that bonking phase where you just don't want to take any nutrition but you're gonna bond because there's no fuel coming in. Yeah, okay. And I think we talked off camera as well about you can put electrolytes and some carbohydrate in your water bottle as well. It's another good idea. So is the best approach if you can to have a blend of all three? I try and keep people's race plans quite simple because I think if you're thinking about how often do I want to take something on board every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, is it on the hour, every hour? If you, there's so many other things to be thinking out when you're even training but racing in particular, you don't want to have to be doing an equation in your head is what minutes do I need to take that versus that versus that? So a combination, it depends how long the event is. If you go really long event, it's nice to mix it up so you're not getting that flavor fatigue. If it's a short event, I try and get people to stick with the same thing. So they're only worrying about the same product each time. Interesting. And how important is that first hour or two when people may not feel hungry because I've had a big meal and let's say they've got five or six hours ahead of them but to ensure that they are consuming in that first hour, even though they may not feel hungry, is that important? Because I feel like some people wait for two or three hours and then they're almost behind the curve for the rest of the ride. That's what I've been told enough. There's any truth in that? If you wait too long, then you can start feeling nauseous because there's no fuel coming in. Electric acid might be increasing and you're just feeling nauseous and then you're less likely to consume. So you really are going to be at a higher risk of wonking. It really depends on what you've had before you start. So that first hour is probably, it can be but it's not essential. I would say on the hour, try and keep it pretty steady every hour but it really depends on intensity, how long you're going for and if you've had anything before you start. And you wanted to mention quickly about the two to one ratio? Yeah, so with that 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour, it's really important to understand that after 60 grams of carbs per hour, your gut can only digest one type of carbohydrate up to 60 grams of carb per hour. So when you're bumping it up to 90 grams of carbs, we need a ratio of different carbs. So generally you'll find most gels will be a two to one ratio. So this will be two parts multi-jection, one part fructose. Ah, so there's a reason why they do that. I just thought they were just jamming just different sugars in this. Because the gut can absorb that two to one ratio at 90 grams. If you just put one type of carbohydrate in, it's just, you may as well just be having 60 grams. So that health bar that you've got there, which isn't really for cycling, it's just, I just like to eat it because it is a bit more gentle on the gut. That may not have that in mind because it's not specifically thinking about sports nutrition. Well, look, this has a number of different carbohydrates in it. And if we look at it, the first ingredient is a sugar or a syrup. So it's still going to do the job. It's just that, you know, to get in 90, you know, we're thinking about it realistically, to get 90 grams of carbs in, you've got to eat three of these now, almost three of these now. So it's pretty unlikely that you're going to do that. Okay. You could. Yeah, good luck. I probably would have been the best performance choice. Yes, okay. Yeah, maybe you do one of these and one of these and then a little bit of fluid or, you know, two of these and one. Yeah, yeah. Cool.