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there's something riders in the pro peloton are doing in order to race their bikes faster and if
you want to race your bike faster you probably want to know about it gone are the days of just
filling your water bottle with a massive thing of melted extra now as luck would have it i'm friends
with a nutritionist from ef pro cycling so i asked him a few questions because there's still clearly
a bit of confusion over using carbohydrates for fuel and how important it really is i've found
you to ask some questions you mentioned about nutrition obviously because i'm the food guy
how important are carbohydrates for bike racing well the easy answer is carbs are king and
you always need carbs if you want to win a bike race ultimately all the research shows
that carbohydrates always outperform any other form of diet whether it's ketosis or anything
else and ketosis only ever in certain scenarios is equivalent uh to having you know all the same
as having carbohydrates for professional racing in particular and doing rides of the duration
that they're doing competitions are king and you need them in high amounts as well
now i've heard this term dual carbohydrates thrown around before
what exactly is that the majority of products that you see nowadays commercially available
are termed as dual fuel source or a glucose fructose mix and this is ultimately relating to
the two different types of carbohydrate they have in the drink or the gel the reason why that's good
is because they use different transporters or i like to use like the term trains and
glucose uses one train and fructose uses another and it ultimately allows you to digest and absorb
more carbohydrate more efficiently more quickly and also more per hour so is there a magic
ratio of carbohydrate sources that you need to stick to or is it just half half that ratio
is a two to one ratio of glucose to fructose um there are a couple of products out there like sas
do with beta fuel which i think is a one to zero point eight ratio and have similar research as to
what ultimately and the whole pro peloton will be using a two to one ratio carbohydrate source
uh with a lot of them using similar brands ultimately they will be eating anywhere between 90
to 120 grams an hour on hard stages now i wanted more than one expert opinion on this matter and
sturker is a sponsor of this channel they make stuff with dual carbs in so i cornered leon
their product developer and asked them the same questions essentially your body can use 60 grams
of glucose oxidation and that's just glucose alone 90 grams per hour can be used with transportable
carbohydrates these are multi-dextrin and fructose so when they're used together you
can use twice as much effectively because you've got two different sources also it kind of bypasses
the gastric system so it spends less time in your stomach which will cause less distress to your gut
is it important to mix the right amount of water with carbs so it's very important because you
kind of want the carbohydrates to go into the water at the same consistency of your blood
if you have too much for example it could stain your gut and cause distress but if you
have too little then you're probably not going to utilize the maximum amount of carbohydrates
is it going to be messed up if you say eat a bar that's a different ratio right after you've
had a drink how how does that work most likely not because the carbohydrates you're getting from food
are different to the carbohydrates you're getting from your mixed drinks or from your products so
you've got the maltodextrin and fructose your carbs will absorb differently from food because
they sit differently they're digested differently so it's kind of two different things so i wouldn't
worry too much about that i'm back to will from ef what about if you tried to consume
120 grams of carbs through normal food i don't want to ride with this in my pocket
four slices of bread or four large bananas or two jam sandwiches yeah per hour yeah
i probably wouldn't do it um because also when we think about it if the race is that intense that
you're needing 120 grams an hour probably won't be having you know a chance i went
on the bike and i can assure you like the guys that are eating that in a race uh are doing it
primarily from just drinks and gels so if you hit the right ratio how much of a performance increase
are you going to see it's hard to put into a specific percentage in performance because
there's lots of variables that are going to affect how you can win a race we do see
faster finishing times and improved power output towards the end of races
with higher amounts of carbohydrate eating per hour and we also see at the top end at 120 grams
an hour we see a reduction or an improvement in recovery a reduction in muscle inflammation the
following day so if you are doing a multi-day event whether that's uh an ordax or an ultra
injury event it will have a big impact and it will also really help with digestion when you compare
just having manufacturing also just having real food sources the digestion rate will be slower
because there'll be other things coming with that which would be fiber and bits of fat this
protein along with it whereas if you're going for dual fuel source you know glucose breakfast mix
items it will empty out the stomach quicker and will help you feeling uh improving digestion and
not feeling as full and bloated so there's a lot of great brands out there now that are doing it um
is one of them which does a lot of two-to-one ratio items provides them in something that i
really like because we're talking about 90 grams here an hour but you know that peak performance
is 120 and they provide all their products in 30 gram portions this makes it really easy to work
out you don't have to do that mental math whilst you're you're writing so essentially you just know
it's three items an hour or four items an hour and that's in the same with other brands like another
second which sponsor yeah obviously who i work with and also bahrain and also uh jumbo bisma 60
sports nutrition also provide great products like that sas have products like that and more as well
martin's a little bit different purely because it does have this pectin algae formula and that's
meant to be the idea of aiding and speeding up absorption but the current research i last read
was more theorized than proven as always fantastic and easy to digest information
from will easy to digest that wasn't intentional of course with all things based around nutrition
and sport it's gonna completely depend on the kind of riding you're doing and the goals that you have
so keep that in mind he's working with extremely high level athletes but a lot of the tactics and
methods they use can be applied to any level of sport as well i hope you found this video useful
please let us know in the comment section if you have any questions and i can get will involved
and help try and answer them if you want to buy some stoker stuff there'll be a link in
the description down below for 25 off and please subscribe to this channel for more