Excellent Sports Nutrition Videos

The IOC Diploma Sports Nutrition YouTube channel has a collection of very interesting videos about Sports Nutrition.

Short and to the point videos, providing specific answers by the world leading experts on the field to questions like Can caffeine improve fat loss?, What carbohydrate intake would you recommend for an ultra athlete? or  What is the best source of protein?.

Be warned, if you are interested in the field these videos are really addictive. I can't stop watching them.

Take care
Javier Arias González

Interesting recovery drink research potentially applicable to multi-stage days

You ride, your muscles are glycogen depleted, you have 4 hours to recover before a 20km TT. What recovery drink are you having? Apparently chocolate combined with any kind of milk (dairy, low-fat, soya or hemp) improves around 3mins!!!! in the TT compared to placebo (aka. almost having no recovery drink).

Don't have all the details on the beverage preparation as I don't have access to the paper, but from the summary below I infer that 1 gram of carbohydrates per kg per hour (ie. if you are 70kg, you would need 70gr of carbohydrates per each of the four hours = 280gr of carbs) in a 2250ml (almost 4 pints!!!) mix of cocoa, any of the mentioned milks and water should work.

I think this could be applicable for the first day at L'etape de la Defonce (11k TTT followed around three hours later by a 85k stage) so I'm going to try something similar as a recovery drink after some turbo sessions in the evening and see how I feel riding hard on the following morning.

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IJSNEM Volume 26, Issue 1, February

Original Research

Cycling Time Trial Performance 4 Hours After Glycogen-Lowering Exercise Is Similarly Enhanced by Recovery Nondairy Chocolate Beverages Versus Chocolate Milk

2016, 26, 65 – 70 http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/ijsnem.2015-0056 Postexercise chocolate milk ingestion has been shown to enhance both glycogen resynthesis and subsequent exercise performance. To assess whether nondairy chocolate beverage ingestion post–glycogen-lowering exercise can enhance 20-km cycling time trial performance 4 hr later, eight healthy trained male cyclists (21.8 ± 2.3y, VO2max = 61.2 ± 1.4 ml·kg-1·min-1; M ± SD) completed a series of intense cycling intervals designed to lower muscle glycogen (Jentjens & Jeukendrup, 2003) followed by 4 hr of recovery and a subsequent 20-km cycling time trial. During the first 2 hr of recovery, participants ingested chocolate dairy milk (DAIRYCHOC), chocolate soy beverage (SOYCHOC), chocolate hemp beverage (HEMPCHOC), low-fat dairy milk (MILK), or a low-energy artificially sweetened, flavored beverage (PLACEBO) at 30-min intervals in a double-blind, counterbalanced repeated-measures design. All drinks, except the PLACEBO (247 kJ) were isoenergetic (2,107 kJ), and all chocolate-flavored drinks provided 1-g CHO·kg body mass-1·h-1. Fluid intake across treatments was equalized (2,262 ± 148 ml) by ingesting appropriate quantities of water based on drink intake. The CHO:PRO ratio was 4:1, 1.5:1, 4:1, and 6:1 for DAIRYCHOC, MILK, SOYCHOC, and HEMPCHOC, respectively. One-way analysis of variance with repeated measures showed time trial performance (DAIRYCHOC = 34.58 ± 2.5 min, SOYCHOC = 34.83 ± 2.2 min, HEMPCHOC = 34.88 ± 1.1 min, MILK = 34.47 ± 1.7 min) was enhanced similarly vs PLACEBO (37.85 ± 2.1) for all treatments (p = .019) These data suggest that postexercise macronutrient and total energy intake are more important for same-day 20-km cycling time trial performance after glycogen-lowering exercise than protein type or protein-to-carbohydrate ratio.