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Nutriție sportivă
Carb loading is one of the best-known nutritional strategies in endurance sport. Its main aim is to reach high muscle glycogen stores before an important race and thereby delay exhaustion. But how do you do it properly?
Endurance sports such as marathons, triathlons or long-distance cycling require a constant supply of energy. The ideal scenario is topping up a sufficient amount of carbohydrates - but this often runs into the digestive problems experienced by 30 to 50 % of endurance athletes. This creates the classic dilemma: take in fewer carbohydrates and risk running out of energy, or take in more and risk stomach upset. The solution is "gut training" - targeted training of the digestive tract.
Many athletes ask themselves which type of sports drink to choose - hypotonic, isotonic or hypertonic. These drinks differ from each other in osmolality, that is, the concentration of dissolved particles (carbohydrates and sodium) in the solution, which is compared with the osmolality of blood plasma (approximately 280-300 mOsm/kg). It is this parameter that determines the direction of water movement across the intestinal wall and the rate of gastric emptying - and so decides how quickly the body absorbs fluids and energy.