Low glycogen adaptation study

[ChrisDe]

I was just reading a study about low muscle glycogen training, using twice a day vs once a day with low night.
A first long session to lower glycogen, followed by the HIIT session 2h later appears to be much more efficient than a “fasted” night.
Would anybody know about a study which compares a long slow ride followed by HIIT, fasted vs fueled ?

Twice-a-day training improves mitochondrial efficiency, but not mitochondrial...

[ChrisDe]

A presentation on low glycogen vs high. Winner for mitochondrial adaptation seems to be low glycogen, even if it means doing SIT at lower intensities.

IS-PM05 - High-carbohydrate or high-fat diets for optimizing training adaptation and performance?

[Rizzi]

@ChrisDe

A presentation on low glycogen vs high. Winner for mitochondrial adaptation seems to be low glycogen

Interesting presentation. Nevertheless we have @empiricalcycling Kolie Moore here in another thread with this:

@empiricalcycling

I don’t know if this point was in that episode, but my understanding is that what you eat and what substrate you use for aerobic metabolism during exercise does not alter the underlying aerobic adaptation in any fundamental way. No exceptions. The mechanisms of aerobic adaptive signaling DGAF.

With the exception of short easy recovery spins, I think fasted rides are useless and never suggest anyone restrict energy intake even at the start of rides. Diet manipulation is method that is used sometimes but has a lot of practical drawbacks that make it rare to pull out of the toolbox, since odds it doesn’t work or fully backfires are fairly high. I think you likely heard me discussing this method on another podcast, but restricting food to increase fat burning doesn’t sound like something I’d advocate.

You may be confusing that with my suggestion to always start endurance rides easier because lipolysis takes time to fully make blood borne FFAs available so you end up dipping into glycogen stores too much early on, which often becomes a positive split ride that feels awful at the end vs a negative split ride that feels great later on.

@empiricalcycling Any thoughts on the presentation above “IS-PM05 - High-carbohydrate or high-fat diets for optimizing training adaptation and performance?”?

My gut feeling says that it was all discussed somewhere in this forum already and here we circle again…

[Singingdog]

Interesting study. The twice a day group had a whole day for recovery between each work day, while the every day group worked out every day. The authors noted that none seemed over trained, but from experience, having a proper rest day is pretty important. Can’t say I came away from this convinced that glycogen depleted training is the way to go.