I am going to start 1 fasted ride a week this week. From what I have read, fast for 12 hours, do a low intensity workout around 60 minutes. Somwhere around 55% ftp? Anyway, I am wondering if my post workout nutrition needs to be lower carb? What do you all recommend?
What you want. I often eat nothing
Lower in carb? You do realise why we do post workout nutrition right? What do you think your body is depleting while you ride…
1 Like
Carbs and protein, primarily. Mostly carbs. Rapid carbs are ideal.
1 Like
How are those applicable to the scenario the OP described?
The first study is after 4 hours of endurance pace and the second after a couple types of high intensity intervals. Neither of those is what the OP described.
1 Like
What are you aiming to get out of this kind of ride?
I ask because, in my opinion, most of the articles I’ve seen out on the internets about ‘fasted’ riding misapply the research.
1 Like
As above, a carb-rich meal. Benefit of doing fasted training is from exercising in a carb-depleted state. Once you’ve finished exercising there is no longer any benefit in being carb-depleted and you want to start replenishing glycogen stores ASAP both to improve recovery and to be ready for the next (non-fasted) workout.
In terms of the ride itself, an hour at 55% seems a sensible place to start. Can extend that quite a bit though - I can do ~2 hours at ~65% with no problems and that’s not something I had to dedicate a lot of time building up to, I just typically do 1 fasted ride most weeks because it feels good and doesn’t seem to have any down sides.
1 Like
A problem I see is that the research is about exercising in a muscle glycogen depleted state. Not eating for 8-12 hours probably won’t leave you in a muscle glycogen depleted state. Sure, your liver glycogen will be low, but that is different. I was disappointed to read an article on Pez recently from a person with an exercise physiology background using the research to tell people they would get the same adaptions from from muscle glycogen depleted training by just not having breakfast before riding. Most articles I’ve read about ‘fasted’ training were similarly misapplying the research. Not having breakfast != depleted muscle glycogen.
I get up at 4:50am and try to be on the bike in 15min. I don’t have issues doing highish kJ rides (1500kJ+) or high intensity efforts (supra-threshold / VO2max) because while I haven’t had breakfast (i.e i’m ‘fasted’), my muscle glycogen isn’t depleted during overnight sleeping. If I was depleted, I’m sure I wouldn’t make it through the long or high intensity sessions.
1 Like
This!
Those are fair points.
I was just pointing out the scientific research that I am aware of in regards to eating after fasted training. I don’t know of any research that would hint that restricting intake post-training would be beneficial (in any context).