Sport nutrition application - the year-long fueling approach

It's well-documented that if a workout is less than 60 minutes, there is no need to take in any carbohydrate. However, for workouts lasting more than an hour, carbohydrate has been shown to improve performance.

Despite scientific literature telling athletes when fuel is or isn't needed, I encourage my athletes to use sport nutrition all-year long, regardless of the workout duration. For me and Karel, we never train without eating before a workout and we always have sport nutrition in our bottle(s) when we workout. 

While this may appear as if I don't understand exercise physiology or that I am putting my body at a metabolic disadvantage, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Consider these facts:

• It can take up to 8 weeks to train your gut to adapt to the mechanics of fueling and exercising.
• It can take several months of trial and error to figure out which sport nutrition products have the right types / amounts of carbohydrates and tastes for your personal preferences and needs.
• It can take several weeks to find the right hydration set-up and hydration belt/pack to make fueling/hydrating simple and effective while exercising.
• Training and racing in cold weather is significantly different than training and racing in hot weather. Carbohydrate absorption is highly compromised if it doesn’t occur with the correct amount of fluids and sodium, particularly in the heat. Learning how to take in sport nutrition in cooler temps is critical before fine-tuning your sport nutrition in hot temps.
• Nutrition is typically the most common reason/excuse why athletes fail to perform to their full abilities on race day. Interestingly, the athletes who often struggle to take in nutrition on race day have yet to master fueling in training. 

With all this in mind, athletes who routinely practice with sport nutrition in the early part of the season find it easier to adapt to peak/race-specific training. The gut is more primed to take in nutrition, there's no need to guess as to what sport nutrition products may work during workouts and with appropriate fueling, workouts are easy to execute which means more consistent training and faster fitness gains. 

Although research may say that, physiologically, you don't need to take in calories during your short workouts, consider the many performance benefits of practicing with sport nutrition for several months before you really need it.