I agree. For most workouts you should leave being able to do a bit more. That’s not a statement I disagree with.
Emphasis my own, but the reason this statement didn’t sit well.
Also disagree with this. you should feel ‘good’ after the workout, but if you leave the gym every time feeling ‘refreshed’ (physically not mentally) then you haven’t worked hard enough to build much strength. If that’s not your goal, fine, you can get a good workout and feel refreshed. But that’s not progressive strength training.
edit: if these aren’t the point’s you’re making and im taking you too literally, apologies, tone on the internet is hard.
For me, deliberately or incidentally, I eat more carbs on training days.
Ill have more carbs at lunch if Im gymming later, and Ill have extra carbs at dinner after. Today I looked at my workout plan and I have a pretty big bench and deadlift session tonight, so I ate a lot more carbs than I usually would at lunch.
For you, I think it depends how you are going to approach it. If you’re thinking of cutting carbs on rest days and keeping them the same on workout days. I think that’s a bad idea. The way you’ve phrased it makes me worried this is how you are thinking of approaching it.
If you are thinking of adding carbs on work days, to make sure you have a good workout and good recovery, then I think that’s a great idea, and keeping carbs where they are now on rest days might help make that decision easier / more palatable than just increasing calories across the board.
The latter is appropriate for you because at your current calorie intake you are still very very lean. This means your baseline carb intake does not need to be lowered. You are increasing your workout volume though which would necessitate increasing carb intake around training.
I think you should eat more overall and gain a bit of weight. Carb cycling is normally something done to lose weight, or maintain weight in some cases. If you have extra carbs on training days like Gatorade while training and some carbs in your post-workout shake then there is no need to consume the same things on rest days, but overall (unless you are trying to lose weight) there is no need to have drastically different caloric intakes depending on whether you train today or not.
As for what @Pinkylifting is saying, if you train in the afternoon or evening then it would make sense to be well fed prior to that. It would also depend on how you normally eat on non-training days and what you do during the day. If you have a physically demanding job and barely eat then you would definitely want to eat extra if you have a hard workout later in the day.
I think while this is true for most cases, for me (and I think Anna is quite similar) carb cycling is a psychologically easy way to up calories and carbs without being worried about fat gain because you ‘know’ they are going to the workout.
Then more carbs in your last meal the night before, and maybe have some EAAs or a small protein shake before training. I’d still up carbs in the 1 or two next meals following training.
That’s not a very good way to go you know. That could very well be contributing to your lack of progress. There are several studies showing decreased performance, hypertrophy, and strength gains as a result of training fasted. There is even evidence that it’s less effective for fat loss as opposed to eating before training. It’s pretty much the worst thing you can do if you actually want results in the gym. Muscles tissue gets damaged when you train, and if your body doesn’t have amino acids available to repair and build up your muscles then it’s going to break down muscle to get those amino acids. And low blood sugar levels mean decreased performance as well.
Even some toast and a protein shake when you wake up would be much better.
I used to do this (in HS when my parents made me eat breakfast before leaving for school), but found that it takes a ridiculously long time for my stomach to settle in the mornings. My old breakfast (2 slices of toast +1 egg), would keep me really full (and not willing to train) until noon
That’s a fair point, but normally the idea with carb cycling is reduced carbs on off days. This is more like carb loading, which is sort of the same thing but in reverse.
Just eat something. Or drink something. Whey protein + maltodextrin, then drink Gatorade when you train.
@anna_5588 Agree here. It’s certainly not worth force feeding yourself and training with an unsettled stomach, thats counter productive, however something is better than nothing, so it’s worth finding something you can stomach. Just something with some protein and carbs.
If your stomach really rebels, an amino mix would be second best to whey, hydrolysed whey would be easier digesting if you dont mind spending for it.
That said fasted training isn’t ‘wasted’ training, but its certainly not optimal
Find something that digests easily. Whey protein and maltodextrin are about as easy as it gets. I train within about an hour - hour and a half of breakfast, on days that I’m working I can’t waste time or I won’t get to train and I also don’t have much appetite first thing in the morning. My usual breakfast is toast, milk with whey protein, and a glass of orange juice. Just don’t eat too much and avoid stuff that is harder to digest or can cause heartburn, I tried eating eggs before training a few times and I felt like I was going to puke.
What do you mean? You intentionally keep your workout short or you think you are doing too much?
I think for most people 2 hours or more is not going to be productive anymore, just dragging yourself and causing more fatigue for minimal benefit. But rushing rest periods to get your workout done fast isn’t good either, at least not heavy sets on the competition lifts.
90 minutes is plenty. How long you rest should depend on what you are about to do, if it’s a PR attempt then taking a few extra minutes might increase performance. If you are doing triples with 70% then there is no need to wait around, but the thing is that once you are fatigued past a certain point you can’t recruit the strongest motor units which means that you won’t build as much muscle (those are the ones with the most potential for hypertrophy) and you won’t stimulate as much strength gains (you aren’t training the strongest motor units at that point). I have been reading a bunch of stuff about this sort of thing, Chris Beardsley has a lot of posts on this on Instagram.
In my case, I force myself to rest longer between work sets on comp lifts, especially on bench because it seems less fatiguing and I’m ready to go real fast. There have been plenty of times that I rushed rest periods and fell short of my goals as a result, a couple more minutes can make a significant difference and in a meet you normally have at least 10 minutes between attempts too so I don’t really see a downside. Training is the most productive when you are the least fatigued, and obviously performance is best as well.
My biggest barrier is mental. I physically feel fine, but sometimes give up a set or stop AMRAP sets because I don’t feel like I can “push through”, not because I physically can’t.
In this sense, high volume programs like Sheiko have been quite liberating because I don’t have to decide whether to do another set I’m doing them
Oh, dear, don’t forget my poor english, haha,. sometimes is difficult for me finding the right words (i don’t use it in my work, only for movies and articles)
