Proper nutrition before and after riding will make you perform better
Riders need to support training and competition for a long time.
It must not be enough to burn the inner universe alone.
The physical foundation laid at ordinary times and appropriate competition strategies are important factors affecting performance.
However, most riders attach great importance to training, but often ignore diet and nutrition.
Although sufficient physical fitness is a necessary condition for good performance, appropriate nutrition before and after riding is also important.
If the body is not provided with the required nutrients in time, it will not only affect training and performance, but also make the exercise that is originally beneficial to the body, Instead, he became a wounded murderer.
Cattle should eat grass, drive and refuel.
Your body also needs appropriate nutrition as fuel, which is what we call sports nutrition.
We, who train seriously, need to pay more attention to diet and nutrition than ordinary people.
We need a balanced intake of carbohydrates, necessary protein, fat, minerals, natural vitamins and water.
They will provide you with all your needs and make you perform better.
Carbohydrates carbohydrates in foods such as rice, noodles, grains, bread, Cereals, potatoes, fruits…
Are the basis of energy sources for riders, because it provides glucose needed by the body to meet energy needs, and additional glucose is stored in muscle and liver as liver sugar, just like backup power supply.
In short-range cycling, the body will mainly rely on the role of glycogen to control blood glucose concentration, so as to maintain your energy.
If you don’t have enough glycogen, you may feel very tired and unable to ride, that is, the common “hitting the wall”.
On the other hand, low blood sugar may also affect your willpower and exercise performance.
Even if you ride for a long time, the body will first use carbohydrates as supplement, and then gradually increase the use rate of body fat.
However, this does not mean that you should eat carbohydrates with your head depressed.
Carbohydrates should account for 50-60% of the total daily calories.
One of the common dietary mistakes of cyclists is to eat too much carbohydrates.
For example, you may have a bagel, muffin and orange juice for breakfast, a mashed potato sandwich with fresh fruit for lunch, and a pasta with pumpkin juice and meal bag in the evening.
Does it seem normal? But in fact, you have eaten a high proportion of carbohydrates and ignored the intake of other nutrients.
What is missing? Let’s keep looking.
For modern people, fat seems like a devil.
Most people avoid it.
Newspapers, magazines and TV news continue to advocate low-fat diet and crack down on body fat; There are a wide range of oil and fat removing foods on the market, with a cooking menu that teaches people to avoid fat and filter oil at three or five times.
Oh, my God! Is the oil wrong? In fact, we all misunderstood fat as a good friend.
What we want to reduce is too much fat in the body, but the intake of healthy fat in the diet can not be neglected.
Fat is a necessary nutrient to maintain metabolism and vitality, and can also provide necessary protection for body organs.
If we lack fat intake for a long time, not only the body skills can not operate normally, It’s also easy to get depressed.
Fat intake is very important, but it is more important to get good fat.
If the sources of fat are fried and processed foods, it is difficult for the body to have problems.
We should eat more excellent unsaturated fat.
Saturated fat mostly comes from animal fat, eggs, milk and dairy products, while unsaturated fat comes from vegetable products and deep-sea fish, such as corn oil, olive oil Nuts, deep sea fish, etc.
Overall, about 20-25% of the energy in the diet plan should be provided by fat to increase physical strength, maintain weight and improve riding performance.
This rate may be higher than you think, but there is no doubt that a diet plan that is too low in fat may affect your performance and cause other health problems.
For example, some fat soluble vitamins need to be absorbed by the body through fat cooperation.
Protein the main sources of protein needed by the human body are fish, chicken, eggs, beans, almonds, milk products and other foods.
Protein should account for 12% to 15% of your total daily calorie consumption.
It provides energy to build and repair cells, muscles and body fluids, and maintain the normal operation of body functions such as cell metabolism; After heavy-duty training or competition, muscles and body tissues are often damaged after a big war.
At this time, supplementing enough protein will help to recover.
In the process of exercise, only when glycogen and fat are insufficient to supply the body’s energy needs, can protein be used by the body.
When protein is used, it must be decomposed into amino acids.
The end of the chemical bond of leucine, isoleucine and valine is a carbon frame, which is easy to be used by the body as a source of energy, Therefore, some athletes are used to supplement branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) before the competition.
BCAAs is the main component of amino acids in skeletal muscle.
Therefore, prior supplementation has the effect of prevention and can avoid decomposing skeletal muscle as an energy source in case of insufficient body energy, so as to reduce exercise performance.
The supplement amount of BCAAs is determined by individual energy level, exercise intensity and exercise duration.
You can supplement BCAAs appropriately according to the content of competition or practice to help you have better endurance and performance in the competition.
Vitamins and minerals are not the source of energy, but they have many necessary functions in the human body.
For example, vitamin D and calcium are needed for strong bones, and iron is an important raw material for producing heme to transport oxygen to the whole body, which are very important when riding.
Electrolytes such as potassium, calcium and salt are indispensable for cycling, because they play an important role in the body’s water content and muscle function..