Pre-workout nutrition needs to contain protein and carbohydrates to power your workout. Physical activity, whether therapeutic, sporting hobby, competition, or to stop being one more passive person in the world, consumes energy and activates the muscles that are worked on the most. Whatever your motivation, you expect that your body will react and offer you health, sporting pleasure, or a good ranking as a result.
For this reason, you must keep the idea clear that if you are going to train, then you must give your body the conditions it requires to meet your expectations, that is, what you hope to get as a result. This is precisely where pre-workout nutrition comes in as a solution.
Pre-workout nutrition should provide what your body needs in the activity you intend to develop, however, in the intensity and time required for this. It is for this purpose that it is used, and this is how it should be planned.
That’s right: you should plan your training (what time to start, how long to train, etc.) and simultaneously plan your pre-workout nutrition to get the best results.
What Is The Importance Of Pre-Workout Nutrition?
The importance of pre-workout nutrition lies in its objective, that is, to guarantee the body the nutrients it needs for its best performance. This means improving performance while preventing fatigue. These nutrients mainly involve water, carbohydrates, and proteins.
During training, a lot of energy is required to continue the activity. This energy is supplied by the carbohydrates ingested in the pre-workout meal. In addition, several muscle tissues are injured, and muscle mass development is precisely the recovery and reconstruction of those injured tissues.
See the importance of each type of pre-workout food.
Water
After the oxygen you need to breathe, water is the essential nutrient for life and, above all, for those who are going to undergo a training routine.
Hydration needs to be constant, as even minor fluctuations in the amount of water available in your body can drastically reduce your performance. On warmer days, this condition intensifies.
With the rise in temperature during training, there will be a loss of water and electrolytes from the body. For this reason, hydration must already be guaranteed from the pre-training moment, continued during the training, and completed afterward in the post-training.
The water inside the body motivates the following actions:
- Regulates body temperature;
- Allows more excellent disposition for training;
- Helps control fatigue;
- Eliminates toxins produced during training;
- Enables the transport of glycogen required during training;
- Decreases the occurrence of cramps.
Inadequate hydration of the body can lead to situations of dehydration during training. The main symptoms of water deficiency in the body are:
- Cramps;
- Increased heart rate;
- Dizziness;
- Nausea and vomiting;
- Visual changes;
- Hearing alterations;
- Fatigue.
An adequate pre-training water intake should consider at least 400 and 600 ml of water 2 hours before training. If training takes more than 1 hour, you should drink about 150 ml every 20 minutes.
Carbohydrates
During training, significant energy consumption is much higher than usual during the day. This energy needs to be available for your use, or you will soon feel tired and generally unwell during training.
Thus, the first aspect regarding the importance of pre-workout nutrition is the prevention of hypoglycemia, that is, the low availability of sugar (glucose) in the blood for the demands of the body in general, as well as its associated symptoms.
Eating foods rich in carbohydrates transforms glucose into glycogen and stores this energy source in the liver and muscles. The glycogen in the liver supplies energy demands between one meal and another. It is a strategic reserve of glucose to meet the various demands of the body.
On the other hand, the glucose needed by the musculature, which is the most required during training, is met by muscle glycogen. For this reason, pre-workout carbohydrate feeding aims to supply and maintain muscle glycogen stores, which will be required during training. And in this way, fatigue is prevented from occurring before completing physical activity.
For this purpose, foods composed of complex carbohydrates are recommended. These carbohydrates gradually release glucose, supplying the demands during training, without large explosions of glucose followed by a fall.
That’s why they are called low-glycemic foods (because they don’t provide a lot of glucose immediately, but little by little).
Proteins
You stimulate muscle development when you exercise (train, work out). For this formation of muscle mass to consolidate, available amino acids are needed. The amino acids will build the proteins for the new muscle tissues being formed.
On the other hand, muscles are made up of proteins, which in turn are made up of amino acids. Many of these amino acids are not produced by the body (the so-called essential amino acids) and, therefore, must be ingested in food.
Thus, consuming protein-rich foods is the first way to ingest amino acids. They are digested and release amino acids.
Another way to make amino acids available directly for muscle mass production is to use concentrated amino acid food supplements. In this case, specifically those supplements rich in amino acids.
Also Read: Healthy And Proper Nutrition