So regular training will increase our muscle and liver capacity to store more glycogen allowing us to extend or improve our performance over time. So here is the plan: within the 30 minute window following the completion of exercise your goal should be to consume protein, fat and carbohydrates to quickly replenish the muscles need for these valuable nutrients.

The amount of protein would be roughly 20 to 30 grams depending on your size. The carbohydrate should be low-glycemic non sugary which means avoiding sugary sports drinks, candy, pasta, bread, and other high sugar starches.

Your best options include brown rice, beans, fruit, vegetables, nuts and other whole foods. The amount is highly variable depending on how long you were exercising but start with a goal of 20 grams of low-glycemic carbohydrate and increase this as indicated by duration and intensity of your workout.

The most important element is that you start this refueling NOW and not wait. The actual amount is an imperfect science and can be resolved with the help of a good dietitian and some trial and error.

Don't forget to take in some fat with this. If your protein selection is meat or eggs then this will contain some fat. Nuts are wonderful here because they have monosaturated fat. Studies have also shown that muscle growth in response to exercise is greater when we replenish calories within 30 minutes post exercise compared with waiting to eat hours after the exercise.

Employing these strategies will help your ability to recover from a hard effort and net greater gains from your workout. See the article posted on research done on this topic. Also avoiding high sugar intake right after a workout is important. Several studies have demonstrated that maintaining baseline levels actually enhances the immune system by reducing the risk of illness and infection.

Therefore, glutamine may be effective as part of a recovery beverage. Well, first and foremost, you don't have to use a recovery beverage. I personally prefer them; they are not only absorbed more rapidly, but they also contribute to your fluid intake, which an overall important part of recovery.

There are a number of research studies in this area; some of shown a positive effect from carbohydrate-protein in a ratio, some have shown a ratio, and others a ratio, meaning for every 2, 3, or 4 grams of carbohydrate, you consume 1 gram of protein.

To put it another way, if you were consuming 60 grams of carbohydrate, you would consume 30 grams protein , 20 grams protein , or 15 grams protein Still with me? There is also enough supportive research to show approximately 3 grams of leucine in addition to that which you'll get from the whey and 5 grams of glutamine are effective.

If you prefer 'real' food, determine what foods meet these requirements and enjoy. Keep in mind that you do not want fat or fiber in this meal, as both slow down the absorption. Moreover, aside from pre- and post-workout and maybe during , it's the one meal of the day you should consume simple, high glycemic carbs so enjoy and you'll be on your way to recovery and growth.

This is just a quick summary of the topic. If you're interested in more great information about how to grow and recover, check out WeaponsforMass. com for an entire book on this type of information on nutrition and training, along with a week sample plan!

Chris Mohr, Ph. Post Workout Basics - Optimizing Glycogen! Review Before delving into the research, however, let's review the importance of post-workout nutrition and why it should absolutely be a part of every single person's training diet, whether you are trying to lose, gain, or even just maintain your lean body mass.

The best time to replenish your glycogen stores is within 15 minutes of completing your workout according to ACE Fitness. If carbohydrates are consumed immediately after exercise, the body is able to retain up to 50 percent more glycogen.

Depending on the length of exercise and muscle fibers involved, it can take between 22 hours to four days to completely replenish your glycogen supply. The maximum window for "best-case" glycogen replacement is two hours post exercise.

The consequences of not replenishing the muscle glycogen stores are dire. If not properly fed, the body will start consuming muscle in order to fuel itself. Before a lengthy athletic event like a marathon, participants will often "carb-load.

The purpose of this is to make sure the glycogen stores are completely full so the body doesn't turn to alternate sources of fuel. Glycogen replacement is essential to the body's repairative process. Read more: 4 Reasons to Eat More Calories And Carbs At Night. Muscle glycogen replenishment in the form of a post-workout meal doesn't need to be large.

Generally, to calories of quality food will suffice. ACE Fitness recommends a three to one ratio of carbohydrates to protein for the optimum replacement of your energy stores.

However, on the other hand, a sufficient amount of glycogen is essential in order to meet the energetic demands of both endurance and resistance exercise. Most existing information on nutrition and concurrent training adaptation is derived from studies where subjects performed exercise in the fasted state [ — ].

Coffey and colleagues investigated the effects of successive bouts of resistance and endurance exercise performed in different order in close proximity on the early skeletal muscle molecular response [ 76 ].

Although the second exercise bout was performed with different levels of skeletal muscle glycogen content, the subsequent effects on Akt, mTOR and p70 signaling following the second exercise bout remained the same.

Prospective long-term concurrent training studies may help to understand the complexity of the impaired adaptation with concurrent training and further determine to what extend the acute signaling antagonism contributes to this. Moreover, the role of nutritional factors in counteracting the interference effect remains to be further elucidated.

In this review we summarized the role of glycogen availability with regard to performance and skeletal muscle adaptations for both endurance and resistance exercise. Most of the studies with low-glycogen availability focused on endurance type training.

The results of these studies are promising if the acute molecular response truly indicates skeletal muscle adaptations over a prolonged period of time. Unfortunately, these results on low-glycogen availability may be biased because many other variables including training parameters time, intensity, frequency, type, rest between bouts and nutritional factors type, amount, timing, isocaloric versus non-isocaloric placebo varied considerably between the studies and it is therefore difficult to make valid inferences.

Furthermore, the majority of the studies with low glycogen availability were of short duration [ 18 ] and showed no changes [ 11 — 17 ], or showed, in some cases decreases in performance [ ].

Nevertheless, reductions in glycogen stores by manipulation of carbohydrate ingestion have shown to enhance the formation of training-induced specific proteins and mitochondrial biogenesis following endurance exercise to a greater extent than in the glycogen replenished state [ 11 — 16 , 18 , 68 ].

For resistance exercise, glycogen availability seemed to have no significant influence on the anabolic effects induced by resistance exercise when MPS was measured with the stable isotope methodology.

However, the exercise protocols used in most studies do not resemble a training volume that is typical for resistance-type athletes. Future long-term training studies ~12 weeks are needed to investigate whether performing resistance exercise with low glycogen availability leads to divergent skeletal muscle adaptations compared to performing the exercise bouts with replenished glycogen levels.

The role of glycogen availability on skeletal muscle adaptations and performance needs to be further investigated. In particular researchers need to examine glycogen availability when endurance and resistance exercise are conducted concurrently, for example, on the same day or on alternating days during the week.

To date, only a few studies have investigated the interactions between nutrient intake and acute response following a concurrent exercise model. We recommend that future research in this field should focus on the following questions:. What is the impact of performing one of the exercise bouts endurance or resistance with low glycogen availability on response of markers of mitochondrial biogenesis of the subsequent endurance or resistance exercise bout?

Does the resistance exercise bout need to be conducted with replenished glycogen stores in order to optimize the adaptive response when performed after a bout of endurance exercise? Is nutritional timing within a concurrent exercise model crucial to maximize skeletal muscle adaptations following prolonged concurrent training?

To conclude, depletion of muscle glycogen is strongly associated with the degree of fatigue development during endurance exercise.

This is mainly caused by reduced glycogen availability which is essential for ATP resynthesis during high-intensity endurance exercise.

Furthermore, it is hypothesized that other physiological mechanisms involved in excitation-contraction coupling of skeletal muscle may play a role herein.

On the other hand, the low glycogen approach seems promising with regard to the adaptive response following exercise. Therefore, low glycogen training may be useful as part of a well-thought out periodization program. However, further research is needed to further scrutinize the role of low glycogen training in different groups e.

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Fat adaptation followed by carbohydrate loading compromises high-intensity sprint performance. Download references. We would like to thank T.

Maas HAN University of Applied Sciences Institute for Studies in Sports and Exercise for his fruitful input and feedback on the manuscript. Division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University, Bomenweg 4, HD, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Pim Knuiman, Maria T. Radboud University, Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, Department of Physiology, Geert Grooteplein-West 32, GA, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Pim Knuiman.

No funding was used to assist in the preparation of this review. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are directly relevant to the contents of this review. PK wrote the manuscript. MTEH and MM contributed substantially by giving insightful comments and suggestions during the creation of the manuscript.

All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4. Reprints and permissions. Knuiman, P. Glycogen availability and skeletal muscle adaptations with endurance and resistance exercise.

Nutr Metab Lond 12 , 59 Download citation. Received : 19 August Accepted : 11 December Published : 21 December Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. That is why you want to know exactly how much glycogen is available in an individual athlete, instead of having some rough estimates.

INSCYD is the first and only tool that provides you this information. Now you know the disastrous effects of running out of glycogen, you probably wonder how you can maintain glycogen stores during exercise. The most obvious one is to decrease exercise intensity. This will decrease carbohydrate combustion, increase fat combustion, and as a result: maintain glycogen stores for a longer period of time.

Examples are energy drinks, bars and gels. Long-term, you can also maintain glycogen stores longer by increasing fitness level. As mentioned, a higher fitness level will increase the maximal amount of glycogen stored per kilo muscle mass. When an increase in fitness level comes from an increase in aerobic power, you will also rely less on carb combustion and more on fat combustion.

By playing around with the INSCYD glycogen availability calculator, you can see how changes in fitness level and aerobic power have an effect on how long an individual can maintain glycogen stores during exercise. Experiencing low glycogen stores is of course not a big problem once you crossed the finish line.

In fact, in most races or intense training sessions, this is inevitable. You should however make sure you replenish muscle glycogen stores afterwards, to make sure you have enough energy for the next race or training session.

Fill in the form to receive an email in which you learn how you can use glycogen depletion and replenishment to create a training camp program.

Additionally, you can schedule a free consultation with us in your own language or write to us to discover how we can help you transform your training program with personalized glycogen insights. It goes beyond the scope of this blog to talk about the exact nutritional strategies to replenish glycogen as fast as possible.

You can get more information about nutrition and glycogen via the form. It is however good to know that it will take a minimum of 48 hours to fully replenish glycogen stores once they are depleted.

We talked about all the important aspects of muscle glycogen during exercise and hopefully gave you a better overall idea of how glycogen stores change during exercise. Calculate how much glycogen your athletes have in their active muscles.

Learn how much they burn at any exercise intensity. Create a nutrition plan to make sure to never run out of glycogen again. As a coach or lab professional, you can gain valuable insights into glycogen by scheduling a free consultation with the INSCYD team in your own language.

Unlock the full potential of your athletes and elevate their performance. Create highly personalized training programs with lab-level performance insights anywhere anytime to analyze, optimize and improve performance faster and save cost.

Skip to content. Launch App. Muscle Glycogen and Exercise: all you need to know. Download full article in PDF. WHAT IS GLYCOGEN. HOW MUCH GLYCOGEN IS STORED IN THE BODY. Example of how the total glycogen content differs per athlete. Glycogen: a core protein surrounded by thousands of glucose branches.

HOW MUCH GLYCOGEN IS STORED IN THE ACTIVE MUSCLE. Example of how the available glycogen content differs per sport. Body composition. Since glycogen is stored in the muscle, the more muscle mass you have, the more glycogen you can store.

Type of exercise. Certain sports require more muscles to be active than others. For example: in cycling, a lower percentage of the total muscle mass is active when comparing to running or XC skiing.

Fitness level. Untrained individuals store less glycogen in their muscles than professional endurance athletes. For example: a ­ fully recovered untrained athlete stores about 15 gram glycogen per kilo muscle mass, while a professional can store about 25 gram or even more glycogen per kilo muscle mass.

and higher for athletes on a high carbohydrate diet. Gender Body Weight Body Composition Sport Fitness level Diet. The results are also presented in the metabolic profile report. Book Free consultation. HOW GLYCOGEN IS BROKEN DOWN TO GLUCOSE.

WHEN DO YOU NEED MUSCLE GLYCOGEN. HOW LONG DO GLYCOGEN STORES LAST. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF GLYCOGEN.

How to measure glycogen availability over days. HOW TO MAINTAIN GLYCOGEN STORES DURING EXERCISE. HOW TO REPLENISH MUSCLE GLYCOGEN. While exercise decreases glycogen content, recovery can create a slight overshoot in glycogen stores.

Schedule a personal consultation. Subscribe to newsletter. Test remote. Anytime No Special Equipment Needed Full Performance Insights from a Single Test. GET FREE DEMO.

Recognize the symptoms of hypoglycemia. While anyone can experience hypoglycemia, patients that suffer with diabetes are more susceptible to episodes of abnormally low levels of glucose in the blood, otherwise known as hypoglycemia.

Common symptoms of hypoglycemia include the following: Feeling hungry Feeling shaky or nervous Feeling dizzy or light-headed Sweating Sleepiness Confusion and difficulty speaking Feelings of anxiety Feeling weak.

Know the risks. A severe and untreated hypoglycemic episode can lead to seizures, coma, and even death. Use insulin or other medications for diabetes. Since the pancreas does not function normally, oral and injectable medications can help.

Medications work to provide the balance needed to help the body properly perform both glycogenesis and glycolysis. While the available medications are saving lives every day, they are not perfect. Patients with diabetes are at risk of developing hypoglycemic events, even by simple changes in their daily routine.

In some cases, the hypoglycemic events can be severe and even life-threatening. Stick to your eating and exercise regimens. Even the smallest change can cause unwanted results. Talk to your doctor before making any changes in your food choices and exercise routine. If you are diabetic, altering the foods you eat, the amount of foods and beverages you consume, and changes in your level of activity, can result in complications.

For example, exercising, which is an important part of diabetic health, can create problems. During exercise, more energy, or glucose, is needed, so your body will try to pull from your glycogen stores. Impaired glucagon functioning causes less than adequate amounts of glycogen to be pulled from the stores in muscle and liver tissue.

This can mean a delayed, and possibly severe, episode of hypoglycemia. Even several hours after exercise, the body will continue to work to restore the glycogen used during exercise. The body will pull the glucose from the blood supply, triggering a hypoglycemic event.

Treat an episode of hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia comes on fairly quickly in someone that is diabetic. Any signs of dizziness, fatigue, confusion, difficulty comprehending a statement, and having trouble responding, are warning signs.

The initial steps to treating a mild hypoglycemic episode involve consuming glucose or simple carbohydrates. Help the diabetic person to consume 15 to 20 grams of glucose, as gel or tablets, or as simple carbohydrates. Some food items that can be used include raisins, orange juice, sodas with sugar, honey, and jellybeans.

As the blood sugar returns to normal, and enough glucose is getting to the brain, the person will become more alert.

Continue to provide foods and beverages until the person recovers. If there is ever any question about what to do, call Prepare a kit. People with diabetes may want to have a small kit prepared that contains glucose gel or tablets, possibly injectable glucagon, plus simple directions for someone else to follow.

The diabetic person may quickly become disoriented, confused, and unable to treat themselves. Have glucagon available. If you are diabetic, talk to your doctor about having injectable glucagon available to help manage any severe episodes of hypoglycemia.

Consider educating friends and family. A diabetic person having a severe hypoglycemic episode will not be able to administer the injection. The risk of not treating a severe episode of hypoglycemia goes beyond any risk associated with the injection. He or she can help you decide if your condition warrants having a glucagon injection available to treat potentially serious hypoglycemic events.

Glucagon injections require a prescription. Part 3. Be cautious with low carbohydrate diets. Talk to your doctor to be sure this type of weight loss plan is safe for you.

To safely pursue a highly restricted carbohydrate diet, which usually involves consuming less than 20 grams per day of carbohydrates, you must factor in your level of activity. This helps your body to tap into stored glycogen as an aid in losing weight. Limit the time you restrict your carbohydrate intake.

Ask your doctor about safe time limits specific to your body type, level of activity, age, and existing medical conditions. Resuming a higher carbohydrate intake at that time helps your body to restore the glycogen used.

Consider your exercise intensity. Your body pulls the energy it needs from the glucose in your blood, then pulls from glycogen reserves stored in your muscle and liver. Frequent and intense exercise depletes those stores.

Know what to expect. The most common result is feeling tired or weak, and having episodes of hypoglycemia. This results in less than enough energy to function normally and problems pursuing intense exercise.

Resume a higher carbohydrate content in your diet. After the initial 10 to 14 days of the low carbohydrate diet, move to a phase that allows for more carbs to be consumed, which allows your body to restore the glycogen. Exercise moderately. If you are trying to lose weight, incorporating routine exercise is a great step to take.

This helps you to lose weight, use enough energy to tap into your reserves, but avoid depleting your glycogen stores. Chris M. Matsko, MD Family Medicine Physician. Matsko, MD. Try eating a small portion of a high-energy food, for example peanut butter toast, before you work out.

This will help with glucose and glycogen storage while you are exercising. We're glad this was helpful. Thank you for your feedback. Use it to try out great new products and services nationwide without paying full price—wine, food delivery, clothing and more.

Claim Your Gift If wikiHow has helped you, please consider a small contribution to support us in helping more readers like you. Support wikiHow Yes No. Not Helpful 1 Helpful 5. Kristi Acuna Holistic Nutritionist. Kristi Acuna. Making sure to consume protein, fat, and carbohydrates will help.

For example, you might eat a nut butter packet with a little maple in it, or you could have a protein shake with almond butter, sprouts, and avocado.

Not Helpful 0 Helpful 1. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. By using this service, some information may be shared with YouTube. Caffeine is a stimulant that affects people in different ways.

Talk to your doctor about consuming caffeine, especially if you have any medical condition, or if you are pregnant. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0. Drink plenty of water for hydration, even if you are drinking sports beverages. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 1. Glycogen stores are depleted differently depending on the forms and intensity of exercise.

Know the effects of the types of exercise that suits you. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 4. Submit a Tip All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published. You Might Also Like. How to. Holistic Nutritionist. Expert Interview. More References About This Article. Co-authored by:. Co-authors: Updated: January 1, Categories: Carbohydrates.

Article Summary X To restore glycogen after you work out, eat foods that contain simple carbohydrates, like fruits and vegetables. In other languages Italiano: Ripristinare il Glicogeno.

Русский: восстановить гликоген. Bahasa Indonesia: Memulihkan Glikogen. العربية: استرجاع مستوى الجليكوجين. Français: reconstituer ses réserves de glycogène. Tiếng Việt: Khôi phục Glycogen. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read , times. Reader Success Stories. Maya Mar 30, This article is so well-illustrated, plus it offers great advice on consumption of carbohydrates, exercise, and diabetes.

Thank you so much. More reader stories Hide reader stories. Did this article help you? Cookies make wikiHow better. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Sanjay Yadav Jul 27, In fact, my muscle was not growing faster, and that because I was not feeding my muscles.

Share yours! More success stories Hide success stories. You Might Also Like How to. The carbohydrates that will be combusted come from two sources: carbohydrate stored in the muscle glycogen and carbohydrates located in the blood, as a result of carbohydrate food intake blood glucose.

In conclusion: the higher the intensity the more glycogen is needed. By consuming additional carbohydrates during exercise, you can decrease the amount of glycogen needed. However, since glycogen is preferred over blood glucose as a fuel, and because the amount of exogenous carbohydrate intake is limited, you can never exercise at a high intensity and not burn any glycogen.

Learn more about creating fueling and pacing plans using carbohydrate combustion rates and glycogen stores via this article: How carbohydrate combustion determines pacing and fueling whitepaper included! We know glycogen storage can be depleted rapidly.

We also know this will cause fatigue to develop quickly. But how long does it take before glycogen stores are empty? To give you a rule of thumb: after approximately 80 minutes of exercise at a maximum lactate steady state, glycogen stores are depleted.

Although this rule of thumb gives you an idea, a ballpark number, it does not help the individual athlete to train and perform better. This is exactly why we built the INSCYD muscle glycogen calculator!

It takes into account all the variables that affect glycogen availability and lets you know exactly how much glycogen is stored in your active muscles. Combine this knowledge with the carbohydrate combustion rate we showed in the previous graph, and you know how long glycogen stores will last.

Of course you can extent the time glycogen stores last. Read along to learn how to maintain glycogen stores during exercise. Knowing the importance of glycogen, it should come as no surprise that running out of glycogen will seriously hamper exercise performance.

As the carbohydrate combustion graph clarifies, it is impossible to exercise at higher intensities when there are no carbohydrates available. Learn how to know whether you have enough glycogen in the muscle to start a new training session. Fill in the form and receive an email with more practical tips using glycogen availability.

In short: running out of glycogen is the end of every high performance effort. That is why you want to know exactly how much glycogen is available in an individual athlete, instead of having some rough estimates.

INSCYD is the first and only tool that provides you this information. Now you know the disastrous effects of running out of glycogen, you probably wonder how you can maintain glycogen stores during exercise. The most obvious one is to decrease exercise intensity.

This will decrease carbohydrate combustion, increase fat combustion, and as a result: maintain glycogen stores for a longer period of time.

Examples are energy drinks, bars and gels. Long-term, you can also maintain glycogen stores longer by increasing fitness level. As mentioned, a higher fitness level will increase the maximal amount of glycogen stored per kilo muscle mass. When an increase in fitness level comes from an increase in aerobic power, you will also rely less on carb combustion and more on fat combustion.

By playing around with the INSCYD glycogen availability calculator, you can see how changes in fitness level and aerobic power have an effect on how long an individual can maintain glycogen stores during exercise. Experiencing low glycogen stores is of course not a big problem once you crossed the finish line.

In fact, in most races or intense training sessions, this is inevitable. You should however make sure you replenish muscle glycogen stores afterwards, to make sure you have enough energy for the next race or training session.

Fill in the form to receive an email in which you learn how you can use glycogen depletion and replenishment to create a training camp program. Additionally, you can schedule a free consultation with us in your own language or write to us to discover how we can help you transform your training program with personalized glycogen insights.

It goes beyond the scope of this blog to talk about the exact nutritional strategies to replenish glycogen as fast as possible.

You can get more information about nutrition and glycogen via the form. It is however good to know that it will take a minimum of 48 hours to fully replenish glycogen stores once they are depleted. We talked about all the important aspects of muscle glycogen during exercise and hopefully gave you a better overall idea of how glycogen stores change during exercise.

Calculate how much glycogen your athletes have in their active muscles. Learn how much they burn at any exercise intensity. Create a nutrition plan to make sure to never run out of glycogen again. As a coach or lab professional, you can gain valuable insights into glycogen by scheduling a free consultation with the INSCYD team in your own language.

Unlock the full potential of your athletes and elevate their performance. Create highly personalized training programs with lab-level performance insights anywhere anytime to analyze, optimize and improve performance faster and save cost.

Skip to content. Launch App. Muscle Glycogen and Exercise: all you need to know. Download full article in PDF. WHAT IS GLYCOGEN. HOW MUCH GLYCOGEN IS STORED IN THE BODY. Example of how the total glycogen content differs per athlete. Glycogen: a core protein surrounded by thousands of glucose branches.

HOW MUCH GLYCOGEN IS STORED IN THE ACTIVE MUSCLE. Example of how the available glycogen content differs per sport. Body composition. Since glycogen is stored in the muscle, the more muscle mass you have, the more glycogen you can store.

Type of exercise. Certain sports require more muscles to be active than others. For example: in cycling, a lower percentage of the total muscle mass is active when comparing to running or XC skiing.