Work, family obligations or ignorance of when and what to eat make to not follow a proper diet to optimize training and improve recovery. One of the most common mistakes in all the athletes is forget food pre-training and I am going to explain why it is so important to not skip it.
Many make the mistake of starting training in conditions of fasting between four or five hours. Whatever the objective to achieve, gain muscle, loss of fat or improvement in athletic performance all athletes should make a meal pre-training two hours before training. If you have a delicate digestive tract we can advance one hour meal.
First of all, we have to take into account the speed in the digestion of food. Not equal are digested fats, carbohydrates or proteins.
Low in fat. It is digested very slowly and will not help us to get the necessary energy, so we will avoid red meat, fish and fatty oils.
Moderate-protein. They will protect the musculature in intensive training since they contain branched chain amino acids (BCAA) that will help us to increase the rate of protein synthesis and decrease protein degradation during training. Ideally coming from the egg protein since it assimilates quickly, placating the possibility of heaviness before training. As a second option non-fat milk.
High in slow absorption carbohydrates. It will help us to fill glycogen stores and can perform a more intense workout. Brown rice, oat or fruits as bananas are good foods to have lots of energy and to make long and intense training.
How much eating food pre-training?
This is the million-dollar question. It is the most difficult to answer for us because It is a different response in each case. In addition, you have the answer because every body is different and has different answers.
Depending on the objective to achieve, fat loss, muscle gain or improvement of athletic performance food pre-training will be different though always with the same bases I have mentioned previously.
In general, a meal pre-training for a man of 80kg, which aims to lose fat You should have between 450 to 550 calories, taking into account the adequate proportion of carbohydrate/protein.
On the other hand, if we are looking for optimize athletic performance a man of 80kg increase carbohydrates and reduce the amount of protein.
For gain muscle, It will be a meal a bit more caloric, adding more carbohydrates and protein can reach up to the 650kcal.
All this to say that, for my, food pre-training is one of the most important and that most athletes are skipped. Remember, that with it you will have more energy to make workouts more freakish and long-lasting, protect our muscle and we can more easily increase musculature.