Jolly #312

Always saw the biggest guy at my college gym eating sour patch kids inbetween his sets and my underdeveloped brain could not comprehend why a man so jacked would eat something so taboo (this was peak low-carb era). But now I understand. Fast carbs (glucose, dextrose, sucrose) enter your bloodstream immediately. Working muscles sucks that glucose out of your blood via GLUT4 transclocation, independent of insulin. You bypass the usual metabolic bottlenecks and feed your engines mid-burn. High intensity training is heavily dependent on glycogen and glycolosis. Burn through your glycogen stores and your performance suffers. Less explosiveness, no pump, more cortisol. Keeping your muscles fueled mid-workout gives you everything you want and need. Glucose has an osmotic effect. It pulls water into muscle cells and hydrates you at an intracellular level (very anabolic btw). You get better bloodflow, bigger/fuller muscles, better contraction. You can sustain peak output for the entirety of your workout. Its not just your muscles that are being fueled either. Your brain is a glucose hog. Low blood sugar during long sessions is the leading cause of fatigue and poor motor output. Hence why glucose microdosing is beneficial for cognitive tasks as well (especially hybrid psycho/physiological tasks like martial arts, sports etc.) Better yet, exogenous glucose blunds cortisol-induced tissue breakdown. Extremely anti-catabolic. You perform better, you feel better, you recover better, and you leave your workout less fried than you otherwise would. All while giving you a perfect excuse to get your sugar fix in guilt free.

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