Un (un) scared (skârd): The art of dealing with fear.

Scale it

May 16, 2012 in Blog, training

To Carb, or not to carb

May 5, 2012 in Blog, Nutrition, training

Tired of sports drinks? What is it really like to ingest things during your training like sugar, that you would never really consider consuming unless you were “cheatski’s”? I know I am constantly asked what I use for fuel when I train, and when I’m going long or doing endurance efforts. There is so much information out there from the “window” of opportunity, to what protein to take post workout, to intermittent fasting. Some we’ve found to be great information, others are showing that the window just isn’t what we thought it was. Hell, I used to be a huge carb guy during and post training/competing efforts.

Flip that on its head and I fell into this place where I just wanted to believe you didn’t need to take in any carbs during longer efforts or multiple WODS in a day. We were getting away with it for a while, sort of. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to start chowing down sugar or high glycemic carbs. Quite the contrary! Just know, I fought tooth and nail thinking we could train and compete on super low carb intake, and although we kind of can, I’ve got a story that might just help you out. And if you still want to eat sugar afterwards you go right ahead, it will offend me none.

Not too long ago (about a year and a half or so) we started toying with MCT (medium chain fats) as a fuel source. Back pedal some 6-7 years ago and I was using protein alone at one point as a fuel source. In endurance events. In fact I did an un official 100k from Calistoga, Ca to Sonoma County on protein and tea primarily. I had a couple of other things mixed in, but no real carb sources. This was Dr. Romanov’s idea and it spun me quite a bit… In a good way. I didnt really eat that clean back then, but I was well on my way. I had pizza from time to time, and ate pasta as well, but this thing Romanov had me do got me thinking. Why are we so ingrained in thinking we need carbohydrates as a fuel or recovery source? Can we actually detect which region of muscle glycogen has been depleted and is it being replaced when I suck down 50g of some starch or sugar?



Move forward into CrossFit which happened right about the same time, and I run into a goofy yet very fit four eyed scientist who was talking about zone and this thing called Paleo. Yes, Robb Wolf… And we hit it off pretty well. I had noticed that in order to survive on a clean or “paleo” zone diet and do the amount of training I was doing that I had to up the fat blocks. I actually had this very conversation with Glassman in Santa Cruz in 2007, where he simply stated… “You probably upped your fat blocks by 4-5x’s, right kid?” I agreed, and discussions continued and books were read. Notice I didn’t have to up my carb blocks? Weird. Yet I got faster, stronger, and better at everything I was doing. Funny, Greg and Robb were reporting the exact same thing.

Fast forward to a year and a half ago, and after talking with many people far smarter than me on this stuff, including Robb, SFH, and some others I believed that we could get away with using Protein and MCT’s as a fuel source in endurance events and crossfit events pre and post WOD’s. With a few additives, that were just amino’s and very safe we thought we were onto some serious revolutionary stuff, and we were. But we werent really testing out past a couple of hours and werent using multiple days. So we did, and found out at about 3 hours or 2 back to back mulitple workout days the protein MCT combo wasnt holding up. So we adjusted diet, and still, we were finding the same thing. F#$K!

In October of 2011, I was asked if I wanted to try a “special” carb from a friend whom is an advisor/consultant of ours. This is like the anti christ to me, so you can imagine my reaction as I was pretty determined to not touch carbs. Yet after an explanation of waxy maize hydroxypropyl distarch phosphate (hdp) I reconsidered my typical first reaction to not like what I just heard. A carb that acts like a fiber? Wait, am I going to crap myself when I take this? Seriously, that was one of my first questions and major concerns. As you can read at the link I provided this thing sits very low on the GI. It’s like a 36, and interestingly enough it starts to kick glucose at about 2-3 hours after ingested without the insulin spike. Say what!?!? Remember what I said before about not feeling it 3+hrs into an effort or after a couple of days of multiples. So began the shipments and testing of this carb that looked like a bag of the “china white”. Seriously, my kitchen looked like a dope factory every time I’d get a shipment of big gallon ziplock bags full of white powder waxy maize.

At first we were just testing the carb and using a glucometer, which just held STEADY for hours. Then we started buying up some grass fed protein and mixing it. Then added the MCT’s. Then we started playing with the combos to see where we got the best results. Long story short, we not only found a combo, but we added one more bad ass ingredient, and started having various other athletes from MMA, to Running, Cycling, Rowing and more CrossFitters use it… Bang Bang! People were begging for more as they were running out. Seriously, most of the cats we handed it out to wanted to know when the next batch was coming because they felt amazing and weren’t drained after training. We did not account for that!

It had not even crossed our minds to make more product because we were really just making it for us. Selfish, I know… Don’t worry. We thought about approaching a few companies to help us produce it, then that didnt really feel right, as most of the companies have no idea what we do.