w8lifter

Muscle Glycogen Resynthesis & Bodybuilding

ponyboy

Do you agree with the carb depleting/loading program recommended by this article?

Great info as always!

w8lifter

I would agree w/ the basic program yes, but having said that, everyone has the potential to respond differently and should test the program several times before actually using it for a comp. There's so many variables that come into play in a carb deplete/load process that it should be used as a guideline, not written in stone.

J'Bo

W8,

I read the article and it was great.
My question is how do you know when to stop carb loading?
I believe they call it "spilling", please explain.

....and thats my $.02

w8lifter

That comes from experimenting beforehand. If you spill, you'll lose cuts, and if you lean enough (as a BB should be in the final weeks) and in tune w/ your body, you'll be able to tell the precise time when you spill and you'll know for future. Insulin sensitivity will affect it, as will the degree to which you depleted glycogen stores.

w8lifter

Here' s another article along the same lines:

Glycogen Supercompensation Enhances Athletic Performance

An excerpt:

Bodybuilders

Since every gram of glycogen is stored with approximately 3 grams of water (13) a doubling of glycogen stores due to glycogen supercompensation is likely to increase the apparent size of muscles. Since exercise upregulates the body’s ability to store glycogen and bodybuilders have more muscle mass than the average person, we might expect that a bodybuilder stores considerably more than the 500 grams of glycogen mentioned earlier as an average value for normal adults. For the sake of argument let’s assume that a bodybuilder is storing 800 grams (not an unreasonable amount) of muscle glycogen. By carbohydrate depletion and supercompensation to twice that level (again, not unreasonable) it would be possible to add 800 grams of glycogen plus 2400 grams of water to the bodybuilder’s muscle tissue. This amounts to a 7.2 pound weight gain from a single carbohydrate depletion/carbohydrate loading cycle. Therefore a bodybuilder can potentially gain a significant amount of apparent mass with successful glycogen supercompensation.



An apparent increase in muscle mass is certainly a bonus for bodybuilders. Therefore, successfully glycogen supercompensating can certainly be a worthwhile process for these athletes. Since bodybuilders have much more muscle mass than the average person, larger carbohydrate intakes are likely to be required to maximize glycogen synthesis. Therefore, instead of the 25 grams per hour mentioned earlier, a large bodybuilder is likely to need closer to 40 grams (This is assuming that the bodybuilder has 40% more muscle than the average person). Since we are trying to maximize glycogen supercompensation in all muscles, we must glycogen deplete all muscles. This is accomplished by performing high repetition, high volume workouts for all body parts while on a low carbohydrate diet prior to glycogen loading.

The bodybuilder should be training the entire body over the three-day period with a large volume of high repetition exercises to enhance glycogen depletion. It is the total volume of work that will determine the degree of glycogen depletion so rest between sets should be adequate to allow a large volume of work to be performed. Bodybuilders should avoid lifting very heavy as high force eccentric contractions have been shown to interfere with glycogen synthesis (15) probably due to muscle microdamage. Additionally Doyle et al. (16) found that glycogen synthesis was 25% lower in muscle that had performed eccentric contractions 48 hours earlier. Although the bodybuilder might not normally train three days in a row, it is recommended in this case. This prevents the bodybuilder from having to remain on a low carbohydrate diet for more than three days. Determining the amount of carbohydrates that should be consumed will require some trial and error but the research literature might provide some clues. A study by Pascoe et al. (17) found that the glycogen synthesis rate following resistance exercise was 12.9 mmol/kg/hr. If you know the molecular weight of glucose and can convert mmol to grams and if we assume that each gram of glycogen is stored with 3 grams of water this would give us a value of approximately .43g/kg/hr (explaining the calculations is beyond the scope of this review). If we match carbohydrate intake to the glycogen synthesis rate this would equal 43 grams per hour for a 220 pound bodybuilder (100kg) and a total of approximately 1000g (4000 Calories) from carbohydrates in a 24 hour period. Ivy (11) recommends consuming a 1g/kg bolus (single feeding) immediately after exercise and adding protein to enhance the insulin response. Glycogen replenishment is very rapid for six hours after high intensity exercise (11) and glycogen concentrations can return to baseline levels within this six hour period if adequate carbohydrates are consumed (supercompensation occurs in the days that follow). Therefore providing a bolus as Ivy suggested might speed up the process relative to consuming a predetermined number of grams every 3 hours. On day 1 most of the carbohydrates should be in the form of simple sugars to enhance glycogen uptake. The degree of glycogen supercompensation can be estimated by the amount of weight gain. Recall that each gram of glycogen is stored with 3 grams of water. If a bodybuilder gained 1600 grams (3.5 pounds) then an extra 400 grams of glycogen was stored.

lina

The first article was very in depth and informative. Interesting that he would recommend EAS products first hand. Sounds like someone did well on his term paper

Robboe

The first article is good until he starts pushing supps. After that point i read with less interest.

Being held down by The Man

gopro

The key to carb loading is to start high and end low...immediately after depletion is when your body is most sensitive to storing carbs in muscle. As time goes by, this sensitivity decreases and the affinity to spill over into subcutaneous departments increases. If you begin your carb load on say a Wednesday, you should start at around 3 x your average daily amount of carbs...then on Thurs you will cut back to 2 x the amount and on Fri, a normal carb day.

This is a very simplified version of how a carb load should be done, but it just gives you an idea. People spill over because they try to increase carbs as they get closer to the show...this is wrong!

Of course, there is so much more involved...supplements, water manipulation, etc...but that is something that I work with on an individual level.

Monthly columnist for Muscular Development and Ironman magazines.

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