Articles
How Liquid Shot Delivers More Energy, Faster
By Dr. Luke Bucci, PhD
Dr. Bucci gets granular with the sugars and starches that make Liquid Shot the ultimate emergency fuel source when you’re at your absolute limit.
Caffeine and Endurance Performance
By Matt Hanson, EdD
Matt Hanson explains caffeines benefits, its potential pitfalls, and how Kona Mocha Liquid Shot is engineered to maximize the former while minimizing the latter.
Fueling for Endurance Races
By Matt Hanson, EdD
Dr. Hanson shares his tips about how to train to upgrade your race-day nutrition plan, not just your race-day performance.
Liquid Shot: Traditional Gels Are History
By Dr. Luke Bucci, PhD
When re-engineering Liquid Shot, we left no design choice unquestioned and no research or tech stone unturned. In this post, Dr. Bucci explains the rationale behind the latest formula.
Getting Somewhere while Going Nowhere
By Dr. Luke Bucci, PhD
Riding indoors is also radically different from riding outside.
In this blog installment, we share tips for how to approach fueling, recovery, and maintaining a mental edge during indoor training.
When to Cram Carbs In an Ultra-Endurance Event
One of the most frequent questions we get is how much carbs do I need to take (or, often, how much can I take) during my long-duration events, races, or training? This blog is a follow-up to the previous blog about increasing carbs/hour during endurance exercise, where Dr. Bucci answered that question. One thing he didn’t cover in that last blog is that, with higher carb intake, timing is everything, so in this blog, Dr. Bucci addresses when to go big on carbs.
How Many Carbs Should Endurance Athletes Really Consume Per Hour?
One of the most frequent questions we get is: How many carbs do I need to take during my long-duration events, races or training lasting more than three hours? The prevailing wisdom has long been set at 30-60 grams per hour (120-240 calories/hour), and usage directions for EFS & EFS-PRO are based on this time-tested range. But emerging research suggests athletes can ingest more and more carbs per hour: 90-140 grams or 360-560 Calories. That’s 1.5 to 19 times MORE carbs than the endurance experts have agreed upon for years!
Mythbusting Caffeine Habituation
The idea that habituation reduces caffeine’s effect on exercise performance is a myth that has been perpetrated by years of investigator reporting bias, unsupported anecdotal comments, and ambivalent study designs in many peer-reviewed articles over the years.
The real story is that no matter how much caffeine you normally ingest daily, taking it before and during exercise will still produce tangible performance benefits – or, in scientific terms, it’ll still be ergogenic. You will still run faster, farther, longer, burn more fat, spare more glycogen, and perform better physically if you ingest caffeine before exercise. Your physiology and biochemistry still respond favorably to caffeine and always have. So keep it up!
Caffeine as a Nootropic
Is caffeine a nootropic?
Short answer: YES! Calling caffeine a nootropic is a no-brainer; it’s the poster child, most prolific, and – arguably – best nootropic.
The Glycemic Index & Carbohydrate Fueling
The Glycemic Index (GI) is a characteristic of carbs in different foodstuffs that affects choosing what carbs to use during long-term exercise. Since glucose is by far the main sugar in the bloodstream, glycemic index tracks the change in blood glucose levels for 4-6 hours after eating on an empty stomach, and it’s measured by administering 100 grams (about a quarter pound) dry weight of a specific carb source. The area under the curve for the rise in blood sugar from 100 grams of glucose is defined as a GI = 100.
The Do’s, Don’ts, and Donuts of Fueling for Gravel Riding and Racing
By Burke Swindlehurst
So, you’ve been hearing a lot about this “gravel” thing lately, amiright? Color yourself intrigued. Indeed, gravel is on the tip of seemingly everyone’s tongue, and by now you’ve heard enough to know that there’s a lot to consider when looking to tackle this emerging genre of events.
There’s the bike, the tires, the tire pressure, the gearing, the tactics, the fashion—wait, what? Uh, yeah, we’ll not go there.
But there’s also another aspect to gravel that truly can make or break your day regardless of how dialed your rig is or how on-point your fanny pack game.
Fuel.
Rally Cycling has a “No Chain” Day at USPRO
Last month, Joey Rosskopf of Rally Cycling won the US national crit championship. His stablemate, Kyle Murphy, finished third after a day spent animating the race in a two-man break that depleted the strength of EF Education-Nippo, who were easily co-favorites with, of course, the dominant L39ION of Los Angeles.