Carbs Equal to Steroids: New Nutrition Research for Functional Fitness Athletes

Oh no, he’s writing about carbs.  We’re all gonna get fat, and all of our followers will flock to other Instagram accounts.  It’s true, this article will cover some recent, hot off the presses research, that investigated performance and carbohydrate intake.  Keep reading to discover how much carbs can improve your performance.  Spoiler alert it’s as much as hard training on steroids!

Now, I know that last line has many of your bullshit meters in the red zone, but it’s accurate, or at least as accurate as we can be without a real study investigating steroid effects on functional fitness.  If you still don’t believe me, read this article about steroids and their performance effects by Greg Nuckols.

He found that on the whole, for strength sports, they gave a 10% boost in performance. They do give you more of a benefit for increasing your muscle mass, but that’s besides the point.  We are interested in performance, and carbs are a great way to increase it.

Keep in mind however, that I’m not saying that carbs and steroids are the same thing, only that these researchers found a similar improvement, by increasing carb intake.

Listen guys, I think athletes have had a fairly unhealthy relationship with carbs since it’s inception.  There have been a lot of myths and bad info out there that has further muddied the waters.  Carbs are not good or bad, they are simply one type of macronutrient that is key for your performance.  Before we get into the research let’s go over some basics about carbs, so we can all start on the same page.

There are three types of macronutrients your body uses, proteins, carbohydrates, and fat. Carb have approximately 4 calories per gram, by weight, and they primarily fuel our bodies for shorter term activities, less than one to two hours.  Anything longer than this and your body starts to burn fat and muscle as it’s primary source for fuel.

Once you ingest carbs they are converted to glycogen, which is related to glucose, that is used to fuel your muscles during exercise.  There is only a finite amount of glycogen that can be stored in your body at any one time.  When you run out, this is what marathoners experience when they hit the wall, or bonk.   To replenish your stores you have to eat more carbs.

I know your saying great Jake thanks for the biology lesson, but what does that mean for athletes? In short, it means that we must match our carb intake to our workload.  This is the key difference that most coaches don’t talk about.

If you like science based fitness articles,  click here to join the Tier Three Team. It’s totally free and thousands have already.  You’ll get the latest and greatest sent right to your inbox 

The Sport vs. The Lifestyle

This is an area that so many newish athletes have a hard time understanding.  What you see at regionals, or on ESPN is not the a normal lifestyle, that is functional fitness as a sport.

Most folks really just want to look good, feel strong, and hang out at the gym with their friends.  This is a far cry from someone who is attempting to compete in this as a sport, and as a corollary their nutrition requirements are vastly different.  Enter the research article.

The Latest Research

The paper is titled, “The Effect of a Moderately Low and High Carbohydrate Intake on Crossfit Performance.” As the title explains, it examines the effect of low vs high carbs on functional fitness athletes.  This was a 9 day study where a total of 18 male and female athletes, with about a year of experience, were placed in a low carb intake group or a high intake group. It’s important to note that the high intake group only increased their carb intake on the last three days, and maintained the same level as the low group for the other six days.

The participants were measured on the wod Rahoi, which was named after an FBI special agent assigned to the Hostage Rescue Team, who died on a training exercise.  The workout consists of:

---

“Rahoi“

Complete as many rounds as possible in 12 minutes of:
24 inch Box Jump, 12 reps
95 pound Thruster, 6 reps
6 Bar-facing burpees

---

The participants completed this wod on day 1, then redid it on day 5, resting in between.  This was done to assess any learning effects, i.e better pacing because you are more familiar with this workout.

After the second test on day 5, half the group was assigned to increase their carbs, while the other half maintained their current intake.  During this phase all participants completed normal wods on day 6 and 7, resting on day 8 before the final iteration of Rahoi on day 9.

All of this was tracked via My Fitness Pal app.  See, there’s a reason why I recommend it, even scientists think it’s a good tool.  

Results 

Once the participants completed their last iteration of Rahoi, researchers determined that the group that had a higher intake of carbs increased their performance by a whopping 10.9% vs 5.7% for the control group that did not increase their carb intake.

Remember from above that taking anabolic steroids gives you the same type of strength improvement, so 10% is nothing to sneer at.  It’s massive; however, we do need to discuss what exactly that means.

Discussion

This was only a limited increase in carbs right before a testing period.  So we know that this does in fact work for a limited duration.  I hope these researchers conduct a longer trial to see what effects constantly elevated carb intake has on hard training.

The second area we need to discuss, is the fact that these are newer athletes.  We know from a previous article discussing a ranking system for functional athletes, that these folks are probably intermediate athletes.

Now this means that almost any kind of intervention will have some kind of increase in their performance.  These researchers did a great job of controlling all the other variables they could, so we know the increase in performance is only a result of increased carb intake.

We also don’t know if this works for advance, elite, or international elite athletes.  My hunch is that you would get some increase in performance, probably not double digit increases, but we really don’t know till that research has been done.

Recommendations 

Before we can make any recommendations we have to first discuss what your goals are, your body type, and training history.  All of these factors will have an impact on your use of carbs.

If you are an experienced athlete with significant muscle mass, you can use more carbohydrates.  If you don’t have either of these advantages, then you will have to ingest less.  Most importantly is your training volume.

If you are going to the gym 3-5 times per week and doing an hour long class you should not eat a huge load of carbs all the time, but if you are doing extra WODs, cardio, or strength sessions, then you will need to be closer to the top end of the spectrum.

This is also a good method for the competitive season.  If you really want to do well in the open, you can increase your carb load 3 days before you plan on tackling the workout, and then return back to a more normal load for the rest of the week.

Check this chart out to see how to figure your specific amount of carbs.

Let’s go through this chart so you can better use it.  If you answer yes to these categories, then you can add 50g of carbs for each one. A Well muscled person is someone who has probably hit the advanced standard for our ranking system linked above.  High volume is someone who is over 5 wods/strength sessions per week.  Low body fat is roughly 15% or under for women, and 13% or under for men.  The important wod category could be a competition, or a big workout etc.

This will give you a rough idea where you should be for carb intake.  Remember, if you are elevating your carb intake for a competition, you only get that increase for 3 days prior, not forever.  Nice try guys.

If you want even more info on fitness and nutrition then check this out!

Review

I hope that we’ve cleared up some of the misconceptions about carbohydrates.  They are simply one variable in your nutrition plan.  That being said, the amount that you need will change from person to person, and day to day; however, you now have some good tools that get you in the right ball park.

So take some of the recommendations here, but don’t be afraid to modify them based on your own experiences, and hey, even if you can’t replicate the 10% increase that they did, you will still see great improvements, and oatmeal is much cheaper than Trenbolone.

If you liked this article feel free to sign up for our email list on the right, to receive the latest and greatest from the site when it comes out.  Also don’t be afraid to follow us on social media using the buttons below.

If you’re interested in increasing your performance in other ways, you should give Blonyx’s HMB+ Creatine product a try.  It increased my FRAN performance by 15% in one month.  Check this article out covering the science behind it, and my self experiment using Blonyx’s HMB+Creatine product.

You’ll never see an endorsement on this site for something we don’t believe in, so feel free to click on the link below, and help support this site at the same time.  Thanks.

The opinions and information expressed in this article are solely those of the author and are not affiliated with any corporation, group, public or private entity. This web site is not endorsed by, directly affiliated with, maintained, authorized, or sponsored by Crossfit Inc. All product and company names are the registered trademarks of their original owners. The use of any trade name or trademark is for identification and reference purposes only and does not imply any association with the trademark holder of their product brand.