Increasing endurance range- fasted training tips...?

[53x12]

The first study you link sums up that the CHO group had a slightly lower TTE and the fatmax was similar. Energy burned was nearly identical. Moreover the RER was lower in Fasted, as was vo2. Fat oxidation rate was higher in grams/min in CHO as well! CHO oxidation was higher as well. This study was also done at a reasonably low intensity and didn't address post exercise oxygen consumption, which is lower during CHO limited and fasted training.

So for the average Joe, the marginal cellular benefits aren't going to matter. I can't think of many sports that are further behind than cycling, even crossfitters are prescribing CHO intake again after a single study showed it' detriments to performance.

The point of the first article by Proeyen et al. was that "fasting is more effective than CHO to increase muscular oxidative capacity and at the same time enhances exercise-induced net IMCL degradation." Also don't forget that that study found that fasting was more "potent to stimulate CS and β-HAD activities than CHO. Finally, drop of blood glucose concentration during fasting exercise was prevented by fasting, but not by CHO." Their findings provide evidence to indicate that regular fasted training is a useful strategy to stimulate physiological adaptations in muscle that may eventually contribute to improve endurance exercise performance. That in and of itself shows me that it is a useful tool to include in my training regimen.

Here is the best point from the second link, which corroborates a pretty introductory course in physiology:

"However, to produce the same amount of ATP, oxidation of fatty acids requires more oxygen than the oxidation of CHO. For example, the complete oxidation of one molecule of glucose requires 6 molecules of oxygen, while the complete oxidation of stearic acid requires 26 molecules of oxygen."

Considering your o2 intake is relatively fixed, that sounds like a terrible way to produce energy in either pathway unless your goal is to go super low for a very long period of time. Or you are a WT rider that can already store almost 1.75x as much glycogen as a normal person and you might benefit from bumping that up to 1.78 so you don't get fined for taking gels in the last 10km of every climbing stage.

We're dealing with an OP that doesn't ride a very high volume and doesn't have a dedicated history of regimented training and dieting. Simple strategies first.

You are missing the point. There is plenty of published research showing that fasted state training helps and even increases VO2. That in and of itself is all I need to know and that I need to include it in my training regimen. Not to mention the fact that ProTour teams still do it.

Read the published article by Stannard et al. 2010.

Adaptations to skeletal muscle with endurance exercise training in the acutely fed versus overnight-fasted state.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20452283

The FAST group showed a significantly greater training-induced increase in VO(2max) and resting muscle glycogen concentration than FED

[Ahillock]

OP, I started a thread about a similar question to this thread last year: http://weightweenies.starbike.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=138143

A lot of great information in that thread. I can tell that I have benefited from incorporating into my training. There is also research that shows fasted training helps increase muscle glycogen storage ability. There is a good website that I learned a bit more about the benefits of this kind of training.

http://www.leangains.com/2010/05/fasted ... e-and.html

[KWalker]

The first study you link sums up that the CHO group had a slightly lower TTE and the fatmax was similar. Energy burned was nearly identical. Moreover the RER was lower in Fasted, as was vo2. Fat oxidation rate was higher in grams/min in CHO as well! CHO oxidation was higher as well. This study was also done at a reasonably low intensity and didn't address post exercise oxygen consumption, which is lower during CHO limited and fasted training.

So for the average Joe, the marginal cellular benefits aren't going to matter. I can't think of many sports that are further behind than cycling, even crossfitters are prescribing CHO intake again after a single study showed it' detriments to performance.

The point of the first article by Proeyen et al. was that "fasting is more effective than CHO to increase muscular oxidative capacity and at the same time enhances exercise-induced net IMCL degradation." Also don't forget that that study found that fasting was more "potent to stimulate CS and β-HAD activities than CHO. Finally, drop of blood glucose concentration during fasting exercise was prevented by fasting, but not by CHO." Their findings provide evidence to indicate that regular fasted training is a useful strategy to stimulate physiological adaptations in muscle that may eventually contribute to improve endurance exercise performance. That in and of itself shows me that it is a useful tool to include in my training regimen.

Here is the best point from the second link, which corroborates a pretty introductory course in physiology:

"However, to produce the same amount of ATP, oxidation of fatty acids requires more oxygen than the oxidation of CHO. For example, the complete oxidation of one molecule of glucose requires 6 molecules of oxygen, while the complete oxidation of stearic acid requires 26 molecules of oxygen."

Considering your o2 intake is relatively fixed, that sounds like a terrible way to produce energy in either pathway unless your goal is to go super low for a very long period of time. Or you are a WT rider that can already store almost 1.75x as much glycogen as a normal person and you might benefit from bumping that up to 1.78 so you don't get fined for taking gels in the last 10km of every climbing stage.

We're dealing with an OP that doesn't ride a very high volume and doesn't have a dedicated history of regimented training and dieting. Simple strategies first.

You are missing the point. There is plenty of published research showing that fasted state training helps and even increases VO2. That in and of itself is all I need to know and that I need to include it in my training regimen. Not to mention the fact that ProTour teams still do it.

Read the published article by Stannard et al. 2010.

Adaptations to skeletal muscle with endurance exercise training in the acutely fed versus overnight-fasted state.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20452283

The FAST group showed a significantly greater training-induced increase in VO(2max) and resting muscle glycogen concentration than FED

"Plenty of research" is literally 3 studies that Stannard has helped design. None of them involved what would be equal to intense cycling. The link that was pasted from British Cycling even says "the jury is out on fasted training".

You are excellent at taking things out of context and equating it with overall net efficacy. You're copy-pasting quotes without fully understanding what they mean, classic cherry-picking. Intra-muscle lipid oxidation, as noted in your second link is LESS efficient for producing ATP. The fact that it causes oxidative capacity to increase because more o2 passes through the mitochondria to be converted does not mean the kreb cycle is actually improved. Resting muscle glycogen supercompensates and then net normalizes. So if your limiter is glycogen capacity the day of or after fasted training than great, but recent studies on carbohydrate loading have not shown the mythical net performance benefit if one does not purposely deplete and sacrifice training. Which is what amateur cyclists reallllllly need to do to push the boundaries of their 10hrs a week of training.

A good study that is relevant to the OP: https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/article ... 014-0054-7.

"These findings indicate that body composition changes associated with aerobic exercise in conjunction with a hypocaloric diet are similar regardless whether or not an individual is fasted prior to training."

2016 study shows no net benefits of fasted training after "sleeping low": http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/8/12/755/pdf

And her study that demonstrated that LCHF diets impair aerobic performance even in something as easy as walking, which if your theory on energy metabolism was even remotely accurate would be impossible since it's a purely aerobic sport: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 73230/full

Anyways I'm out guys. Hopefully those interested have gotten information either way out of this thread.

Not sure why Leangains is cited as the entire premise of that diet is to do as little resistance training as possible and only eat to support retaining lean muscle mass during a diet. And that fasted resistance training has a terrible track record not limited to dramatically increased recovery time, testosterone suppression, and depletion of adrenal hormones over time (which is why Berkhan espouses super low volume methods).

[53x12]

"Plenty of research" is literally 3 studies that Stannard has helped design. None of them involved what would be equal to intense cycling. The link that was pasted from British Cycling even says "the jury is out on fasted training".

That is incorrect. There is plenty of published research that has looked at over-night fasting/glycogen depleted state/reduced carbo intake states and looked at exercise/endurance training. Not all of it is cycling, but you aren't going to get too much published research that specifically looks at ProTour riders performing "intense cycling" as you want to put it. That would be proprietary information that whatever team sponsored the study would want to keep for themselves.

What you need to do is look at the vast amount of published research looking at over-night fasting/glycogen depleted state/reduced carbo intake states and its influence on exercise and piece the data together. You won't get a perfectly designed study that looks at high level professional intense cycling. There just isn't a market for the government to fund a study that specific and narrow.

You are excellent at taking things out of context and equating it with overall net efficacy. You're copy-pasting quotes without fully understanding what they mean, classic cherry-picking.

Keep bringing the ad hominem attacks when you lack substance to your replies to my posts. You are the one that lacks a basic understanding of biochemistry and human physiology. You stated that ketosis burned ketones and not necessarily fat cells, but you don't understand that to get ketone bodies for energy, you first need to get fatty acids (from which ketone bodies come from) and you get fatty acids from lipids = fat cells. So please don't go on about trying to degrade what I have tried informing you about from my training and education background when you are the one that is copy pasting things that you think you know about, but don't.

Intra-muscle lipid oxidation, as noted in your second link is LESS efficient for producing ATP. The fact that it causes oxidative capacity to increase because more o2 passes through the mitochondria to be converted does not mean the kreb cycle is actually improved. Resting muscle glycogen supercompensates and then net normalizes. So if your limiter is glycogen capacity the day of or after fasted training than great, but recent studies on carbohydrate loading have not shown the mythical net performance benefit if one does not purposely deplete and sacrifice training. Which is what amateur cyclists reallllllly need to do to push the boundaries of their 10hrs a week of training.

That is why you want to do some fasted state training as you want to shift the crossover point of your metabolic efficiency graph. We have already gone over this. By training in a fasted state/glycogen depleted state, you become more efficient at producing ATP from lipids->fatty acids->ketone bodies. By training in a fasted state, VO2 max is INCREASED and you also have an improvement in glycogen use and storage. That is why you do some training in a overnight fasted state/glycogen depleted state.

A good study that is relevant to the OP: https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/article ... 014-0054-7.
"These findings indicate that body composition changes associated with aerobic exercise in conjunction with a hypocaloric diet are similar regardless whether or not an individual is fasted prior to training."

Which is in contrast to the research published out of Northumbria University in the British Journal of Nutrition study that found people can burn up to 20% more body fat by exercising in the AM after an overnight fast than one could by exercising post-breakfast (postprandial) .

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 091425.htm

2016 study shows no net benefits of fasted training after "sleeping low": http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/8/12/755/pdf

Which is in contrast to the "The FAST group showed a significantly greater training-induced increase in VO(2max) and resting muscle glycogen concentration than FED": http://www.jsams.org/article/S1440-2440(10)00073-3/fulltext

And her study that demonstrated that LCHF diets impair aerobic performance even in something as easy as walking, which if your theory on energy metabolism was even remotely accurate would be impossible since it's a purely aerobic sport: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 73230/full

By training when CHO is low in the body/blood due to overnight-fast training/glycogen depletion training, you are able to increase the capacity to store glycogen in trained muscles. Also, the current scientific understanding to how endurance training up regulates oxidative metabolism in the muscles is that rate limiting metabolic proteins are unregulated by the effect of increases in gene transcription in response to exercise. However, CHO intake blunts/limits the exercise-induced increase in the mRNA content of several genes.

All of this can be cross-referenced with these citations:

1) Pilegaard H, Neufer PD. Transcriptional regulation of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4 in skeletal muscle during and after exercise. Proc Nutr Soc 63: 221–226, 2004.

2) Civitarese AE, Hesselink MK, Russell AP, Ravussin E, Schrauwen P. Glucose ingestion during exercise blunts exercise-induced gene expression of skeletal muscle fat oxidative genes. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 289: E1023–E1029, 2005.

3) De Bock K, Richter EA, Russell AP, Eijnde BO, Derave W, Ramaekers M, Koninckx E, Leger B, Verhaeghe J, Hespel P. Exercise in the fasted state facilitates fibre type-specific intramyocellular lipid breakdown and stimulates glycogen resynthesis in humans. J Physiol 564: 649–660, 2005.

4) Schrauwen P, Hesselink MK, Vaartjes I, Kornips E, Saris WH, Giacobino JP, Russell A. Effect of acute exercise on uncoupling protein 3 is a fat metabolism-mediated effect. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 282: E11–E17, 2002.

[boysa]

How would caffeine/coffee ingestion affect any of this? Curious, because during all of my fasted training I always had one or two... sometimes three... double espresso pre-ride. Does this make any difference?

Or what about ingestion of Omega 3 supplements?

[53x12]

^ caffeine encourages fat metabolism. Best to drink black or with only heavy whipping cream. All the other creamers and flavor adders have too much sugar.

[boysa]

Milk? Creamer? Blasphemy! Haha. Espresso is one of my passions. I have often been told I should run a cafè/bicycle repair shop out of my home. Maybe in my next location, wherever that may be. But I digress...

I thought it had an effect on fat metabolism. One of the things I find most interesting is how I can ride and ride without fuel, but once I have a single bite of something, immediately the hunger pangs start and I need to keep eating. And drinking. Through all my experimentation, if nothing else I have garnered a keen understanding of my body and the smallest sensations.

[raspaa]

Haha... I don't think OP knew what a can of worms he was opening! This is such a fascinating topic.

lol, had no idea. However, many have put in effort and time into their responses, so there is a lot to learn from it...hopefully for others who are interested in this topic as well!

I'm pretty lean as is, 5'9 ~138lb, about 3.64 w/kg....solid numbers I think. Weight loss is not my goal...let's just get that out of the way.

I cannot disagree that there needs to be a better fueling strategy, and for me personally, I think I may need to replace high GI-index foods (bananas) with low GI-index carbs for events >4 hours to control blood sugar level. I think that's a good start.

The event I'm gearing for is a century with ~12k ft of climbing.

I wanted to learn specifically more about fasted training, not because I am going to ONLY rely on burning fat, but rather pushing my body to burn more fat, which, in turn, extends endurance range. My theory is that no matter how well you fuel, you can never replenish the glucose/energy/carbs fast enough for your body to consume during an event as such. It's never 1:1. This is where I believe fasted training would be of benefit.

Appreciate all the wisdom here, thanks for sharing!

[Ahillock]

Not sure why Leangains is cited as the entire premise of that diet is to do as little resistance training as possible and only eat to support retaining lean muscle mass during a diet. And that fasted resistance training has a terrible track record not limited to dramatically increased recovery time, testosterone suppression, and depletion of adrenal hormones over time (which is why Berkhan espouses super low volume methods).

The reason why you wouldn't understand why I posted it was because you didn't even read it. I posted it because it showed that fasted state training increases VO2 max, increases muscle glycogen content, and some interesting data regarding citrate synthase and 3-hydroxy-CoA dehydrogenase production by gender. But you would have to read the article first before commenting on it just by the name of the website.

[KWalker]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8730603

"It is concluded that ingesting a fat-rich diet during an endurance training programme is detrimental to improvement in endurance. This is not due to a simple lack of carbohydrate fuel, but rather to suboptimal adaptations that are not remedied by short-term increased carbohydrate availability." womp womp

Don't understand physiology yet you are the one that somehow believes ketosis and fat adaptation is efficient despite the fact that they are an incredibly inefficient way to produce atp from oxygen. One of the most basic aspect of the krebs cycle. Anyways, you clearly have so much more passion for the interwebs and this topic so I concede.

Or here is a basic premise that is the foundation of empirical inquiry- what, of this "evidence", concludes in a statistically significant manner on a similar population that any of these modalities produce net long-term improvements in the outcomes desired by this thread? Cell signaling bullshit aside, where is that proof? That's why I called it a hack- at the end of the day the few studies that have tried to determine such an outcome show no net improvement, and in more cases net detriment.

Fascinating thread? This topic is years old in other sports, but cyclists tend to cling to ideas that have since passed. But don't trust Louise Burke, it's only been her entire career and she's only worked with hundreds of athletes from all endurance sports...

53x12 apparently can't read past abstracts, but if you find that approach compelling by all means do follow his advice. I guess the approach of picking a bunch of things that could be indicative then produces truth?

Take for example the study, which he doesn't link for some reason "Beneficial adaptations..." done in 1985. All it does is list possible benefits, but is not a statistically significant comparison of the benefits of multiple approaches.

Or loving the AMPK-based studies, despite that they do not prove any increase in actual performance nor bodyfat reduction in the case of this thread. No studies that show a long term net increase in fat oxidation despite short term increases. So, when the OP goes to do their century ride they can either remain LCHF and limit intensity and increase PE, or resume a normal diet and gain nothing.

[tranzformer]

Anyways I'm out guys. Hopefully those interested have gotten information either way out of this thread.

I thought you were out Karsten? Back for more it seems like. 53x12 has done a great service in providing data, research studies and explanations of what some fasted state training thrown into a regular training regimen can do. You Karsten, are the one going down a completely different discussion thread that this one didn't set out to answer or discuss. Why are you talking about the ketogenic diet and high fat low carb diet? No one has talked about that or advocated for that. You are such a tool. Go ride your bike....oh wait you don't have one and have left the sport. Looks like you have too much idle time on your hands to just post BS and just to argue to argue. Go find a new sport to participate in as it seems you need to get some exercise going on for your health.

[53x12]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8730603

"It is concluded that ingesting a fat-rich diet during an endurance training programme is detrimental to improvement in endurance. This is not due to a simple lack of carbohydrate fuel, but rather to suboptimal adaptations that are not remedied by short-term increased carbohydrate availability." womp womp

You don't have very good reading comprehension if you think this thread is about a high fat/low carb diet for cycling and in particular for racing. I have not advocated a ketogenic diet. Not sure anyone has in this thread. So you can take your womp womp back as it has nothing to do with this thread. A ketogenic diet is for another thread topic.

Don't understand physiology yet you are the one that somehow believes ketosis and fat adaptation is efficient despite the fact that they are an incredibly inefficient way to produce atp from oxygen. One of the most basic aspect of the krebs cycle. Anyways, you clearly have so much more passion for the interwebs and this topic so I concede.

I am not advocating a ketogenic diet. Never said such things. I have advocated for a few fasted state/glyocgen depleted state training to get the benefit of (1) shifting the crossover point of your metabolic efficiency graph, (2) increase VO2 max and (3) increase muscle glycogen storage, (4) improved whole body fat utilization. That is the point of incorporating a fasted state training into a training regimen. No one has said to only do fasted state training for all your rides. No one has said to live on a ketogenic diet. The fact that you keep bringing those up tells me you have poor reading comprehension ability, or you are trolling. Might be both.

Or here is a basic premise that is the foundation of empirical inquiry- what, of this "evidence", concludes in a statistically significant manner on a similar population that any of these modalities produce net long-term improvements in the outcomes desired by this thread? Cell signaling bullshit aside, where is that proof? That's why I called it a hack- at the end of the day the few studies that have tried to determine such an outcome show no net improvement, and in more cases net detriment.

Fascinating thread? This topic is years old in other sports, but cyclists tend to cling to ideas that have since passed. But don't trust Louise Burke, it's only been her entire career and she's only worked with hundreds of athletes from all endurance sports...

Fasted state training has been used in cycling since the 1950s/1960s and is still be used today. I have already provided way more published articles supporting the benefit of a fasted state/glycogen depleted state into a training plan. The cell signaling aspect is not bullshit. Regardless of how much you want to disregard it. Again, you will not get a research study with thousands and thousands of participants. There just isn't going to be government or private founding funding for this kind of research study of any large (i.e. expensive) type of research study. You will need to take the limited studies we already have on this topic + what current team docs for ProTour teams are saying.

Louise Burke? What about what Joe Friel, Dr. Andrew Coggan, and Dr. James Morton? If anything, I believe what Dr. Andrew Coggan and Joe Friel have done on this subject.

53x12 apparently can't read past abstracts, but if you find that approach compelling by all means do follow his advice. I guess the approach of picking a bunch of things that could be indicative then produces truth?

The reason I posted the abstracts was to refute your statement there were only 3 published studies on this subject and that Stannard was involved with all of them. You were wrong then, you are wrong now. I have read all the articles that I posted the abstracts for. The reason I posted the abstracts is that there is no easy way for me to legally post the full articles, people like you wouldn't take the time to read the whole article and for the rest of the members reading this thread the abstract provides the gist of the research article to get the point.

Take for example the study, which he doesn't link for some reason "Beneficial adaptations..." done in 1985. All it does is list possible benefits, but is not a statistically significant comparison of the benefits of multiple approaches.

That published article by Van Proeyen from 1985 is one of the abstracts that I posted. I don't need to provide the link. Go to Pubmed and enter all the data and pull it up yourself. You have the authors names, title, date of publication and more importantly I provided the DOI and PMID information. Would take you 15 seconds to pull it up yourself.

The reason I posted that Van Proeyen article was because it showed that fasted state training lead to being more effective than carbohydrate training in increasing muscular oxidative capacity and it also enhanced net intramyocellular lipid breakdown.

Or loving the AMPK-based studies, despite that they do not prove any increase in actual performance nor bodyfat reduction in the case of this thread. No studies that show a long term net increase in fat oxidation despite short term increases. So, when the OP goes to do their century ride they can either remain LCHF and limit intensity and increase PE, or resume a normal diet and gain nothing.

Again, you don't understand how research studies are funded. I have had to write and submit R01, R43, TL1...etc. grants to the NIH for funding. To get the kind of study that you want for any large amount of participants, to have a look at the signaling pathways of athlete in a fasted state training group vs. a carbohydrate rich study and then to look at long term net increase in fat oxidation or increase in performance just isn't a study that would get funded. There is no interest at the NIH level to fund something this minute and non-applicable to the general public or the general public health. That is why you have these small studies where a researcher is able to do them pretty inexpensively on the side of other projects or with limited funding from some other source. That is why you have to piece together the studies that are already published, accepted them for what they have shown and stop trying to project the kind of research that you want done onto what has already been done and shown.

The Pilegaard 2004 article that I referenced earlier showed that PDK4 expression was increased from a fasted state training. Their study wasn't looking at whether this had net impact on performance, it was looking at what PDK4 did during a fasted state.

The Civitarese 2005 article that I referenced earlier showed that glucose ingestion during exercise decreases the expression of genes involved in lipid metabolism rather than increasing genes involved in carbohydrate metabolism.

The De Bock 2005 article that I referenced earlier showed that fasted state facilitates fibre type-specific intramyocellular lipid breakdown and stimulates glycogen resynthesis.

The Schrauwen 2002 article that I referenced earlier showed that increase in uncoupling protein (UCP3) expression appears to be an effect of prolonged elevation of plasma FFA levels and/or increased fatty acid oxidation. In the fasted state, UCP3L mRNA expression was increased significantly and wasn't in the glucose group. Acute exercise on its own had no effect on UCP3 protein levels.

What those studies show is that at a biochemical and protein level, the body makes adaptations to training in a fasted state. The body becomes more efficient at this and leads to what we have already talked about. That fasted state training leads to: 1) shifting the crossover point of your metabolic efficiency graph, (2) increase VO2 max and (3) increase muscle glycogen storage, (4) improved whole body fat utilization. Even some research showing depleted state leads to increased mitochondrial biogenesis.

Just for completeness of this topic of fasted state training, I will provide more research studies supporting its use in a training program.





^ Both of those published articles showed a trained athlete, uses more fat than an untrained individual during intensive exercise (at same intensity level). Reason would dictate, that a trained athlete would want to optimize and train this system to be as efficient as possible. Don't miss this point "the better performance by the well trained group was explained by their nearly threefold higher rates of fat oxidation at high intensity."

[KarlC]

..... however, if your goal is to ride farther, you need to ride farther. There is no substitute for the miles.

So simple, so true !

[WinterRider]

Interesting thread. I did forget to duck once and got smacked by a flying article. Happens...

Marginal gains .. the elite cyclist ingests chems .. "juice" that props up performance. I question if their routines are valid for the 99.9% watching.... wannabee amateurs. I've been told .. having no interest in pro cycling .. that selecting the 'wind shield' riders for a team means being able to clear said chems fast enough to fly under the 'rooles' radar. Have no idea if that is valid.

Humans evolved storing adipose tissue for hard times. Doubt a 100 mile ride qualifies as such knowing the fridge is loaded post ride. The balance between fat and carb utilization is genetically specific to each carbon unit. The many play with this scenario to enrich their wallets .. primarily. Hard won knowledge requires the application of the real estate between one's ears for each genetic map. Sorting internet verbiage is more a waste of time once one understands the basic framework.

[waltthizzney]

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