Marko Melamed

11/12/19
Keystone instructor

Principles of Carbohydrate Loading

Carbohydrate loading is a system that endurance athletes and some bodybuilders use to fill their
body’s glycogen stores with the objective of delaying fatigue and maximize their muscle size for
competing. This protocol gives the muscles the ability to super compensate glycogen stores
giving the athletes more energy reserves to perform longer and faster. This process requires to
deplete the muscle glycogen stores by reducing the carbs intake and exercise intense for a few
days. All of this is followed by a reloading phase over the next few days, when they increase
carbs intake and taper off exercise. The benefits of this procedure is that the body will super
compensate and stores as much as 2 to 3 times the amount of glycogen than normal. This process
begins seven days prior to prolonged endurance events and tournaments with multiple games or
matches lasting several hours.

This system may be appropriate for exercises that leads to large decrease in the amount of
glycogen in the muscles, for example biking or running. In these exercises, fatigue can occur
when glycogen levels get to low. Carb loading may reduce fatigue and improve performance by
2-3% for exercise lasting more than 90 minutes. One example of this is the “classic 6-day”. For
this, during the 1st three days, people exercise while consuming a low-carb diet (15% of its
calories from carbs). Combining exercise and low carb intake, decreases the body’s glycogen
stores. In the days 4 to 6, people consume a high-carb diet (70% of its calories from carbs). Here
they reduce exercise on day 4 and perform no exercise on days 5 and 6.

Sample diet
Breakfast: oats, milk, berries, nut butter, banana, and orange juice.
Snack: oats honey bars and dates.
Lunch: a sandwich of turkey, cheese, and tomato; roasted chickpeas, grapes, chocolate milk.
Snack: sweet potato with cinnamon, dark chocolate, and coconut water.
Dinner: white rice, butternut squash, chicken, salad with lettuce and veggies, and a sports drink.