Guide: Increasing Energy & Endurance; An Overview

Fri 21 May 2010

The nature of endurance based exercise means that it’s important to ensure you’re doing everything possible to provide your body with the essential nutrients it needs to perform at an optimum level, and minimise risk of fatigue and injury.

Key Points

• Consume 5-6 smaller meals with sufficient complex carbohydrates throughout the day
• Drink plenty of water throughout the day to stay hydrated
• Consume sufficient protein throughout the day to promote repair and recovery
• Use high quality carbohydrate supplements before, during and after training to provide the essential energy required for high intensity exercise

The Training

Stamina and endurance is a key part of a number of different types of sports and exercise. Carrying out regular endurance training results in a number of adaptations allowing for greater energy levels, greater tolerance for fatigue, and the completion of exercise workloads with greater ease. Carrying out the right type of training, fuelled by a sound nutrition and supplement plan can lead to increased stamina and endurance, along with improved health and well-being. Endurance training may relate to strength endurance needed during resistance type exercise, or endurance required during prolonged aerobic exercise bouts.

In order to improve stamina and endurance for both types, it is important to employ training specificity. This means making sure the nature of training is in line with the nature of competition. By repeatedly carrying out a specific type of exercise, your body will become more efficient at the type of exercise involved, meaning you will be able to complete it more easily with progressive training. Some research suggests that varied training schedules/patterns employed sparsely can help to aid performance in a specific exercise type, and furthermore explosive strength training that predominantly works fast twitch muscle fibres may help to improve performance in long-distance endurance exercise. As with all training programs, it is important to make sure the training is tailored to your individual needs in order to promote maximum results.

The Nutrition

For training and sports that involve stamina and endurance, it is important to ensure your body has the required energy levels to sustain prolonged exercise. Although we can use both fat and carbohydrate as the principle fuels to provide energy, it is carbohydrate that is the preferred fuel for sporting activity. Eating 5- 6 meals a day that contain sufficient complex carbohydrates such as brown rice and wholemeal cereals will ensure you are supplying your body with a sustained release of energy. Choosing low glycaemic carbohydrates such as these will mean a steady breakdown of the ingested carbohydrate into blood glucose, and therefore a stable energy release throughout the day. This will ensure you go into training sessions with the energy levels required to perform to your best potential. Each meal should be well balanced and include the right proportion of carbohydrate, protein and healthy fats (macronutrients). Making the right food choices will help to ensure you are getting the calories required for energy production from healthy sources, as opposed to ‘empty’ calories. It is important to make sure you don’t miss meals or have irregular eating patterns, as this can reduce metabolic rate, and leave you feeling tired and lethargic. Simple, or high GI carbohydrates such as white bread, potatoes and white rice, should only be consumed straight before, after, or during exercise, when your body needs a quick release energy source.

Consuming adequate protein along with carbohydrate both before and after exercise will help you to supply the energy required to train and compete harder, and allow you to recover properly following intense exercise. Using the right supplements at the right times can provide an effective, convenient way of ensuring you’re supplying your body with the nutrients it requires for optimum performance. OneOn has developed a number of proprietary blends designed to support your energy and training needs. They include OneOn Apollo (post-workout formula) which is packed with high quality carbohydrates and protein. OneOn Apollo can help to replace the fluid, carbohydrate, and electrolytes lost during exercise, and will help to repair and rebuild damaged muscle after training. OneOn also offers Karbo-Lyn™, a next generation supplement invented for the sole purpose of carbohydrate loading. It has been designed for elite athletes looking for a fast, easy, convenient, safe and high performance way to load the muscle with accessible muscle energy (glycogen).

As well as ensuring your body has the required energy levels for optimum performance, it is also important to ensure you stay hydrated. This means drinking enough fluid to match the rate of sweat loss during exercise. Furthermore, a lack of fluid intake can lead to dehydration which can seriously affect performance.

The Supplements

For a complete list of recommended supplements that can help visit our energy & endurance supplement section.