Learning Path · Nutrition
Fueling for training
Seven steps through what the tissue burns, the glycogen battery, when to restock, water and salt, when a powder is actually warranted, oxygen riding on iron, and how Zone 2 thickens mitochondria.
For: Someone who trains seriously and does not want a shelf of endurance powders deciding the menu
Start with the engine. Fueling is not a shelf problem — it is what this contractile tissue burns, and how oxygen arrives at its door.
- Muscle SystemOpen in the atlas
The fastest fuel this tissue likes is glucose, stored as glycogen. Fibre is a different job: it feeds the gut, not this battery.
- Carbs & FiberOpen in the atlas
The battery has to be restocked, but the body handles the same mouthful of carbohydrate differently across the day. When you eat changes the metabolic window — not a 30-minute post-workout bottle.
- Meal timing · when matters as much as whatOpen in the atlas
Carbon is only half of fuel. Contraction runs on a sodium-potassium drop, and the blood has to stay full enough. What runs short is the compartment and the salt, not how many glasses you counted.
- Water & ElectrolytesOpen in the atlas
Powder earns a place when sweat is actually carrying salt out. For most people, food and water already cover it. The powder is for those hours of real sodium loss — not everyday water marketing.
- Electrolyte powdersOpen in the atlas
Fuel and salt can be in place and oxygen still has to ride haemoglobin to the fibre. Iron is that seat. Supplementing blindly and being truly short are two different kinds of danger.
- IronOpen in the atlas
Last, how to enlarge the engine itself. Zone 2 trains mitochondrial density and fat-oxidation capacity — the fueling ceiling rises here, not in beetroot powder or beta-alanine.
- Zone 2 — mitochondrial trainingOpen in the atlas