Thanks! These are some of my favorite videos to make, but also take way more time and emotional energy than some other types. I hope to keep doing them though. It's a great benefit to not being bound by an upload schedule like full time content creators.
Very good video. I learned a lot. Thanks for condensing all those science papers into one vid and practical sheet. Appreciate your effort. Sure gonna use it.
Glad it was helpful! I would love some feedback on it's use. I've been using the sheet to plan supplemental drink for my last few very long rides and it's working pretty well. Getting new eyes on it will certainly find problems I can't see as the author.
That was great! Thank you. I am suprised you have so few views. I would suggest changing the name b/c you really give a lot more than a new ingredient. Well done.
@@overbikedrandonneuring yeah, b/c this is important. I actually found it from your other video then almost didn't watch it. You literally give a solid lecture on this stuff and PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW! :) lol
Thanks for the video! It's been very helpful and insightful. I'm currently trying out both of your excel sheets, and I'm seeing to find a good integration, for example also including temperature (which I assume changes sweat rates), as well as HR (BPM), as a proxy/metric for differing intensities. Maybe interesting to also look into?
Thanks for the recommendation! I agree, it absolutely would be useful if it could be done accurately. Unfortunately, both heat response and heart rate at intensities are quite complex and individualized to account for with confidence. I leave it to the end user to input sweat rate based on historical record of temperatures and RPE. The RPE column could be replaced with Dr. Coggan Zone or Avg. HR if preferable. Your comment does get me thinking more about Wet Bulb Globe Temperature instead of absolute temps.... Still, with only a little practice fueling by app or spreadsheet, a baseline individual formula starts to appear which often needs only minor adjustment for specific conditions. My little spreadsheets can be thought of as a sandbox to experiment with. I highly rate the Saturday: Pro Fuel & Hydration app for those who want control over more variables and more specificity in recommendations.
Nice video! I’ll have to give sodium citrate a try! Got a couple questions for you. Do you take into consideration the osmolarity of your mix? My understanding is in the 70kg rider example, 72g of sugar in a 600ml bottle would be quite hypertonic, leading to a high risk of stomach issues and inefficient absorption from the stomach into the body. Is this something you’ve experienced? Also, would body weight even matter in the calculation? We wouldn’t be trying to replace all of the energy losses per hour through ingesting carbs because we’re limited by the absorption rate of the stomach. So while a 90kg rider may burn more calories per hour than a 60 kg rider, their stomachs would act in the same way by only absorbing similar amounts of carbs per hour, right?
Hi Brandon, thanks for watching, and very good questions. Regarding osmolarity, my personal sweat rate is quite high, and target carb intake is moderate, so having too concentrated a mixture is not an issue. There does seem to be some conflict in whether one is targeting complete fueling or more complete hydration with carb concentrations. Rowlands, Kopetschny, & Badenhorst (2022) found isotonic concentrations to hydrate the best, for example. I've personally found 10% carb concentration trouble free as long as I stay hydrated. Dr. Harrison over at Saturday has suggested up to 14% concentrations may work in a hydrated state, but I've had no interest to test that one out myself. The example in the video was just to illustrate how the calculations work. Someone with a low sweat rate and high carb target may have difficulty balancing fuel and hydration though. WRT body weight, it will have a significant impact on sweat and the related salt loss rates. Research on carb ingestion rates by body size has not been tackled to the best of my knowledge. There is still little agreement on average size athletes, so I don't expect that variable to be addressed any time soon. Body size and height are linked to stomach size though, and thus surface area too. By my back of the napkin calcs, the difference could be 20% or more stomach surface area in a large, tall person. With all of the variables, there will be great variation within similar groups and across individuals. The calculator should allow users to test different values to find suitable solutions.
Hey Brandon, I wanted to follow up with you on the body size effect on carb absorption. Research now supports that body size correlates with carb absorption capacity. The average small subject oxidized 48g/h exogenous glucose while the average large subject oxidized 61g/hr, with their largest subject topping 70g/hr. This matches my "20% or more" estimate quite well. Authors also suppose organ size explains this difference. www.researchgate.net/publication/381201288_Exogenous_glucose_oxidation_during_exercise_is_positively_related_to_body_size
Excellent video, as always. I wonder what your thoughts are about Protein intake strategy, especially on multi day events 600k-1500k and further, PBP / TCR
Thank you! I consider carb drinks to be supplemental, so plenty of regular food should be eaten as well. Of that regular food, moderate levels of fat and protein feel good to eat and help with satiety, but foods should still generally be carb focused for energy availability. I've found it's easy to overeat fat, protein, or fiber during the day especially with roadside food options. These foods sit heavily in the stomach or cause stomach aches, which can harm future fueling. If you've seen my video on sleep, I recommend maximizing sleep, hopefully 5+ hours per night. A large, balanced meal (fat, protein, carbs, veg/fiber) that includes significant protein eaten before a nice sleep should maximize protein availability for tissue repair/recovery, minimize stomach aches, and facilitate a BM in the morning for a fresh start. Carb biased days with a big balanced meal at night helped me maintain weight for over 5 months of thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Carb drinks are a nice modification of that strategy to support shorter, more intense activities like randonneuring.
Would I use your calculator instead of Saturday app because yours takes into account body weight and you can calculate needs for multiple days? Any other reasons to use your calculator? Do you still use the Saturday App? It seems that a person could use the Saturday app to plan out each day separately and then add them together for a total?
Cheers, thanks for watching! Row 3-4 offer simple descriptive guidance for common sweat rate, sodium, and carbs/kg/hr. The hover text in row 2 set boundaries for extreme situations. If B7 and C7 are not populating, their equations may have been changed accidentally. You can download a new sheet or input B7 as =$B$2*A4 and C7 as =$C$2/0.267*B7/1000000.
Thanks! Other components of sweat can be easily replaced with whole foods from a reasonable diet. Most randonneurs I see eat 3-4 meals per day and many snacks of real food too. There are pretty large reserves the body can draw from to balance their losses. The research I looked at regarding an imbalance in other elements of sweat were focused on other medical conditions as a cause, rather than exercise. Sodium balance is more sensitive and has a relatively small reserve to draw from compared to magnesium or calcium. Maybe in an extreme race situation, a pure liquid diet and more complete replacement of all lost sweat elements would be called for. I believe Strasser did something like that for his 24 hour distance record.
I set it up the link download an excel file of the Google doc. I had issues trying to share as a webpage or Google doc before, so hoped this would be trouble free. Is anything in your download folder?
With regards to fats and protein, is there really no performance benefit (if one is not concerned about calorific balance e.g. in a race) from including a certain amount of them? Can the body not process even a few grams of fats or proteins per hour in addition to the carbs?
I always consume plenty of fat and protein from whole foods on long rides, especially around dinner time or before sleeping on 400k+ rides. Fat used as energy in a carb fueled athlete seems to come mostly from stored fat, rather than exogenous fat though (Muscella, 2020 for a review on the topic). Protein is also certainly consumed for energy, although most studies I've seen compare a set carb intake to the same carb intake plus extra protein. Their result then can only conclude that more calories = better performance. I'd recommend a solid base of whole food throughout each day, and to use drink mix as a vehicle to better meet the very high water, carb, and sodium needs of endurance exercise. The mix is not intended to be an all-in-one energy source.
Thank you for the awesome videos! A quick question if I may. What is your method of dividing salt and sugar during the ride, considering no scale or a spoon are at hand?
When poured from a bag, the sugar in grams is about equal to milliliter measurements on a bottle, a 500ml bottle will hold about 500g of sugar, maybe a bit less. Pack sodium citrate (or salt) in separate little tubs or baggies at home so that one tub/bag mixes with the 1 bottle of sugar. Then just shake it well. Koolaid packet or other flavor powder can be added to the sodium citrate at home to make it a quick process. Wish we had old style Koolaid packs here in Korea. Maybe time to import some.
Awesome video! What are your thoughts on a hyper concentrated drink mix supplemented with plain water from another bottle? I am starting to experiment and was able to easily dissolve 425gr of sugar in a bottle from which I would take a sip once in a while. I knew I had to have the bottle finished within X hours. Takes a bit more managing, but is much easier to cary and refill. I would simply need to add Sodium Citrate to the mix and call it a day.
Thanks! Since this video was made, I've tried the Jesse Coyle syrup preparation and like it. Doing a little prep and heating up the water/sugar mix to completely dissolve the sugar helps with mouth feel and makes it easier to consume. It's still lighter in texture than a gel. I like being able to separate hydration and fueling as long as I keep close to a plan. Having sodium with the syrup keeps the two goals somewhat intertwined. Taking a giant swig of the syrup when energy feels low is nice, as it having plenty of plain water available. Having 2 clean bottles of water is nice too, since sometime splashing water to cool off is helpful. I think my teeth suffer less abuse with the syrup + fresh water system. Give it a try and report back!
Did you look into potassium for your drink mix? It is usually included alongside sodium in commercial electrolyte mixes, as well as medical Oral Rehydration Salts. I'm wondering how important it is for a homemade mix. And what about magnesium and its relationship with cramping? If you haven't seen it yet, this TH-cam series is relevant: th-cam.com/video/XgIfC3TnpNU/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for the link, I look forward to watching those. Good to see backpackers being more mindful of performance nutrition. I thru-hiked the AT (2009) and PCT (2011), and typical food choices were pretty suspect. I managed to avoid losing much weight on the PCT with a heavy fueling strategy. I would allocate about 1200 kcal of snacks per day and enjoy what I called 'double dinners'. It's been a while since the research was fresh in my mind, but I remember that potassium stores in the body are pretty robust and the amount lost in sweat is quite small compared to sodium. Maybe 1/10th the concentration IIRC. I think urine, stool, and potentially vomit have higher potassium concentration which is why it is common in ORS solutions, since those are made for sick people rather than athletes. If one is eating decent quality food regularly and has no relevant health conditions, no potassium should be needed in a supplementary drink mix. A pure liquid or sports nutrition diet over several days without real food, such as some RAAM racers do would require mixes to have potassium and other electrolytes too. As far as exercise induced cramping goes, it is generally agreed to be a complex problem, with the two main causes thought to be dehydration/electrolyte imbalance and the other simple overexertion. Here is a review on exercise cramping: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6901412/ Another recent review found magnesium to be unlikely to help reduce exercise induced cramping. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8094171/ My perspective is proper fueling using concepts in this video or tools like the Saturday App manage dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, and allow a higher work load for longer before overexertion is reached. Together, these reduce cramping frequency. I've noticed research designs often ignore carb intake. For example, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7962362/pdf/12970_2021_Article_414.pdf, uses a ORS vs water methodology, and the ORS outperforms water for preventing cramping. The paper talks a lot about the electrolyte component of the ORS helping, but fails to acknowledge the possible beneficial effect of having 38g of glucose after an hour of exercise versus none. Same with bananas as a folk remedy. Is it mineral content or the carbs? I would venture to say carbs, water, and electrolytes all do their part.
![Hydration - electrolytes, supplements, sports drinks, & performance effects [AMA 33 Sneak Peek]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tcMfBS3BMjY/mqdefault.jpg)
Excellent video! Please make more like it. Love the comprehensive science paper coverage.
Thanks! These are some of my favorite videos to make, but also take way more time and emotional energy than some other types. I hope to keep doing them though. It's a great benefit to not being bound by an upload schedule like full time content creators.
Totally distracted by that butterfly on your shoulder during the intro 🙂
It hitched a ride for another 10 minutes or so after that shot.
Outstanding presentation! I always learn something that I can apply immediately.
Very good video. I learned a lot. Thanks for condensing all those science papers into one vid and practical sheet. Appreciate your effort. Sure gonna use it.
Glad it was helpful! I would love some feedback on it's use. I've been using the sheet to plan supplemental drink for my last few very long rides and it's working pretty well. Getting new eyes on it will certainly find problems I can't see as the author.
Thanks for making this!
Amazing information, thank you 😊 I downloaded your bottle calculator. Ride on !
Thank you. Love the way you talk and explain. It is easy to follow and understand. Not that one tone fact bombs from most others
Thank you for the kind words! I loved researching and making this video and am glad you found it helpful and enjoyable.
What a great video! You are one of my favorite youtubers, keep it up! Cheers from Brazil
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoy the content
That was great! Thank you. I am suprised you have so few views. I would suggest changing the name b/c you really give a lot more than a new ingredient. Well done.
Thank you for enjoying and for the feedback. I'll change the title a bit and see if it helps.
@@overbikedrandonneuring yeah, b/c this is important. I actually found it from your other video then almost didn't watch it. You literally give a solid lecture on this stuff and PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW! :) lol
Thanks for the video! It's been very helpful and insightful. I'm currently trying out both of your excel sheets, and I'm seeing to find a good integration, for example also including temperature (which I assume changes sweat rates), as well as HR (BPM), as a proxy/metric for differing intensities. Maybe interesting to also look into?
Thanks for the recommendation! I agree, it absolutely would be useful if it could be done accurately. Unfortunately, both heat response and heart rate at intensities are quite complex and individualized to account for with confidence. I leave it to the end user to input sweat rate based on historical record of temperatures and RPE. The RPE column could be replaced with Dr. Coggan Zone or Avg. HR if preferable. Your comment does get me thinking more about Wet Bulb Globe Temperature instead of absolute temps....
Still, with only a little practice fueling by app or spreadsheet, a baseline individual formula starts to appear which often needs only minor adjustment for specific conditions. My little spreadsheets can be thought of as a sandbox to experiment with. I highly rate the Saturday: Pro Fuel & Hydration app for those who want control over more variables and more specificity in recommendations.
Nice video! I’ll have to give sodium citrate a try! Got a couple questions for you. Do you take into consideration the osmolarity of your mix? My understanding is in the 70kg rider example, 72g of sugar in a 600ml bottle would be quite hypertonic, leading to a high risk of stomach issues and inefficient absorption from the stomach into the body. Is this something you’ve experienced?
Also, would body weight even matter in the calculation? We wouldn’t be trying to replace all of the energy losses per hour through ingesting carbs because we’re limited by the absorption rate of the stomach. So while a 90kg rider may burn more calories per hour than a 60 kg rider, their stomachs would act in the same way by only absorbing similar amounts of carbs per hour, right?
Hi Brandon, thanks for watching, and very good questions. Regarding osmolarity, my personal sweat rate is quite high, and target carb intake is moderate, so having too concentrated a mixture is not an issue. There does seem to be some conflict in whether one is targeting complete fueling or more complete hydration with carb concentrations. Rowlands, Kopetschny, & Badenhorst (2022) found isotonic concentrations to hydrate the best, for example. I've personally found 10% carb concentration trouble free as long as I stay hydrated. Dr. Harrison over at Saturday has suggested up to 14% concentrations may work in a hydrated state, but I've had no interest to test that one out myself. The example in the video was just to illustrate how the calculations work. Someone with a low sweat rate and high carb target may have difficulty balancing fuel and hydration though.
WRT body weight, it will have a significant impact on sweat and the related salt loss rates. Research on carb ingestion rates by body size has not been tackled to the best of my knowledge. There is still little agreement on average size athletes, so I don't expect that variable to be addressed any time soon. Body size and height are linked to stomach size though, and thus surface area too. By my back of the napkin calcs, the difference could be 20% or more stomach surface area in a large, tall person. With all of the variables, there will be great variation within similar groups and across individuals. The calculator should allow users to test different values to find suitable solutions.
Hey Brandon, I wanted to follow up with you on the body size effect on carb absorption. Research now supports that body size correlates with carb absorption capacity. The average small subject oxidized 48g/h exogenous glucose while the average large subject oxidized 61g/hr, with their largest subject topping 70g/hr. This matches my "20% or more" estimate quite well. Authors also suppose organ size explains this difference. www.researchgate.net/publication/381201288_Exogenous_glucose_oxidation_during_exercise_is_positively_related_to_body_size
Excellent video, as always.
I wonder what your thoughts are about Protein intake strategy, especially on multi day events 600k-1500k and further, PBP / TCR
Thank you! I consider carb drinks to be supplemental, so plenty of regular food should be eaten as well. Of that regular food, moderate levels of fat and protein feel good to eat and help with satiety, but foods should still generally be carb focused for energy availability. I've found it's easy to overeat fat, protein, or fiber during the day especially with roadside food options. These foods sit heavily in the stomach or cause stomach aches, which can harm future fueling.
If you've seen my video on sleep, I recommend maximizing sleep, hopefully 5+ hours per night. A large, balanced meal (fat, protein, carbs, veg/fiber) that includes significant protein eaten before a nice sleep should maximize protein availability for tissue repair/recovery, minimize stomach aches, and facilitate a BM in the morning for a fresh start.
Carb biased days with a big balanced meal at night helped me maintain weight for over 5 months of thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Carb drinks are a nice modification of that strategy to support shorter, more intense activities like randonneuring.
Excellent video! I just started using the Saturday App this weekend and like it. I'd like to try out your calculator but I have some questions.
Should the estimated sweat be 0-35 scale or 6-20 scale?
Should the target sodium be between 0-2000 or 300-1000?
The top grey shaded boxes in the 2nd and 3rd columns are not populating with numbers. The table below is populating.
Would I use your calculator instead of Saturday app because yours takes into account body weight and you can calculate needs for multiple days? Any other reasons to use your calculator? Do you still use the Saturday App? It seems that a person could use the Saturday app to plan out each day separately and then add them together for a total?
Cheers, thanks for watching! Row 3-4 offer simple descriptive guidance for common sweat rate, sodium, and carbs/kg/hr. The hover text in row 2 set boundaries for extreme situations. If B7 and C7 are not populating, their equations may have been changed accidentally. You can download a new sheet or input B7 as =$B$2*A4 and C7 as =$C$2/0.267*B7/1000000.
very nice video :) thx for sharing! what about other important minerals like magnesium?
Thanks! Other components of sweat can be easily replaced with whole foods from a reasonable diet. Most randonneurs I see eat 3-4 meals per day and many snacks of real food too. There are pretty large reserves the body can draw from to balance their losses. The research I looked at regarding an imbalance in other elements of sweat were focused on other medical conditions as a cause, rather than exercise. Sodium balance is more sensitive and has a relatively small reserve to draw from compared to magnesium or calcium. Maybe in an extreme race situation, a pure liquid diet and more complete replacement of all lost sweat elements would be called for. I believe Strasser did something like that for his 24 hour distance record.
@@overbikedrandonneuring ty :)
Thanks for this. My only issue is that I could not open either up in Google Docs. Any suggestions?
I set it up the link download an excel file of the Google doc. I had issues trying to share as a webpage or Google doc before, so hoped this would be trouble free. Is anything in your download folder?
With regards to fats and protein, is there really no performance benefit (if one is not concerned about calorific balance e.g. in a race) from including a certain amount of them? Can the body not process even a few grams of fats or proteins per hour in addition to the carbs?
I always consume plenty of fat and protein from whole foods on long rides, especially around dinner time or before sleeping on 400k+ rides. Fat used as energy in a carb fueled athlete seems to come mostly from stored fat, rather than exogenous fat though (Muscella, 2020 for a review on the topic). Protein is also certainly consumed for energy, although most studies I've seen compare a set carb intake to the same carb intake plus extra protein. Their result then can only conclude that more calories = better performance. I'd recommend a solid base of whole food throughout each day, and to use drink mix as a vehicle to better meet the very high water, carb, and sodium needs of endurance exercise. The mix is not intended to be an all-in-one energy source.
Thank you for the awesome videos! A quick question if I may. What is your method of dividing salt and sugar during the ride, considering no scale or a spoon are at hand?
When poured from a bag, the sugar in grams is about equal to milliliter measurements on a bottle, a 500ml bottle will hold about 500g of sugar, maybe a bit less. Pack sodium citrate (or salt) in separate little tubs or baggies at home so that one tub/bag mixes with the 1 bottle of sugar. Then just shake it well. Koolaid packet or other flavor powder can be added to the sodium citrate at home to make it a quick process. Wish we had old style Koolaid packs here in Korea. Maybe time to import some.
Awesome video! What are your thoughts on a hyper concentrated drink mix supplemented with plain water from another bottle? I am starting to experiment and was able to easily dissolve 425gr of sugar in a bottle from which I would take a sip once in a while. I knew I had to have the bottle finished within X hours. Takes a bit more managing, but is much easier to cary and refill. I would simply need to add Sodium Citrate to the mix and call it a day.
Thanks! Since this video was made, I've tried the Jesse Coyle syrup preparation and like it. Doing a little prep and heating up the water/sugar mix to completely dissolve the sugar helps with mouth feel and makes it easier to consume. It's still lighter in texture than a gel.
I like being able to separate hydration and fueling as long as I keep close to a plan. Having sodium with the syrup keeps the two goals somewhat intertwined.
Taking a giant swig of the syrup when energy feels low is nice, as it having plenty of plain water available. Having 2 clean bottles of water is nice too, since sometime splashing water to cool off is helpful. I think my teeth suffer less abuse with the syrup + fresh water system. Give it a try and report back!
Grest vid! What helmet were you using?
Thanks! It's an HJC Furion
Did you look into potassium for your drink mix? It is usually included alongside sodium in commercial electrolyte mixes, as well as medical Oral Rehydration Salts. I'm wondering how important it is for a homemade mix. And what about magnesium and its relationship with cramping?
If you haven't seen it yet, this TH-cam series is relevant: th-cam.com/video/XgIfC3TnpNU/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for the link, I look forward to watching those. Good to see backpackers being more mindful of performance nutrition. I thru-hiked the AT (2009) and PCT (2011), and typical food choices were pretty suspect. I managed to avoid losing much weight on the PCT with a heavy fueling strategy. I would allocate about 1200 kcal of snacks per day and enjoy what I called 'double dinners'.
It's been a while since the research was fresh in my mind, but I remember that potassium stores in the body are pretty robust and the amount lost in sweat is quite small compared to sodium. Maybe 1/10th the concentration IIRC. I think urine, stool, and potentially vomit have higher potassium concentration which is why it is common in ORS solutions, since those are made for sick people rather than athletes. If one is eating decent quality food regularly and has no relevant health conditions, no potassium should be needed in a supplementary drink mix. A pure liquid or sports nutrition diet over several days without real food, such as some RAAM racers do would require mixes to have potassium and other electrolytes too.
As far as exercise induced cramping goes, it is generally agreed to be a complex problem, with the two main causes thought to be dehydration/electrolyte imbalance and the other simple overexertion. Here is a review on exercise cramping: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6901412/
Another recent review found magnesium to be unlikely to help reduce exercise induced cramping. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8094171/
My perspective is proper fueling using concepts in this video or tools like the Saturday App manage dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, and allow a higher work load for longer before overexertion is reached. Together, these reduce cramping frequency. I've noticed research designs often ignore carb intake. For example, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7962362/pdf/12970_2021_Article_414.pdf, uses a ORS vs water methodology, and the ORS outperforms water for preventing cramping. The paper talks a lot about the electrolyte component of the ORS helping, but fails to acknowledge the possible beneficial effect of having 38g of glucose after an hour of exercise versus none. Same with bananas as a folk remedy. Is it mineral content or the carbs? I would venture to say carbs, water, and electrolytes all do their part.
Great video but what on earth are 'freedom units"?!
Thanks! Degrees Fahrenheit, for US viewers.
Lost me at 99 freedom units.
99 degrees Fahrenheit
@durianrider