How To Fuel A Training Camp: Part 1

Putting in place strategies to help maintain adequate energy supply will help you maximise the quality of training throughout your training camp, especially since you will most likely see a significant increase in training volume and load during the camp. It’s really important to make sure you’re consuming enough energy but also remaining hydrated. Performance gains aside, this will also make the camp way more enjoyable! Whilst you may “get away” with neglecting fuelling at home, you’ll struggle to get the most out of a big block of training if you don’t give it some more thought on camp.

As you will be doing much more volume than usual, across consecutive days, you need to guard against progressive muscle glycogen depletion. At home it is likely that you can “make-up” for shortfalls in energy supply between training sessions, but with an increase in volume and intensity on a training camp you are less likely to have the opportunity to make up for any shortfall. It may get to the point where you need to include an unscheduled rest-day.

In very basic terms, you’re doing more therefore you need to eat more! Or prepare to struggle.

Our go-to products for on training camp are our energy bars. Both the Duo bar and Anytime bar can provide around 40g of carbohydrates, whilst also being morale boosting and delicious. These would make up the bulk of our fuelling strategy with energy gels being used towards the latter stages of those seriously tough days. Mix up the flavours to avoid barrier to fuelling too. We’ve got 11 flavours of Anytime Bars and two Duo Bars so hopefully there’s enough variation there.

Exercising for more than 4 hours?

If you’re pushing your endurance and aiming for runs or rides exceeding 4 hours, you may want to consider our Super Range. These products have been designed to provide higher amounts of carbohydrates for when energy demand is particularly high. It also means you can carry less too.  Find out what the Super Range is.

Calculating Carbohydrates for you Training Camp

The carbohydrates requirement will be different depending on what your training plan prescribes.

• Less than 90 minutes: Fuelling during won’t be necessary unless it’s a high intensity interval session.
• Up to 4 hours (easy to moderate intensity): 60-80g of carbs per hour.
• 4 hours + (moderate to hard intensity): 80-120g of carbs per hour.

Since most training destinations are in a warmer climate, sweat rates are going to be high. This just means paying attention to not only the replenishment of fluid, but also the salts lost through sweating too! The best combination for long day cycling or running should include OTE Energy Drink in your bottle is a great way to tackle both rehydration and energy intake; did you know it also contains electrolytes? Back this up with either Energy Gels or Duo Bars during longer sessions. Then be prepared to have to refill your bottles for the endurance rides or run, so popping an extra energy drink sachet or tube of Hydro Tabs in your pocket is a good idea. After all dehydration can negatively affect your performance, and that’s not what you want when you’ve got big training planned!

Keeping your core body temperature down is important when it’s really hot. Starting with refrigerated bottles or adding ice can help. Then topping up with cold water from local stores can be just the refreshment you need in the heat of the day. Adjusting your training times to avoid the heat of the day is often a sensible idea to avoid any severe impact on the session.

Around training, to optimise recovery, it’s probably best to stay out of the direct sun. We’d also advise always having a bottle of Hydro Tabs to hand to sip on, but we’ll cover more on recovery next.

Research shows that the right combination of protein and carbohydrate will speed up your muscle glycogen stores faster than carbohydrate alone. OTE Recovery is the ideal post-exercise drink as each serving delivers 25g of protein and has sufficient carbohydrates, electrolytes and vitamins to ensure you maximise your recovery.  Aside from just recovery benefits it will also help support your adaptation to the increased training load. If you do not prioritise your recovery drink or snack within 30 minutes of finishing exercise the whole body starts to slow down, enzyme activity falls, and it is difficult to recover if additional hard training is to be carried out on the same or following day.

OTE offer 2 recovery drinks – a Whey/Casein blend and OTE Soya protein formula as well as a number of Anytime Protein Bars to help top up the protein intake too.

There’s more…

We’re just getting going on how you can maximise your training camp. Read part two of this guide covering travel and avoiding illness on your return home.