The Best Snacks for Endurance Training

With marathons and triathlons and obstacle course races and tough mudders, there are a lot of reasons to endurance train. You have to keep that stamina up. To do this, people focus primarily on cardio activities, like cycling, running, and swimming. But, they also do strength training. After all, stronger leg muscles propel you further when you are running and they take the impact that would otherwise stress your joints.

When you are in and endurance event or training yourself for them, you need to eat foods that give you the energy that you need. A lot of people get that from GUs and gels because they digest easily and have the carbs you need to keep up your blood glucose. All that blood sugar will go into your muscle’s glucose stores and keep them moving. But, there are also all-natural options that can give the same benefits. Next time you train, try some of the following energizing snacks.

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Honey

Not only is honey giving you the obvious—fructose and glucose—it’s also giving you potassium and sodium. You get exactly the same elements you could expect to find in a sports drink and a better carbohydrate profile than a lot of gels on the market.

Dates

These dried fruits are also packed with potassium, and they will surely boost your simple sugar and carb consumption. They do not, however, have sodium, so you should have a sports drink or some salt to compensate for the sodium you lose when you sweat.

Raisins

This is another high potassium, dried fruit snack. In a study, grapes were shown to improve running performance (when compared to water alone). Plus they performed as well as those sports nutrition chews you can buy at the store. A lot of dried fruit can work, but raisins are low in fiber, which means you won’t face any difficulty digesting them. You don’t want stomach upset in the middle of training or an event.

Maple Syrup

This is another high potassium food (sensing a pattern?). In addition, it’s a fast-absorbing sugar. Low on the glycemic scale, maple syrup slowly releases glucose, which means you can keep going for longer. It’s perfect for endurance.

Bananas

If you have run marathons, you know that bananas are often handed out to athletes on the course. It’s no wonder because they assist performance just as well as any sports drink. This is also another great source of potassium. In fact, they have 13 percent of your daily requirement. Potassium aids your body in holding on to the fluid stability in your cells, which lessens the chance of muscle cramping.

Red Grapes

Of course, grapes are a great source of calories, given all their sugar. Plus, they are high in vitamin C. But, experts attribute their endurance benefits primarily to quercetin, an antioxidant in the skins. It boosts the levels of mitochondria in brain cells and muscles, which boost both physical and mental endurance during exercise.

Try working some of these natural wonders into your training routine to find out which ones give you the most energy.

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Dorothy is an expert in writing health blogs most specially in behavior problems, addiction, gambling, recovery and free rehab centres.