When we think about fitness, we often focus on the workout itself. We lift weights, run, jump, and condition our bodies to become stronger and more capable. But what happens between workouts matters just as much. One of the body’s most important energy systems involves glucose and glycogen. Understanding how your body stores and uses carbohydrates can help explain why what you eat before and between training sessions can have a meaningful impact on your performance and recovery.
Three Things to Know
Your body stores excess glucose as glycogen. Carbohydrates are broken down into glucose, which the body can use for energy. When there is more glucose available than the body immediately needs, some of it is stored as glycogen. These glycogen stores are primarily found in your muscles and liver. Muscles can store approximately 300–500 g of glycogen, depending on muscle mass, while the liver stores approximately 80–100 g. Think of glycogen as an accessible fuel reserve that your body can draw from when you need energy.
Training uses up your glycogen stores. Physical activity requires energy, and glycogen can be an important source of fuel during training. Glycogen stores can become depleted through:
Heavy lifting
Conditioning
Long training sessions
Inadequate carbohydrate intake
The more frequently and intensely you train, the more important it becomes to replenish the fuel you’ve used. It can take approximately 24-48 hours for glycogen stores to replenish.
Fuelling today’s helps prepare you for tomorrow. A useful way to think about glycogen is like a gas tank. Yesterday’s carbohydrates help fill the tank that your body can draw from during today’s training. Pre-workout carbohydrates can also provide accessible fuel that helps your body perform smoothly during a session. This means nutrition isn’t simply about fueling one workout. It’s about maintaining your energy stores across multiple training sessions. Consistent fueling helps create a foundation for consistent training.
Try These Movements
Deadlifts are a high demand strength exercise that recruit large muscle groups and require significant force production. Because demanding strength training can contribute to glycogen use, exercises like deadlifts are a great reminder that training performance is connected to how we fuel our bodies.
Farmer marches challenge the body to stabilize while carrying load and moving one leg at a time. They combine strength, coordination, and conditioning into one movement.
Broad jumps require explosive force production and coordination. Because they are performed with high intensity, they provide a useful contrast to slower strength movements like deadlifts and goblet squats.
Takeaway
Your body doesn’t just need training, it needs fuel to train, recover, and adapt. Carbohydrates provide glucose, and excess glucose can be stored as glycogen in your muscles and liver. As you train, those stores are gradually used and need to be replenished. Thinking about nutrition as part of your training strategy can shift the focus away from simply “eating for today’s workout” and toward supporting your body across weeks, months, and years of movement.
In The Long Game, we’re not just interested in how hard you can train today. We’re interested in building the capacity to keep showing up, recovering, and getting stronger for years to come.