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Anyone use Accelerade instead of Gatorade/water during workouts and notice any improvements?

Here's the idea behind why it's better:

http://www.accelerade.com/science/Default.aspx

The 4:1 Protein:Carb ratio is often recommended for endurance athletes. For strength trainers a 2:1 ratio is more commonly recommended. You can just mix protein powder and corn sugar together and have just as good a drink and for a lot less money. I doubt that it's any better than chocolate milk, but it's clearly better than Gatorade.

My gym gave out a bunch of free samples. It tasted like dirty dishwater and with only 4 grams of protein and 15 grams of carbs, I thought it was a complete waste of money. With such little energy provided, I didn't see the point of using it over H2O

i think you have your ratio backwards. 4:1 carbs to protein. for endurance athletes.

as for the drink its a good idea for long endurance athletes like marathoners or ppl who are constantly in motion for over 1 hour. weight lifters are normally resting alot durring their workouts so its deffinately not necessary for the any weight lifter.

just my opinion.

Well, lets get into that idea that's so common about endurance types having to have tons of carbs for endurance events. I'm not picking a fight, I'm playing Devil's advcate, because recently I've seen a lot of top trainers advising to go mod carb and heavier fat for endurance types. Yes, carb loading is a sound practice, howeer, you can only pack down so many carbs into glycogen. Once you overflow the tank, your spilling them everywhere, and insulin is batting them down into the other tank. Now fat on the other hand, is burned much slower, meaning energy after glycoen is depleted. Dr Sears ( the Zone and a top nutritional advisor for lots of college and pro teams, most noteably the Stanford swim team ) advocates taking in mod carb, mod protein, and doubling the fat for more extreme type of sports, including the distance runners and the on-off sports such as football, basketball, rugby,soccer (which everyone except Americans call football).
Why, in your opinion, should we take in more carbohydrates than we can store as glycogen>
Tim

One more thing to add, back in my HS days in the 70's, when I was up in the Sierra's backpacking and hiking, we basically lived on nuts and fish, and occasionally had berries.
Tim

Weren't the Sierras just foothills when you were in high school Tim? ;)

badum-cha!



I think it would still have its benefits for weightlifters, if they are working intensely enough-personally I like to superset my exercises that don't use the same muscles.

As Hoosegow pointed out, it doesn't have enough protein to make it worthwhile for a weight trainer. Yes it's marginally better than Gatorade but 1/2 cup of milk has more protein.

Yeah but can you drink milk during a workout?

You can drink it for a recovery drink. I just gave that as an example. I've already said that I mix protein, corn sugar and creatine and sip it during my workout. I get about 50g of protein and I'm sure I paid a lot less than 1 bottle of Accelerade with 4g.

I smell a sales agent for Accelerade...

From the Mod- I did when the original post came out, but then I looked at who the poster was, and he is a regular poster w/no apparent affiliations w/ the product. This appears to be a non spam question.
Tim

God i hope companies don't actually bother doing that, and yeah I'm not an accelerade sales person, I just used its brand name because I don't know any other drinks out there with the same ratio.

PS

im going to try your combo stu

Yah, they do, and it's quite funny to see how Ironman deals with them. I'm seen it happen on a few forums, only a couple of times here. On JPfitness they actually start discussing it until someone figures it out.