Early Morning Fuelling Tips For Hikers In Training

"I know it is important to fuel before training. But I can't bear the thought of eating first thing in the morning (I would have to wake up crazy early for it to settle). What can I do?"

In this video, we explore some simple strategies to help a hiker fuel if they are training first thing in the morning, or are tackling a hike that has some tough sections right off the mark!

Inside, we cover:

• Why hikers should pay attention to fuelling before training and hiking (and when this can get very important) 
•  What types of food a hiker wants to prioritise before training and hiking
• What a hiker can eat if they struggle with digestion early in the morning

Video Transcript:

[0:00] In this video, we're talking through a few ideas a hiker can use to fuel before

[0:05] a morning's hunt or a morning's training session. Now, this question came through the other day, just sort of saying, I know it's important to fuel and to eat before training, but I can't bear the thought of eating first thing in the morning, and I would have to wake up crazy early for that to settle. What can I do? and when it comes down to this very very very common situation for a lot of people because realistically when we are looking at training for the most part we want to have some food in our stomach and find some fuel in our stomach to get us through the session same thing for our hikes as well now we can survive any type of training any type of hygiene initially if we're not eating a lot of people can get out there go out and empty stomach it's not that big deal but if we really looking at to increase our performance, so increase how much effort we could put into our sessions, or increase how comfortable we feel in the first couple of hours of hiking, we probably do want to eat some.

[1:04] Now as things do get more and more and more intense, so say you're looking at training sessions which are on the little harder side of things, maybe look at interval training or strength training, or maybe you've got a hike which just starts off very very difficult, this gets more and more and more important, and it's something we want to look at here. Now in the perfect world, we would ideally have something to eat which is usually carbohydrate based even one to two hours before quitting you know this is typically something we want to do just to get a bit of fuel carbohydrates would uh providing a lot of fuel through a lot of our training and hiking and we want to be making sure we're getting something like that one to two hours in the kind of perfect world um and the closer we get to training so if we're getting close to that hour mark we want something that's not going to take forever to digest but something's relatively quick digesting, But in this particular situation, when we're training in the morning, this isn't super realistic because we can kind of fall into a situation that if we just eat immediately and then we start training, then this can just sit in our stomach and feel a bit uncomfortable. It can sort of like inhibit how much we can actually perform in our training and when we're hiking, the same thing.

[2:11] Alternatively, you know, this can be a situation where like, all right, well, I know I really need food in me. But I'm going to train at 5 o'clock, I'm going to train at 6 o'clock, I'm going to wake up an hour or two before that to get food entering. And that just ends up being a little bit backwards because it compromises with

[2:26] our sleep, it's probably not super sustainable. And if you're already hiking, if the crad is torn, we don't want to be waking up even earlier. So we want to be smart around this. Now, typically the solution here is if we are looking at pre-fueling before a session or pre-fueling before hiking, we just want to play around with different foods and see different food types, which may work a bit better for you.

[2:46] Now, if you were eating kind of right before training and you're eating 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 20 minutes before training, we kind of want to have a think about, okay, doing weight carbs. We want to get something in that is high carbohydrate because carbs are going to provide fuel for us during the session.

[3:02] But what we probably want to look at is something that's low-fat, low-fibre and low-protein. Now, the reason behind this is fiber, fat, protein all slow down the digestion process a little bit. And if you've only got 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes before you actually start exercising, we don't want to sit in your stomach. We want it to digest really quickly so you can be as comfortable as possible. So a few simple examples here might be just having some fruit. Wake up, have a banana. That may be enough. Have some dried fruit. Have some dried apicots, whatever it may be. Maybe a case of having some white bread, just a piece of white toast or a bagel

[3:35] or rice cakes with honey or whatever it may be. You know, looking at this sort of stuff that is intentionally quick at digesting can be really need a good option in this situation.

[3:45] Alternative you know some people will do that feel like oh you know what i've done the nine or an eating that like it just doesn't feel good then going down that route you may want to consider looking at liquid calories so essentially liquid calories when food is in liquid form it tends to be just quicker digesting again so we can get it in and digest pretty quickly so you may be a situation where you're like okay i'm going to train first in the morning i'm going to hike this in the morning maybe the night before maybe i'll make a bit of a smooth uh and the reason as I say, night before, just sell something like a cracker bill and you're waking everyone up. That'll make a smoothie. I'm putting some fruit in there. Again, make sure it's low-protein, low-fat, low-fiber, but just have that before you go away, before you start training. Maybe some fruit juice, just a glass of orange juice, maybe enough. You know, admittedly, sometimes the fruit juice doesn't feel amazing first thing in the morning, but it could be an option. Or, you know, it could be potentially looking at like electrolyte stuff with carbohydrates, like a sports drink.

[4:39] You know, having that type of stuff first thing in the morning may not taste amazing, but it is designed for this type of process just to be that big digesting fuel um there's definitely things worthwhile exploring like in the end it's not the end of the world if you can't get something in right before training you know even if you look at calories that's quite work but if you are looking at increasing your ability to exert during your training if you're doing hiking which is relatively difficult first thing in the morning or whatever may be it's definitely worthwhile playing over this and considering it um because it can make a bit of a difference getting that fuel in making

[5:13] sure you have that energy to actually perform or do your best. So if you've never explored any of this or you do struggle with eating in the morning or what it would be, maybe try some of these ideas out, see if anything works for you and it may make a bit of a difference when you fall.

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