Hey fitness nerds!

Thank you all {{active_subscriber_count}} of you!

Low carb is sold like a universal performance upgrade.

Some lifters thrived. Others watched power and training quality fall off a cliff on the same style of diet.

Read below! 

🍪

IN LESS THAN 10 MINUTES WE WILL COVER:

Cut carbs and one lifter hits a new deadlift max within weeks. Another loses 10% off their squat and can't work out why. Same diet, opposite outcomes. The gap isn't willpower or discipline. It's biology, and it's measurable.

Strength and power output run on a fuel system that doesn't negotiate. Fast, forceful contractions pull energy from muscle glycogen and the phosphagen system, not from fat oxidation. Fat can fuel a long walk. It cannot fuel a heavy set of five.

Muscle glycogen is stored carbohydrate sitting inside the muscle fibre itself, ready to be broken down without oxygen. That anaerobic pathway is what lets you produce maximal force in the two to twenty second window a heavy lift or a sprint demands. Strip carbs hard enough and glycogen stores drop, sometimes by more than half within a week of very low intake.

For endurance work this barely matters. Fat oxidation covers steady, lower intensity output for hours. This is why some people report feeling fine or even sharper on low carb for a long run or a cycling session, while the same intake wrecks their bench press.

Research on low carb and performance shows wide scatter between people, not a single verdict. Some trained lifters maintain strength output on very low carbohydrate intake for weeks. Others show measurable drops in peak power and volume within days.

Three factors explain most of that scatter.

Training history matters. Someone who has spent years fat adapted through endurance work has more mitochondrial density and enzymatic machinery for fat oxidation. That doesn't replace glycogen for max effort lifts, but it buffers the drop in submaximal work.

Muscle fibre composition matters. People with a higher proportion of fast twitch fibres rely more heavily on glycogen and the phosphagen system for force production. Those fibres are glycolytic by nature. Starve them of their preferred fuel and output falls faster than in someone with a more fatigue resistant, oxidative fibre profile.

Baseline insulin sensitivity and metabolic flexibility matter too. Some people shift between fuel sources smoothly. Others get stuck in a sluggish middle state for the first two to four weeks of carbohydrate restriction, neither properly glycogen loaded nor efficiently burning fat. That transition window is where most of the "low carb made me weak" complaints come from, and it often resolves with time. Not always.

People doing lower volume strength work, general fitness training, or steady state cardio often do fine on reduced carbs. Their sessions don't demand repeated maximal glycogen depletion, so partial glycogen stores are enough.

People who are already metabolically flexible, often through years of varied training and eating patterns, adapt faster and lose less output during the transition.

People carrying more body fat sometimes perform better on lower carb for a period, because fat oxidation is already upregulated and the reduced insulin load helps with other markers, even if raw strength dips slightly.

Athletes doing high volume resistance training, multiple heavy sets across multiple lifts, need repeated glycogen resynthesis between sessions. Chronic low carb intake here shows up as flat sets three and four, earlier failure, and slower bar speed.

Sprinters, throwers, and anyone doing repeated maximal efforts rely on the exact pathway carbohydrate restriction targets. This group shows the clearest, most consistent performance drop in low carb studies.

Lean, already fat adapted endurance athletes trying to also build strength often hit a wall, because they've optimised one fuel system at the expense of the other.

Total calories get missed constantly. Cutting carbs without deliberately replacing those calories with fat or protein creates an accidental deficit. A deficit alone reduces training performance regardless of macronutrient split. Half of what gets blamed on "low carb" is actually just under eating.

Electrolytes are the second miss. Carbohydrate restriction drops insulin, and lower insulin increases sodium excretion through the kidneys. Less sodium means less water retention, and the result is cramping, dizziness, and flat feeling lifts that have nothing to do with glycogen and everything to do with a sodium deficit that's easy to fix with a teaspoon of salt in water.

Sleep and stress also shift on low carb during the adaptation phase for a meaningful minority of people, and poor sleep alone tanks strength output independent of diet.

The pattern that shows up repeatedly in practice, even among people who eat low carb the rest of the day, is targeting carbohydrate intake around the hardest training sessions. A moderate carb intake in the hours before a heavy lower body day, or immediately after a high volume session to support glycogen resynthesis, lets someone keep most of the metabolic benefits of lower carb eating without gutting the sessions that actually need glucose.

This is different from going low carb everywhere. It's matching fuel to demand. Easy days, low intensity cardio, and rest days carry little glycogen cost, so carbs can stay low there without consequence. The heavy squat day or the interval session is where the fuel tank actually gets drained, and that's where a moderate carb intake earns its place.

If your training is heavy, high volume, or built around repeated maximal effort, don't run low carb across the board and expect no cost. Put carbs around your hardest sessions and keep them lower on easy or rest days.

Before blaming the diet for lost strength, check total calories and salt intake first. Both get missed constantly and both mimic a glycogen problem.

Give any carb change four weeks before judging it. The first two are metabolic adjustment, not a verdict.

If your training is lower intensity, lower volume, or steady state, you likely have more room to run lower carb without a performance cost. Track your actual numbers, not how you feel, because feeling flat and lifting less aren't always the same thing.

That is the loudest signal yet. This stuff is not a passenger along for the ride. It changes what happens to you.

And the science is still young. What we can measure today is almost certainly the floor, not the ceiling.

Article

Foam rolling feels like it unlocks your joints. New research suggests most of that unlocking happens in your head, not your tissue.

Researchers tracked range of motion and pain thresholds after rolling sessions.

Pain tolerance jumped noticeably. Actual joint range barely moved once the short window closed.

That short window is the trap. Rolling numbs the area for a few minutes, so stretches feel deeper and workouts feel looser. Your muscle length hasn't changed. Your nervous system has just turned down the volume on discomfort.

This matters for how you use foam rolling. Treat it as a warm up tool, not a fix for tight hips or a stiff back. It buys you comfort right before training, nothing more.

Lasting mobility comes from consistent stretching, strength through full range and loaded movement over weeks. Five minutes with a foam roller won't rewrite your tissue length no matter how committed you are.

Keep rolling if it helps you move into your session. Just stop expecting it to permanently loosen anything. Pair it with real mobility work if flexibility is your actual goal.

Your body responded to sensation, not structure.

Fascinating Fact:

Foam rolling triggers the same pain gating mechanism as rubbing a stubbed toe. Pressure signals travel faster than pain signals, so your brain briefly blocks the ache. That's the relief you feel, not tissue repair.

Your body talks before it screams.

Most lifters wait for injury to force a break. Smart ones read the signals weeks earlier.

When two or more of these drift at once, take a full deload week. Half the volume, half the intensity, same movements.

Catch these early and you train harder for longer. Ignore them and the body forces the break for you.

Here are three signs your body wants a deload, and what to actually do about it.

Your body does not care that you are 30,000 feet up. It cares that you fed it.

Most turkey mince dinners taste like sad chicken. This one does not.

Thai basil, garlic and chilli hit hard against a splash of fish sauce and lime. 20 minutes, one pan, proper flavour on a lean protein you already have on repeat.