Carb Rinsing: Spit Out Your Gatorade for Increased Performance

Welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast with Jerred Moon and Joe Courtney! Today, we're diving into an intriguing performance hack called carb rinsing. If you’re looking for ways to improve your athletic output without consuming extra calories or disrupting your fast, carb rinsing might be the solution for you.

This technique, popularized by Alex Hutchinson’s book Endure, involves swishing a carbohydrate-rich solution in your mouth during exercise, then spitting it out. It sounds odd, but this strategy has science backing its effectiveness. Let’s break down what carb rinsing is, how it works, and whether or not it’s something you should incorporate into your training.

What is Carb Rinsing?

Carb rinsing is exactly what it sounds like: swishing a carbohydrate-rich drink like Gatorade or any sports drink around in your mouth for about 5 to 10 seconds, then spitting it out. The idea behind this is to trick your brain into thinking it’s getting an influx of energy, even though you’re not actually consuming the carbs.

You can use any sports drink with a carbohydrate concentration of 6-8%, which is standard for most sports drinks. You can also make your own solution using a glucose-based carbohydrate powder if you prefer.

Typically, athletes would swish around 1 to 2 ounces of the solution (think of it like a shot of Gatorade) every 10 to 15 minutes during the first 30 to 60 minutes of exercise. For shorter, high-intensity workouts, you could do this before you start or during any brief rest periods.

How Does It Work?

The science behind carb rinsing is fascinating. When carbohydrates enter your mouth, they activate special receptors that detect their presence. These receptors send signals to the brain, specifically to areas involved in motor control and reward, telling your body that more energy is on the way—even though no actual energy is being absorbed into the bloodstream.

This leads to a cascade of physiological and psychological responses:

• Reduced Perception of Fatigue: The brain reduces the feeling of fatigue and exertion, making it feel like you’re expending less effort than you actually are.
• Increased Motor Output: As a result of the reduced fatigue, you can maintain or even increase your performance levels temporarily.
• Improved Focus and Motivation: Studies suggest that the brain’s reward centers react positively to the presence of carbohydrates, leading to better focus and motivation during high-intensity activities.

In essence, carb rinsing taps into the placebo effect, but with a real, physiological response that enhances your performance. This is a neat trick for your brain, allowing you to push harder and perform better, even without actually consuming the carbs.

When to Use Carb Rinsing

While carb rinsing is an effective performance enhancer, it’s not something you should rely on for every workout. Your body may become accustomed to the trick over time, diminishing its effects. Think of it like caffeine: it’s great in moderation, but lose its punch if overused.

Here are some ideal situations for experimenting with carb rinsing:

1. Short, High-Intensity Workouts: If you’re doing a quick but intense workout, carb rinsing could give you the extra push you need to improve your performance.
2. Fasted Workouts: If you train in the morning while fasting but find it challenging to maintain high output, carb rinsing might help you get through your workout without breaking your fast.
3. During GI Distress: For endurance athletes, especially during longer events, gastrointestinal distress can be a common issue. In this case, carb rinsing can provide a performance boost without adding more to your digestive system. Whether it’s the final 30-60 minutes of a marathon or a Spartan race, carb rinsing could be a helpful tool to finish strong.
4. Early in Long Races: For longer events, you could try carb rinsing during the first portion of the race to delay gastrointestinal issues while still maintaining energy output.

Why It’s Effective—But Not for Everyday Use

Carb rinsing works because it tricks the brain into reducing perceived effort. However, overuse of this strategy may cause your body to adapt, reducing its effectiveness. Much like caffeine, the more frequently you use carb rinsing, the less impact it may have over time.

So, while carb rinsing is a powerful performance tool, it’s not something you should use every day. Save it for when you need an extra boost, whether it’s a challenging fasted workout or pushing through the final stretch of a race.

Final Thoughts

Carb rinsing may seem unconventional, but it’s backed by science and proven to enhance performance in the right situations. Whether you’re an endurance athlete looking for a way to push through the final leg of a race or someone who trains in a fasted state, this method can give you that extra edge when you need it most.

Want to learn more about performance hacks and training strategies? Visit us at Garage Gym Athlete to explore our programming and join our community of athletes who strive for peak performance every day.

Remember, if you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you!

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: All right. Should you be spitting your Gatorade out to increase your performance? Talk about carbon sink today. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the garage gym athlete podcast. I'm Jared moon and let's dive right into it. If you have read the book in juror by Alex Hutchinson, or if you haven't, I highly recommend you read it.

If you have, you've heard of what I'm talking about. This was the first time I had heard of it. It's called Rinsing. And it's essentially where you. Do exactly what I said at the beginning of the podcast. You put some Gatorade in your mouth, you swish it around and then you spit it out. Pretty crazy, but I want to talk about why you might want to do this, how you could experiment with it, and if it's even effective. I'll go ahead and give you a spoiler alert. It is effective and there is science that backs it up and you can look up that science if you want to.

But obviously Alex wrote about it in his book. He's very well-respected journalist. The science is out there only more science has come out about it. It is an effective strategy to increase your performance. And that I'm just going to say right off the bat. It is a good strategy. Now, should you utilize it?

And where my it be useful. That's what I want to talk about. Because I don't necessarily think the garage gym athlete out there should be taking a Gatorade to their workout every day, swishing it around and spitting it out on a daily basis. Thinking that they're going to get some sort of. Performance benefit. In all honesty.

My opinion of the, of that is if you were to do this more frequently, your brain would learn that you're basically trying to trick it and it wouldn't work that well anymore, but that's my own personal theory. So again, let's talk about it real quick. What a carb rinsing. Protocol is, and then why it works. First you can use any kind of sports drink, Gatorade, Powerade, anything that has a carb rich solution.

You want it to contain about six to 8% carbohydrate concentration, which is the standard for most sports drinks. You could also make your own glucose. Glucose based car powder. If you wanted to. And you would do about 68 grams of that per 100 milliliters of water. And then you are going to rent.

So you're going to swish around. It's only about one to two ounces. So think about a shot. If you had like a shot glass. Of the carbohydrate solution, your mouth, you're going to swish it around. And you'll do this about every 10 minutes, eight to 10 minutes for the first 30 to 60 minutes of exercise, or if you're only working out for 60 minutes, then you would do it about every 10 minutes or so. And it's four for shorter high intensity stuff.

If like you're, obviously some workouts you don't want to stop, then you would want to do it right before you started. And then if you did have a time, maybe in the middle, if there was like one point in time where like you were going to rest really fast, just grab it real quick, swish it around, spit it out. So you're going to want to swish it around in your mouth. For about five to 10 seconds is another question like people, like how long do I switch it?

Around five to 10 seconds. You want to ensure that your mouse carbohydrates receptors are activated. And then you want to spit it out. So after that five to 10 seconds of swishing around you spit out the solution do not swallow it. Because the key here is that you're trying to activate receptors without consuming the carbohydrates. And you can repeat this every 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the duration of your workout for up to 60 minutes.

So about three to four rinses. And that's about it now. The reason, this works is crazy to me. Like I said we're tricking the brain. That's essentially what we're doing. So you hit. The oral receptor. So when carbohydrates like Gatorade are switched around in your mouth, There are these specialized receptors that detect their presence.

And now even if you don't swallow it, you have these oral receptors. That pick up on the fact that you have a sugary drink in your mouth, then there's a neurological response. So the receptors send the signals to the brain. Particularly the regions involved in motor control and reward, and the brain interprets these signals as a cue.

That more energy is incoming. It's on the way. Even though none is actually absorbed in the blood. Bloodstream. And then you have the psychological perception of effort. So after this neurological response, the brain reduces the perception of fatigue. And perceived exertion. This means athletes feel like they can maintain their pace or power with less effort.

And that's a very real thing. Then we move on to motor output. The reduced perception of effort allows for a temporary increase in motor output, meaning athletes can push harder or sustain higher levels of performance than they otherwise would. And then also motivation and focus. Some studies suggest that car renting may increase motivation and focus during high intensity efforts as the brain's reward centers respond positively to the presence of carbs.

So we are in all honesty, forcing the placebo effect on our brains, but through some actual. Mechanical processes, neurological processes. That's what we're doing here. And if you know the placebo effect, it's a very real thing. Like people. I have cured disease in they both ways caused disease and cure disease with the placebo effect.

So what's happening is you're getting your brain engaged, but in this case, you are actually ingesting something. Your body starts to go through this fast acting. I'm like, oh, sugar's coming. And then it signals this cascade of things. And then that forces your body to perform better. And like I said, my opinion is if you did this all the time, since we are tricking our body into doing something, I think your body would learn.

I think all of that, the oral receptors, the neurological process, the perception of effort. I think all of that would start to fade. If you overuse this again, I'm not coming from a scientific standpoint here. It's just true of anything, have caffeine once. It's awesome. Have caffeine every day for your life. No, not so awesome anymore.

That's just how the body works in the brain works. It gets used to things. It grows accustomed to them. And then it's not as effective. So when you actually utilize your, this strategy, first off, don't overuse it. Now next getting into when you'd actually want to use it. Versus a short high intensity workout.

If you want to either just test this out, you want to do a short, intense, high intensity workout. Maybe you have some data you want to see if you're better or worse. Try it out there. Also some people who like to fast in the morning, but they have trouble. Having the higher output in their workouts in the morning, but they maybe want to maintain fasting or they don't want to eat something or they don't want to drink a Gatorade. So that might be like when you're just not feeling it again.

It's not, to me, this is not an everyday thing, but if you're like, man, I'm just really not feeling it today. You wake up in the morning, you want to keep your fast, but you also want to hit the workout and you want. Like more performance that day. I think that's in all honesty for groggy math, that may be the perfect time to experiment with a carbohydrate rinsing. Next you can.

I'm trying to think of like the other ideal situation. Is if your stomach is messed up. So this might be an, a longer event. This could be an endurance event or something like that. Maybe it's a 5k for you. Maybe that's a half marathon, a marathon, an ultra marathon, whatever it is, a lot of these events or even a longer Spartan race. If you're ingesting a bunch of different things sometimes you can start to have GI distress, right? Or maybe your stomach's just not feeling right from the exercise itself.

The last thing that you want to do is pile on more crap into your digestive track. No pun intended. When you have all of that stuff going on, you have some GI distress. So one way to trick your body for the last effort here. Maybe have 30 minutes left of a race or 60 minutes. Another great time to maybe try some carbohydrate, rinsing, do the rinsing strategy, swish it around five to 10 seconds.

Spit it out and see if you can get enough of a kick to finish the race. Really strong. And then lastly, just talking about races, you could also try it. At the very beginning of the race to try and eliminate some of that GI distress later on. If that happens to you. So it's like same strategy, but in reverse, you're like, Hey, this is a long race is a two hour race, three hour race.

I'm going to just try basically carbohydrate rinsing for the first 30 minutes, 45 minutes, just because I don't want to put too much in my system too soon. I'm going to see if I can get some performance benefits there, then I'll start ingesting actual carbohydrates. So those are about all the use cases you'd have for carbohydrate rinsing.

We've definitely talked about this on the podcast before, but I wanted to have a very concrete episode. I could point people towards that was quick. Here's how you do it. Here's how it works, all that kind of stuff. And if you want to look up any of the science of this, you want to see any other resources we have go to garage, gym athlete.com. Check out the blog where we have our show notes.

And if you are not an athlete of ours, go to garage, gym athlete. Dot com sign up for a free trial. We would love to have you, but that's it for this one. Remember if you don't kill comfort will kill you.

References: