For about fifteen years, carbohydrates were the villain of gym nutrition. Low-carb, keto, fasted training, “train low” — a whole generation of recreational athletes learned to be suspicious of rice. That era is over. Sports nutrition in 2026 has swung hard back toward carbohydrate availability, and the research and the practice have converged: if you are doing hard, repeated, glycolytic work — which is exactly what functional fitness and HYROX are — carbohydrates are not optional, they are the performance variable you are most likely getting wrong. Elite endurance athletes are now experimenting with 120 to 200 grams of carbohydrate per hour during racing, and while that is well beyond what most recreational athletes need or can tolerate, the direction of travel is unmistakable. Understanding carbohydrates for functional fitness is the difference between sessions that build you and sessions that flatten you. Here is what our coaches across Vancouver and the Tri-Cities actually recommend.
Why Your Training Style Demands Carbohydrate
Fuel choice is dictated by intensity, not by preference. At low intensity — a walk, an easy Zone 2 row — your body runs comfortably on fat. As intensity climbs past roughly 65 to 70 percent of your maximum capacity, the contribution from carbohydrate rises sharply, because glycogen is the only fuel your body can break down fast enough to sustain that rate of work.
Now think about a typical session at our gyms: a strength piece, then intervals, then a conditioning finisher. Or a HYROX race — 60 to 120 minutes spent hovering near threshold with eight sled and carry stations attached. That is almost entirely carbohydrate-dependent work. Running it on a low-carb diet is like entering a road race with a half-empty tank and calling it discipline.
The symptoms of chronic under-fuelling are so common that most people accept them as normal: the workout where you feel fine for ten minutes and then fall off a cliff, the 3pm crash, the training week where every session feels heavier than the last. Nine times out of ten in our nutrition coaching consultations, the athlete is not overtrained — they are under-carbed.
How Much Do You Actually Need?
Ignore percentage-based targets. Carbohydrate needs scale with bodyweight and training load, so use grams per kilogram.
- Light training days or rest days: roughly 3 to 4 grams per kilogram of bodyweight.
- Moderate days — one class, an hour of work: roughly 4 to 6 grams per kilogram.
- Hard days — race simulations, doubles sessions, long compromised running: 6 to 8 grams per kilogram.
- Race week and heavy competition blocks: 8 to 10 grams per kilogram for the day before and day of.
For a 70-kilogram athlete training hard, that is somewhere between 420 and 560 grams on a big day. Written down, the number looks alarming. In practice it is oats and fruit at breakfast, a proper portion of rice or potatoes at lunch and dinner, and something carbohydrate-dense around training. It is not a struggle — it is simply eating like someone who trains.
Timing: The Three Windows That Matter
Before Training
Two to three hours out, eat a normal mixed meal with a solid carbohydrate base — rice, pasta, potatoes, oats — plus protein and lower fat and fibre so it clears your stomach comfortably. If you are training first thing in the morning, which many of our Downtown Vancouver members do, you do not have that runway. In that case take 30 to 60 grams of fast-digesting carbohydrate 30 to 45 minutes before: a banana and a slice of toast with honey, a bowl of cereal, or a sports drink. Fasted training is fine for easy aerobic work. It is a poor choice before anything hard.
During Training
For sessions under an hour, water is enough. Beyond 75 to 90 minutes — long aerobic days, race simulations, and the race itself — you benefit from 30 to 60 grams per hour, which is about one gel or one sports drink. This is where the 120-to-200-gram headlines get misapplied: those rates belong to elite endurance athletes racing for five hours, and attempting them in a HYROX race will simply make you nauseous. More is not automatically better, and your gut needs training to handle what you do take.
After Training
If your next hard session is more than 24 hours away, you do not need to panic-eat within a magic window. Just get a solid meal with carbohydrate and 25 to 40 grams of protein in over the following couple of hours. If you are training twice in a day or racing back-to-back, prioritise about 1 to 1.2 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram in the first hour to restock glycogen quickly.
Choosing Carbohydrates Worth Eating
Carbs coming back into fashion is not a licence to live on candy. Structure most of your intake around foods that bring something else with them.
- Everyday base: oats, rice, potatoes and sweet potatoes, whole grain bread, pasta, beans and lentils, and fruit. These deliver fibre, micronutrients, and volume.
- Around training: bananas, white rice, bagels, dried fruit, honey, and sports drinks — fast, low-fibre, easy on the stomach.
- During long efforts: gels, chews, and drink mixes. Practise with them in training. Race day is the worst possible time to discover a product disagrees with you.
- Keep fibre high on rest days and deliberately lower it in the hours before hard sessions. Fibre is excellent for health and terrible timing before a sled push.
Fuelling Through a Lower Mainland Winter
There is a seasonal wrinkle worth naming. As Vancouver and the Tri-Cities get darker and colder through the fall, appetite patterns shift, people drift toward convenience eating, and training volume often peaks at the same time — especially with HYROX Vancouver landing in December. That combination produces a very specific problem: rising demand and falling intake quality.
Two practical habits fix most of it. Cook carbohydrate in batches, because a container of rice in the fridge removes the decision entirely on a wet Tuesday. And do not let cold weather blunt your thirst — dehydration reads as fatigue, and it worsens carbohydrate absorption during training.
Fuel Like You Mean It
Most members who come to our coaches frustrated with plateaued performance are not missing a supplement or a training method. They are asking a high-output engine to run on low-output fuel and then wondering why the sessions feel so hard.
If you want help translating grams per kilogram into meals that fit your actual week, our nutrition coaching does exactly that — no rigid meal plans, just a fuelling strategy built around your training and your schedule. Pair it with HYROX or functional fitness classes at our Downtown Vancouver or Port Coquitlam locations and you will feel the difference inside two weeks. Book a session with the team at Function and stop training on empty.
