Unpopular opinion: your training might need more sugar
"Brainy What-Why-How"
Your weekly nibble of science-backed goodness to help you move better and feel unstoppable.
🧠
What:
If you’re struggling with movements that require precision, coordination, and grace (hello handstands), you might benefit from… more sugar.
Yes. Sugar.
Not complex carbs. Not an apple.
Actual, scandalous, nutrition-influencer-triggering sugar.
Why:
In neurology there’s something called the feeding pattern of the brain.
This is simplified*, but the basic idea is that the older parts of the brain—towards the back and bottom—get fuel (oxygen and glucose) first.
The newer, fancy human parts, like your Prefrontal Cortex, are last in line.
Let's contextualise this with a phenomenon you may be familiar with: hanger.
When you’re hungry, the thinking, planning, impulse-control parts of the brain are under-fuelled. Meanwhile the more primitive emotional circuits are fully operational.
Result: you become… less evolved.
Suddenly you’re snapping at people, making bad decisions, and generally behaving like a sleep-deprived toddler in a supermarket aisle.
Under stress, fatigue, or low fuel, the brain shifts resources away from the areas responsible for things like:
• coordination
• inhibition of the wrong movement
• fine motor control
• decision making
…and towards the areas responsible for keeping you alive.
Which is fair enough.
Your brain prioritises a beating heart over an elegant handstand line.
Annoying when you're trying to catch your balance...but understandable.
How:
Give your brain more fuel.
This realisation hit me recently:
For months I’d been doing long morning handstand sessions after… coffee and a protein bar.
Which seemed logical. Who wants to train for 2 hours upside down with a full stomach?
So I’d save my real breakfast for afterwards.
But while writing to you recently about the Frontal Cortex, it occurred to me: these areas are last in the feeding pattern.
Meaning they’re probably the first to struggle when fuel is low.
So I ran an experiment.
I started bringing tea to training with about seven or eight tablespoons of sugar dissolved in it.
Which is certainly not my usual M.O. I could just hear the pushback....
“Sugar is inflammatory!”
“Sugar is bad!”
“The wellness internet will revoke your membership!”
Yes, yes. Calm down.
I’m not suggesting anyone go eat a family-sized cookie cake for lunch every day.
But if you’re experiencing things like:
clumsy transitions between movements
unable to stop repeating an unhelpful sequence of movements (for me it was shifting to my right hand --> immediately going into the heel of the hand and falling)
difficulty inhibiting the wrong movement
hesitation or freezing in a motor task
or just general brain fog toddler energy
…it might simply be a fuel issue.
Your nervous system runs on glucose.
Not vibes. Not chakras. Not willpower.
So if things feel weirdly uncoordinated in your practice, try a little experiment:
Take a few slow nasal breaths.
Sip some orange juice or Gatorade. Or do like me and put scandalous amounts of sugar in your tea like a Victorian dockworker.
And see if your brain suddenly remembers how to do the thing.
Sometimes the difference between “why won't my body do what I tell it to? 😩 ” and “I'm a freakin' badass 😏” is just a bit more fuel..
And let me know if it makes a difference for you,
Adell
*if you want more of a breakdown, where I explain the distinction between the vascular delivery of fuel to different regions of the brain, vs their metabolic demand vs the functional hierarchy of brain regions when fuel is scarce, let me know and I'll make another Brainy What-Why-How about it!
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