Hey
People often say you should drink carbohydrates during your workout to "preserve muscle glycogen". Muscle glycogen can actually be stored in different locations, leading to different subtypes of muscle glycogen;
Subsarcolemmal (5-15%)
Intermyofibrillar (75%)
Intramyofibrillar (5%)
Ref: Ørtenblad, Westerblad & Nielson 2013
We needn’t dwell too much on that for now, but just be aware that glycogen can serve different functions depending on its location and this compartmentalisation is going to be different depending on fibre type too.It has been demonstrated that resistance training can reduce muscle glycogen content by 24-40%, with greater decreases seen with higher repetition protocols (Knuiman et al. 2015).
However, interestingly, a lot of the research looking at the resulting fatigue from low glycogen status in resistance training tends to look at this question from the perspective of pre-exercise carbohydrate restriction. I don’t think it is fair to consider those two things the same; glycogen depletion during exercise vs pre-exercise glycogen status achieved via nutritional changes.
