Hey everyone! Today, after another one of my runs, I started wondering: how do workouts before contests actually affect your thinking?
When you hit the gym, go for a run, or play football — you're burning glycogen. That’s a form of stored energy your body makes from carbs. It’s stored in your muscles and liver.
Muscle glycogen is used for movement.
Liver glycogen keeps your blood sugar stable and literally feeds your brain.
During physical activity, you burn both. Your muscles use their own fuel, and your liver starts dumping sugar into your blood to keep your brain from shutting down. So yeah — doing a CF round two hours after playing football is a terrible idea.
If you burned all your glycogen yesterday, didn’t eat well, and didn’t sleep enough — your brain the next day runs on fumes. You’ll feel it hard if you played football right before the round: you sit down to code, and your head’s just fog. Easy problems feel heavy, and on the hard ones you’re just staring like it’s your first time seeing a for loop.
Here are the simple rules I stick to:
- No heavy physical activity the day before Forget the “let’s go kick a ball real quick.” You’ll just sit there in the contest with fish eyes, chasing bugs in your own code. Your body needs time to recover that energy.
- Eat real food (not tea and cookies) Your body needs carbs — pasta, rice, potatoes, oatmeal. Don’t chug soda and snack on candy like it’s fuel. Slow carbs = stable energy through the whole contest.
That’s it. Sleep well, eat well, don’t fry your body the day before — and go solve at full power.
Good luck in your contests and olympiads! :)
P.S. I recently wrote a motivational/educational book where I shared my experience and dropped a bunch of practical advice — both for improvement and for getting real results.
You can find the book h-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-re
