Maltodextrin for Endurance Exercise: Why Hammer Nutrition Uses It
For endurance athletes, carbohydrate choice matters. During prolonged training and racing, you need energy that is readily available, easy to consume and appropriate for the demands of exercise.
Hammer Nutrition has used maltodextrin as a primary carbohydrate source for more than 39 years in products including Hammer Gel®, HEED® and Perpetuem®.
There's a reason.
What Is Maltodextrin?
Maltodextrin is a carbohydrate made from chains of glucose molecules. Unlike simple sugars such as glucose, fructose and sucrose, maltodextrin consists of longer chains of linked glucose units.
Despite being a more complex carbohydrate, maltodextrin can be rapidly digested and made available as glucose during exercise.
That's exactly what an endurance fuel needs to do.
Research has long established maltodextrin as an effective carbohydrate source during prolonged endurance exercise. View research on PubMed →
Why Does Hammer Use Maltodextrin?
1. Rapid Energy When You Need It
Maltodextrin has a high Glycaemic Index (GI). In everyday nutrition, constantly consuming high-GI carbohydrates isn't necessarily desirable.
During prolonged exercise, the situation is different.
Working muscles require energy. The purpose of consuming carbohydrate during exercise is to make carbohydrate available for use.
Research consistently shows that consuming carbohydrate during prolonged endurance exercise can help maintain carbohydrate availability and support performance. View the research →
2. Designed for Endurance Fuel Formulation
Maltodextrin's longer glucose chains mean that, for the same amount of carbohydrate, it contributes fewer individual dissolved particles than the equivalent amount of free glucose.
This is an important characteristic when formulating concentrated endurance fuels, where carbohydrate delivery, fluid concentration and gastric emptying all matter.
Research has shown that the type and concentration of carbohydrate in a sports drink can influence gastric emptying. View research on PubMed →
3. Maltodextrin Isn't an Inferior Sports Carbohydrate
Some sports-nutrition marketing now promotes “maltodextrin-free” as though the absence of maltodextrin automatically makes a product better.
The research doesn't support that conclusion.
Glucose, sucrose and maltodextrin can all provide effective carbohydrate during endurance exercise. Maltodextrin has been successfully used and studied in sports nutrition for decades. View the research →
“Maltodextrin-free” is an ingredient claim. It isn't evidence of superior endurance performance.
What About Simple Sugars?
Simple sugars aren't automatically bad.
Glucose, fructose and sucrose can all contribute carbohydrate energy, and research shows that combining glucose or maltodextrin with fructose can increase carbohydrate oxidation when athletes consume very high amounts of carbohydrate. View the research →
But this raises an important distinction:
Being able to absorb more carbohydrate doesn't automatically mean you need more carbohydrate.
This is where Hammer's approach differs from many modern high-carbohydrate fuelling strategies.
More Carbohydrate Isn't Automatically Better
Some modern endurance strategies encourage athletes to consume 90–120g or more of carbohydrate per hour.
Research shows that trained athletes can oxidise very high amounts of carbohydrate, particularly when different carbohydrate sources are combined.
But maximum carbohydrate absorption and optimum carbohydrate requirement are not the same thing.
A major dose-response performance study testing carbohydrate intakes all the way to 120g/hour found increasing performance benefits initially, but diminishing performance improvement at higher intakes, with the estimated optimum under those particular conditions around 78g/hour. View the study →
Hammer's philosophy is therefore not:
How much carbohydrate can I force my body to process?
It's:
How much fuel do I actually need?
The Hammer Nutrition “Less Is Best” Principle
For decades, Hammer Nutrition has advocated a measured approach to endurance fuelling.
Your body cannot replace every calorie it burns during exercise—and it doesn't need to.
The objective is to provide enough fuel to support performance without unnecessarily overloading the digestive system.
For many athletes, Hammer uses approximately 120–180 calories per hour as a starting point, adjusted for body size, duration, intensity and individual requirements.
Use the least amount necessary to maintain energy.
That's the Hammer Less Is Best principle.
Read: How Many Calories Do You Really Need Per Hour? →
What About Maltodextrin and Metabolic Health?
Context matters.
Hammer doesn't recommend maltodextrin-based sports fuel as a replacement for healthy everyday food.
These products have a specific purpose:
fuel training, racing and recovery.
During normal daily life, athletes should build their diet around nutritious whole foods and appropriate carbohydrate sources.
During prolonged exercise, however, the metabolic situation changes dramatically. Working muscles are consuming large amounts of energy and carbohydrate can contribute directly to exercise metabolism.
Sports nutrition should be used for sport—not treated as an everyday snack.
Hammer's Tapioca Maltodextrin
Hammer Nutrition's current endurance fuels use tapioca-derived maltodextrin with a Dextrose Equivalent (DE) of approximately 10–13.
DE describes how extensively the original starch has been broken into shorter carbohydrate chains. Lower DE generally means a greater proportion of longer glucose chains.
Importantly, DE and GI are different measurements. Maltodextrin can have relatively long glucose chains while still being rapidly digested and therefore producing the high GI that makes carbohydrate readily available during exercise.
Why Hammer Chooses Maltodextrin
After more than 39 years of endurance sports nutrition, Hammer continues to use maltodextrin because it provides the characteristics we want from an endurance carbohydrate:
- Rapidly available carbohydrate during exercise
- Well-established use in endurance sports nutrition
- Excellent properties for concentrated sports-fuel formulation
- Less dependence on large quantities of free simple sugars
- Suitable for Hammer's measured, duration-based fuelling approach
The goal isn't to consume the maximum amount of carbohydrate possible.
The goal is to fuel intelligently and give your body what it needs to perform.
Fuel Smarter. Not More.
That's the principle behind Hammer Gel®, HEED® and Perpetuem®—and the reason maltodextrin remains central to Hammer Nutrition's endurance-fuelling system.
Choose Your Hammer Fuel
Hammer Gel® → Portable maltodextrin-based energy for training and racing.
HEED® → Maltodextrin-based carbohydrate energy plus full-spectrum electrolytes.
Perpetuem® 2.0 → Long-duration carbohydrate, protein and fat-based fuel designed for approximately 3+ hours.
Recoverite® 2.0 → 3:1 carbohydrate-to-protein recovery nutrition for after demanding endurance exercise.
Learn More
HEED vs Perpetuem — Which Fuel Is Right for You? →
Research References
Carbohydrate and endurance exercise — Coggan & Coyle. PubMed →
Carbohydrate intake and endurance performance — systematic review and meta-analysis PubMed →
Maltodextrin + fructose oxidation during prolonged exercise PubMed →
Carbohydrate dose-response and endurance performance PubMed →
Carbohydrate composition and gastric emptying during exercise PubMed →