Should I eat carbs around workouts?
If training is demanding, long, high-volume, or repeated within the same day, carbohydrates around training can help. Carbs support muscle glycogen, which matters for repeated demanding sets, endurance work, team sports, and mixed conditioning.
For typical lifting sessions under an hour, you may not need special workout carbs if your daily food is already adequate. For longer or more demanding sessions, a pre-workout meal with digestible carbs and protein can improve training quality. During sessions that run long or include lots of intense conditioning, a sports drink or simple carbohydrate can be useful.
Do not force workout sugar because it sounds athletic. Use it when it solves a performance or recovery problem without pushing calories out of range.