It's Just a Drink Away...

I have written about recovery in the past, you can read that here. Right now I would like to talk about post workout recovery nutrition. I would argue that the most important meal of the day for everybody is breakfast. If you're not eating breakfast then you can forget about your performance gains, ability to perform at a high level, or even your fat loss goals. The second most important thing you eat (or drink) all day is going to be what you take in immediately after your workout. But when I ask most of the people I work with what they use for a recovery drink, from general fitness clients to elite level athletes, I get no answer. In many cases, though, that's because people just don't know what they should be doing.. So here's a quick tutorial......

"Eest good for recover, da?".... Umm, not really.

I have done tons of research on the topic and I have experimented with my own post workout nutrition a lot. I'm not going to go into the science behind it because, well, I'm not a scientist. I'm simply going to give you a summary of what's going on after a workout and what you need to do to recover as quickly as possible based on research I've done written by people much smarter than me.

Workouts beat you up and break you down. Whether they are long endurance sessions, interval sessions, or short, intense resistance sessions. Your muscle glycogen is depleted (glycogen is what your muscles use for energy) and your body is put in a catabolic state (muscle breaks down). If you do nothing to reverse this, the result is any or all of the following:

- prolonged muscle soreness and fatigue

- poor subsequent performance

- overtraining syndrome, or at the very least "over-reaching"

- minimal gains in muscle mass or even losses in muscle mass (especially in endurance athletes)

- a lowering of your metabolic rate (essentially the rate at which you burn calories)

Here's what the smart guys say:

"Failure to consume carbohydrates after exercise results in higher than necessary level of muscle breakdown, thereby reducing the benefit that might be derived from resistance training" - Dr. Dan Benardot

"Rapid replenishement of muscle glycogen stores has a favorable impact on the prevention of muscle protein catabolism, on cellular rehydration, and on subsequent exercise performances within the same day or on subsequent days. Basically, if you don't replenish glycogen rapidly, your performance will suffer next time you train and you may even lose some muscle along the way." Dr. John Berardi

Here's what I say.... To reverse this process, it is crucial that you take in the right balance of carbohydrates and protein post-workout. Not only that, but there is a window of opportunity following a workout when your muscles are super sensitive and receptive to these nutrients. The research shows that within 30 minutes of a workout, glycogen synthesis is 3x higher than just 2 hours later. What this means is faster recovery times. The key macronutrient is carbohydrates. You want between 0.8g -1.0g of carbs per kilogram of bodyweight. The longer and more intense the workout session, the closer to 1g/kg you would want to be.. For most people, the 0.8g/kg is a good target. So for a 150 lb person (68 kilos), that's 54g of carbs. The research shows that the optimum ratio of carbs to protein is anywhere from 2:1 to 4:1, trending towards the higher ratio of 4:1 for endurance athletes and 2:1 for strength/power athletes. Don't get caught up in the numbers here so much. Just make sure you're getting about 50-60g of carbs and about 15-25g of protein and you'll be fine. Liquid form is best since it gets into your system the quickest. You want a type of sugar that triggers the quickest insulin response and a type of protein that is absorbed the quickest. Maltodextrin or dextrose are the fastest sugars to be converted to glycogen, whey protein is absorbed the quickest. The protein source should also contain all the essential amino acids, particularly leucine, and studies have also shown that supplementing with the non-essential amino acid, Glutamine, also helps recovery and muscle protein synthesis.

OK, so now you're thinking, "thanks, Coach, can't wait to mix me up some of that dextrose and whey.". 

Can you say Mmmmmaltodextrin!

Here's a couple easy suggestions. You've heard before that chocolate milk is a good recovery drink, (or maybe you haven't..) Well, it's OK. Unless you're lactose intolerant. Mix the powder (not the high-fructose corn syrup!) with fat-free milk and you'll get a recovery drink with about a 3:1 CHO:PRO ratio. Milk also contains all the essential amino acids. Read labels and use the right amounts of milk and powder to get the right amount of carbs and proteins.. Carnation Instant Breakfast is another one. Again, use fat-free milk. Fat just slows down the whole process of getting the carbs working their magic with your insulin response and you don't want to do anything to slow that process down. 

Or you can do what I do. I drink Ultragen from First Endurance. It mixes great with water, it tastes good, they use the best ingredients for fast absorption into the system and it just flat out works. I've been using it for over a year now and it has been awesome for my recovery. Today I was out for 2 hours on the bike in the 90+ degree humid weather doing threshold intervals. Hammering out 3x9:00 intervals in this kind of heat at heart rates over 95% max were crushing. I was spent when I got home and I'm not kidding when I say that within a couple minutes of drinking the recovery drink I already started to feel better. There's no doubt in my mind that the stuff works. If it didn't I wouldn't recommend it. I also believe in it enough that it is the only recovery drink that I am selling at the gym. If you are interested in some, let me know. Read here if you're interested in the research behind the product.

If you're not doing the post-workout recovery nutrition right then you are wasting a huge opportunity to get the most out of your training. And you are literally one drink away from fixing it.