By: Adam Lloyd (BKIN, CSCS, PNS)
A Brief Explanation of Workout Nutrition
Before you choose your workout nutrition, and diet composition for that matter, you really outta know what your goals are. Whether it's to gain muscle, lose fat, increase power, etc, an athlete needs to alter their nutritional intake to optimize performance.
Athletes, and the weekend warrior, are generally trying to accomplish three main things:
- Glycogen replenishment (Replacing Carbohydrate stores)
- Anabolic hormone response (A decrease in protein breakdown)
- An increase in protein synthesis (replacing/creating new protein)
In other words, they want to replenish their energy stores, increase muscle size and/or muscle quality. And in doing so, they want to increase performance and/or improve their appearance.
Benefits of Optimal Workout Nutrition
- Significantly Improved recovery
- Reduced muscle soreness
- Increased ability to protect and build muscle
- Enhanced immune function
- Increased fat burning
Why So Important?
After resistance workouts, muscle protein synthesis (anabolism) does increase as a result of the workout, but it still doesn't always increase as much as protein breakdown (catabolism). The relationship between these two components, rate of muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown, represents the basis for muscle growth/recovery and optimal performance.
Muscle growth and recovery can only occur when a positive protein balance is established during recovery, and when there is sufficient energy stores (carbohydrate). This is often difficult with high intensity athletes, especially MMA fighters, protein breakdown increases substantially and carbohydrate stores are drastically depleted. This is the reason nutritional intake is so vital, specifically the drinks consumed during a game or practice and the food consumed after.
Consuming the right combination of nutrients during and immediately following exercise promotes a positive protein balance and helps restore carbohydrate stores, leading to optimal recovery.
What You Need to Know
During and immediately after intense exercise, blood flow to the working muscles is greatly increased. Therefore, a performance drink with protein and carbohydrate in a ratio of 2C:1P ingested during and 3C:1P after exercise (or games), the rate of protein synthesis and carbohydrate replenishment can be optimized.
“The Window”
Some refer to this workout and post-workout phenomenon as “anabolic window”, or something along that line. During this “window”, your muscles are primed to devour nutrients that can stimulate muscle repair and optimize performance. Feed your body properly while this 2-3 hour window is open and you’ll reap huge rewards. If post exercise nutrient ingestion is inadequate or delayed as little as 2 hours, a decrease in recovery and performance can be expected.
To take advantage of this window, you could absolutely eat a whole food meal directly after exercise. However, whole food is slower digesting (not usually a bad thing), so you might want to consider recovery drinks/bars that contains rapidly digesting protein (protein hydrolysates or isolates) and carbohydrate (maltodextrin, dextrose, glucose, etc). Save the whole meal for about 45-90 minutes post workout, which should consist of 40-50g protein, and 80-100g carbohydrate (depending on goals this varies greatly). For example, 40g lean protein (chicken, extra lean beef, turkey) and 80g carbohydrate could be consumed through a combination of veggies and starchy carbs such as whole wheat pastas, wild rice, quinoa, bread, sweet potatoes. A little dietary fat is ok, such as 10% of the total calories for a post workout meal, but the majority is best saved for all other times of the day.
Extra Credit
- The combination of carbohydrate and protein during/after exercise results in a stimulatory effect of natural growth hormone and testosterone levels, increasing the rate of recovery and optimizing performance.
- A pre workout or game meal should be something the body is used to. It should not be a heavy meal, not a huge bowl of pasta, not a fat heavy meal. Ex. 1-2 cups mixed fruit + 1-2 cup veggies + 30g lean protein + ½-1 cup oatmeal and 500ml – 1L water.
- Yes, it is helpful to add 5g of creatine to your workout nutrition (5g before your workout and 5g after is more then enough).
- Beta-Alanine boosts carnosine concentrations, allowing our type 2 muscle fibers to soak up more H+ (hydrogen ions) and stay in an optimal pH range. By keeping our type 2 muscle fibers in an optimal pH range, they are better able to maintain maximal strength and endurance throughout your workout session and bring on new muscle gains. In other words, you train longer, harder, and kick ass in the gym.
Summary and Suggestions
As a baseline recommendation, start by ingesting 30g carbohydrate and 15g protein (in 500ml water) per hour of workout time (fast acting products – protein isolates, and hydroslates, and quick acting carbohydrate powder). This means if you’re working out for one total hour, you’re sipping your 30g carbohydrate and 15g protein drink during that hour. Once your workout is done, have a recovery drink of 40-60g carbohydrate and 30-40g protein (depending on goals this will vary). Finally, eat a whole food meal rich in protein (40-60g protein) and carbohydrate (60-100g carbohydrate) within 90 minutes after the recovery drink.
