How do you recover optimally from training? Training puts a certain amount of stress on your body. Your muscles get tired from all the lunges, and the bones get loaded with heavy weights during deadlifts. The skin from your hands may get damaged from pull-ups, while all the jumps may beat your tendons. Does that sound scary? It's actually EXACTLY what triggers your muscles, bones and tendons to get stronger! However, they do need to be able to recover, and recovery is impacted by many things, like how well you sleep, how well you manage daily life stress, genetic factors and your nutrition – including supplements. Today, we will examine how pre- and post-workout meals can help improve recovery and performance. To do that, we need a quick primer on how nutrition influences recovery.
Nutrition and (muscle) recovery:
In your diet, fats (oils, butter) can function as energy but are also necessary to make your hormones function properly. Proteins (meat, dairy, eggs, tofu) form the building blocks for your body. Carbohydrates (bread, potatoes, rice) are energy.
That's roughly how your food's so-called "macronutrients" are often explained. Although it's way more complex in reality, it will suffice for the purpose of this post. I highly recommend reading our [POST ON SUPPLEMENTS] before reading the rest of this post if you haven't already because it will give you a bit more context on protein and supplements and why they help with recovery.
For the majority of people who follow strength, weightlifting or CrossFit classes, the primary four things are:
<ul><li>Have a healthy relationship with food. <em>(No excessive stress over your weight or diet!)</em></li><li>Eat enough to roughly sustain your body weight, or slowly gain/lose weight if that specifically is your goal.</li><li>Eat enough protein and spread your protein intake over 4-5 moments per day.</li><li>Eat like an adult. <em>(Eat your vegetables, emphasize unprocessed foods, but have some cake or a glass of wine sometimes if you enjoy it, etc.)</em></li></ul>
Do you need a pre-workout snack?
If you do the above reasonably well, most people -save for high-level competitive athletes- probably don't need a pre-workout snack or even a pre-workout meal specifically. However, practical situations may make it a VERY good idea to have a pre-workout snack. Consider the following real-life example that I frequently see.
Scenario A: You have lunch around 13:00 and train from 17:30 to 18:30 after work. You go home and have dinner around 19:30. That means you go without food for about 6,5 hours, with possibly an intense workout in between. That may cause two issues. One – you go hungry, which is distracting during a workout. Some people may even feel a bit weaker because of it. Two is that this means you're not really spreading your food (or rather protein) intake throughout the day, which means suboptimal recovery, and possibly more muscle damage from your workout.
Scenario B: You have lunch around 14:00 and train from 16:30 to 17:30, you have dinner at 18:00. You now only have 4 hours of not eating, which means there are more nutrients in your body throughout this period, fixing both issues from scenario A. You're more or less having a pre-workout meal in this situation.
Not everyone can be flexible with the exact moments they eat, train or work, so you may end up in scenario A. As a rough guideline: If you spread your protein intake over those ~4 moments per day (usually every 4 hours or so), you're probably already doing a great job. If you're in scenario A, I recommend:
<ul><li>Some protein, at least 0,3 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. So if you weigh 85kg, that's about 25 grams of protein. That could be a protein shake, a bit more than 100 grams of most types of meat or a protein bar.</li><li>Add something that keeps you from going hungry. This could be anything, just don't do anything that'll make you nauseous during training. (Some people are a bit sensitive to high amounts of fat right before training… So maybe not have 6 slices of bread with a lot of peanut butter as a snack). </li></ul>
In practice, a snack, in this case, could be a handful of berries and one of those squeezable packets of protein-rich yogurt from brands like Albert Heijn or HiPro. An alternative is a chicken filet sandwich, a protein bar, and an apple if you want to keep it simple.
Side note: If you train in the morning before having your breakfast, a pre-workout snack could be very useful for all the reasons mentioned earlier. Just a protein shake and a banana could already make a difference.
Okay, I want to improve my muscle recovery even further – what about a post-workout meal?
Well, if you stick to the earlier nutrition guidelines, the first meal after training is going to be a "regular, protein-rich meal", which could be anything, really, as long as you stick to those guidelines. A post-workout snack specifically becomes interesting in scenario C, which would be something like this:
You have lunch at 13:30, train at 16:30 and want dinner at 1745. This should not have a big, negative impact on recovery. However, you tend to get stuck in traffic and have a lot of stuff to do, so you're likely to eat at 19:00, or maybe later. This can cause two issues. The first of course having done a heavy workout and many hours of having few nutrients in your body to recover with. Another issue may be that going without food for so long and training hard increases the chance of you overeating later in the day. Even if you have a solid meal there, you may stay hungry and have cravings throughout much of the evening. This gets even worse if you have very unpredictable working days. This is where a post-workout snack can come in!
All you have to do is make sure you have that 0,3 grams of protein (or however much) with you at all times, just in case you have an unexpected busy day. Have some protein powder and a shaker at work that you can take with you to the gym if necessary. Have some protein bars in your gym bag at all times, or get one at UnScared from the vending machine after work. Have some beef jerky or nuts (or other stuff that doesn't spoil) in your car in case of emergency. Find whatever makes it sustainable to consistently have post-workout snacks available if you're at risk of having weird work days and such!
Okay, so anything else I can do post workout? Or maybe a pre-workout supplement?
Aside from enough quality sleep and such, supplements CAN help. Make sure to read our blog on supplements to learn more about this!
Keep in mind that how hard and often you train has a big impact on your muscle recovery. If you train extremely light, you can train a muscle ten times in a day. If you train extremely hard, a muscle might take a few days to recover. You don't always have to be 100% recovered to have a productive workout, but if you're smart about training and at least do the lower-effort-basics right (like eating your protein), you can make a HUGE difference.
Okay, I still find this a bit complicated, can you make it more concrete?
<ul><li>Spread your protein intake roughly evenly over 4-5 moments in the day. If you do that, don't worry too much about pre or post-workout snacks/meals. If you cannot do that (or train before breakfast), consider a pre or post workout snack to make sure you still spread your protein intake throughout the day and don't go without protein for too long.</li>
<li>A pre-workout snack or meal should have some protein in there plus whatever helps stave off hunger. Watch out for anything that makes you feel bloated or nauseous during training. Caffeine (in the form of coffee, a FITAID, or even a caffeine supplement) also has a mildly appetite suppressing effect, but I don't recommend it before evening workouts because it can mess with sleep quality… Which is also bad for recovery.</li>
<li>A post-workout snack or meal should also have protein, but anything else you put in there matters a lot less. </li></ul>
If you want to go the extra mile and optimize your nutrition, consider following any type of nutrition seminar at UnScared, or send an email to info@unscared.fitness to see if a 1-on-1 session can help you iron out some details to improve your own nutrition and recovery!
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