Post Workout
The Religion of Post Workout Nutrition Part 1
Pre- and post-workout nutrition is all the rage these days, and for good reason. For some, however, it's become more than a science-it's become their religion, or perhaps just a place to focus their OCD-like tendencies. Regardless, people have taken the topic of pre- and post-workout nutrition to a level that is not justified by the research, or at least not confirmed by the research that currently exists.
Readers should realize I may have my membership card to the Bodybuilding Nutrition Guru Society torn up and thrown at me for what I am about to share in this article...
As expected, supplement companies-and self-proclaimed 'net guru types-have used what does exist for research to convince everyone that that if they don't take in exactly 98.7 grams of carbohydrates and 37.2 grams of protein within 28 seconds after they leave the gym, their muscles will be attacked by every muscle-hating hormone they possess in their body by second 29; with the prior year of hard work in the gym totally wasted by second 30!
People are fixated on this particular topic like nothing else, and when you throw in the other possible ingredients that can be added to the post-workout drink, such as creatine, glutamine, and many others, it's taken to the level of psychosis!
Of course supplement companies have come out with their own "techno-functional ultra-repartitioning multi-dimensional"* post-workout drink formulas that are claimed to be the latest breakthrough. Besides the carbs and protein in these formulas, many of the additional compounds are either under dosed (ergo the 'label decoration' syndrome), have no particular justification for being in the formula in the first place, or both (ergo, the 'shot gun' approach)...but I digress.
Now I have to take at least some blame-or credit-for this predicament, depending on how you want to view it. I have written extensively about the importance of post-workout nutrition in all manner of articles, and give the topic extensive focus in my Bodybuilding Revealed e-book.
Unlike many of the supplement companies and 'net experts' out there, however, I never claimed you would shrivel up into Pee Wee Herman in a matter of minutes if you didn't get your ultra high-tech post-workout drink 29 seconds after your last set of squats. I have always taken a balanced view on the topic, by pointing out that food is still more important in the overall equation of muscle growth.
Thus, what I can say is that research-and common sense-tells us it's advantageous to get some fast-acting carbs and protein after a hard workout to optimize the time we put in the gym. From there, however, people have relied more on wishful thinking than science for their pre- and post-workout nutrition. People who have poor diets and poorly thought-out training routines, but focus on the latest magic pre- and post-workout elixirs are missing the point. Their approach is like trying to hold up a three-legged stool with one support leg and the other two missing.
General Considerations of Research vs. the "Real World"
As we all know, a great deal of research is performed that-although interesting-has very little "real world" application to bodybuilders and other athletes.
This is because scientists do everything in their power to study their chosen topic in isolation. In other words, they go to great lengths and trouble to control variables that will impact the outcomes of their studies. For example, in a study looking at the effects of a drug or supplement, a placebo group is matched to the "active" group. The scientists want to make sure the effect they get-or don't get-is due to the drug/supplement and not the placebo effect. Making the study double-blind is another way of attempting to prevent the bias of the scientists from influencing the study.
The point is that, when they attempt to isolate an effect of something being tested, scientists often end up with results that may not always be directly applicable to the "real world" of Joe Schmoe gym goer.
When study designs don't reflect "real world" conditions, they need to be taken with a grain of salt. Were the study participants fasted? What type of exercise did they perform? What effects did the researchers actually look at and how does that apply to the "real world" or athlete in question? Were the study participants new to the form of exercise being utilized in the study or were they experienced athletes? How many people were in the study? Who do the results apply to: endurance or strength athletes? Both? Neither?!
Those are just a few of the essential questions that have to be asked and answered before you can even begin to draw any useful "real world" conclusions from the studies that come out. Yet this doesn't stop people and supplement companies from jumping on the latest studies as the last word in nutrition and start making recommendations from them. They also tend to ignore the studies that contradict or fail to replicate the advice they are giving out. Let's look at some examples...
The Fast vs. Slow Protein Craze..
The use of fasted subjects in nutrition studies illustrates how researchers can end up with results that may not apply well to the real world. As the name implies, the study subjects are a group of people who have not eaten for an extended period of time. In many cases, they haven't eaten for 8 - 10 hours or more, which of course does not reflect how the average person eats, at let alone how the average athlete eats-especially bodybuilders looking to add muscle mass.
Enter stage right, the "fast vs. slow" protein craze. The study that got this craze rolling was called "Slow and fast dietary proteins differently modulate postprandial protein accretion" and was responsible for causing a resurgence of interest in casein. The basic premise of this much-touted study was that the speed of absorption of dietary amino acids (from ingested proteins) varies according to the type of dietary protein a person eats.
The researchers wanted to see if the type of protein eaten would affect postprandial (e.g., after a meal) protein synthesis, breakdown, and deposition. To test the hypothesis, they fed casein (CAS) and whey protein (WP) to a group of healthy adults, a single meal of casein (CAS) or whey WP following an overnight fast (10 h). Using this specific study design, they found:
•WP induced a dramatic but short increase of plasma amino acids.
•CAS induced a prolonged plateau of a moderate increase in amino acids (hyperaminoacidemia)
•Whole body protein breakdown was inhibited by 34% after CAS ingestion but not after WP ingestion.
•Postprandial protein synthesis was stimulated by 68% with the WP meal and to a lesser extent (+31%) with the CAS meal.
The basic non-science summary is: the study found that CAS was good at preventing protein breakdown (proteolysis), but was not so good for increasing protein synthesis. WP had basically the opposite effects: it increased protein synthesis but didn't prevent protein breakdown. The problem is that they were using fasted subjects for a single meal. ***
Keep that in mind as we move along here...
So far so good right? So what can we conclude from this study and how useful are the results? Like so many studies, the results were interesting-and of little use to people in the real world. Do these results hold up under more "real world" conditions where people are eating every few hours and/or mixing the proteins with other macronutrients (i.e., carbs and fats)? The answer is probably not, which is exactly what the researchers found when they attempted to mimic a more realistic eating pattern of multiple meals and or the addition of other macronutrients. The follow up study was called "The digestion rate of protein is an independent regulating factor of postprandial protein retention." Four groups of five to six healthy young men received:
• a single meal of slowly digested casein (CAS).
• a single meal of free amino acids mimicking the composition of casein (AA).
• a single meal of rapidly digested whey proteins (WP).
• repeated meals of whey proteins (RPT-WP) mimicking slow digestion rate of casein (i.e., reflecting how people really eat).
So what did they find? In a nut shell, giving people multiple doses of whey-which more closely mimics how people really eat--had basically the same effects as a single dose of casein, and mixing either with fats and proteins pretty much nullified any big differences between the two proteins.
Even that's not the end of the story, however, as multiple follow up studies done by the same group and others found these effects could also be different in older versus younger people and male versus female! How messed up is that?! So how much press did these follow up studies get? Little or none, as I recall.
Now, a later study did attempt to examine the actual net amino acid uptake after resistance training with whey vs. casein, and found both proteins had essentially the same effects on net muscle protein synthesis after exercise despite different patterns of blood amino acid responses.
Does that put to rest the issue or debate of one protein vs. the other post-workout? No, as there are yet more conflicting studies out there and my bet is still on whey as the superior post-workout protein, but it's important to realize the answer is far from established at this time.
End Part 1...
