Unwarranted concerns regarding Peri-Workout nutrition. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, peri-workout nutrition simply means what you eat/supplement with pre / during / post-workout. Uninformed coaches, people in the gym, athletes and more often than not muscle magazines use fear mongering tactics about the peri-workout nutrition period. Often suggesting it be eliminated while making claims like: #1. Fat gain due to large sums of nutrients being consumed #2. Hormonal effects To address #1, literally the exact opposite is true. During resistance training GLUT4 and GLUT12 receptors are trans-located and make for a direct pathway of carbohydrates to the muscle cell. Making for a quick and efficient energy source avoiding fat gain entirely. Lets also remember the fact that one of the biggest drawbacks to training in a lower than normal calorie deficit to illicit fat loss results in weak workouts because of the lower amount of energy. So why not have carbohydrates where you need them most?During training so that you are kicking ass in the gym and having energy where you need it while quite literally avoiding any fat gain from them? This will also boost recovery so that youre coming in more prepared for the next sessions as well. Benefiting tons of areas of body composition and performance positively. To put #1 to rest, fat loss is entirely dependent on energy balance and daily macro-nutrient breakdown, not acute events such as intra-workout carbs. To put it another way, if you were on a 500 calorie per day diet and all of your calories came in the form of intra-workout nutrition, do you think you would not burn any fat because you had it during your workout? Of course you would!!! 500 calories per day is extremely low which is why you have to look at the whole picture of fat loss (which is really the only one that matters) as opposed to just during training. Now to hit #2, you will often hear people saying carbs around training can negatively impact testosterone or growth hormone. Once again, completely unwarranted. Research is quite clear that these pulsatile releases have almost zero effect on body composition and that it is chronic elevations in these hormones that create a beneficial effect. If you have a nap and acutely elevate GH and testosterone, its really not going to do anything. If you inject testosterone and GH daily, youll probably get jacked and lean. Big difference between chronic and acute elevations, main difference being acute elevations really do jack shit for your physique in both the big and small picture. Another thing you will commonly hear is dudes waiting to have their post-workout shakes after training because GH is elevated from training so im going to wait because insulin will drop my GH. This is dumb. GH is elevated because it is working with cortisol to scavenge your body for energy substrates because youre being highly active. Leading to more muscle breakdown, ESPECIALLY IN A CALORIC DEFICIT. Completely dumb strategy that can lead to less muscle growth and the pulsatile GH effect is going to have no impact on your body composition. Far more important than any of these senseless warnings is for an athlete to be able to train effectively and recover to the best of his ability during a caloric deficit and be able to positively adapt from that training. Ensuring intra-workout nutrition is on point plays a large role in that. I recommend all my athletes take both carbohydrates and protein during and after training and the calculations are based on activity level and size.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:54:12 +0000
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