Woman on fitness mat eating healthy vegan salad after workout. Vegan diet and sport concept.vaaseenaa/Getty Images
Despite what Instagram may tell you, the key to recovering after a hard workout isn’t a high-tech self-massage machine or a bone-chilling ice bath or a decadent hour in the sauna.
You can do those things if you want, and they might even help a bit. The science on them is mixed. But what matters far more, and is backed by robust research, is what you put in your mouth.
In a recent issue of the journal Sports Medicine, an international team of sports nutrition researchers from six countries, led by Alireza Naderi of Islamic Azad University in Iran and Tim Podlogar of the University of Exeter in Britain, rounds up the current evidence on nutritional strategies to help post-workout recovery. They zero in on three key goals: replenishing your energy stores, repairing muscle damage, and restoring homeostasis. Here’s what they found.
Replenish energy stores
After a long workout, your fuel tanks will be depleted. You have enough carbohydrate stored in your muscles and liver to fuel a couple hours of sustained effort, but they need to be refilled before the next workout.
In the 1980s, research showed that taking in carbs within about half-hour of finishing a workout refilled the tanks faster than taking in the same amount of carbohydrate several hours later. This led to an emphasis on a short “recovery window” for post-workout refueling.
But more recent research has found this only matters if you’re planning multiple workouts in the same day, Naderi and Podlogar point out. If you’re sticking to one workout a day, the timing is less crucial than simply making sure you eat enough carbs over the course of the day.
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The right amount depends on how active you are, ranging from 3 to 5 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day for people who are recreationally active; or up to 8 to 12 grams per kilogram a day for athletes training more than four or five hours a day.
Repair muscle damage
Every workout causes microscopic damage to your muscles. That’s actually a good thing, because repairing that damage is in part how you grow bigger and stronger muscles. But you need to have the right raw materials available: amino acids from protein.
Just as with carbs, there has long been a belief that you need to down protein within a narrow window immediately after a workout to kickstart the rebuilding process – hence all the protein shakes at the gym.
Once again, though, more recent research has found that the window isn’t as narrow as thought. As long as you get enough protein throughout the day, you’ll have the amino acids you need available for repairs. That means three to four meals or snacks with 20 to 40 grams of protein each, according to Naderi and Podlogar.
Another option for warding off muscle damage is antioxidant supplements like vitamins C and E. There’s some evidence that large doses may speed up recovery, but other studies have found that they blunt fitness gains when taken regularly. A better alternative with no downside, Naderi and Podlogar suggest, is getting plenty of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables in your diet.
Restore homeostasis
Homeostasis is your body’s way of keeping in balance, ensuring that parameters like body temperature and blood sugar stay in a relatively narrow range.
Exercise pushes you out of homeostasis in a few different ways. For example, you’ll almost certainly finish your workout less hydrated, thanks to sweat losses. You can calculate how much sweat you lost by weighing yourself before and after the workout, then aim to drink 1.5 to two times as much as you lost. Or you can simply pay attention to your thirst cues and make sure to satisfy them.
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More subtly, hard exercise can make your blood more acidic, which in turn interferes with muscle contraction and contributes to the sensation of fatigue. Preliminary evidence suggests that taking baking soda – a base that buffers acidity – after a workout might help restore homeostasis more quickly and improve subsequent exercise performance. But further research is needed, the researchers conclude.
There are, of course, numerous other hypotheses about how nutrition might help recovery. Creatine and caffeine might speed up carbohydrate absorption under certain circumstances, for example. But if you get the basics right – replenish, repair, and restore – then you don’t need to sweat the details.
Alex Hutchinson is the author of The Explorer’s Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map.
