Recovery Nutrition Continued

There’s an old school saying that we used to describe someone who was strong or muscular. We’d say he was built like a brick shithouse. Conversely, there’s another saying that nothing is capricious in nature––that is––if something exists there is a reason for it.

No matter what your goal in training whether it’s strength or endurance the health as well as cosmetic benefits are many. When you are training at a high level of frequency as well as intensity you’re going to experience a level of fatigue and/or hunger. Nature has provided these two ‘signals’ to tell you that it needs nutrition and/or sleep in order to recover and build more endurance, more strength and more muscle.

So think of those nutritional components like bricks needed to build the house. Well, we put the concrete mix in, poured the water in and began mixing the concrete (the workout) and poured it into the wheel barrel––the clock is ticking. Next, we need to place those bricks on the wall and cement them in. Otherwise, not only was the workout wasted but we’re even further behind because we’ve already cut into the body’s ability to recover. If we don’t put the nutrition in, we’ve got a mess on our hands.

There are a number of nutritional guru’s out there in the muscle building/athletic World that I have tremendous respect for, they include Steve Holman, Eric Broser, John Bernardi, Bill Phillips, Layne Norton, Dave Goodin and John Hansen. They all come up with similar strategies with a little twist and frankly they are very close to strategies we used in the 80’s and 90’s when I trained under the tutelage of some of the greats. We drank protein during our workouts, immediately after our workouts and then went out for a meal.

The only thing about that advice which has changed is that, this is the best time to ALSO ingest your simple or starchy carbohydrates. During your workout you can take 2 scoops of whey protein with BCAA and L-Glutamine added and mix it with about 16 ounces of Gatorade.

Then, as soon as you leave the gym, have another 2 scoops of protein, BCAA’s and L-Glutamine mixed with water and 4 brown rice cakes. That will give you just enough insulin spike to drive the amino acids into the muscle for adequate recovery.

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