It can take at least 6 days to recover from a hard training session

This study seems to support the basic workout frequency prescribed by Doug McGuff and John Little in Body by Science - once a week (and less frequently if necessary).

Recovery after Heavy Resistance Exercise And Skeletal Muscle Androgen Receptor And Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I Isoform Expression In Strength Trained Men.

The effects of heavy resistance exercise on skeletal muscle androgen receptor (AR) protein concentration and mRNAs of AR, insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF)-IEa, and mechano growth factor (MGF) expression were examined from biopsies of vastus lateralis (VL) muscle before and 48 hours after heavy resistance exercise (5 × 10 repetition maximum [RM] leg press and 4 × 10RM squats) in 8 adult strength trained men. The present exercise induced an acute decrease in maximal isometric force and increased serum total testosterone (T) and free testosterone (FT) concentrations. During 2 recovery days, maximal isometric force and subjective perception of physical fitness remained significantly lowered, whereas serum creatine kinase activity, subjective muscle soreness, and muscle swelling (i.e., thickness of VL by ultrasound) were significantly increased compared to pre-exercise values. Subjective perception of physical fitness was followed up to 7 days, and by 6 days postexercise, it was elevated above the pre-exercise level. Basal T and FT concentrations remained unaltered after the exercise. No statistically significant changes were observed in AR protein or mRNA expression, but IGF-IEa (p < 0.05) and MGF (p < 0.05) mRNA expression were increased compared to pre-exercise levels. These findings indicate that IGF-IEa and MGF responses may be related to acute regenerative processes in muscle because of exercise and may contribute to muscular adaptation to resistance exercise. Subjective perception of physical fitness suggests that recovery over a pre-exercise level of the present type of heavy resistance exercise can take approximately 6 days.


Of course I am left asking about the vaidity of subjective perceptions.....

Naps improve recovery from exercise....

As is often the case, this is not that surprising:

The data imply that daytime naps have a potential role as a valuable recovery tool following endurance exercise,

I wish I had the opportunity to taek smoe daily naps in the afternoon. Unfortunately work intervenes.

The effect of prior endurance training on nap sleep patterns.

PURPOSE: The use of daytime napping as a recovery tool following exercise is virtually unexplored. The objective of this study was to assess the quality of daytime nap sleep following endurance training in an athletic population, and to appraise the optimal circadian timing of the nap and the time interval between training and the nap.
METHODS: Six physically trained male subjects (22.5 +/- 2.4 y) performed four separate standardized 90-min endurance training sessions followed by a 90-min daytime nap either 1 or 2 h after training (time interval), commencing at either 10:30 or 11:30 (circadian timing). During the nap, sleep was monitored using polysomnography. Subjective measurements of sleep quality, alertness and preparedness to train following a nap were recorded using a visual analog scale.
RESULTS: The duration of slow wave sleep (SWS) was significantly greater during the 11:30 naps (13.7 +/- 9.0 min) compared with the 10:30 naps (6.9 +/- 8.8 min) (P = .049). There was no significant difference in SWS duration between a 1-h (10.6 +/- 10.2 min) or 2-h (10.0 +/- 9.0 min) time interval between training and the nap (P = .82). No other sleep variables differed significantly according to circadian timing or time interval.
CONCLUSION: Recovery naps commenced later in the morning contain more SWS than earlier naps. The data imply that daytime naps have a potential role as a valuable recovery tool following endurance exercise, given the suggested energy restorative functions of SWS.

Recovery methods

you read a lot about how to speed recovery - stretching, contract baths.....

According to this study neither works any better than doing nothing.

Effect of Postexercise Recovery Procedures Following Strenuous Stair-climb Running.

This study compared the effects of hot/cold water immersion, static stretching, and no recovery (control) interventions on leg strength, rowing performance, and indicators of muscle soreness/damage in the 72 hours following strenuous stair-climb running. Club (n = 14) and elite (Sports Institute) (n = 6) rowers performed the training run on three separate occasions. After each run, participants completed a randomly assigned 15-minute recovery treatment, either hot/cold, static stretching, or control, which were repeated at 24 and 48 hours postrun. No significant strength or performance differences existed between the three recovery treatments for either group. Muscle soreness for both groups remained significantly elevated (p < 0.05) above baseline at 72 hours postrun. At 48-hours postrun serum creatine kinase levels had returned to baseline and at 72 hours postrun were below baseline in both groups. In conclusion, neither hot/cold nor static stretching accelerated recovery at 72 hours beyond that achieved by the control condition.

Just wash your face in cold water......

An interesting study! Speed recovery by dunking your face in cold water

Influence of cold water face immersion on post-exercise parasympathetic reactivation

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of cold water face immersion on post-exercise parasympathetic reactivation, inferred from heart rate (HR) recovery (HRR) and HR variability (HRV) indices. Thirteen men performed, on two different occasions, an intermittent exercise (i.e., an all-out 30-s Wingate test followed by a 5-min run at 45% of the speed reached at the end of the 30–15 Intermittent Fitness test, interspersed with 5 min of seated recovery), randomly followed by 5 min of passive (seated) recovery with either cold water face immersion (CWFI) or control (CON). HR was recorded beat-to-beat and vagal-related HRV indices (i.e., natural logarithm of the high-frequency band, LnHF, and natural logarithm of the square root of the mean sum of squared differences between adjacent normal R–R intervals, Ln rMSSD) and HRR (e.g., heart beats recovered in the first minute after exercise cessation) were calculated for both recovery conditions. Parasympathetic reactivation was faster for the CWFI condition, as indicated by higher LnHF (P = 0.004), Ln rMSSD (P = 0.026) and HRR (P = 0.002) values for the CWFI compared with the CON condition. Cold water face immersion appears to be a simple and efficient means of immediately accelerating post-exercise parasympathetic reactivation.

Getting older helps recovery

we old guys have some advantages....

Effects of Age and Rest Interval on Strength Recovery


The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of two different rest intervals between sets of isokinetic knee extension exercise on peak torque (PT), and Total Work (TW) between untrained younger and older men. Seventeen young men (24.22±2.58 yrs) and 20 older men (66.85±4.02 yrs) performed 3 sets of 10 unilateral isokinetic knee extension repetitions at 60°/s. The rest intervals between sets were 1 and 2 min. There was a significant decline in PT when 1 and 2 min rest intervals were used for young men, but not when a 2 min rest interval was applied for old men. There was also a significant decline in TW among the 3 sets when 1 and 2 min rest intervals were applied for young men, whereas the decline in TW in older men occurred only between the 2nd and 3rd sets. PT and TW in the 3rd set were significant greater following a 2 min rest interval than a 1 min rest in both young and older men. The present study indicated that non-resistance trained young men may require longer rest interval to recover full PT and TW when compared to older men.

Carbs and Protein during recovery

Carbs may be controversial to we paleo types - (I'm not that paleo actually - I like my cream and the odd spud!) - but here are a couple of new studies indicating that carbs plus protein after exercise benefits recovery:


Co-ingestion of protein with carbohydrate during recovery from endurance exercise stimulates skeletal muscle protein synthesis in humans.

Effects of an amino Acid carbohydrate drink on exercise performance after consecutive-day exercise bouts.

Training without exhaustion

I have been thinking about muscle soreness.

I love training hard and waking the next day to check out the soreness in the muscles. My first workouts with weights over 20 years ago produced intense and exquisite soreness the next day and over the years I have continued to experience that soreness and often use it as a gauge to indicate that I've been working hard - my pecs are sore: I must have trained effectively etc.

However, I've been thinking more about this recently. How useful in real life is such soreness? If a training session leaves you exhausted immediately after it and almost crippled with soreness the next day, is that a practical or useful way of training for everyday life?

I want my training to enhance my life. To make me fit for whatever challenges are going to come at me in those days. I might need to sprint for a bus, to sprint away from a fight or to defend myself in some way. If my ability to perform is limited because of my previous day's training then is there a problem?

Hard and intense training works and I enjoy pushing myself to the limit. But there is a balance.

I want to train hard enough to improve ....... but not so hard that I am debilitated and handicapped. Train hard but not so much that - paradoxically - I become weak.......

Old guys, weights and protein.....

I am sure that there are lots of clever people reading this blog that will be able to make more of this study than I can but how about:

• Resistance training still has effects on older men
• Taking protein around training in older men reduces the usual resultant levels of testosterone in the blood; but
• Taking protein around training did not affect the gene expression associated with other hormonal growth factors.
  

So in the light of this study and of this one - Protein co-ingestion stimulates muscle protein synthesis during resistance type exercise - is it a good idea to eat protein around your training? I don't know and I can't really comment since I've not tried it, but I can't help thinking that I would throw up.

Androgen receptors and testosterone in men-Effects of protein ingestion, resistance exercise and fiber type.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of protein ingestion on circulating testosterone and muscle androgen receptor (AR) as well as on insulin-like growth factor-I (MGF and IGF-IEa) responses to a resistance exercise (RE) bout in (57-72 year) men. Protein (15g whey) (n=9) or placebo (n=9) was consumed before and after a RE bout (5 sets of 10 repetition maximums), and vastus lateralis muscle biopsies were taken pre, 1 and 48h post-RE. The protein ingestion blunted the RE-induced increase in serum free and total testosterone while the RE bout significantly increased muscle AR mRNA levels in older men (P<0.05). However, protein ingestion did not significantly affect AR mRNA or protein expression, or MGF and IGF-IEa mRNA expression at 1 and 48h post-RE. Immunohistochemical staining of muscle cross-sections was done with antibodies specific to AR and MyHC I and II and showed that there seems to be within or near the type-I muscle fibers a greater staining of ARs than within or near the type-II fibres. In conclusion, the protein ingestion hinders RE-induced increase in serum testosterone in older men but may not significantly affect muscle AR, MGF or IGF-IEa gene expression. Furthermore, the present study shows that even older men are able to increase muscle AR mRNA expression in response to a RE bout.

Repeated sprints....how to recover

Two studies that say how best to recover from repeated sprints....basically rest / passive recovery rather than active recovery.

Effect of Recovery Mode on Repeated Sprint Ability in Young Basketball Players. - The results of this study show that during repeated sprinting, passive recovery enabled better performance, reducing fatigue. Consequently, the use of passive recovery is advisable during competition in order to limit fatigue as a consequence of repeated high intensity exercise.


Performance and metabolism in repeated sprint exercise: effect of recovery intensity - In summary, peak power indices during the repeated-sprint test were inferior in the MI (moderate intensity) and LI (low intensity) active recovery trials, compared to passive (total rest?) . The minimal differences in performance and muscle metabolites between the MI and LI trials suggest that any low-to-moderate level of muscle activation will attenuate the resynthesis of PCr and the recovery of power output during repeated short-sprint exercise.


Not sure how we apply this to sports - e.g. football where, while you may be doing repeated sprints, you cannot just stand around to recover...... UPDATE 1/5/08 - of course as someone comments below, that is the point. In such sports, you cannot recover passively. That is why conditionign is so important and why these studies msut always be put into some context.

Getting older......

Here is a good one for those of us who are getting older. I'm 40 now - which used to seem old but now doesn't! Anyway this study looked at older cyclists (old? over 35 isn't old!) . It seems that as you age, exercise might make you more sore and give you greater feelings of fatigue.....but your performance might not be affected. You feel worse, but your performances may not similarly decline.

Altered perception and report of fatigue and recovery in veteran athletes.


AIM: This study investigated whether ageing effects perceived and reported ratings of fatigue and total quality of recovery following high-intensity training in athletes. We hypothesized that veteran (V) athletes would report greater changes in perceived measures of fatigue and recovery than training-matched younger athletes.
METHODS: Perceptions of muscle soreness (SOR), fatigue, and recovery were recorded in young (Y) and V (>35 years) well-trained cyclists in response to 3 days of repeated cycling time trials. Nine Y (24+/-5 years) and 9 V (45+/-6 years) cyclists performed 3 consecutive days (T1-T3) of 30-min cycling time trials (TT30) intended to induce fatigue leading to decreased performance. Physiological and performance variables were measured before, during, and after each time trial. Subjective measures of SOR, fatigue, and recovery were recorded each day.
RESULTS: There was no change in performance at the TT30 from T1 to T3 for either group. SOR, fatigue, and recovery significantly changed over the 3 days in the V group, but not in the Y group. The change in SOR from T1 to T3 was significantly greater in the V group than in the Y group (22+/-14 mm vs 9+/-12 mm, respectively; P=0.04).
CONCLUSION: It was concluded that 3 days of cycling time trials induce perceptions of muscle pain/SOR, fatigue and reduced recovery in well-trained V cyclists with no corresponding decline in physical performance.

Warm ups......

Actually stretching is OK but not as a warm up - that seems to be the view of both scientists and coaches now.

For example, Vern Gambetta comments:

I want to make sure that people do not get the impression that stretching is not important. Stretching as a means to improve functional flexibility is very important. It is a separate training unit. Stretching is not warm-up!

This New York Times piece concludes:

Another systematic review, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise in 2004. It looked at multiple studies and found that stretching “was not significantly associated with a reduction in total injuries,” but also concluded that more research was needed.

For now, many experts say that what may work is a quick warm-up, like low-impact aerobics or walking. It also helps to ease into an activity by starting off slow and then increasing speed, intensity or weight (for lifting).

So how do you warm up, if not by stretching?

Scott Sonnon says that:

Dynamic movements are the best way to prepare your body for dynamic workouts. The following series of Dynamic movements will develop your flexibility, balance, coordination, mobility and strength.

So what does that mean?

Craig Ballantyne has a nice simple idea of using bodyweight exercises to warm up:

.......do 5 minutes of bodyweight exercises to warm-up. This is a much more efficient approach than spending 5 minutes walking on a treadmill, which really doesn't prepare you for anything except more walking on a treadmill.

for example, we would do a circuit of bodyweight prisoner squats (to include the upper back muscles), some type of pushing movement (pushups - modified to the trainee's level of difficulty), and some type of pulling movement (focusing on shoulder blade retraction).

That could simply be 2 circuits of

• 10 reps of bodyweight squats or lying hip extensions
• 20 second plank
• 6-10 reps of kneeling pushups or pushups

Scot Sonnon has an excellent post on his blog today which is a little more developed:

Sequencing Dynamic Flexibility and Joint Mobility

In this article he presents the standard dynamic flexibility series used by James Madison University.

He goes on to say:

Your workout should have a prescribed joint mobility warm-up. It should always precede this dynamic series. The warm-up raises the body temperature, increases blood flow to the muscles, and lubricates the joints. Always remember warm-up the joints, they prime the muscles for work! Do not stretch to warm-up!

It is a great article.

While I am on the subject, I think Crossfit's warm up stops being a warm up and becomes a workout....

Training Frequency - a natural precription

The other day I pointed to the Crossfit "World Class Fitness in 100 Words" as a good summary of where I am getting to in my thoughts about training and diet. I noted that there are some modifications that I might make but overall it is an excellent précis.

One of the things that I think is not that well developed in the Crossfit manifesto is the idea of training frequency and indeed the relationship between frequency and intensity. All their statement says is :

Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.

Fair enough, but from my own training experience, the research and the ability to live a normal life, I think that training hard and intensely "5 or 6 days" a week is not the best solution.


This is where I think the thoughts of Art Devany are useful. One of the ideas that he proposes in his essay "Evolutionary Fitness" is that we would do well to look at optimal human activity patterns in terms of a "power law" distribution. This is a concept that he develops more in a post on his blog today:

Power Laws in Nature

The idea - in a simplified form - is that as the intensity of your exercise increases, its frequency should fall. You will get lots of rest, lots of easy low intensity movement and a few random bursts of hard, high intensity exercise.

Combine brief, but intense, work outs in a gym (the FT zone) with a wide variety of activities that mix intensity and duration randomly (mixing the IT and ST zones with brief spurts into the FT zone). Roller blading, bicycling, walking, sprinting, tennis, basketball, power walking, hitting softballs and so on are the sorts of activities that mix IT and ST fibers with intermittent FT action.

There is no hard and fast prescription to all this - it is about randomness, intermittency, a routine lack of routine. I try to put this into practice through lots of walking, daily balance exercises and a couple of gym/weight sessions a week, one interval based trying to work on VO2 max, one strength/power focussed. Always using "functional" movements - basically what Chek describes as primal patterns:

I’ve proposed that any primal man or woman who could not perform any of the primal patterns (squat, lunge, bend, push, pull, twist and gait) from a standing position, would have perished.

Read the post and the essay. Interesting and thought provoking.

Back to the Crossfit statement - "Routine is the enemy" needs to apply to intensity as well as other parameters.

Research digest.....

I wanted to get a post up to point to a couple of pieces of research that I have seen in the last week, about which I've not had time to write:

1. A study which might indicate that garlic is helpful in treating exercise induced muscle damage: Effects of allicin supplementation on plasma markers of exercise-induced muscle damage, IL-6 and antioxidant capacity.
2. Yet another complication associated with statin use! This time it a French study confirmed previous anecdotal reports that statins seem to trigger tendinitis or even an Achilles rupture. The study is reported here and here. Statins are full of potential side effects which are swept under the carpet by physicians desperate - for some reason - to reduce cholesterol. Once again I'd encourage you to read some of the cholesterol sceptics (e.g. this essay) and think for yourself about whether or not cholesterol deserves to be so demonised!
   

shock news...stretching doesn't help prevent sore muscles

We have looked at this before in the post "stretching doesn't prevent sore muscles" Now it appears that the New York Times has caught on......

The Claim: Stretching Can Prevent Soreness and Injury

Stretching — long promoted as a way to prevent injury, to reduce soreness and to speed post-exercise recovery — may not fulfill its promise. Over the years, scientists have found that stretching before or after a workout has little effect on either risk of injury or what is commonly known as delayed onset of muscle soreness, the discomfort that comes a day or more after challenging physical activity.

Of course readers of this blog now know how to prevent sore muscles ;-)

How to avoid sore muscles!

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is the pain or discomfort often felt 24 to 72 hours after exercising and subsides generally within 2 to 3 days. Once thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup, a more recent theory is that it is caused by tiny tears in the muscle fibers caused by eccentric contraction, or unaccustomed training levels. Since lactic acid disperses fairly rapidly, it could not explain pain experienced days after exercise, and some concentric-only exercises produce lactic acid, but rarely produce DOMS

Well that is what Wiki says. But we have all experienced it, even - dare I say it - enjoyed it. I used to feel that it was a sign that I had really trained hard and had stimulated growth.....masochist to the last.

The thing is I am not sure that such soreness is necessarily good. Certainly for those of a less obsessive / masochistic tendency it can put them off exercise all together. Soreness itself is maybe a warning a sign of tissue damage, a signal of injury rather than health....

So how do we prevent DOMS?

I just spotted this new study that seems to indicate that DOMS can be prevented by using a certain training protocol: Aerobic cardioacceleration immediately before each set of resistance exercise It is hard to tell from the abstract, but presumably that means a brief sprint or whatever to get the heart rate up.

The conclusions was that this protocol rapidly eliminates DOMS during vigorous progressive resistance training in athletes.

That is quite a big conclusion!

Is anyone out there going to try this and see if it works? I wonder how it applies to things like interval weight training? I did an interval session of kettlebell snatches the other day and my heart rate got really high throughout the session.....but I was still sore the next day!

Anyway, here is the abstract:


Elimination of delayed-onset muscle soreness by pre-resistance cardioacceleration before each set.

We compared delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) induced by anaerobic resistance exercises with and without aerobic cardioacceleration before each set, under the rationale that elevated heart rate (HR) may increase blood perfusion in muscles to limit eccentric contraction damage and/or speed muscle recovery. In two identical experiments (20 men, 28 women), well-conditioned athletes paired by similar physical condition were assigned randomly to experimental or control groups. HR (independent variable) was recorded with HR monitors. DOMS (dependent variable) was self-reported using Borg's Rating of Perceived Pain scale. After identical pre-training strength testing, mean DOMS in the experimental and control groups was indistinguishable (P > or = 0.19) for musculature employed in eight resistance exercises in both genders, validating the dependent variable. Subjects then trained three times per week for 9 (men) to 11 (women) weeks in a progressive, whole-body, concurrent training protocol. Before each set of resistance exercises, experimental subjects cardioaccelerated briefly (mean HR during resistance training, 63.7% HR reserve), whereas control subjects rested briefly (mean HR, 33.5% HR reserve). Mean DOMS among all muscle groups and workouts was discernibly less in experimental than control groups in men (P = 0.0000019) and women (P = 0.0007); less for each muscle group used in nine resistance exercises in both genders, discernible (P < 0.025) in 15 of 18 comparisons; and less in every workout, discernible (P < 0.05) in 32% (men) and 55% (women) of workouts. Most effect sizes were moderate. In both genders, mean DOMS per workout disappeared by the fourth week of training in experimental but not control groups. Aerobic cardioacceleration immediately before each set of resistance exercises therefore rapidly eliminates DOMS during vigorous progressive resistance training in athletes.

CoQ10 - A supplement that works?

If you have read previous posts (for example "Post Workout drinks are a waste of money") you may have picked up the idea that I think supplements are - by and large - a waste of money. Desperate athletes try anything to improve their performance but their purchases are often driven more by marketing than by any scientific research. This is something pointed out in the Intermittent Fasting book Eat Stop Eat.

However that isn't to say that all supplements are useless. For example I keep hearing positive things about CoQ10. Here is another study on this:

Reducing exercise-induced muscular injury in kendo athletes with supplementation of coenzyme Q10.

Intensive physical exercise may cause muscular injury and increase oxidative stress. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of an antioxidant, coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), on muscular injury and oxidative stress during exercise training. Eighteen male students, all elite Japanese kendo athletes, were randomly assigned to either a CoQ10 group (n 10) or a placebo group (n 8) in a double-blind manner. Subjects in the CoQ10 group took 300 mg CoQ10 per d for 20 d, while subjects in the placebo group took the same dosage of a placebo. All subjects practised kendo 5.5 h per d for 6 d during the experimental period. Blood samples were taken 2 weeks before, during (1 d, 3 d, 5 d) and 1 week after the training. Serum creatine kinase (CK) activity and myoglobin (Mb) concentration significantly increased in both groups (at 3 d and 5 d). Serum CK (at 3 d), Mb (at 3 d) and lipid peroxide (at 3 d and 5 d) of the CoQ10 group were lower than those of the placebo group. The leucocyte counts in the placebo group significantly increased (at 3 d) and neutrophils significantly increased in both groups (at 3 d and 5 d). Serum scavenging activity against superoxide anion did not change in either group. These results indicate that CoQ10 supplementation reduced exercise-induced muscular injury in athletes.

Post Workout Drinks - a waste of money?

I have posted about post workout nutrition before (where we saw that eating carbs after a workout can blunt the fat burning effect).

Here is a new study that indicates that - despite all the marketing to the contrary - a post workout carbohydrate or protein/carbohydrate drink does not enhance recovery...so don't waste your money. Worth thinking through....


Carbohydrate-protein drinks do not enhance recovery from exercise-induced muscle injury.

This study examined the effects of carbohydrate (CHO), carbohydrate-protein (CHO+PRO), or placebo (PLA) beverages on recovery from novel eccentric exercise. Female participants performed 30 min of downhill treadmill running (-12% grade, 8.0 mph), followed by consumption of a CHO, CHO+PRO, or PLA beverage immediately, 30, and 60 min after exercise. CHO and CHO+PRO groups (n = 6 per group) consumed 1.2 g . kg body weight-1 . hr-1 CHO, with the CHO+PRO group consuming an additional 0.3 g . kg body weight-1 . hr-1 PRO. The PLA group (n = 6) received an isovolumetric noncaloric beverage. Maximal isometric quadriceps strength (QUAD), lower extremity muscle soreness (SOR), and serum creatine kinase (CK) were assessed preinjury (PRE) and immediately and 1, 2, and 3 d postinjury to assess exercise-induced muscle injury and rate of recovery. There was no effect of treatment on recovery of QUAD (p = .21), SOR (p = .56), or CK (p = .59). In all groups, QUAD was reduced compared with PRE by 20.6% +/- 1.5%, 17.2% +/- 2.3%, and 11.3% +/- 2.3% immediately, 1, and 2 d postinjury, respectively (p < .05). SOR peaked at 2 d postinjury (PRE vs. 2 d, 3.1 +/- 1.0 vs. 54.0 +/- 4.8 mm, p < .01), and serum CK peaked 1 d postinjury (PRE vs. 1 d, 138 +/- 47 vs. 757 +/- 144 U/L, p < .01). In conclusion, consuming a CHO+PRO or CHO beverage immediately after novel eccentric exercise failed to enhance recovery of exercise-induced muscle injury differently than what was observed with a PLA drink.


Brad Pillon author of East Stop Eat stresses that so much of accepted sports nutrition is driven by marketing, with people trying to sell you things. The Science of Sport blog
also said similar things when they pointed out that much of the idea of drinking sports drinks came from studies sponsored by the very companies which made sports drinks.....