TL;DR
25-35 grams of whey protein, Orange Juice with a pinch of sea salt as immediately as possible after workouts.
Longer
“You don’t get bigger, faster, stronger from training. You get bigger, faster, stronger from RECOVERING from training”
This is a point I failed to recognize as a young man. I spent most of college overtrained, or under recovered, depending on how you’d like to couch that.
Disclaimer
Everyone responds differently to training and nutrition. I’m giving solid advice backed by much reading, research, and self-experimentation.
That said, if 10,000 people took this advice, it would likely work for most, but not all.
So like all things, listen, evaluate it critically, then take it for a test drive.
Keep what is useful, discard the rest.
The three foundational pillars of recovery, without these your gainz and athletic performance will be limited.
In order, the most important components of recovery.
- Sleep
- Hydration
- Nutrition
Sleep
Without proper sleep, everything is degraded. You have ~18k genes, and after a single night’s sleep ~800 change how they regulate things, some upregulate, some downregulate, all in the wrong direction. (Cortizol up, insulin sensitivity down, both bad)
Bad sleep is brutal on general health, and lethal for sports improvement. A single bad night’s sleep can degrade cardio by 20+%.
If you have a bad/short night’s sleep, I’m a huge fan of a nap in the 10-40 minute range.
If naps aren’t available, try a 10 minute Yoga Nidra relaxation visualization. youtube has many. If yoga nidra is too woo-woo, check out NSDR, Non sleep deep rest, basically guided body scanning without the woo. Also on youtube.
Hydration
Dehydration negatively affects sports performance. RPE(Perceived Rate of Exertion) goes up, coordination goes down, basically everything trends wrong. By the time you realize you’re dehydrated, it’s likely too late in the match or training session to play catch up.
If you have a hard time drinking enough water try a Nalgene bottle of ‘Meathead lemonade’
Meathead Lemonade
1L of water in bottle,
Tablespoon or three of lemon juice
Pinch of sea salt. (Sea salt has trace minerals, so better than just table salt)
I like mine room temperature to slightly warm if I’m trying to really chug it. Seems to sit better in my stomach. Oddly, it tastes great, sits well and helps keep the water in your body.
Nutrition
Target 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day, mostly from whole food sources(meat, eggs, cottage cheese, etc). There is little danger from overdoing protein if you take in sufficient water.
Post workout recovery windows
Post workout of any sort, there is a time window where your muscles replenish glycogen much faster. Scientists generally have this as 0-60 minutes post training.
If you’re doing hard daily training it is likely you’ll see good results with the post workout recovery drink immediately after training.
I find the most noticeable effect is how I feel the next day. Much fresher with less soreness.
A mix of whey protein and high glycemic carbs is the ticket, as muscles repair better with both protein and carbs than they would given either protein/carbs. I’m a fan of 25-35g of vanilla whey protein, OJ, and a pinch of sea salt. Tastes great, sits well in my stomach. This is one of the few times I’d recommend powders over high quality whole foods. The whey is digested much faster than 25g of steak and time is of the essence for maximum recovery.
If you miss this anabolic window, it’s clearly not the end of the world, it’s just the muscle repair and glycogen(muscle gas tank) filling will take more time. If you work out 3x a week, no big deal. If you’re training 6-7 days a week or doing 2 a days, much more of a big deal.
If you are doing seriously high intensity cardio or high glycolytic training(wrestling hard), I recommend supplementing with BCAA’s and Glutamine.
Glutamine is essential in immune health and gets drained from this type of training. BCAA’s are great post hard training and can help reduce muscle damage when lifting and dieting. If I finish a gonzo training session, I’ll put a heaping tablespoon of BCAA’s in with a heaping tablespoon of glutamine. Really helps reduce DOMS(that 2 day after can’t move sore) and I get sick less often.
Supplement list
There is nothing magic about these supplements. I’ve tried 100s of pills/powders/snake oil/pre-workouts and such. 95%+ were a total waste of time and money. Some were just terrible. One notably bad one: Taking NoXplode before jiu jitsu, I thought my heart was going to Xplode during the warmup.
The supplements below work for me, and are likely of relatively reasonable price and high quality.
I’m a fan of Bulk Supplements products. Clean and a fraction of the per-tablet price of others.
Bulk Supplements BCAAs
Bulk Supplements Glutamine
For protein powder, I’m a fan of Optimum Nutritions ‘natural whey vanilla’. I like to avoid sucralose, which is what most protein powders have as a sweetener.
There is enough evidence out there to suggest sucralose is no bueno for gut health. Since there are whey protein powders that don’t use sucralose, I pick those.(Stevia as a sweetener is a-ok)
Really any good whey without sucralose is likely just as good. I like vanilla as it has a good flavor when mixed with OJ. Tastes like an Orange Julius if you’ve ever had one of those.
Immune support
Zinc and D3, take with food in the AM. Cheap and really good. I like zinc + quercetin as quercetin is an ionophore which helps get zinc across the cell membranes. I take these in the AM.
Importance of a workout and food journal
This idea courtesy of the great strength coach Dan John.
Keep track of your workouts in something handy. I use Google Sheets as it’s accessible from everywhere.
Track workouts, including subjective measures, ‘felt terrible coming in, felt better after workout.’ ‘Shit night’s sleep’, etc.
Track your food, you don’t need to weigh things, but tidbits like ‘ate huge burrito was WAY too close to workout. Felt like I had a brick in my stomach and couldn’t move well’ These will provide hints.
Track your supplements as well.
There is little value in doing this workout/nutrition tracking over the short term. After a few months, you can circle back and read times you were doing really well in the gym/mat/life, and times when things weren’t going well.
From mining your workout journal you can glean the most important thing:
What makes YOU work best.