Maximizing Anabolic Effects through Peri-Workout Nutrition

Sourced from Strength Sensei

For quite some time there has been an on going debate in regards to the post exercise “anabolic window” that occurs post weight training.

For years, the theory was that within a certain period of time after training you had to get in your protein shake, lest you lose all your gains you stimulated during lifting.  If you’re well enough read on this subject, you will know it goes something like this…

– Lift weights

– Get in your protein shake and carbs in within 30 minutes post training or you lose out on anabolism

This has led countless numbers of lifters to be paranoid about downing a protein shake quickly post training, lest they lose their “gains”.  Or more effectively put, miss out on the post training window for setting up growth.

Now I want to preface this by stating there eventually became two factors here regarding this theory.

One was glycogen replenishment.  That you needed to take in carbs post training in order to replenish depleted glycogen stores from training.  The other factor was muscle protein synthesis (MPS), the removing or repairing damaged proteins and building new proteins that are replicas of the original.

This theory was widely accepted as truth for decades until some research was done over the years that showed so long as you had a meal within a few hours of training, you would be just fine, and that total protein intake over the course of the day mattered more than when you had protein intake.  That it made no difference if you had a shake immediately after training, or three hours later.

But is that really true?

Hard training creates damage at a cellular level.  This is the stimulus for growth.  But growth itself doesn’t happen until after training.  That’s when the repair process happens.  Post training, the rate of muscle protein synthesis has to be greater than the rate of muscle protein breakdown (MPB).  So if muscle protein balance (the weighing between synthesis and breakdown) is in the negative, anabolism/growth cannot occur.  To get this straight for you, when MPS is greater than MPB, growth will happen.  When they are the same, nothing happens.  When MPB is greater than MPS, you will lose muscle.

This is not debatable.  This is factual.

So where is the debate?

The debate from there became, how important is nutrition timing?

To answer this, we have to understand how to dramatically increase MPS, and decrease MPB in order to create the most anabolic environment possible to grow as fast as possible.

I’m going to try and cut through a lot of bullshit for you, and make this easy to understand, digest, and apply to your nutrition plan, so that you can take advantage of it.

So let’s get down to it.

Increasing MPS

According to pretty much all research, MPS spikes post training for up to 24 hours, then starts to return to baseline between 36 and 48 hours (depending on what study you look at).  But the fact is, if you haven’t eaten anything at all 36 hours after training you probably had bigger problems in your life than worrying about losing all your gains.  So we really don’t need to worry about stretching the timeline out that far.

The theory held by lots of folks in the scientific field are that, so long as you are getting ample amounts of protein within that time in the post workout window, you should be ok.  This is far more important for people who train fasted.  Something we will address later as well.

But on the surface, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

So if I wait and eat 4 hours after a really brutal leg training session, it’s no different recovery wise than if I eat very shortly afterwards?  I’ve never ever thought that not eating, or waiting to eat, was just as good as eating when it came to building muscle.  It seems awfully contradictory.  Not only that, is training in a fasted state a good idea?  During a time when my muscles will be primed for nutrient uptake and partitioning (during training), I have no nutrition coming in?  So does eating before you train play an important role in increasing MPS?

Apparently, it does.

Pre-Peri-Post workout nutrition

For a while, intermittent fasting (IF) was a big diet fad.  I say fad because I see it as nothing more than another coming and going of something that isn’t backed up by either anecdotal evidence or scientific evidence in regards to building muscle mass.  I don’t know of a single massively muscled individual that got that way by doing IF.  I have seen lots of little bitty guys rave about how great it is for getting lean.  But this isn’t surprising.  You’re telling me if I don’t eat for long periods of time, I will get lean, but really small?

I agree.  That’s exactly what will happen.  You’ll go through both fat and lean muscle mass.

Not eating for long periods of time seems to run counter to what common sense should tell us about building muscle mass.  Remember, to build mass, we need a positive muscle protein balance so that we can grow (MPS > MPB).

And if anything, eating before you train appears to have a more significant effect on increasing MPS than training in a fasted state, and then eating afterwards.

An increased net uptake of EAAs translates to increased muscle protein synthesis. We found this to be the case, because a mixture of 6 g EAAs + 35 g glucose given immediately before exercise resulted in a greater stimulation of net muscle protein balance than when it was given either immediately or 1 h after exercise.

So we’ve set the stage for step one in regards to net protein balance.  Eat before you train.  How long before you train?

The research shows that doesn’t matter a whole lot, so long as you’ve had a meal within a few hours, and are not training fasted.  I personally don’t like to eat, then train immediately after.  I prefer a few hours in between.

In contrast, when I was in Australia with John Meadows, he liked to eat and train as soon as possible after that.  In fact he told me “the only time I will walk out on a training session is if I get hungry during it.”

So it’s mainly a personal preference.

What about during training?

It appears that intake of protein during training also helps to increase MPS, and further resist MPB.  If you are in a position where you cannot eat before training, then the uptake of amino acids during training appear to have a similar effect on MPS as eating before training.  However I personally advise to eat before training as all of the research shows time after time that it increases MPS even more so than eating afterwards.  Having amino acids during training does appear to prolong MPS, so to create the best possible environment for building lean tissue, make sure to do both.

That leaves us with what to do post workout.

Last year a very well done study showing that there was a significant increase in nitrogen retention when protein was consumed immediately post workout.

This was a very well done study, on both trained and untrained subjects.

http://www.jphysiolanthropol.com/content/33/1/24

This particular study left a lot of people who had claimed that timing didn’t matter, baffled.

To break it down so you don’t have to read the entire text…

• Two groups, one trained and untrained, were involved in the study.
• One group had a protein-carb shake immediately post workout, and one did not.
• Both groups had lunch at 1300 (2 hours post training).
• The group that did not have the post-workout shake, had the same shake 4 hours after lunch.
• The group of trained individuals had a significantly higher degree of nitrogen retention, than the group of untrained men in regards to having the post-workout shake.
• The group of trained men that had the shake immediately post workout, had a higher nitrogen balance than the group of trained men that had the shake four hours after training.

If you’re following all of that, then here is what it says.

If you’re a noob, then just get your protein in over the course of the day after training.

If you’re a trained, or advanced lifter, then getting your nutrition in immediately post workout does make a difference in achieving a higher nitrogen balance.  This is pretty much irrefutable.  Because the fact is, we don’t care about what works for noobs.  Anything works for noobs in regards to growing muscle mass.  It’s at the advanced stage of development where we see things like this start to matter.

This study pretty much debunks the theory that if you just get your protein in over the rest of the day, it’s all the same as getting it in within a shorter window post training.  But only for trained athletes.  This is where some of the other research fell flat on its face.  It used untrained individuals.  And as noted, anything will work for noobs.  So throw that out if you’re a highly qualified athlete, and pay attention to what these results showed for people with a real training history.  It DID make a difference.

Leucine

So as not to leave any stone unturned in regards to MPS, we must also cover the importance of Leucine and its role in this process.

Leucine it is the key, it appears, to turning making amino acids, and branch chain amino acids work.

A series of cellular studies has now clearly shown that leucine directly activates a critical compound in muscle called the mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin). It turns out mTOR is like a molecular switch that turns on the machinery that manufactures muscle proteins and leucine is one of the major activators of mTOR. So leucine not only provides the building blocks for protein synthesis, it also plays a critical role in up-regulating the process. Even when an overabundance of amino acids are available to provide the building materials for new muscle, adding extra leucine augments protein synthesis rates further. The bottom line is that adding additional leucine to your diet is an effective strategy to maximize muscle anabolism after resistance exercise.

To add, from my buddy Jonathan Mike’s article on Leucine (because I thought this was an excellent article)
Declining leucine levels signal mTOR that there’s a lack of dietary protein present to synthesize new skeletal muscle protein, therefore disabling mTOR. Upon ingesting increased concentrations of leucine, the elevated amino acid then signals mTOR that sufficient dietary protein exists, and switches on overall protein synthesis. An important point to remember is an increase in mTOR activity (and all aspects of the pathway with which it belongs) results in an increase in protein-building and more growth!

It really is that simple: Flick the leucine switch and you start growing, assuming you’re training and eating enough to support anabolism.

So how much Leucine do you need?

If you’re using a quality protein shake before training then you should be ok.  However it doesn’t hurt to add Leucine to your pre-peri-post workout shakes/meals in order to have your bases covered.  My recommendation is to take in a total of around 10 grams of Leucine over the pre-peri-post workout period.  2.5 grams before you train, 2.5 grams during, and then 5 grams afterwards.

Decreasing MPB

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for increasing MPS, the second part is how do we suppress MPB?  Remember, increasing MPS isn’t enough.  If MBS must exceed MPB to create an anabolic environment.  So now, let’s worry about how to decrease MPB.

The factors we talked about above were strictly for increasing MPS, but they actually don’t play a significant role in decreasing MPB.  So what does?

Insulin.

Insulin does very little in the way of helping to increase MPS.  However it is a major component in suppressing MPB.

Now the first thing that comes to mind when someone talks about spiking insulin is the ingestion of simple sugars or carbohydrates in order to achieve this state.  But the truth is, that’s not really a requirement.  If you are having whey as your post workout shake, it will raise insulin enough that the addition of carbohydrates will literally make no difference.  So ingesting whey protein post workout will spike insulin enough to suppress MPB, and your bases are now covered.

But there is another factor at play here as well.

Cortisol.

It has been shown that intake of carbohydrates as part of post workout nutrition can reduce cortisol after repeated days of heavy training.   An increase in cortisol when carbohydrate stores are low will indeed tap into fat stores for use as energy, but it will also tap into lean muscle tissue as well.  This is not the desired effect for someone trying to build as much lean tissue as possible.  So the fact is, we want to also suppress both cortisol and MPB post workout as much as possible.

When glycogen levels are low, then cortisol levels will rise post workout.  And this is where the importance of ingesting carbs post workout come into play.  However carbohydrate intake prior to training is also going to play a role in keeping post-training cortisol low as well.  So we’re back to the importance of not training in a fasted state again.  So all of this ties up very neatly together.

Putting it all together

As to not make this complicated, how would one situate this so as to take advantage of all the factors above?

1.  Eat 1-2 hours prior to training.  This can be a food meal or protein and carbohydrate mixture shake.  Supplement that with 2.5 grams of leucine.

2.  Use essential amino acids during training along with a simple sugar added.  Add in 2.5 grams of Leucine to this as well.

3.  If you are an advanced lifter, get in a protein/carbohydrate shake or a well balanced meal in less than an hour after training.  If you are a novice it’s not quite as important.  But I would suggest getting in a meal or protein shake within a two hour window post training anyways.  Not eating to build mass are words that don’t seem to go together.

Conclusion

Despite all of the evidence that shows nutrient timing to play a significant role in creating a more anabolic environment, there is still debate about just how important it is.

One could easily pick a great number of studies to refute any study that shows that nutrient timing is important.  So I will actually end with this…

One question I often ask myself in regards to if something is worth implementing into my training or nutritional paradigm is this…”what are the negatives it could bring?  And what are the positives?”

I literally cannot find a single negative associated with adhering to a sound nutrient timing plan.  I can find all sorts of positives, however.  To me, there appears to be enough research and anecdotal evidence to support using it to recover and grow at a more optimal rate than dismissing it, or saying it is irrelevant.  Once you get to an advanced level of development you’re going to have to turn over every rock in order to find the little things that make a difference in getting better, or dealing with stagnation.  If you haven’t been using these principles in your diet, then give them a try instead of debating about it all day.  Then, you will be able to answer for yourself how well it works or does not work.  And that is really the best way to know, instead of debating about it on the internet all day.

References:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8563679
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11440894
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/2/525S.full
http://www.gssiweb.org/Article/sse-107-protein-consumption-and-resistance-exercise-maximizing-anabolic-potential
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16705065
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/2/533S.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4008809/
http://www.nutritionexpress.com/article+index/protein/showarticle.aspx?id=807
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/supplemental-leucine-how-it-powers-muscle-growth.html
http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/295/4/E731
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21131864
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9760352