Post-Workout Carbs – Are They Important For Muscle Mass And Recovery?

Muscle Mass And Recovery? One of the most common recommendations among bodybuilders is to consume carbohydrates after a workout, even better if they are “fast”.

Accordingly, watching people coming out of gyms, one can not help but see at least a few of them who are in a hurry to bite a banana immediately after training. Hardcore trainers break their protein shake, to which they tactfully added 40-50 grams of dextrose or maltodextrin.

And all this is done in the name of muscle mass and recovery from training, but is it really necessary and if so, in what situations?

Carbohydrates after a workout – why? Muscle Mass And Recovery

Let’s start there – why is this carbohydrate recommendation actually made after a workout?

There are two main reasons for this. It’s considered that:

  1. Support muscle growth;
  2. Improve recovery from training;

Let’s pay attention to both.

Supporting muscle growth Muscle Mass And Recovery

The reason it is claimed that carbohydrates support muscle growth is their connection with the hormone insulin. When we consume carbohydrates, they stimulate the secretion of the hormone insulin, and insulin, as most of you may know, is one of the most anabolic hormones in our body, and one of its main tasks is to help absorb nutrients in our cells.

And because a number of scientific studies show that insulin supports protein balance by increasing protein synthesis and reducing protein breakdown, this leads to the notion that carbohydrates are important after a workout. Here, however, it is important to pay attention to 2 things.

The first is that scientific data show that self-intake of carbohydrates is far from the optimal solution for improving protein balance. Carbohydrate intake alone has the ability to slightly stimulate protein synthesis, and if the amounts are far higher, in the order of 100 grams of carbohydrates, they have the ability to reduce protein breakdown. However, the overall protein balance remains negative due to the lack of amino acids.

In short, if carbohydrates are to be taken to support muscle growth, they should definitely be combined with protein.

Here, however, another question arises. Are carbohydrates necessary at all, or if we eat only protein, will we achieve equally good results in terms of protein balance? Interestingly, carbohydrates are only useful if the amount of protein ingested is very small.

In the experiment of Miller and team from 2003 , for example, 35 grams of carbohydrates in addition to 6 grams of protein managed to significantly improve protein balance. However, six grams of protein, although made entirely from essential amino acids, is too low a dose. In real life, no one eats such low amounts of protein. In this case, some other works come to the rescue.

The experiment of Koopman and team from 2007 (3), which shows that when eating a decent dose of protein, which is in the order of more than 15 grams of protein, the additional intake of carbohydrates together with this protein does not lead to additional, practically significant improvements. . This is also confirmed by the experiment of Staples and team from 2011 , in which the addition of 50 grams of carbohydrates to a dose of 25 grams of protein does not lead to additional benefits.

In short, if you eat enough protein after your workout and aim to optimize the process of building muscle mass, then carbohydrates are unnecessary.

Supporting Muscle Mass And Recovery

Okay. We assume that carbohydrates are not needed at all after a workout to increase muscle mass if we get enough protein.

For many people, however, they are important because they are said to aid recovery, and in particular, the recovery of glycogen in our body. For those who do not know what glycogen is, in short, this is the form in which carbohydrates are stored in our body. Its main purpose is to serve as a store of energy that can be quickly broken down and delivered to cells that need such energy. That is why glycogen in our muscles is very important during high-intensity exercise.

The confusion here, however, is that many people do not realize how little glycogen we actually need and consume during standard weight training.

In bodybuilding circles, there is a misconception that a standard weight training exercise almost depletes all of our glycogen. However, this is not the case at all.

One great experiment showing this is that of Roy and Tarnopolsky from 2003 . After performing a full body workout consisting of:

  • 9 exercises,
  • each in 3 series
  • with an intensity of 80% of 1 repetition maximum,

participants’ glycogen levels fell by an average of 36%. Similar results were observed in the experiment of Pascoe and team from 1993 , in which participants did 6 sets to complete failure with an intensity of 70% of 1 repetition maximum of the femoral extension exercise. After this exercise, glycogen levels dropped by approximately 40%. That is, you need to do a very healthy workout to deplete your glycogen stores.

And more importantly, the rate of recovery of glycogen levels, even without carbohydrates, will probably be sufficient for most people who do not train the same muscle groups every day. Our body has mechanisms through which to synthesize only the glucose it needs to restore depleted glycogen in trained muscles. Of course, this will be much slower and will take about 24 hours, but if there is consumption of almost any minimum amount of carbohydrates, whether consumed immediately after exercise or a few hours after it, glycogen levels will were almost completely restored only a few hours later.

If post-workout carbohydrates can be beneficial to someone, it is people who train more than once a day and have an overlapping load on muscle groups in different workouts. That’s why my advice is the following.

If you are one of those people who train 3-4 times a week, with normal training volume and intensity and do not train directly the same muscle group daily, then the intake of carbohydrates in order to recover glycogen faster should be one of the last things. to think about.

If you do not have high-intensity physical activity in the next few hours, also do not feel obligated to consume carbohydrates after training. If you like to eat some fruit – okay, not bad, but to fold dextrose, maltodextrin, chocolate or the like is just unreasonable and unnecessary.

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