Have you ever finished a workout and felt super tired and hungry? Should you go for fast foods, a nutritional food plan, or supplements? Most people have begun recognizing nutrition as a critical component of optimal sporting performance. A planned nutritional strategy helps athletes by increasing performance during practice. An excellent nutritional strategy is better than using artificial supplements to increase muscle strength while exercising. Besides, recovery from exercise is a crucial component of the overall training program and beneficial for continued improvement and performance. Workouts take a lot of strength, leaving a person tired and hungry; nutritional strategies can help to optimize recovery between workouts.
Consume A Combination of Proteins and Carbohydrates
Sufficient intake of carbohydrate facilitates the replenishment of muscle glycogen, which translates to replacing the energy in the muscles that you burned. Eating carbs after exercise is a standard nutritional recommendation for athletes. In addition to carbohydrates, you will need proteins to repair the muscle damage from exercise. It is crucial to ingest carbohydrates plus proteins at least an hour after a workout. Examples of proteins include cottage cheese, lean meat, Greek yogurt, and low-fat chocolate milk. Some examples of carbohydrates are banana, sports drink, pasta, medium bagel, and low-fat chocolate milk.
Combine Caffeine with Carbohydrates After Exercise
According to a study by Pedersen and colleagues in 2008, a combination of 2mg caffeine with 1mg of carbohydrate leads to a 66% greater increase in the replenishment of muscle glycogen rates after exercise. In a separate study by Taylor and his friends in 2011, a combined caffeine and carbohydrate intake resulted in improved running capacity. It is not clear how carbohydrates and caffeine accelerate muscle glycogen. However, a combination of the two is effective in enhancing the resynthesize of muscle protein.
Avoid Antioxidant Supplement During and After Exercise
There is no disputing that antioxidants are integral components of the daily dietary intake; however, exercising individuals should not use antioxidant supplementation as a way to promote recovery from exercise. Many health benefits happen during recovery. Consuming antioxidant supplements may prevent these health benefits from happening. Reactive oxygen species are harmful because they can damage the functional capability of molecules in the body, such as cell membranes. Reactive oxygen molecules can lead to aging, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. Production of reactive oxygen species can occur from metabolic processes such as workouts. Due to this connection, most people believe that antioxidant supplementation can help to counter the increase of reactive oxygen species. However, the findings of a study by Ristow in 2009 showed that exercising people should avoid supplementary antioxidants because exercise induced-reactive oxygen species mediate several health benefits related to exercise training.
Mouth Rinse with Carbohydrate Solution
Exercise can deplete muscle glycogen stores, and replenishment of these stores is vital to training recovery. Typically, eating carbohydrates after exercise is the most vital strategy to promote the synthesis of glycogen. However, while undertaking some types of exercise, mostly advance exercises or hockey and soccer sports, post-exercise may not come for several hours. If you want to achieve a high level of perforce throughout such exercise types, you will need nutritional recovery throughout to spare muscle glycogen. Although ingesting carbohydrates is a good idea, in this case, most athletes fail to do this due to the risk of gastrointestinal distress. Athletes can, however, use a carbohydrate solution for mouth rinsing without swallowing it.
Ingest Sodium Bicarbonate
Athletes can also achieve improved muscle-buffering capacity through sound nutritional strategies. Researchers have discovered that alkalizing agents such as sodium bicarbonate have the potential to improve performance by lowering the degree that metabolic acidosis contributes to developing fatigue when performing high-intensity exercises. Sodium bicarbonate improves recovery by helping in the removal of proton molecules from skeletal muscles. A high concentration of proton molecules is detrimental to the performance of skeletal muscle. Therefore, using sodium bicarbonate to speed up the removal of proton molecules will read to more rapid recovery and improve the performance of skeletal muscle. In turn, this will lead to improved performance. It is, however, worth noting that the use of sodium bicarbonate can lead to gastrointestinal distress in some people. It is, therefore, crucial for individuals to experiment first before incorporating it into their daily routine.
Conclusion
Exercise is vital for the health of the body. However, high-intensity activity or long duration of exercise can lead to tiredness and depletion of muscle strength. This is where nutritional strategies come in to help in optimizing the recovery process. During or after exercise, athletes can use a combination of protein and carbohydrates, caffeine, and sodium bicarbonate. Alternatively to optimize and recover at a faster rate, one can use bodybuilding supplements such as Anavar which can help in faster muscle protein synthesis. Healthy nutritional strategies help to improve performance and restore glycogen.
