The post-workout nutrition market is enormous and seems to only be growing. Millions of dollars are spent on powders, shakes, and snacks that are to be taken within 30 minutes to 2 hours after a workout. Nutrition is vital to obtaining results from lifting weights, but the timing may not be as relevant to results as the consensus says. During a workout, especially one which involves heavy weight lifting and resistance strength training, the body’s reserve of Glycogen and amino acids are depleted. It is one of the main fuels for muscle contraction and it shows itself through muscle fatigue. In a report in the Journal of theInternational Society of Sports Nutrition by Alan Albert Aragon and Brad Jon Schoenfeld, the importance of the post-workout nutrition window is shown to be minimal. In this essay, they analyze results from seven published experiments on the results of post-workout meals and supplements on a variety of men and women of different ages. There is no definitive evidence that shows a causal link between consuming protein and/or carbohydrates in the two-hour window and desired results in somebody’s appearance, athleticism, strength, and physique.

Interestingly, the essay plays with the idea that pre-workout nutrition is more important than what is put in the body after a workout. When a man or woman exercises without proper nutrition or no nutrition at all, muscle protein breakdown increases even after the workout is finished. It’s amazing to think that I could have wasted dozens of workouts in my life because I did not eat before. Even though a workout promotes muscle synthesis and strengthening, a person who had not eaten before the workout would not get the benefits of the muscle synthesis before the proteins would continue to deplete. It is estimated that the anabolic results of a meal last between 5-6 hours– more than enough time to get a workout in. This secondhand account of the effectiveness of that highly recommended protein shake right after a workout does not eliminate enough factors to disprove the causal relationship between the post-workout supplement and results. It also doesn’t prove that the window after a workout to refuel one’s amino acids and glycogen is as important as pre-workout nutrition. Furthermore, the experiments reviewed in the essay could suffer from the affect of a confounding variable as well as the File Drawer problem. It would be very easy to not publish an unwanted result because of the length of time of the observation/experiments.

Works Cited

Aragon, Alan Albert, and Brad Jon Schoenfeld. “Nutrient Timing Revisited: Is There a Post-exercise Anabolic Window?” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 10.1 (2013): 5. Web.