When should you drink your protein shake(s)?

You do strength training to get stronger. That means your muscles need more, well, 'muscle', or myofibrillar (myo= muscle, fibril = small fiber) proteins. Not surprisingly, you need to eat more protein to help your muscle. It has been shown that intake of protein rather than glucose only helps in building these myofibrillar proteins. But when exactly should you drink your protein shake(s)?

A study published today in the renowned Journal of Physiology might give some answers.

Researchers compared different nutritional strategies after a bout of resistance exercise. Subjects performed resistance exercise and then got 80 grams of protein over the next 12 hour recovery period.

Some got these 80 grams as 2x40grams (i.e. every 6 hours), others as 4x20grams (i.e. every 3 hours) and others in 8x10gram (i.e. every 1.5 hours).

In this study, researchers found that intake of 20g of protein every 3 hours has the largest effect on muscle protein synthesis as compared to 10 grams every 1.5hour or 40 grams every 6 hours.

So rather than eating a lot directly after exercise, you might want to consider spreading your intake over smaller portions, but eating them more often - though not too often. The optimum seems to be around 3 hours.Think about that next time you have been to the gym!

http://jp.physoc.org/content/591/9/2319.abstract?etoc