Eating Before and After Training

Most of what matters about eating around training is settled by what you eat across the whole day. The timing questions are real, but they are smaller than the supplement aisle makes them look.

Before: carbohydrate for the hard days

Muscle runs hard efforts on glycogen, the stored form of carbohydrate. An adult carries roughly 400 grams of it in muscle and about 100 in the liver, and a hard hour of intervals or a long run can take a large bite out of that. Starting with the tank low means pace drops in the back half and the work feels harder than it should.

For an easy session under an hour, the pre workout meal barely matters. For an interval session or anything over about 90 minutes, carbohydrate in the one to four hours beforehand pays off, and it may help on a long, heavy lower body day. The sports nutrition range is 1 to 4 grams per kilogram of body weight in that window. At the low end that is about 80 grams for a 180 pound person, roughly oatmeal with fruit and a banana. Keep fat and fiber modest in the hour before, since both slow digestion.

Protein before training is fine, and a meal with 30 to 50 grams two or three hours out covers it. It does not need to be a shake at the door.

After: the window is wider than you think

The idea that muscle needs protein within 30 minutes of the last set is mostly gone from the research. Muscle stays more sensitive to protein for up to about a day after lifting. What drives repair is hitting the daily target, which we set at 1 gram per pound of lean body mass, spread across three or four meals of 30 to 50 grams.

Carbohydrate after training is a question of turnaround. If the next hard session is tomorrow or later, normal meals with enough carbohydrate largely restore glycogen within about 24 hours. If you train twice in one day, or race on back to back days, eating about 1 gram per kilogram of carbohydrate each hour for the first few hours speeds the refill. The rest of the day's carbohydrate target, 1 to 2 grams per pound of lean mass depending on training load, does the remainder.

Fluid matters more than the shake. Weigh yourself before and after a long or hot session once, and replace roughly 1.5 times the weight you lost over the following hours.

What actually moves recovery

Recovery comes down to sleep, total protein, total carbohydrate on hard days and enough calories to support the training. Get those in place and the minutes around the workout are a detail. Miss them and no timing trick makes up the difference.

We build members' nutrition targets from a body composition scan and their training week, which is where the daily numbers above come from.

This article is educational and is not medical advice.

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