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Post Work Out Meals or Miss Out!
Straight after you have been training there is something know as the Golden Window. From when you finish training for about an hour, your muscles are like sponges waiting to absorb anything that you put into your body. This is prime time to get some quick digestion nutrients into your system to start the recovery process.
Because you have trained hard, your body is depleted of energy from the form of glycogen, so these stored needs to be filled back up again. So to do this we conveniently bring a shake with us to the gym so once finish we can supply the demand our body has to nutrients.
Now you can buy post work out shakes but this is really not necessary. You can simply but the ingredients used in these shakes your self and mix up your own. Which ever you do, you need to be taking in simple carbohydrates and fast digesting proteins in a ration of at least 3 – 1 (carbohydrates to proteins).
My personal shake is carbohydrate heavy, and is 100g of maltodextrin to 25g of whey protein, so a 4 – 1 ratio is adopted. Now maltodextrin is a complex carbohydrate, however is just a quick as a simple sugar like dextrose when it comes to digestion. Some people will use half their carbohydrates from maltodextrin and half from dextrose, other will use dextrose along. The choice is yours; however which ever combination you select you must make sure water is used with it! Milk will slow down the digestion so avoid it.
An hour or so after you had your shake you really want to be getting in some real foods. Next to breakfast, this is a very important part of your day when it comes down to recovery.
We now know fat slows down digestion, so avoid it! This meal we want to get nutrients fast, so protein and carbohydrates only at this meal, keeping fat to a minimum.
So select a nice lean meat like a chicken breast and compliment it with complex carbohydrates like yams, brown rice or pasta. You don not need to overfeed at this time, however remember that your body is primed to get good nutrients in!
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| Dean Collins |
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