Recover Faster From Exercise with Protein AND Carbs

A study from James Madison University shows that runners recover faster when they take in large amounts of protein, carbohydrates and antioxidants after their workouts (International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, Volume 17, 2007). Athletes train by taking a workout hard enough to damage their muscles, feeling sore on the next day, and then going easy for as many days as it takes for the soreness to lessen or disappear. The sooner they recover from their hard workouts, the sooner they can take another hard workout and the stronger they will be.

Muscles are made primarily from protein building blocks called amino acids. Muscles heal from a hard workout when amino acids and other nutrients travel from your bloodstream into the muscles. Eating any food, particularly foods with plenty of protein, immediately after you finish your workout helps your muscles heal faster so you can do more work. The sooner you eat after you finish your hard workout, the quicker you will recover.

This study confirms many others that show that taking carbohydrates and proteins immediately after exercise hastens muscle healing and gets rid of the soreness faster. The defect in this study is that the authors fed a drink that combines protein, carbohydrate and antioxidant vitamins. They concluded that you need all three components to recover faster, and that a drink is superior to food. However, other studies show that you can get the same benefit from a wide variety of foods that are rich in protein and carbohydrates, and that these foods would be so rich in antioxidants and other nutrients that it would not be necessary to take any supplements. More

Great News for Older Athletes: Marathon Times Do Not Drop Before Fifty

You should be able to compete effectively in sports that require endurance well into your later years. Researchers at the German Sports University in Cologne, Germany analyzed competitive marathon times and showed that trained men and women did not have a significant drop in their race times until they reached their fiftieth birthdays (International Journal of Sports Medicine, Volume 28, 2007). Average marathon and half-marathon times were virtually identical for age groups from 20 to 49 years. Furthermore, the drop in performance for the 50- to 69-year-old subjects was only in the range of 2.6 percent to 4.4 percent for each decade. As expected, women's times for each age group were slower than the men's times by about 10 percent for the marathon and 13 percent for the half-marathon.

These results show that most older athletes are able to maintain a high degree of physical fitness and suggest that most infirmity with aging is caused by lack of exercise, rather than just by the passage of years. If you exercise regularly, expect to be able to be stronger, faster and better coordinated than your peers who do not exercise. More on recovery times in older exercisers; fitness newsletter