Alcohol And Sports Performance
Time and time again the question is asked by those who are looking to take their training to the next level, whether it’s with building more muscle mass or losing body fat. They want to know if the occasional weekend drink is going to hurt them.
Many times it’s university students wondering about this fact since as the typical college life schedule dictates lots of weekends out at bars, pubs, or parties where alcohol consumption is the norm.
Some individuals have no problem saying no to drinking and choose to either avoid the situation entirely or take part but stick with water or diet soda. Others however, want to indulge a little more and relax with their alcoholic beverage of choice.
Obviously alcohol is going to contain calories and if your goal is fat loss, those calories are going to add up when it comes down to how much fat you lose. But, what other factors are at play when you regularly include alcohol in your diet?
This is what researchers out of the Institute of Food, Nutrition, and Human Health set out to look at recently who conducted this study.
They invested the effects of acute moderate alcohol intake on the muscular performance that was demonstrated during recovery from an eccentric exercise-induced muscle damaging session.
They had eleven healthy males perform 300 maximal eccentric contractions with the quads of one leg using an isokinetic dynamometer. After this, all subjects had a drink that contained 1 gram per kilogram of body weight of an ethanol mixture (vodka and orange juice).
On an entirely different situation, they performed the same leg exercise but then consumed just plain orange juice without the vodka.
After both tests, the measurement of maximal isokinetic and isometric torque that was produced across the knee was measured, along with the plasma creatine kinase concentrations. Measures of muscular soreness were also reported before, after 36 hours, as well as 60 hours post-exercise.
The results of the study indicated that all measures of muscular performance were decreased at both the 36 and 60 hour mark after the exercise was performed when compared with the pre-testing measurements.
In addition to this, plasma creatine kinase activity and the ratings the subjects gave for muscle soreness did not show a significant difference regardless of whether or not alcohol was consumed.
Therefore, from this study we can come to the conclusion that even small amounts of alcohol intake after a weight lifting session will have an impact on your dynamic and static strength.
Keep in mind that this is within the 36-60 hour time frame, which would rule out drinking on most weekends assuming a workout has taken place any time after Wednesday morning.
So, if you do want to maximize your strength and performance factors, you are going to be best to choose to not drink and stick with water or juice instead.
Reference:
Barnes, MJ. Et al. (2009) Acute alcohol consumption aggravates the decline in muscle performance following strenuous eccentric exercise. J Sci Med Sport. Feb 18.
