When it comes to timing on when to eat, one simple rule is critical for athletes:

The sooner the better after hard workouts!

When a muscle is engorged with blood after a hard workout it's a great time to float some of the raw material that we need to replenish and repair the muscle and to reload energy stores into the blood stream. Right after activity is when the muscle is very metabolically active and uptake of these nutrients is at its most efficient. It's also a time when you can be your most liberal with your sugar, starch and fat calories (non-protein calories) that we lean on so heavily to fuel activity.

Let's take it step by step:

Step 1) Anti-Oxidant Timing

Some of the most recent research shows that some anti-oxidants sources act very fast and some a bit slower in helping our bodies cope with stress, free radical and inflammatory insults. This has something to do with the water soluble and fat soluble nature of these nutrients (Vitamin C water soluble and Vitamin E and Carotenoids fat soluble). In the end the mix and variety of these foods in the diet will leave you with an anti-oxidant rich tissue status that is ready to cope with the insults that come your way daily as a student athlete. And every time we think that we can out fox food with a supplement, as a replacement for the food form delivery of these anti-oxidants, we find out that food is typically superior. The reason that is has to do with all that we don't know about these foods that can benefit us. They are loaded with yet to be discovered bioactive compounds that make these foods out perform isolated sources of a nutrient. These compounds act in a synergistic fashion, one helping the other. The use of something as fundamental as a stress formula multi-vitamin for athletes is fine at the most stressful times of the year, but you would never rationalize not eating fresh produce because you took a multi-vitamin. Active or inactive days we eat fresh produce!

Step 2) Carb Timing

There is some evidence that we should hold the simple sugars back a bit at the preworkout / pregame meal so that we keep burning fat and spare our carb stores for the impending work during our training. On game day we typically keep the sugar content of the pregame meal low, but have a very liberal slow digesting carb supply instead. When we arrive at the stadium where we are going to compete, the fast digesting carb sources are going to be available as the adrenaline starts to escalate along with the warm-up reps. If there is one time we can afford some simple sugar calories it's during and right after activity. The reason we have sports drinks, bananas and rice crispy like energy bars around hard working athletes is so they can keep supplying muscle with carbs right up until the last rep is taken. So the faster the carb source digest during activity the more rapidly we can get it out of the stomach and into the blood stream for uptake by that hard working muscle. The science of how to formulate the most efficient sports drinks is still evolving with regards to what formula leaves the stomach the fastest or is most effective at reloading glycogen stores. In the end we find some individual tolerances to what athletes can cope with in their stomachs during and after activity, thus we have liquid and solid delivery systems for these fast digesting carbs. The best way to determine what you can tolerate on game day will be to use it during practice. Never wait until game day to try any new sports drink, energy bar or fast digesting carb food!

Step 3) Protein Timing

Like carbs, we seem to have a post workout window where protein synthesis in the muscle peaks in the first few hours. During training, protein synthesis is actually suppressed, but rapidly picks up post workout making it a great time to get some protein into the mix. Debate persists about what protein sources might be the best to use for recovery. Surely a complete protein from animal or dairy sources works well, but vegetable protein sources that are loaded with leucine are also great. Leucine is a branch chain amino acid that really plays a strong role in the signaling that goes on in a muscle, necessary to jump start the tissue remodeling process. Whey protein, like we find in milk is also loaded with leucine as is ricotta cheese (mostly whey protein). Some other amino acids that we find in abundance in dairy and vegetable protein sources are glutamine and arginine. Both of these amino acids are considered conditionally essential when we are under stress and for sure athletes are under metabolic, environmental and emotional stress! When organizing training table meals we do have medium and high fat protein sources out for athletes who are struggling to maintain body weight. But the only time we put out the high fat sources of protein is at the post workout meal when the athletes have time to digest such a slow moving food supply. A gut full of high fat or very highly spiced food, just before a big workout, is a big mistake! It's not a good idea to eat a chilidog right before a hard practice or big game! While the individual tolerance level of most athletes will vary, the uptight rookie will need to error to the leaner and lower spiced options. Digestion is going to slow with anxiety and activity so to be safe, we typically feed our last pregame meal up to four hours before competition!