Sweat is already soaking through your Kent State “Go Flashes” T-shirt, your plastic water bottle is crunched to empty, and your stomach is starting to fight back after already doing an hour fighting the punching bag. It’s been a long, hard workout and now it’s time to replenish and refuel before your next class. Post workout routines amd nutrition is extremely important, but think twice about grabbing that travel-sized bag of potato chips or chugging down a fizzy energy drink. Keep reading for the perfect post workout routines according to Kent students!
It is important to always stay hydrated, but even more important post workout routines. Drink enough water to re-hydrate yourself after all you have sweated out. Drinking water helps heal muscles and hydrate the body, which has limitless positive effects on your health post workout.
What you are eating after a workout may be just as or perhaps more important than the workout itself. Eating certain nutrients after a workout improves performance and muscle recovery plus it influences body composition like body fat percentage versus muscle mass.
Tip: The best time to eat after a workout is immediately after or within a one hour time frame, when your muscles are still recovering and looking for the fuel needed to replenish nutrients lost through calories burned. The benefits to post workout nutrition include less soreness, an improved immune system, and the better ability to build muscles and burn body fat.
Tanya Falcone, the Coordinator for the Center for Nutrition Outreach and Nutrition and Dietetics Instructor at the Kent State School of Health Sciences, claims that post-workout nutrition is important because that is the time the body is most open to replenishing the energy it has lost.
“Failure to replenish within the allocated time will cause the body’s metabolism to decrease. If we do not replenish with carbohydrates after a workout, this causes us to ‘hit a wall’ during our next workout due to low availability of backup fuel source.” – Tanya Falcone
Backup fuel source comes from the energy or carbohydrates we fuel our body with after a workout.
Falcone also has recommendations for the best foods to eat post-workout. “Focus on protein and carbohydrates,” she says. Examples include low fat chocolate milk, a banana with Greek yogurt, or basically any pairing of a lean protein and complex carbohydrate.
Here at Kent State university, most students find their post workout nutrition at the Summit Street Cafe located inside the Student Recreation and Wellness Center. The eatery offers a menu of salads, wraps, juices, and the more popular post-workout smoothie. Students are able to choose from a variety of options to add into their smoothies such as protein, extra fiber, and important daily vitamins. The options fall under categories of whey protein, muscle builder, and meal replacement.
A student employee says the smoothies can be very healthy, depending on what one you order. “People mostly get the strawberry banana fat burner,” she says, “but the lean machine is probably better.” In addition to their menu, Summit Street Cafe also sells fresh fruit and vegetables, granola bars, and protein bars.
When asked whether buying smoothies post-workout was a good idea, Falcone responded, “Protein shakes are okay, but you must be careful [of the] ingredients. Avoid artificial sweeteners and low carb protein shakes.” Luckily, the protein shakes offered at Summit Street Cafe are made with fresh fruits like bananas rendering them not low carb.
Falcone also comments on the use of add-ins offered at the Summit Street Cafe. She advises taking advantage of the add-ins like vitamins and whey protein, but only in moderation. “We have a tendency to overdo everything. This is when it becomes detrimental to our health.” Falcone says it is a myth that vitamins help the body burn fat. Instead, vitamins help the body maintain a healthy weight while keeping the body well-balanced on the inside. The fat-burner, on the other hand, provides short-term benefits, but with long-term negative side effects including a disturbed metabolism.
Ed Brown, a senior history major, sits at the Summit Street Cafe, casually sipping a strawberry smoothie with whey protein added in while also eating a low-carb protein bar… “I’m trying to build [muscle],” he says, which is why he added the protein. When asked why he eats post-workout, the student replied, simply, because he was hungry.
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