Your Post-Ride Brew is Hurting your Fitness

When I was working in Perugia for Ciclismo Classico, I had a neighbor who lived above me. He was a personal trainer from Maryland. Chad and I would often talk about fitness and exercise. We frequently would discuss the importance of recovery for muscle growth.

A few times I’d come back from a ride around the Trasimeno Lake and he would have finished a spin session at the gym. We’d hang out on his porch and have a beer.

“Grab yourself another one,” he’d say. I’d go to the fridge and find it packed with beer. Every shelf, every door hold, even the egg container had small bottles of lager in it.

At the time, I couldn’t understand why someone so healthy would drink so much beer. “It’s the most complete post-exercise drink that is out there,” he would say. “Beer has carbohydrates, electrolytes, and water.”

He wouldn’t exaggerate his consumption of beer. He would just have one at the end of every spin session.

Chad would do about 3-4 spin sessions a day.

I believed this information for ages. Until I did some reading on the effects of alcohol on the body. And with all of the Olympians who are drinking non-alcoholic beer as a recovery drink, I begin to wonder how much is mythology and how much is fact.

Well, here is what I’ve found:

The Power of Advertising:

Many of the beer commercials have athletes enjoying a cold brew at the end of a grueling workout. Let’s face it: if it is a hot day and you’ve been on the bike for over four hours, a cold brew motivates the soul to finish a ride.

But it shouldn’t be the only reason to go for a bike ride.

Experts from Livestrong agree that while there are psychological rewards for a post-ride beer, the cons outway the pros. Beer does provide polyphenols (anti-inflammatory plant compounds), carbohydrates and some electrolytes.

However, beer most likely contains a potassium electrolyte. During your workout, you sweat sodium chloride that must be replaced. Beer can’t give you that.

In addition, your body could use so many of the nutrients in your system to repair muscles and restock glycogen stores. Instead, all that energy is diverted to the liver to breakdown alcohol. This puts excess strain on other organs and diverts resources which naturally want to fix the body after a long ride.

Alcohol’s Real Deal:

It’s the alcohol in beer that works against your recovery. Aside from putting extra strain on your liver, alcohol has dehydrating qualities. That is exactly the opposite of what you want to do after a long exercise.

In addition, multiple studies show how alcohol intake inhibits muscle protein synthesis. After the tearing of muscle tissue and the damage that muscle protein endures after a hard workout, beer actually prevents protein-building enzymes from doing their job.

That’s not to say you can’t have one beer after a long ride. But stop at one, and have lots of water. And – while you’re at it – have a lot of easily digestible protein to help muscle recovery.

Look at the Drinker

These studies often restrict their own results. With smaller sample sizes, the outcomes are never conclusive. It’s possible that an athlete who is in fantastic condition and participates in the study imbibes a few beers. As a result of this perfect fitness level, the amount of alcohol has no effect whatsoever on their performance

Last year’s Popular Science article shows how limited the research (and the control groups) is with concrete examples from the Monfort Human Performance Research Lab in Colorado. Their research suggested that female runners performed better after getting tipsy in the evening, while their male counterparts fared worse. In the end, these conclusions canceled out each other’s effects.

The New Trend: Nonalcoholic Beers

NPR and other news sources have great articles from last February. New science seems to indicate that nonalcoholic beers (with added electrolytes) could be a good substitute for recovery drinks. The research shows that marathon runners who were instructed to drink 1.5 liters of nonalcoholic beer every day, lowered their risk of upper respiratory infection (by measuring their white blood cell count, which was lowered by the nonalcoholic beer).

In addition, the nonalcoholic beers actually assist with hydration. Athletes have trouble hydrating with just water after a regular exercise. They need calories in the water to help restore the glycogen lost in athletic activity and bind the water inside the body. Nonalcoholic beer helps that: you get all of the benefits of hydration and anti-inflammation without the damaging effects of alcohol.

So the next time you reach for a post-ride beer, grab one that is nonalcoholic and do good for your body and your fitness.