Been thinking about this for a while – do recovery powder drinks work? Are they worth the cost? Any home-made alternatives to the big name brands?

IMHO definitely worth it after big rides. Especially if you're riding again the next day.

search???

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/recovery-drinks-wothwhile

Ah cheers for that, Didn't realise the search was fixed 🙄

I've just had one of those chocolate milkshake things by Lucozade after an epic at Brechfa . . feel pretty good now.. and tasted good too.

No better than milk in terms of protein and carbs or speed of absorption of either.

We like them and believe they work.

TJ doesn't.

We argue about it. It amuses.

Interesting article over here. Chocolate milk works for me, though could just be placebo. It's rather tasty so I don't care either way.

Chocolate fudge Frijj for me. Microwaved if it's cold out. I have no idea whether it does any good or not but it tastes great.

I always try to have a protein shake within the first 10-20 mins after training in the gym, running or cycling. Mix mine with water because i read this on another forum, is it true?

If you work hard and then have a milk based protein shake the increased temperature of your body will lead to the milk curdling in your stomach directly slowing down the absorption of the amino acids in the shake.

one of the points about having a shake post workout is that many of the amino acids in it are pre-digested therefore go straight to where they are needed, whereas eating chicken means the amino acids needed for muscle building have to be digested from the protein first.

Anyway i always seem to recover from aching muscles faster after having protein shakes, one straight after training and one made up as a fruit smoothie a few hours later. May be the wrong thing to do but seems to work for me.

Bulk flavourless whey protein + maltodextrin + nesquick.

Since your body core is a static 37 degrees irrespective of your outer surface temperature, I'm struggling with the curdling bit TBH.

Easily accessed and metabolised protein, whatever its form up to 20 minutes after exercise certainly helps me too though.

+1 for Frijj…awesome stuff

My fav recovery drink

People seem a bit confused about recovery drinks. As I understand it, when you ride or train hard, you rip through the glycogen reserves in your muscles and liver fast. There's a window – duration uncertain, generally quoted at 20 minutes-30 minutes after you stop when your body is basically screaming for carbs and absorbs them faster. Miss that window and it takes considerably longer to top up your glycogen again and you need those reserves for efficient metabolism when riding.

The protein element in recovery drinks is because research shows that a mix of protein and carbohydrate leads to the carbo being absorbed more quickly during that glycogen refuelling window, it's not that you need big chunks of protein to rebuild muscle at this point, just that it means you absorb the carbohydrate more rapidly.

Chocolate milk shake type things have around the right balance of carbohydrate and protein, so work as well on the carbo absorption side of things as specialist recovery drinks. The latter have extra minerals etc that you might need, but you can get these elsewhere.

And that, as I understand it, is about it. In simple terms, bang some chocolate milk down within the 20-minute glycogen window after you stop exercising and your glycogen levels return to normal faster, so your recovery is better. Logically the harder your ride and the more trashed you are, the more beneficial some sort of recovery nutrition is going to be.

That's how I understand it to work anyway. There's other stuff around like the Ribose that Torq seems very keen on, but god only knows whether and how it works. Sports nutrition seems a tad band-wagonesque and it's hard to filter out the chaff.