No, the fact it aids recovery is though 🙂

Maybe I don’t push hard enough but for short fairly intense rides I don’t need to fuel during in 2hrs I’ll burn approx 1500c so not enough to deplete reserves. So a recovery shake is all I’m taking on now, then a normal meal. It my hugely limited trial of 3 days / 2 rides and 2 shakes it seems to be positive, I just expected it to help with the pain….rather than give me more energy to ride if that makes sense.

I am however having massive sugar cravings and in the last couple of weeks taken to snacking on jelly babies late evening, which are supposed to be in the cupboard for long days out. Maybe the body saying it needs more.

i could eat a scabby oss after a ride !

So i’m meant to force food down me which I won’t enjoy or have the possibility of seeing it again whereas a recovery drink goes down without any hassle and stays down.

And no matter how much I try to train my stomach to accept milk it will never happen.

I’ve found through experience recovery drinks work for me so will I be sticking with them.

discoduck i’ve got a mate who’s the same and I often think he would eat one while riding 😀

Dt78, maybe you’re just getting fitter. A flat 60km loop in two hours shouldn’t leave you with sore legs the next day. I think your “full of beans” feeling was progress rather than recovery drink!

I’ve never been a fan of expensive, horrible tasting supplements and have managed on monster rides with oatcakes and dried fruit. However I always got massive cramp attacks after finishing and felt pish the next day. I’ve taken to drinking the supermarket equivalent of Lucozade Sport during and after a ride and it helps massively.

I do of course then have to lick the cats butthole to get rid of the taste. 🙁

Plus side is I’ve now found out I can drink Erdinger instead! 😀

I’ll burn approx 1500c so not enough to deplete reserves.

Well, you can only store what, 2000kcal worth of glycogen, so you can deplete a fair portion of that quit easily.

Maybe the body saying it needs more.

What, don’t you read the diet threads? IT’S BECAUSE YOU ARE WEAK! YOU WORTHLESS FATTIE!

Fattie?! Lightest I’ve been in 20 years (thank you road bike)

Maybe it is getting fitter / progress rather than magic powder. and probably something to do with nice dry sunny days too.

whats the science ( if any ) for chocolate milk? Does the chocolate actually have any effect, other than taste nice 🙂
out of interest does anyone stretch after riding?

Stretch before the ride (if I can) – using ‘Core Advantage’ exercises (worth buying if you aren’t sure what to do)

After ride I tend to use the roller and do limited static stretches whilst my garmin uploads.

Once a month I see an osteo

cool thanks.

I’snt stretching for chicks ?

I generally hobble about the car park whilst my left quad argues with my right calf as to which one is going to lock out first 😈

It’s not actually until I get the bike upside down and attempt to get the wheels off that either if them attempt to do anything about it !

It must be great to watch ?

Maybe it is getting fitter / progress rather than magic powder

Of course – no-one’s arguing that the magic powder makes you quicker. It just helps recover a bit quicker, that’s all. So if your next ride is the following day or a couple of days later, you’ll be better recovered so you’ll ride a bit better, like the OP did.

I do take the commercial websites with a pinch of salt of course

Do you really need that salt? Really? There’s lots of research showing that we have more than enough salt in our diet already and it’s reckless and potentially deadly to add more.

Do you really need that salt? Really? There’s lots of research showing that we have more than enough salt in our diet already and it’s reckless and potentially deadly to add more.

So long as it’s sea salt and not highly processed table salt, there shouldn’t be a problem.

The best advice I can give with regards to nutrition and recovery is clean up your diet – eat real, whole, unprocessed food as far as possible and start to listen to your body not to the little voice inside your head, it’s probably wrong. The more you listen to your body the more attuned you’ll become and after a ride you might find that you quite fancy a glass of milk (full fat, preferably raw!) or a pint of beer or a roast with all the trimmings. Go with whatever you fancy not with what you’ve reasoned is best based on the ‘knowledge’ of others.

I am however having massive sugar cravings and in the last couple of weeks

What stopped sugar cravings for me, was to stop eating sugar.

That’s not me being facetious by the way. Cutting out the sugar and sugary snacks has really helped.

Yeah.. Sugar is a drug. Treat cakes and sweets like fags…

Ok, in no particular order:
Salt is salt. Sea salt is large chunks of salt that you can taste more, same thing.
No need to stretch before, it’ll probably slow you down. Stretch after if you have some kind of limit in ROM, unlikely tbh.
Apples and planets have cores, humans don’t, be wary of ‘core’ training. Foam rollers don’t really work, it’s just the movement. If they did work you should stay well away: nothing knows better than your own brain when it comes to organising your muscles.
Molgrips, ask a dietician to confirm what you’ve posted above, please….

So long as it’s sea salt and not highly processed table salt, there shouldn’t be a problem.

That really had me giggling for quite a while.

Molgrips, ask a dietician to confirm what you’ve posted above, please

Any advice given on STW is purely conjectural and no warranty is implied.

So bugger off 🙂 If you want to ask a dietician, feel free!

How do you know I haven’t? Everything you’ve said in this thread is flat out wrong, have a word with yourself.

What do you mean have a word with myself? I’ve done a lot of reading, that’s my conclusion. Fine, if I’m wrong, great – present your evidence and let’s have a chat about it. I love to learn.

But you seem to be accusing me of moral failing..? I really don’t know what you mean.

Seriously – if you want to chat about nutrition, let’s do it, you can help us all learn. If you want a barney, then go somewhere else please.

Please note none of this post is sarcastic or confrontational. Read it in an honest, sincere and pleasant tone of voice. Apart from the bit about having a barney 🙂

The best thing you can do for recovery is a tedious combination of a decent long term diet, fluids, intelligent training and good quality sleep. This’ll get you up to 12/24h rides/ultra distance runs/whatever your bag is, without sacrificing your entire social life to training. You might add a % or 2 to your performance from technofood, but most of us are so far off our untechno-ed peak it’s easier to tackle the basics. Sleep hard warriors 🙂

I think Stever’s post above would’ve answered the OP in a oner. But with molgrips around stating that you’ll be better recovered days later if you have some kind of protein shake, it gets difficult. Molgrips what exactly have you been reading? Adverts for products? Like I said, if you want to learn, seek out a dietician, they are the authority on these matters, it’s a legally protected title, unlike nutritionist.

That really had me giggling for quite a while.

😈 I aim to please

Seriously tho, don’t listen to the internet, don’t listen to a dietician, listen to your body, it knows what you need far better than they do (so long as it’s not drugged up with sugar and other nasties).

Salt is salt. Sea salt is large chunks of salt that you can taste more, same thing.

it’s not really NaCl is one type of salt that you can buy, low salt usually has a mix of kcl and NaCl while sea salt is the minerals left after the evaporation of sea water which is not just NaCl. metallic salts are normally the result of a neutralisation reaction.

Molgrips what exactly have you been reading?

I’ve been experimenting, on myself. I can’t remember exactly where I first read the thing about the glycogen window, but if you google you’ll find it’s not just me.

What have you been reading, apart from that link you posted at first?

listen to your body

EXACTLY what I have been doing. But apparently that’s not good enough for didgerman…

Just to let you know, I have bought 1.5kg of recovery drink in the last 3 years – because what I was doing at the time didn’t warrant it.

Salt is salt, that fact doesn’t require an opinion. Salt with other stuff in is salt with other stuff in, but it ain’t salt.
Yes, ignore dieticians, the qualified professionals who work with our best athletes. Is there an award for worst advice ever on this forum?
Molgrips, there isn’t a 20 minute anabolic window. You need to start accepting that, it’s just a con, hype from people who make stuff to drink during that ‘window’.

Molgrips, there isn’t a 20 minute anabolic window. You need to start accepting that, it’s just a con, hype from people who make stuff to drink during that ‘window’.

No, I agree there isn’t a window in which you must take magic powder or be screwed. But I do think that carbs immediately after exercise helps recovery. This is not because of marketing, it’s because I’ve tried it. Of course, carbs at any point afterwards can still aid recovery, for me. I generally remain tired after a hard effort until I re-fuel, this can be several days.

I also think that if you are having carbs immediately after exercise, then Torq recovery drink works a bit better than other things. Why do I think that? Because I’ve tried it.

Have you actually tried these things out or are you just repeating what you’ve read on the internet?

A paper about it:

We conclude that ingesting protein with CHO during recovery from aerobic exercise increased muscle FSR and improved WBNB, compared with feeding strategies that provided CHO only and were matched for total CHO or total energy intake. However, adding protein or additional CHO to a feeding strategy that provided 1.2 g CHO·kg?1·h?1 did not further enhance glycogen resynthesis during recovery.

So carbs helps glycogen synthesis, protein not so much.

But they did find that the protein helped rebuild muscle.

However there’s another article linked to under that that says proten does NOT help rebuild muscle. The picture would seem to be unclear, but you seem to be absolutely rock solid positive. What do you know that we don’t?

Salt is salt,

Apart from Himalayan sea salt of course.

Salt is salt, that fact doesn’t require an opinion. Salt with other stuff in is salt with other stuff in, but it ain’t salt.
Yes, ignore dieticians, the qualified professionals who work with our best athletes. Is there an award for worst advice ever on this forum?
Molgrips, there isn’t a 20 minute anabolic window. You need to start accepting that, it’s just a con, hype from people who make stuff to drink during that ‘window’.

Why would you listen to the qualified professionals over your own body? People have been listening to the qualified professional for the last half a century and as a result chronic illness is rampant in the population, every other person is obese or has cancer and we now have more health problems that at any other time in recent history. If they know so much then why is this the case? Their ‘knowledge’ is largely based on flawed studies that have been corrupted by those corporations with a vested interest in the fake foods they promote. Not to mention the fact that every human body is different and will have its own individual requirements that will change over time, so how can you prescribe general guidelines for a whole population?

The advice that they dole out changes frequently – a prime example would be the fact that for the last however many decades the general consensus from the medical profession has been that saturated fat and high cholesterol causes heart disease and we should all be using vegetable oils instead and eating lots of carbs instead (I wonder who benefits from that advice?). In the last few years the tide has started to turn and this view is being discredited. As it happens saturated fat intake is not linked to heart disease and vegetable oils create a whole host of problems when eaten in excess or when rancid (which they usually are).

Jamz do you read the daily mail?

Anyone have the number of a dietician I can hire? Where’s my credit card?

How will I know if they’re right?

or you could read a book, or perhaps not…..

How will I know if they’re right?

When they tell you to liquidise a cake, two Kit Kats and a pint of double cream to fuel your fast twitch muscle post sprint/tabata ninja workout.

Is that standard Kit Kats or chunky ones?

Ask yourself; What would a caveman do?

Therein lies the answer.

How do I know if the book is right?