There are so many arguments about what are the best foods to eat before and after a workout, and there are so many people with a set idea of eating or drinking certain things after working out with no room to change or try anything different. You don’t have to change everything you’re doing, if it currently works then carry on, but do not be afraid to try something different and experiment.

Here we will have a look at the different foods and drinks that you can consume before and after a workout and what could work best.

We must also remember that your specific goal, be it muscle building or weight loss, as well as YOUR own body type and weight will determine what you eat and more importantly HOW MUCH of each macro-nutrient you eat, not only for your pre and post workout meals, but also for every single meal you eat throughout the day.

Pre workout Nutrition

Let’s start with pre workout nutrition. When you weight train you exert a lot of energy, and thus your body will need energy, so do not be scared to eat some carbohydrates before training, even when dieting down.

Photo credit: Your House Fitness 

There are 2 types of pre workout meals, depending on the time of day you train. These are:

1. Your first meal of the day, i.e. breakfast. So if you workout first thing in the morning this will act as your ‘breakfast’ pre workout meal.
2. If you train in the afternoon or evening, then the meal you eat directly prior to your training will be your ‘during the day’ pre workout meal.

For both options, the best is to have a balanced meal containing protein, some complex carbohydrates as well as some fat about an hour or an hour and a half before you workout. You do not want to have too big of a meal and anything too heavy which will cause your stomach discomfort while you exercise.

You could alternatively have a protein shake, but the reason I wouldn’t recommend taking a shake or any liquid form of food before working out is so that you can keep fuller throughout your training. I have experimented with both and tend to become very hungry during my workout if I have a protein shake (even with some carbohydrates) and this can sometimes affect my energy and strength levels.

BUT on the other hand there are many people who would rather not eat anything before their workout as they become uneasy and their stomach does not handle the food well while they are training. If this is you, don’t worry, maybe try a protein shake or some form of liquid shake and see if you can manage that to start off with.

For the first option, the breakfast pre workout meal, here is an example of a meal you could have:

• 2 slices whole-wheat toast/Bowl of oats
• 1 banana
• Small protein Shake/1 Tsp of peanut butter

This is a great combination of protein, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and fat to get you started for the day and get you going for your early morning workout.

For the second option, the during the day pre workout meal, we will assume you would have eaten at least one or two other meals already throughout the day. So in an effort to not complicate things, an example of a simple meal could be:

• 1 Apple
• A portion of chick peas/butter beans
• A portion of rice/Sweet potatoes/Cous cous

Post workout Nutrition

After a strenuous and intense exercise session, your body (and muscles) needs nutrients and amino acids to help them repair and recover, so the sooner you feed your muscles after training the better.

For post workout, I recommend a liquid meal FIRST (straight after your gym session). The reason being the liquid will digest quicker than a full meal, and you want to get the nutrients to your muscles as quick as possible to start the recovery and growth process. Then about an hour and a half to two hours after your liquid meal, you can eat a whole food meal consisting of protein and carbohydrates.

So lets start with the liquid meal. The easiest option is to take a protein shake. Mix some whey protein with some water or even better with some milk. To this you can also add some simple carbohydrates, such as apple juice or just plain glucose. There are many studies showing that taking in a simple carbohydrate source will ‘spike’ your insulin, driving more nutrients into your muscles. But honestly I believe you can use almost any carb source, even a low gi source like oats. There is also a few studies showing that, by consuming your protein first, then after a few minutes, taking in your carbohydrates, will elevate your growth hormone levels. Something to think about.

Experimenting

I have experimented with a few things regarding a post workout meal. I wanted to see if I would experience any different or beneficial results by consuming different things.

I tried each of these for a few months:

1. Whey protein with glucose

Versus

2. Whey protein with oats

I never saw or felt much of a difference, thus the reason I stated you can use almost any carb source.

I then tried this:

1. Whey protein

Versus

2. Plain organic full cream milk  (about 500 – 800 ml)

Versus

3. Whole food meal (Rice/Potatoes and Chicken/Fish)

With this, I really wanted to see if the benefits of this ‘post workout whey shake’ would over power drinking just plain milk or eating a normal whole food meal after a workout. Again I never saw or felt much of a difference.

The one problem with marketing nowadays is that many people have been bombarded (by supplement companies) with the idea that after training the ONLY thing you MUST consume is a protein shake.

Has it ever happened that you came home after gym, and forgot you had run out of whey protein? With all hell braking loose, you jumped in your car and raced to the nearest pharmacy to pick up some whey protein in order to have your ‘post workout shake’ in time, so you do not miss that perfect ‘window of opportunity.’

The Conclusion

By all means if you can get your hands on some rice/pea protein, it’s a good thing to have post workout as it does contain all the branch chain amino acids you need as well as glutamine to help you recover. But if not or if your whey suddenly finishes, do not worry so much and run around screaming, just blend your own smoothie with fruit and peanut butter (you can use soya milk or almond milk with it) OR alternatively just eat a whole food meal.

After training, your muscles have been severely strained and broken down so they will absorb a lot of what you feed them, even if you think it’s going to take ages to digest. Too often people tend to over complicate things. Keep things simple.

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Quick Stats

Name: Roelof Coertze
Age: 24
Height: 1.75m
Competition weight: 95 -100kg
Current weight: 113Kg
Current city: Pretoria
Where do you train: Tuks Student Gym
Occupation: Studying Theology, Psychology and Personal Training

Your dad was also a bodybuilder, did that initiate your love for bodybuilding or was it more than that?

Yes definitely, he competed for 8 years in many competitions then went to the military. My Uncle also competed with my dad and won the masters division at the Iffbb SA National Championships, so they were both really inspiring. Most days after School we used to sit in the gym and watch him train; he was different to most other dads, having big biceps and a huge chest, so it definitely made me want to look like that as well.

“I also started picking up dumbbells at the age of 7; just the small ones but you can see how interested I was at such a young age. My dad would say it’s too heavy right now, but just wait for the right time.”

What do you love about it and what keeps you motivated?

Well I grew up with a love for the sport, so by having that love, that’s really what keeps me going, because I really enjoy every aspect of it. If you do it for the love of it, that will keep you going.

“I am also very competitive and goal oriented. I try to set somewhat unrealistic goals for myself, so that I aim extremely high no matter what.”

For example when I did my first competition I always said to myself I want to go to the Worlds and even to the Olympia, even though I didn’t even have a win or anything at any show. Also the people who surround me support me a lot, in terms of the emotional aspect of the game. They really help to keep me motivated and keep getting better. There are also people who sort of see me as a role model and always come back to me, asking me what shows am I going to do next year and what improvements will I make; so a big thanks to all those people, they help me a lot and I hope I can encourage them in some way as well.

What competitions have you competed in and your placings?

2007

• USN competition, 1st in division and overall winner
• Ifbb Gauteng North Provincials, Juniors u21 Division, 1st
• Ifbb SA National Championships, Juniors u21 Division, 4th

2008

• H&H Classic, Juniors u21 Division, 4th
• H&H Classic, Senior Men Over 90kg, 1st
• Ifbb Gauteng North Provincials, Juniors u21 Division, 2nd

2010:

• Ifbb Gauteng North Novice Classic, Senior Men Over 90kg, 1st place and overall winner

2011

• H&H Classic, Senior Men Over 90kg, 1st
• Ifbb Gauteng North Provincials, Senior Men Over 90kg, 2nd
• Ifbb SA National Championships, Senior Men Over 90kg, 5th

What was your biggest mistake you made when starting out?

Well there were 2 major mistakes.

1. Firstly training too heavy, too often

I only believed in heavy weights and moving a lot of weight around, I didn’t believe in and utilize higher reps, volume, drop sets etc. The end result was that I ended up getting injured a lot. Rather try to have a balance between heavy weights and everything else. Always include heavy weight now and then.

2. The second mistake was eating too much junk food in the off season

Sometimes I would have KFC twice day! I would then end up gaining a lot of unnecessary body fat which made it more difficult come competition time to lose all that extra fat. I also ended up eating crap some days and then tried to drink liters of milk to make up my protein and carbohydrates in my diet.

What are your future plans?

For the sport, I plan to be back next year. I took this year off to add some size and thickness to my frame. I hope to do the H&H, provincials, and SA’s, but my main goal is to qualify for worlds.
Career wise, I have changed and focused more on psychology, and I am planning to work with my dad next year.

Take us through an average day of yours:

• OK, I wake up and eat; I never wake up and don’t eat (one of my motto’s in this sport).
• Then go to the gym at 6:00 am to do some personal training until about 8:00 am.
• I get back home at 8:00 am. I eat again, then get ready and go to class until about 12:00 pm.
• I eat again then go back home where I do class work and studying during the afternoon.
• I eat again at about 3:00 pm. I then prepare all my food and shakes for gym and after gym.
• I’m off to gym at 5:00 pm until about 6:00/6:30 pm, and then do some personal training with two people for about an hour.
• I get back home at 8:00 pm and eat again. I study and work most of the night until about 1:00 am. But I eat at 11:00 pm and again at 1:00 am before bed.
• I wake up at about 4:00 am to eat again.
• If I don’t sleep at least 6 hours or so, I’ll take a nap in the morning again before class.

Give us a brief description of your philosophy on your diet, pre contest and during the off season.

• 0600:  8 egg whites and 2 cups white rice – blended
• 0900:  8 egg whites and 2 cups rice – blended
• 1100:  250 grams of hake and 2 cups rice
• 1400:  250 grams hake and 2 cups rice
• 1630:  200 grams pineapple and 5 egg whites blended
• Train. Pre, intra and post workout shakes.
• 30 minutes after my post workout whey shake I’ll have 8 egg whites and 2 cups white rice – blended
• 2000:  250 grams steak and 2 cups rice
• 2400:  8 egg whites and half a liter skim milk
• Throughout the night another 8 egg whites and 2 cups white rice – blended

This is an off season diet as I am trying to pick up weight. Even with all of that food it is still tough to pick up. What I will add to this diet is every 1 in 15 meals ill put in a breakaway meal. Meaning I can eat whatever and however much I want for that one meal; this helps to increase your metabolism and the extra calories tends to be quite useful for that little boost.
In season I’ll do the breakaway meals 1 in every 30 meals (1 every 3 days) and I’ll drop some of the rice, and/or I’ll swap the white rice for brown rice or for oats for that slower digestion lower GI carbohydrate.

What supplements do you use if any? And do you have a favorite brand?

I love American brands. I love Muscletech as they have always supported me throughout my career and I have worked for them with Cobus Van Der Merwe. The supplements I normally use are:

• Pre workout either jackd 3d or BSN NO explode
• During my workout, Muscletech’s Anabolic halo
• Post workout, Muscletech’s Nitro Tech.

Give us a brief description of your philosophy on your training and on average how long do you workout for?

I believe in doing 1 muscle group a day and never training for more than an hour and a half. Depending on the muscle I train, my total sets vary between 9 and 25 (bigger muscles I do more sets, e.g. for back I do 25 sets and for a smaller body part like biceps I do 9 sets).

“I believe in a combination of volume and big ass weights, and a lot of contraction and isolation, even when I do big weights.”

Lastly the difference between a first place and a second place is the smaller muscles (like calves, forearms etc) which people often neglect to train so I am always sure to train everything.

What’s your favorite form of cardio?

Weight training! I don’t really believe in cardio.

“My cardio would be a higher volume weight workout. I’d rather train twice a day splitting the body parts even more because in the end it’s all about burning calories, and by doing this I can take my supplements twice a day which helps me grow a lot more even when prepping for a show.”

It helps to keep that thick muscle, and you can also eat more food when you train like that because in the end you end up burning more calories because weight training burns more calories than cardio.  I never go off season like before so I don’t need to lose excessive amounts of fat to get stage ready.

What would you say are the two best exercises you can do for a wider back?

Well my Dad brought me up in the gym with wide grip pull downs and T bar rows. So what I used to do is take one of these exercises to start my back workouts and do like 10 sets of it to really focus on the upper back, and then carry on with other exercises. So that’s how I got my back quite wide.

Favorite bodybuilders:

Arnold is one of my favorites, but I like athletes like Branch Warren and Frank Mcgrath because of their ways of training, the more hardcore ideas. On the other hand I admire guys like Kai Greene and his very philosophical and psychological approach. I think the best would be to have a balance between the ‘hardcore’ and the ‘philosophy.’

Which do you prefer and why. Today’s bodybuilders like Jay Cutler and Phil Heath, or the smaller physiques like Frank Zane.

I’d like to quote Shawn Ray: “Too often bodybuilding loses its beauty, and the shape that it had in Arnold’s days, and bodybuilding tends to lose its quality in our days. Words like classical, beautiful, artistic and old school won’t be used by some of the athletes today, for instance guys like Jay Cutler, Dennis James, these guys played Ronnie’s (Ronnie Coleman) game and chased his game in terms of being freaky and huge.” I like Phil Heath though because he still somewhat has that balance between the mass and the classical frame.

Favorite Quote:

“Ain’t nothing to it but to do it” by Ronnie Coleman

One piece of advice for someone wanting to change their lifestyle and achieve their ideal physique?

I’m a personal trainer, and I tell this to a lot of people, set your goals high but start with small steps, clean up your diet and lean it out (limit fat and sugar) and be consistent with that. Then use a blender A LOT. It should be your best friend in a body building lifestyle. Lastly consistency in weight training, diet and supplementation plays a very important role in succeeding in this game and train for the love of the sport and not just for the arms and the chest!

Where can people get hold of you?

Face book or at the Tuks student gym, that’s where I work (personal training) and train.

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Many people have a relatively good idea of which foods are healthy and which are not, or at least what foods are healthier than others.  But what most people are not aware of is the particulars of timing what you eat.  What I am talking about is, eating certain things at certain times.

By manipulating exactly WHAT you eat at certain times, you are able to an extent, enhance certain processes, such as muscle building, or blunt other processes like fat storage.

Now there are many opinions on the actual effectiveness of ‘meal timing,’ but I really believe that it can make a significant difference.  But, the other very important factor that you HAVE to control when wanting to lose or gain weight is the total number of calories that you take in.

Now first and foremost, you need to try and consume some protein at each meal.  By combining protein with other foods, you slow down the digestion of the meal, thus ensuring your blood sugar levels remain more or less constant, and do not jump too high and then crash.  You can also achieve this by adding foods high in fiber to your meals, such as vegetable like broccoli, green beans, spinach etc.

One of the most important points to remember is to not consume carbohydrates alone and after not eating for a long period of time, especially the fast acting carbohydrates which have little nutrients and fiber, such as sugar, sweets, fruit juices, soft drinks etc.  When you do consume these types of carbohydrates your blood sugar levels rise quite rapidly and then can come crashing down leaving you tired and lethargic.  Another effect which can take place when eating these foods alone is fat storage.  If the body’s carbohydrate stores are full it can end up storing those calories as fat, especially since these sugary foods cause the body to digest them very quickly forcing the body to actually do something with the calories quite rapidly.

This will still depend on a few other factors like your metabolism and how much carbohydrates you have had within the past few days.

For example, if we take a bodybuilder who has been restricting his carbohydrate intake for the past few days, he could be quite depleted, so when he starts to increase his carbohydrate intake, and only eat carbs, instead of gaining fat his muscles will actually use those carbohydrates to fill up, since your body stores carbohydrates within your muscles as muscle glycogen.  That’s why so many bodybuilders a few days before a show restrict their carbohydrate intake and then start to eat A LOT of carbohydrates on the day before or on the day of the show.  This really helps to give their muscles a full rounded and pumped look.  So we can see here that by manipulating what you eat really can make a difference.

Now the three times of the day when you really want to maximize the effects of the food which you eat are:

• Breakfast.
• Before your weight workout.
• After your weight workout.

Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day and far too many people eat the wrong things here or just skip it altogether.  By eating a good balanced breakfast you provide your body with the nutrients it needs, to provide you with energy for the rest of the day and since you have not eaten anything in eight or so hours by eating breakfast you can put your body into an anabolic state and get the muscle repair process started.

Anabolic state: A state of muscle building.
Catabolic state: A state of muscle breakdown.

An ideal breakfast would consist of a small piece of fruit, a large glass of chilled water, a few eggs and some form of carbohydrates, e.g. oats.  What I have just suggested contains all the different macronutrients, protein, fat and carbohydrates.  Now the portion sizes will depend on each person and on how active each of us is, but be sure to include a bit of everything.  Personally I have found that when I remove the carbohydrates (oats) from my breakfast (particularly when restricting my calories to lose fat) I have very little energy throughout the day and I feel very flat and lethargic.

But again it must work for you.

Nutrition before your workout can be manipulated in many ways.  Its probably not as important as breakfast and your post workout meal, but it can definitely help.  For instance if you workout long and hard you will need some carbohydrates to fuel your training, and as always you will need some protein to go with it.  But there are many people who just cannot eat a meal and then go train due to tension in their stomach even after two hours after eating.  So be sure to have a small meal at least one and a half to two hours before you train consisting of protein and carbohydrates. Some chicken and rice could do just fine.

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If you have read many fitness magazines out there I’m sure you will have read that after training you need simple carbohydrates like sugar or glucose to spike your insulin in order to refill your muscles and get as much nutrients in them as possible in that 30 minute ‘magic’ window after you train.  Now I do not dispute these claims, but you really don’t need to worry too much about the exact type of carbohydrates to use.

These days there are certain supplements out there which are made specifically to use straight after gym for these exact reasons, but one look at the ingredients and you will find you are just paying for sugar in fancy packaging.

So, yes, your muscles will be fatigued and naturally will need some nutrients to repair them.  The sooner you can get to them the better.  What to eat?  What I would suggest is initially a protein shake with some milk and a banana followed by a whole meal after about an hour or two consisting of vegetables, protein and carbohydrates, such as sweet potato, green beans and chicken.  The reason for all of this is that the protein shake in liquid form digests much quicker than actual food so it can get to work immediately to repair your muscles.  Then once the process is started and you have something in your system you can move onto a decent meal.  You could always just skip the shake and consume the meal straight away as well.

Lastly eating at night, or before bed.  There are a lot of different opinions on eating at night and just before your sleep saying it will cause excessive weight gain since you are not doing anything physical so therefore you will end up storing what you eat as body fat, especially if you eat carbohydrates at night.  I do disagree with most of this.  If you are working out almost every day relatively intensely, you are going to be hungry at night.  So then what do you do?  What do you eat?  Well, go for a high protein snack.

It would be a wise idea to stay away from carbohydrates before bed since when you sleep you naturally release growth hormone, which helps repair your muscles and various tissues within your body as well as help you recover from your day to day activities.  Now when you eat carbohydrates (especially simple carbohydrates like sugar, and sweets) your body releases insulin which to an extent blunts the release of growth hormone.

This is a process which you really do not want to intentionally stop as you should try to maximize it while you can since as you age you naturally produce less and less growth hormone.  So at night try to stick to meals containing protein and maybe some good fats.  The good fats can be found in nuts, olives, avocados etc.

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