What is the Best Post-Workout Shake?

If you have a few free moments at some point over the coming weeks, I'd appreciate if you could take a look at a few links to information regarding post-workout nutrition, as well as some information from Alan Aragon. I'd be especially interested in getting your take on those claiming that chocolate milk is as good as or better than a whey hydrolysate and dextrose or maltodextrin and BCAA mixture.

Guidelines for Ideal Post-Workout Nutrition

Here are my guidelines for ideal post-workout nutrition:

I. Speed of absorption of post-workout proteins should be fast.

At the end of a workout, there is damage to muscle tissue. This damage is interpreted by the central nervous system as an attack on the body. As a result, cortisol is on the rise, and testosterone levels are falling. A fast-absorbing, liquid source of high quality protein without additional fat addresses these needs.

It is no secret that there is an inversely proportional relationship between insulin and cortisol – they do not exist in the system at the same time in equal amounts. If you spike insulin, cortisol has to come down. Since a big picture predictor of progress is determined by the mathematical formula:

Anabolism = Testosterone/Cortisol

, then lower circulating cortisol levels post-workout are very important, because they tip the endocrine equation back in your favor at a time when testosterone values are decreasing.

Additionally, training causes cellular damage to muscle tissue, and results in an elevated circulating amino acid pool in the blood immediately post-training. Once the central nervous and immune systems figure out what needs to be repaired from the workout, those amino acids will be transported to the damaged (trained) area to facilitate growth and repair. Since insulin acts as a nutrient shuttle to cells of the body – taking the nutrients to the cells – there is no better time to have large amounts of insulin in the system, as that means that the micro- and macro nutrients will be taken to the compromised cells at maximum speed.

The best source of protein to meet these guidelines is whey, and up until recently, it was widely agreed that whey protein isolate or hydrolysate were superior because of their higher rate of gastric emptying. Recently, there has been discussion that speed of emptying, though important, is not the only thing to consider.

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