The impacts of alcohol on training and racing are significant, our coaches detail what to expect and how to engage alcohol in training and parts of your racing season.
The positives
The fact is alcohol is not much good for training besides a few short good laughs and thats about it. In this coaches corner we outline any positive benefits of alcohol and the impacts it has on your training and fitness goals.
+ A glass or red wine now and then has been shown to relax the body and be good for you. Moderation means sparingly in volume and frequency can be good for health. A glass or two a week would be considered more than acceptable.
+ A few good times and laughs which can relax the body and brain during periods of hard and stressful training and or events. (We will more so call this neutral as the benefits are lower to this concept given that one drink is usually follow by two.. three…)
?+ Yep thats it.. No other benefits than these two scenarios we can come up with in the many life years of coaching our team collectively has.
The negatives
There are many negatives, we highlight the ones that impact day to day training and life
-Delayed body recovery; due to the poor sleep and dehydration caused by alcohol the body is slow to repair itself after harder bouts of training. Often times the quality of a training session the next day is impacted as alcohol is “sweat out”. Most athletes won’t feel better until after their training session and most report lower than expected outputs.
-Weight gain; Beer is a total gut buster due to the added sugars and carbohydrates and especially in malted beers. Wine and spirits are not much better as they still present “empty calories” that provide no sustenance but aid increasing our already ample fat stores.
If your goals are to be a top pro or age group performer (or even move up the ranks) you can forget about drinking. Top athletes require lean body compositions to improve VO2 max, which is not improved by alcohol consumption.
Drinking while trying to lose weight are two mutually exclusive concepts. When you are training you need to replenish glycogen energy to restore the muscles. Alcohol are added fat calories that do not provide an energy source and are thus considered “empty” calories that leave you just as hungry and eat into your ability to be under calories on any given day.
Coping; Alcohol can be a coping mechanism for life and training stress and why it has such addictive qualities. The work hard play hard approach doesn’t add up here and there are other outlets one should seek to be true to your endurance goals as well as mental health goals.
We know that this may be harsh and sound as “prude” to some reading this. However, if we take an honest assessment of what alcohol can do for us in terms of performance, its not very much indeed.
Its best to take a funnel approached view to your training, intensity and focus when it comes to endurance sports. Perhaps at times your consumption may be higher such as in short periods of downtime or holidays. However, once the goals are set you will find that they are hit more easily when alcohol is not part of your routine.
Train hard and SMART! 👨🏻💻 ~The Tristar Athletes Coaching team
