Brink Zone

Q. I don’t have the cash for protein powder, creatine, glutamine, or other supplements—I can barely afford my gym membership! What do you suggest?

A. Milk is nature’s original MRP. Despite all the fancy proteins out there all claiming to be the next step in the evolution of proteins that “will blast you past your plateaus in the gym,” good old milk seems to be competing—and winning—against some “high-tech” products on the market. We have various studies finding increased protein synthesis and other positive effects when a purified protein supplement (e.g., whey, soy, casein, etc.) is ingested right before or after a workout—usually in conjunction with carbohydrates—but what about good old milk, a “real” food?

One recent study found good old milk to be an effective post-workout drink that increased net muscle protein synthesis after resistance training.

Yet another recent study compared 2 cups of skim milk as a post-workout drink to a soy drink and a “sports drink.” In this study, the milk and soy drinks were matched for basic macronutrient ratios and calories, and all three were matched for total calories. Fifty-six male volunteers were split into three groups, with all put on a resistance-training program for 12 weeks. The volunteers were then randomly assigned one of the three drinks to consume as a post-workout drink and again one hour after the workouts.

Although no major differences were found in strength between the three groups, the group getting the milk had the greatest increase in muscle mass (via increases in Type I and II fibers) with researchers concluding, “… chronic postexercise consumption of milk promotes greater hypertrophy during the early stages of resistance training in novice weightlifters when compared with isoenergetic soy or carbohydrate consumption.”

But it gets better: How about our favorite childhood drink, chocolate milk? How about chocolate milk versus two commercial energy/fluid-replacement drinks, such as Gatorade and Endurox R4?

One recent study—albeit a small one—found chocolate milk as effective as Gatorade, and more effective than Endurox, as a recovery drink for trained cyclists between exhaustive bouts of endurance exercise.

Now, is this a condemnation of sports drinks and an endorsement for milk/chocolate milk as the last word on post-workout drinks? Not at all. Remember those essential questions I mentioned above? You have to look at such a study in context—in other words, at the experimental design and how that applies to the “real world.” The subjects fasted for 10 to 12 hours prior to the chocolate milk experiment, and these drinks were the only food these guys had for 14 to 16 hours. The results may have been quite different had they been following their normal eating patterns. They also measured effects on endurance versus, say, strength or increased protein synthesis, etc.

So, in the context of this particular study design, look at it this way: Chocolate milk has casein (a “slow” protein) and whey (a “fast” protein) as well as calcium, some vitamins, and a bunch of carbohydrates, so it makes a pretty good, cheap MRP, if that’s all you’re going to get all day long. It’s not a half-bad post-workout drink either. It’s not the best MRP—or post-workout drink—I could design, but it’s cheap and easy to find. The reality is that there are some inexpensive foods out there can be used, and most of your old-school bodybuilders and strongmen used milk as the original post-workout drink/MRP.

The study that looked at milk versus soy and sports drink was done in novice weightlifters, so that too needs to be taken into consideration. Regardless, milk, in particular chocolate milk, should make a perfectly acceptable and inexpensive post-workout drink, and people who think it’s too “old-school” or not “high-tech” enough to be of any use are clearly misinformed and the victim of marketing.

Now, the study we need to see that does not exist, of course, is milk or chocolate milk versus a well-thought-out post-workout drink of, say, whey and maltodextrin (a high-GI carb source), in experienced weightlifters who are not fasted—but don’t hold your breath on that one. Studies like that get expensive quickly and also pose practical issues. For example, if you wanted to match the protein content of, say, two scoops of whey isolate to chocolate milk (so the groups were getting an equivalent amount of protein), the subjects would need to drink a large volume of milk (remember, milk is mostly water).

My hunch is that a correctly designed post-workout drink would be superior to chocolate milk, but it would be nice to see the two compared, no?