You Grow From What You Eat During and After the Workout

Members ask me about the meals around training more than almost any other part of the diet. What goes in the meal before, how much the intra-workout drink matters, and whether the meal after has to be a shake. Most of those questions start from the same assumption: since we lift to build muscle, the food has to be built around making the workout as good as possible. For a bodybuilder, that's backwards.

It seems so counterintuitive, because we all think we take pre-workout, we do all these things to improve the workout, but to maximize the growth from it, it's really the stuff you do during and after the workout.

This lecture explains where the training-day food actually does its work, and how much weight each meal around the workout deserves.

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1. The workout starts the growth, the food finishes it

A hard workout creates the need for new muscle. It doesn't build that muscle. The building happens in the hours after, and it can only happen with what the diet supplies.

That's why I don't plan a bodybuilder's training day the way I'd plan an athlete's game day. An athlete is judged on the performance itself. A bodybuilder is judged on what the body builds after the performance.