Pre vs. Post-Exercise Protein Intake – Which is Better?

by Quantify Fitness | Last Updated:  January 26, 2017

That conventional advice that consuming protein post-workout to achieve strength and hypertrophy gains may be flawed…and according to the study if you really want to cover your bases, ingesting 25-30g in both the pre- and post-exercise periods may be the most prudent approach.

But be careful because too high of a protein diet can become a high carb diet as your body will break down excess protein into sugar – gluconeogenesis.

“Across the range of measures, there were no meaningful results consistently attributable to pre- versus post-exercise protein ingestion. The implications of these findings are that the trainee is free to choose, based on individual factors (i.e., preference, tolerance, convenience, and availability), whether to consume protein immediately pre- or post-exercise.

These findings refute the contention of a narrow post-exercise anabolic window to maximize the muscular response and instead lends support to the theory that the interval for protein intake may be as wide as several hours or perhaps more after a training bout depending on when the pre-workout meal was consumed.”

Link to Study

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