Effect of alcohol on performance

[makelymyday]

What is everyones opinion? I am not a heavy drinker, but a have a few beers every other week night (or so) and a little more on the weekends. Is this adversely affecting my progress. Glenn do your athletes drink alcohol? Just curious.

[glennpendlay]

you know, the science says, yes, alchohol does impede progress. But I have never know an OLer who doesnt drink, except Shane Hammon and Kendrick Farris. and yeah, they are good, but, i have seen world champions partying down at the worlds. I think that while it is ideal not to drink, a beer or two wont hurt you, and one night say every other week of having more than one or two wont hurt you that much either.

Lots of things can be either ideal or not ideal, but I think in the end, training and talent trump all.

glenn

[makelymyday]

Ahhhh. . . sweet justification!

[steveq]

I notice that I put on weight when I drink more than once week regularly but other than that my training doesn't really suffer. A pot of coffee and a little extra warmup does the trick for me

[James Bailey]

In my experience, recent experience included, it is better to drink as little as possible.

Each to their own but if I have, like last weekend, a heavy weekend. Bear in mind I work in a bar, I was working Thursday to Saturday and didn't get home earlier than 9am and slept most of the day. I trained on Friday, did ok but oly lifts sucked. Couldn't train on Monday as I still felt hungover and so tired from the weekend, Tuesday was fine though. But we had partied after work each night in the bar.

That is maybe extreme in the sense that I'd had a lot to drink each night and bad sleep. I have found that a couple of beers or what ever rarely impedes performance to a noticeable degree. Everything in moderation...except sleep and food...

[Trey Goodwin]

When I was at the training center I thought I overheard Dr. Mike Stone say that according to some studies drinking a dark beer in the evening could actually help with recovery. So I looked around on the web to see if I could find any articles confirming this and came across this one. There isnt very much scientific language available in this article but still interesting. Has anyone else heard this about dark beer?

http://www.ananzimen.co.za/cgi-bin/ananzimen/search.pl?id:1209863709

[SimonKlimesh77kg]

Trey,
you know I have read something about this at a resturant/bar once before. It was posted on the wall and it was an article about a study done by a university. The article had similar information as yours did indentifying antioxidants as the key benifit. I have read coffee has similar antioxidant benifits. Looks like dark beer is the better choice if you are gonna have a drink, and moderation is always a good thing.

Simon

[James Bailey]

Trey,
you know I have read something about this at a resturant/bar once before. It was posted on the wall and it was an article about a study done by a university. The article had similar information as yours did indentifying antioxidants as the key benifit. I have read coffee has similar antioxidant benifits. Looks like dark beer is the better choice if you are gonna have a drink, and moderation is always a good thing.

Simon

Coffee, red wine, dark beer, whiskey, etc, all have similar antioxidant properties. So do green tea and grape juice, it doesn't seem to be an amazing reason to drink them. I think the better reason is if you enjoy a beer or glass of wine or whiskey in the evening then go for it, the enjoyment of doing so far outweighs the potential health benefits of the antioxidants in it. If you enjoy a six pack or a bottle of wine in the evening then you may be affecting your recovery(unless you are British and not me;)). I read a really good article on recovery by Dan John here. (http://danjohn.net/2009/12/rest-the-definitive-answer/) Made a lot of sense to me, especially in light of my recent experiences of training and recovery. I'm not saying that you shouldn't drink, I am saying that you shouldn't need to justify it with antioxidants, I would rather say go for quality over quantity. Single malt over random scotch, Guinness over Budweiser, red wine over white. And if you really want antioxidants take Vitamin C and E.

[henrystyrish]

Alcoholics and controls have been experimentally determine the effects of a reasonable amount for the supply of whiskey, which requires constant attention to the relatively long duration. When working in isolation of the two groups did not differ from questions of accuracy or alcohol have a negative impact on performance.