Major Fatigue After Lifting?

JessaLee0324

I've been doing SL5x5 for 3 weeks now. I love it. But I'm noticing that I get pretty fatigued after a lifting session. Achy, tired, cold. At first I thought it was illness. But this is becoming a rather recurring thing.

Has anyone else experienced this? I want to continue with my workouts, but I would really like to know how to squash the crappy feeling I get the rest of the day!

Nayners21

Do you eat carbs after? If not, maybe you need to give your body some energy after it has been depleted with the workout. I am not familar with SL5x5, so I cant chime in on personal experience.

coralraelamb

I'm no expert, but try some carbs- fruit and a little caffeine like green tea before. Plenty of water before during and after. At least 12-15 grams of protein and some carbs right after. Plenty of sleep to aide recovery. Also a multivitamin is essential. Heavy training taxes the body. You need adequate nutrients. Hope some of this helps.

CaffeinatedConfectionist

(Edited to fix quotes and also to comment that I just realized this is kind of a zombie thread, oops.)

You're from my old stomping grounds, more or less! I grew up around and went to college in Madison. I do miss the cheese, beer, sausage, and bloody mary's! Oh, and the fish fries. But the BBQ here is better...

Aaaanyway. Make sure you're getting enough protein overall. It looks like your daily protein goal might be a bit low, and it's important to get enough protein while you're doing resistance training, in order to maintain your current muscle mass.

Hitting your overall macros are likely going to be more important than your nutrient timing. There aren't any studies (that I've found, anyway) that conclusively demonstrate that the timing of your carb and protein intake is crucial. Findings appear to be mixed, in fact.

A tl;dr summary of what is below: It's not clear whether or not nutrient timing makes a difference. You probably don't need to worry too much about it, but if you want to cover your butt just in case and make sure you're eating enough protein to cover any hypothetical benefits of nutrient timing, try to eat .4-.5 g of protein per kg of lean body mass before a workout and try to eat a balanced meal 3-4 hours after a session, or another .4-.5 g of protein per kg of LBM. Mostly make sure you are getting sufficient protein. Per the second study, if you are relatively new to resistance training, which it sounds like you might be if you've been doing SL for 3 weeks, you will likely want to aim for 1.6-1.7g per kg (total weight, not LBM) of protein per day. I'm currently around 140, so I aim for around 110g of protein, though I don't always meet it. I usually have an iced coffee and a clif builder bar before my workouts, which puts me nicely in the .4-.5g of protein/kg of LBM range, and then I just eat dinner within 2-3 hours of lifting. I don't typically feel fatigued, achy, or cold.

http://www.jissn.com/content/pdf/1550-2783-10-5.pdf
Nutrient timing revisited: is there a post-exercise
anabolic window?

Distilling the data into firm, specific recommendations is difficult due to the inconsistency of findings and scarcity of systematic investigations seeking to optimize preand/or post-exercise protein dosage and timing.

With that said, high-quality protein dosed at 0.4–0.5 g/kg of LBM at both pre- and post-exercise is a simple, relatively fail-safe general guideline that reflects the current evidence showing a maximal acute anabolic effect of 20–40 g [53,84,85]. For example, someone with 70 kg of LBM would consume roughly 28–35 g protein in both the pre- and post exercise meal. Exceeding this would be have minimal detriment if any, whereas significantly under-shooting or neglecting it altogether would not maximize the anabolic response. Due to the transient anabolic impact of a protein-rich meal and its potential synergy with the trained state, pre- and post-exercise meals should not be separated by more than approximately 3–4 hours, given a typical resistance training bout lasting 45–90 minutes. If protein is delivered within particularly large mixed-meals (which are inherently more anticatabolic), a case can be made for lengthening the interval to 5–6 hours. This strategy covers the hypothetical timing benefits while allowing significant flexibility in the length of the feeding windows before and after training. Specific timing within this general framework would vary depending on individual preference and tolerance, as well as exercise duration…Shifting the training session closer to the pre- or post-exercise meal should be dictated by personal preference, tolerance, and lifestyle/ scheduling constraints.

Even more so than with protein, carbohydrate dosage and timing relative to resistance training is a gray area lacking cohesive data to form concrete recommendations. It is tempting to recommend pre- and postexercise carbohydrate doses that at least match or exceed the amounts of protein consumed in these meals. However, carbohydrate availability during and after exercise is of greater concern for endurance as opposed to strength or hypertrophy goals. Furthermore, the importance of co-ingesting post-exercise protein and carbohydrate has recently been challenged by studies examining the early recovery period, particularly when sufficient protein is provided...For the goal of maximizing rates of muscle gain, these findings support the broader objective of meeting total daily carbohydrate need instead of specifically timing its constituent doses. Collectively, these data indicate an increased potential for dietary flexibility while maintaining the pursuit of optimal timing.

http://www.jissn.com/content/pdf/1550-2783-10-53.pdf
The effect of protein timing on muscle strength
and hypertrophy: a meta-analysis

This is the first meta-analysis to directly investigate the effects of protein timing on strength and hypertrophic adaptations following long-term resistance training protocols. The study produced several novel findings…. an expanded regression analysis found that any positive effects associated with protein timing on muscle protein accretion disappeared after controlling for covariates. Moreover, sub-analysis showed that discrepancies in total protein intake explained the majority of hypertrophic differences noted in timing studies. When taken together, these results would seem to refute the commonly held belief that the timing of protein intake in the immediate pre- and postworkout period is critical to muscular adaptations [3-5]. Perceived hypertrophic benefits seen in timing studies appear to be the result of an increased consumption of protein as opposed to temporal factors…. In fact, the reduced model revealed that total protein intake was by far the most important predictor of hypertrophy ES, with a ~0.2 increase in ES noted for every 0.5 g/kg increase in protein ingestion…. The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 g/kg/day. However, these values are based on the needs of sedentary individuals and are intended to represent a level of intake necessary to replace losses and hence avert deficiency; they do not reflect the requirements of hard training individuals seeking to increase lean mass. Studies do in fact show that those participating in intensive resistance training programs need significantly more protein to remain in a nonnegative nitrogen balance. Position stands from multiple scientific bodies estimate these requirements to be approximately double that of the RDA [59,60]. Higher levels of protein consumption appear to be particularly during the early stages of intense resistance training. Lemon et al. [61] displayed that novice bodybuilders required a protein intake of 1.6-1.7 g/kg/day to remain in a non-negative nitrogen balance. The increased protein requirements in novice subjects have been attributed to changes in muscle protein synthetic rate and the need to sustain greater lean mass rather than increased fuel utilization [62].

In conclusion, current evidence does not appear to support the claim that immediate (≤ 1 hour) consumption of protein pre- and/or post-workout significantly enhances strength- or hypertrophic-related adaptations to resistance exercise. The results of this meta-analysis indicate that if a peri-workout anabolic window of opportunity does in fact exist, the window for protein consumption would appear to be greater than one-hour before and after a resistance training session. Any positive effects noted in timing studies were found to be due to an increased protein intake rather than the temporal aspects of consumption, but a lack of matched studies makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions in this regard….Since causality cannot be directly drawn from our analysis, however, we must acknowledge the possibility that protein timing was in fact responsible for producing a positive effect and that the associated increase in protein intake is merely coincidental. Future research should seek to control for protein intake so that the true value regarding nutrient timing can be properly evaluated.

dym123

I normally drink a post-workout protein shake after I lift, but for some reason the other night I didn't drink one and I felt the same way, tired and achy, the following day. I actually thought I was coming down with something. Decided to take a rare day off, even though I wasn't even hungry, ate some extra carbs and protein and felt better. I do not skip my post-workout shake anymore.