Food and nutrition for enhancing muscle mass and performance

Food and nutrition for enhancing muscle mass and performance

It is a common belief amongst strength and power athletes that nutritional supplementation strategies aid the recovery process by shifting the anabolic/catabolic profile toward a profile more favourable for anabolism. Factors such as nutrient quantity, nutrient quality, and nutrient timing significantly impact upon the effectiveness of nutritional supplementation strategies in optimising the acute responses to resistance exercise and, hence, the adaptive response to resistance training (i.e., muscle growth and strength expression). Specifically, this review will address nutritional supplementation strategies utilizing carbohydrates (CHO), protein (PRO) and/or amino acids (AA), as there is growing evidence suggesting a link between these nutrients and the initiation of key signals responsible for protein synthesis, muscle glycogen resynthesis and attenuation of myofibrillar protein degradation following resistance exercise. Collectively, the current scientific literature indicates that nutritional supplementation strategies utilising CHO, PRO and/or AA represents an important approach aimed at enhancing muscular responses for strength and power athletes, primarily increased muscular hypertrophy and enhanced strength expression. Ultimately, there appears to be a critical anabolic window associated with the key principle of nutrient timing (i.e., pre-exercise, during the exercise bout, and immediately post-exercise), with provision of dietary nutrients used to alter nutrient and hormone availability to augment the acute hormonal response, thereby promoting skeletal muscle growth. Finally, recommendations for nutritional supplementation strategies to promote muscular responses to resistance exercise are provided.

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