Don’t Drink And Try To Run A PR

Drink the first. Sip the second. Skip the third. – Knute Rockne

How Is Drinking Alcohol Affecting My Workout Routine?

We asked the experts for their rules of thumb on how to mix work and play.

BY ALEX SHULTZ for GQ.

There are few worse feelings in a pickup basketball game than blowing a layup, which is doubly true when the punishment for the blown layup is to sprint to the other side of the court and take a swig of a 40 while everyone else is still playing. This tough (but fair) set of rules was strictly enforced at a recent GQ charity pickup game, and I would be lying if I said I did not have to pull from the 40. The faintest sensation of unwelcome liquids sloshing around my stomach—even sans any actual impairment to my motor skills—was more than enough of a warning, ahem, shot that alcohol is not a performance-enhancer during athletic activities.

Although booze, generally speaking, can be detrimental to your health regardless of its temporal proximity to a workout, how it affects a person varies depending on a couple of factors, including the type of exercise involved. There isn’t a ton of scientific research available—mostly because loading up test subjects with beer and asking them to do a triathlon is an ethically dubious proposition—but here’s what we know about the subject, and what the experts advise you do about it.

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Avoid drinking before cardio

Separate and apart from dealing with a hangover, which I’ll get to shortly, there is concrete evidence that imbibing in the hours leading up to any sort of endurance training—namely, cardio—will hamper your workout. You’ll fatigue quicker, and take longer to hit your usual goals. As sports dietitian Claire Siekaniec notes in a 2015 research paper examining the interactions between alcohol and athletic performance, the extra fatigue that accompanies drinking is the result of the citric acid cycle slowing down—the pathway known as gluconeogenesis is inhibited, which effectively means less glucose (less energy) for the body to use.

Additionally, Siekaniec writes, “the body preferentially metabolizes alcohol, thereby altering the metabolism of carbohydrates and lipids, which are the preferred energy sources during endurance exercise.” Burning alcohol off does not translate into any sort of useful energy—and you also won’t be able to effectively cut carbs, if that’s a nutritional goal of yours. Drinking after a long run isn’t necessarily advised, but it won’t cause the same issues.Avoid drinking after resistance training

Alcohol and weightlifting actually interact in a very different way than alcohol and cardio exercise, says. Dr. Jakob Vingren, a professor of exercise physiology and biological sciences at the University of North Texas.

When we spoke, he wanted to first make clear he absolutely does not endorse drinking before pumping iron. That said, “alcohol ingested before a workout does not appear to affect strength and maximum power,” he explained. Of course, being wasted affects motor performance, and studies have mostly examined alcohol’s effect on maximal strength, so it’s not known if it impedes one’s ability to do a high-reps, low-weight routine. Vingren’s gut feeling is that too wouldn’t be greatly affected by drinking. (Perhaps this is how former Yankees pitcher David Wells allegedly managed to throw a perfect game while simultaneously buzzed and hungover from a bender.)

Drinking after lifting can and will invalidate those sweet, sweet gains you’re angling for, though. Vingren recommends not drinking in the hours after resistance training, because the muscles you just broke down will take far longer to recover. Studies also show that men experience more post-workout muscle recovery issues from alcohol than women, though Vingren cautions that he wants more data on that front. His general counsel for everyone: Don’t force a lift into your schedule on a Friday evening if you’re going to go out and drink a couple hours later.Avoid hangovers all the time, at all costs

There is not—I repeat, there is not—a real cure for a hangover, so if you’re serious about getting a real workout in on a Saturday morning, you’ll need to keep tabs on your alcohol intake on Friday night. Beyond a drink or two, you’ll start experiencing the ill effects of having one too many. Even if being tipsy or drunk sends you straight to bed, studies show your quality of sleep will suffer, which doesn’t bode well for your next-day exercise plans, either.

“I wouldn’t give any advice against going to the gym the next day if you’re sober,” Vingren says, “as long as you’re aware you may not be able to perform as well and that your balance could potentially be affected a bit.” In her research, Siekaniec finds an 11 percent decrease in aerobic capacity for people who are exercising while hung over.

The no-cure-for-hangovers rule means that, yes, sweating out a hangover is a myth. “Your liver is going to metabolize the alcohol, and whether you exercise or not, it’s not going to metabolize any faster,” Vingren says.

Basically, if you’re squeezing in a workout around some pre-planned boozing, remember the golden rules: Don’t drink before a run, don’t drink after resistance training, don’t miss a layup, and hangovers remain undefeated.

Unless you’re David Wells.