Basketball players push their bodies to the limit. Are you recovering fast enough? 

By Jackie Ansley 

Basketball players push their bodies to the limit on a daily basis. Hard practices, workouts and games deplete the muscles of energy fuel and traumatize muscle tissue. You cannot perform again at a high level until your muscles have been rebuilt and re-energized.

Failure to do this before the next practice or game will result in poor performance and possibly even injury.  Because basketball players play and train so frequently, the muscle recovery process must be complete as quickly as possible.

What is muscle recovery?

There are three main components of post-exercise muscle recovery. First, it is necessary to restore fluids lost during exercise. When you sweat heavily, you lose a lot of water and electrolytes. Drinking a sports drink during practices and games can slow the rate of fluid loss, but can’t stop it completely.

So it’s important to make up the deficit by continuing to use a sports drink with electrolytes after exercise. If you don’t re-hydrate properly before the next practice or game, you could experience overheating, muscle cramps and other problems.

The second component is putting carbohydrate fuel back in the muscles. In high-intensity sports such as basketball, most of a your energy comes from a form of carbohydrates stored in your muscles and liver. The longer a practice or game lasts, the lower your muscle fuel supplies become. By using a sports drink containing carbohydrates during practices and games, you can slow down this process. But it’s impossible to take in carbohydrates during intense exercise as fast as it’s burned. That’s why you must continue to absorb carbohydrates after exercise. If you don’t get your muscle fuel levels back to normal in time for the next practice or game, you’ll be sluggish and sloppy.

Finally, the third component of muscle recovery is fixing the damage done to muscle tissue during exercise. High-intensity physical activity can cause small tears in muscle tissues. In addition, some muscle proteins are broken down for energy during hard exercise. Also, hard exercise produces damaged molecules known as free radicals, which attack muscle cells. In order to undo all this damage, you need to consume protein and amino acids ­– the building blocks of proteins – after practices and games. You should also get antioxidants such as vitamins C and E, which help protect your muscle tissues against damage from free radicals.

Choose carefully

Conventional sports drinks such as Gatorade do not contain protein or antioxidants. Your best chance of finding them is in sports drinks formulated specifically for muscle recovery. But most of these drinks contain either too much protein or not enough carbohydrates or both. Your muscles need a lot more carbohydrates for fuel than they need protein for rebuilding.  When you eat a lot of protein, it slows down the rate of stomach emptying, which bogs down the delivery of nutrients to your muscles and other tissues. Besides too much protein, the other thing to avoid is too much fat, and for the same reason. It creates a traffic jam in your stomach and makes your muscles wait for the nutrients they need.

Research shows that the best results come from drinks that contain carbohydrates and protein in a 4:1 ratio – four grams of carbohydrates for every gram of protein. In one study, a recovery drink containing carbohydrates and protein in a 4:1 ratio, as well as electrolytes, antioxidants and amino acids (Endurox R4), reduced muscle soreness by 36 percent and increased performance in a subsequent workout by 55 percent, as compared to a conventional sports drink.

The importance of timing

Timing is critical. Immediately following exercise, your muscles are able to rebuild and re-energize themselves two to three times faster than they are able to do later. You cannot wait until the next meal and expect to recover as fast as another player who drinks a good recovery drink in the first 30 minutes after practices and games. Since most players aren’t able to eat a full meal within a half hour of training or playing, drinks such as Endurox R4 offer a practical alternative.

The bottom line

So much of success in basketball comes down to outlasting your opponents. The player who has the most energy late in the fourth quarter can take charge of the game and win it for his team.  And the team that has the most energy at the end of the season can find a higher gear when the season is on the line and their opponents are worn out from months of travel and playing. Proper muscle recovery makes these things possible. By getting the nutrition you need when you really need it, you can bounce back better and faster from hard work and maintain the strength and energy you need to perform at the highest level for a full game and a full season. OC

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