Recent research shows that low fat chocolate milk may be as effective as a carbohydrate-electrolyte beverage at speeding recovery after hard training. However, most research so far has been conducted on the cycle ergometer and this might limit the practical applications. To my knowledge, very limited research exists on football palyers. One interesting study was published few days ago in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research by Spaccarotella and Andzel from Kean University, USA.
What was their protocol?
13 young 19-20 years old football players completed their regular pre-season training in the morning and afternoon. Performance was assessed with the 20-m shuttle run test in the afternoon session. After the morning session, the players received either low fat chocolate milk or an equivalent volume of carbohydrate-electrolyte beverage.
Table. Composition of the beverages used (in 100ml).
Nutrient | Low fat chocolate milk | Carbohydrate-electrolyte |
Energy (kcal) | 67 | 20.8 |
Protein (g) | 3.3 | 0 |
Fat (g) | 1.3 | 0 |
Carbohydrate (g) | 11.3 | 5.8 |
Modified from Spaccarotella and Andzel (2011)
Main finding
Time to fatigue in the 20-m shuttle run test did not differ between conditions.
Practical applications
- Low fat chocolate milk might be as effective as a carbohydrate-electrolyte solution at speeding recovery after a training session.
- The benefits of low fat chocolate milk as a recovery drink are:
- It contains large amounts of sodium
- It is cheap
- It can be easily found
Points to consider
Although this is an interesting area of research with obvious practical applications, readers should keep in mind that training load was not controlled in the morning session in the above mentioned study. Besides this, I think that the findings of Spaccarotella and Andzel’s study add to current knowledge. Future research should examine the effect of this recovery drink under more controlled conditions.
Related posts in this blog
Related posts in this blog
No comments:
Post a Comment