We all have, or will ask the question at one point or another. Can I be a better athlete if I stop drinking? We all know the true answer is…………yes. We know that alcohol makes us groggy, gain weight, make poor nutrition decisions, and generally makes us feel lousy. Conversely, we don’t want to miss out on social situations enhanced by alcohol or just want to relax.
I’m not going to preach. After all, the featured image from this blog is me drinking a glass of whiskey ahead of a training kick off weekend in October of 2021.
I do, however, try to be more thoughtful about how having even one drink impacts my training. Below is how I think about alcohol in relation to training for Endurance Sports.
The issue with alcohol is really an issue with recovery.
Let’s start from another fact we know…….Sleep is the best recovery tool we have when training for endurance sports. You can spend huge sums of money on recovery techniques and gadgets, but none of them will compare to a good night’s sleep.
As a busy athlete your body is faced each evening with recovering from your daily life and workouts. That’s already asking a lot! Now let’s add alcohol to the mix. Alcohol is a toxin that your body has to recover from! So at this point we’ve put our bodies in a place where it has to recover from daily life, workouts, and now alcohol! That’s a significant load and it’s likely you will wake up the next morning under-recovered.
Here’s the real insidious part.
On top of increasing an athlete’s recovery demand, alcohol also wrecks our sleep quality! To recap, when consuming alcohol, our body is now recovering from daily life, workouts, alcohol, and we have now reduced quality sleeping hours. I’m sure you can see the picture coming into focus.
Some tips….
I know it doesn’t help my training, but I still occasionally have a few drinks. Below are some general tips that have worked for me as I’ve progressed through my endurance sports journey.
- If you do consume alcohol understand that you will need to dramatically increase your recovery time.
- As your training increases try to decrease your alcohol intake.
- **For any hard race I generally cut back alcohol consumption 2-3 months ahead of time.
- If you do have a drink, try to have it as early as possible. For example, have a drink while you’re making dinner instead of after dinner.
- Don’t consume alcohol on consecutive days. Understand that any day you are trying to train and have a few drinks you will likely be under-recovered the following day. If you consistently begin each day under-recovered you will not reach your endurance potential.
- Recovery days/weeks are not an excuse to consume alcohol. If you’re drinking you’re not recovering.
Everyone is different but I think it’s reasonable to say that if you’re not willing to give up alcohol consumption all together you should be in search of balance. Endurance sports training is a balancing act anyway. Makes sense that our relationship with alcohol should be the same.