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alcohol on workout days

bill86

bill86

Active member
ok, since im fairly confident most of you guys know more about this than i... i ask


my friend and i have been having some heated arguments about drinking alcohol on training days. he thinks, that to drink (more specifically, get drunk) on a day that you've worked out on CANCELS out your workout. he says theres no point in lifting on a certain day if youre going to get drunk that night... he points to the fact that bodybuilders dont drink, etc


i say... getting drunk in and of itself isnt the problem... its the dehydration, hangover, and simply not feeling like lifting/dieting correctly the day after that causes the problems... being that alcohol raises your estrogen levels and decreases testosterone, i think it would be awful to do every day, but the fact that 'bodybuilders dont do it' is somewhat irrelevant. (i use the example that HARDCORE workout heads take copious amounts of vitamin c, but taking vitamin c increases muscle mass about as much as alcohol, in and of itself, decreases muscle mass)... but my question to yall is

is it pointless to lift on a day that you plan on consuming enough alcohol to get drunk? does 'getting drunk cancel out your workout'
 
Its never pointless to workout imo...But consuming alcohol is not good while on certain supps. Alcohol has alot of cals and hard to burn off. So basically turns into fat mighty quick. But your right to a certain extent, bcause i drink almost every weekend lol. Have to live life to but i dont drink to get blasted maybe to feel nice..My suggestion is just drink enough water that u wont wake up with a hangover and not be able to hit the gym....
 
it certainly doesn't "cancel out" the workout, not sure how that could be possible.

good article about drinking and gains:
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TheDarkHalf said:
Drinking does screw with your hormones. It certainly won't cancel your workout. It will delay recovery.
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I completely agree. It's won't completely cancel out your workout, but its don't to delay recovery, possibly mess with any supp cycle you are on, and make it harder to actually get results from a work out.
 
thanks for the input guys.

gymrat- basically, the whole argument was whether or not it 'cancels out' your workout. my point to him was that it causes dehydration, hangover (which includes not wanting to hit the gym, or desire for unhealthy foods), slower recovery, but the alcohol in and of itself doesnt cause your body to lose muscle mass or not recover whatsoever. obviously binge drinking several nights a week is going to hurt your gains and may decrease testosterone enough to see a difference... but i feel like if youre only going to drink once a week (or less!), and it just so happens to fall on a day you workout, its stupid to pass up on the workout because 'its a waste of time since im drinking tonight'
 
bill86 said:
thanks for the input guys.

gymrat- basically, the whole argument was whether or not it 'cancels out' your workout. my point to him was that it causes dehydration, hangover (which includes not wanting to hit the gym, or desire for unhealthy foods), slower recovery, but the alcohol in and of itself doesnt cause your body to lose muscle mass or not recover whatsoever. obviously binge drinking several nights a week is going to hurt your gains and may decrease testosterone enough to see a difference... but i feel like if youre only going to drink once a week (or less!), and it just so happens to fall on a day you workout, its stupid to pass up on the workout because 'its a waste of time since im drinking tonight'
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Agreed
 
I dont think it cancels out the workout at all. The biggest and strongest I have ever been was a year ago when I was single and gettin hammered almost every night. Only supps I was takin were whey and original size on. I put on over 10 pounds, lost fat, and put a inch on my arms in less than three months
 
Alcohol is labeled as 7.1 calories per gram, but the real value is more along the lines of 5.7 calories due to the thermic effect of food (TEF) which is 20% of the ingested calories.
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Wtf is this? The same happens with protein/carb/fat?
 
The "cancels out" idea is just plain stupid and is usually touted by people who are weak or fat. Would you not do your cardio for the day because you had two donuts and a pop and you're only going to burn the same amount you ingested?

Getting drunk certainly isn't going to help anything in any effect, but the idea that drinking does away with anything you did for your body that day is just plain wrong. FWIW I'd rather lift before drinking than the day after if I'm hungover, but the overall point still stands. Getting drunk certainly isn't doing your recovery or physique any significant favors, but the idea that the positives you got from exercising that day "go away" because you had a shot is just flat stupid.
 
seccsi said:
The "cancels out" idea is just plain stupid and is usually touted by people who are weak or fat. Would you not do your cardio for the day because you had two donuts and a pop and you're only going to burn the same amount you ingested?

Getting drunk certainly isn't going to help anything in any effect, but the idea that drinking does away with anything you did for your body that day is just plain wrong. FWIW I'd rather lift before drinking than the day after if I'm hungover, but the overall point still stands. Getting drunk certainly isn't doing your recovery or physique any significant favors, but the idea that the positives you got from exercising that day "go away" because you had a shot is just flat stupid.
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EXACTLY! i was in no way saying excessive alcohol is ok if youre working on building lean muscle/strength, just that if you havent drank ANY in a week or 2, and you plan on getting a little wild one night, its stupid to say 'well, im not doing chest (for example) today because im drinking tonight'... im the exact same way, id MUCH rather get in a good workout the day OF drinking, say on a friday if saturday is my off day, so i can rest the next day rather than force my sluggish self to hit the gym hungover (which almost always results in being weaker/less motivated, for me at least)

i think hitting the gym really hard before a night of drinking>>TRYING to hit the gym really hard the day after drinking. because even if you dont have a full blown 'hangover', you (or at least, i personally) still feel more tired and sluggish than usual, even if im not nauseas, have a headache, etc.
 
bill86 said:
EXACTLY! i was in no way saying excessive alcohol is ok if youre working on building lean muscle/strength, just that if you havent drank ANY in a week or 2, and you plan on getting a little wild one night, its stupid to say 'well, im not doing chest (for example) today because im drinking tonight'... im the exact same way, id MUCH rather get in a good workout the day OF drinking, say on a friday if saturday is my off day, so i can rest the next day rather than force my sluggish self to hit the gym hungover (which almost always results in being weaker/less motivated, for me at least)

i think hitting the gym really hard before a night of drinking>>TRYING to hit the gym really hard the day after drinking. because even if you dont have a full blown 'hangover', you (or at least, i personally) still feel more tired and sluggish than usual, even if im not nauseas, have a headache, etc.
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Agreed on the which day you'd prefer. I'm certainly not getting a good workout in if I got blitzed the night before. But my beef was with the cancelling out effect which is just wrong.
 
I realize this is an old thread, but I wanted to point out a couple ideas that have sprung to mind over the past year or so for me regarding the topic of drinking before, during or after a workout.

First off, to process alcohol in your system requires protein. This means that any muscle build up you are working on may actually get "cancelled out" due to the fact that your alcohol processing is going to be happening at the same time. The idea of a complete "cancel out" doesn't exactly make sense as a blanket statement since it really depends on how much alcohol you drank vs. the amount of protein you've ingested plus the amount of exercise you've done.

Also, what are you trying to do? Lose fat? Gain muscle mass? These factors matter in order to properly answer this question as well.

The bottom line, though, is that this is more of a question of how much of an alcoholic you are, because if you really can't stop yourself from drinking every day then you have a serious problem, maybe not of alcoholism in particular but more of self-control and willpower.

For what it's worth, I'm saying all of this as someone who has trouble with sticking to workout schedules and diets and has spent enough time researching to figure out how to balance my vices with my virtues.

Hope this helps someone stumbling on this thread like I did!
 
haha, no, i was talking about drinking every day (or even most days, for that matter). i was just trying to get opinions on drinking on an evening that happens to be on a workout day. not drinking before or during. essentially my friend was arguing that if one was to go out on a friday night and drink, it would be pointless for him to even workout that friday morning because the alcohol consumption "cancels out" that days workout. i said that was idiotic, we argued for a while, then i came here to get opinions from you guys haha.
 
Oh haha, yea when I say "you" I meant a person in general, not you specifically. I've been wanting to gain muscle mass and stuff like alcohol consumption definitely became an issue for me, so that is what I had to face: why can't I have the willpower to have only 1 drink with my friends the night before I know I'm going to work out instead of 6?

I have a friend who drinks A LOT and is very thin -- toned, but barely any muscle mass -- he told me how he likes working out when he gets home after drinking with his buddies. I asked him if he was trying to gain and he said yes but it's so hard, he can work out all he wants and never gain a pound of muscle mass. I had to inform him that working out while drunk or after drinking tons of alcohol is actually a bad idea because of the conflict of where your body's protein is going to be used. In fact, you can overextend yourself and could actually cause respiratory or cardiac arrest since your body is already working very hard to break down the alcohol and stave off the poison that is created as a byproduct of that process, coupled with the fact that alcohol is a depressant and exercise acts as a stimulant since it speeds up your breathing and heart rate.

I really think that if you have, say, 5 or six drinks one night and plan on working out the next day, you'd do well to drink lots of water, take lots of vitamin B and eat a lot of protein to compensate, otherwise you may as well not work out. And, again, if someone can't stop themselves from drinking too much the night before a workout then they probably have a serious problem!
 
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