What to Eat Before, During, and After Your Strength Workout

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When you learn how to optimize your nutrition, you’ll get stronger, faster, and improve your overall athletic performance. While we’ve covered nutrition for endurance athletes in the past, today we’re focusing on strength athletes.

Whether you’re a Crossfitter, weightlifter, powerlifter, or someone who simply prefers dumbbells to running shoes, this blog post is for you.

What to Eat Before Your Strength Workouts

Your pre-workout meal is important for providing the necessary fuel (and nutrients) so you can have a great workout. Because your body’s main source of energy is carbohydrates, it’s important to get enough prior to working out. Your body also needs protein to support your muscle growth and recovery.

About 1 – 3 hours before your strength workout, enjoy a small but filling meal of carbs and protein. If you wake up and immediately head to the gym, you can try a smaller snack on the road or add an intra-workout snack.

To get enough carbohydrates, enjoy a bagel, some bread, crackers, pita, or dried fruit. Pair your carbohydrates with high-quality protein like chicken, tuna, turkey, or half a scoop of Muscle 5. You can even skip the cooking altogether and enjoy a fruit smoothie with half a scoop of Muscle 5.

How to Energize Before Your Strength Workout

Food aside, if you need some quick energy before a workout, try a natural source of caffeine, such as a cup of coffee or a supplement like Trim 7. While named for its weight management benefits, this supplement is packed with energy-promoting extracts like green coffee bean extract and green tea extract, which contain naturally occurring caffeine and antioxidants. These ingredients temporarily reduce fatigue, promoting alertness and wakefulness. Trim 7 is also clinically proven to help you maintain your hard-earned muscle mass, even while losing weight so it’s the perfect supplement if you want to maintain (or even increase) your muscle mass while losing body fat (e.g., “body re-composition”) Take three capsules about one hour prior to your workout.

What to Eat During Your Strength Workouts

Many strength athletes choose not to eat during their workouts.

Unlike long duration endurance exercise lasting ~1.5-2 hours, strength workouts are usually shorter in duration with several breaks between sets. Therefore, eating during your strength workout isn’t necessary for optimal performance.

However, if you couldn’t fuel properly before your workout, if your workout is particularly intense, or if you feel hungry or fatigued, you can enjoy a small snack in the gym.

During a strength workout, your body needs carbohydrates and protein. For the sake of convenience, you can try a protein shake paired with fruit, or a protein bar. Another option is taking one scoop of Restore 9 to check off carbohydrates and protein in one easy-to-drink beverage. This will also provide a quick jolt of energy provided by the three different rapid uptake carbohydrates in Restore 9.

What to Eat After Your Strength Workouts

What you should eat after a strength workout is surprisingly similar to an endurance workout.

After exercise, your body needs to refuel. It’s non-negotiable. A post-workout meal is important for your muscle growth and recovery, athletic performance, and your overall health and wellbeing.

Your body needs carbohydrates to replace what you burned through during your strength workout, and high-quality protein to repair your muscles. A small amount of fat is also helpful for additional energy stores.

We always recommend two scoops of Restore 9 as a convenient way to quickly replenish your body’s fuel stores and rehydrate with electrolytes while supporting a healthy immune system with zinc, vitamin D, and copper.