Save the Boozing for After your Workouts
Tags: alcohol and fitness, pre-workout

Save the Boozing for After your Workouts If you're reading this, you probably have an interest in working out - and most likely, you do some boozing in your free time as well. Unless you were born yesterday, you understand that it's not smart to mix the two (exercising and getting drunk). We're all aware that drinking messes with your motor skills and will decrease performance and possibly lead to injury.

What if I just have one drink and then wait a few hours?
While it's obviously stupid to exercise while drunk, something not as obvious is dehydration. A typical drinker can have a beer or two and a few hours later they're perfectly fine to drive or anything else. But, the dehydration effect from drinking still lasts. Dehydration can have a negative impact on your workouts performance and productivity.

So if you know you're going to the gym later in the day, maybe you should skip out on those happy hour drinks. Or possibly just go for the nachos and have a glass of water - not as fun, but at least you'll still perform well in the gym.

Can't live without happy hour drinks?
I recommend switching your gym schedule so that you workout in the morning. If you exercise in the morning (you can do without the morning bloody mary) you'll have time to rehydrate yourself throughout the day. Then you can drink yourself silly at happy hour without having to worry about a gym visit until the next morning - which should give you sufficient time to rehydrate.

I like fitness and drinking - let's try to make them work together.

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on 5/12/2008

1 - 5 out of 5
ryan good idea for a hangover killer.. I heard eating fruit as you drink helps too.
ryan on 5/14/2008 in response to plucky Respond

ryan good point, a lot of people don't think of alcohol as calories
ryan on 5/14/2008 in response to MyFitnessHut Respond

MyFitnessHut Count the calories like anything else you put into your body----alcohol = 7 calories per gram
MyFitnessHut on 5/14/2008 Respond

plucky A tip for the "next morning" is to slip in a glass of water between each drink. You'll be ready to hit the gym in the morning without the dehydration headache (not that I know what that is... ;)
plucky on 5/12/2008 Respond

Carina Tomorrow is Girlz Night Out (sounds much better than Mom's night out. LOL!)... I won't sacrifice my martinis so I will workout before I go! :)
Carina on 5/12/2008 Respond


ryan
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