What to eat before a workout

Does pre-workout food actually matter

1. Step 1

   It helps you do more work

   Training with something in the tank usually feels better and lets you complete more sets, which is what drives progress.

2. Step 2

   It won't rescue a bad week

   Getting the timing right is not the difference between building muscle and not; it never makes up for eating far too little overall.

3. Step 3

   You may not need to change anything

   If you already eat regularly through the day, the last normal meal you had may already be doing the job (Schoenfeld and Aragon, 2018).

What to eat, and how much

If you train first thing in the morning

Training fasted is not harmful, and plenty of people prefer it. If you feel weak or light-headed, something small twenty minutes beforehand usually fixes it without sitting heavily in the stomach.

• A banana, or a handful of dried fruit
• A slice of toast with honey
• A small glass of juice
• A protein shake, if solid food does not appeal that early

What to avoid close to a session

• Large, very fatty meals within an hour or two of training
• High-fibre meals if you are prone to stomach discomfort
• Anything new and untested before an important session
• Relying on energy drinks in place of food

What a pre-workout meal is actually doing

It helps to know what the meal is for, because it explains why the timings above are what they are. A session of weights runs mostly on carbohydrate stored in the muscle itself, called glycogen, topped up by whatever sugar is circulating in your blood at the time.

This is also why fat and fibre are the usual culprits behind a heavy, uncomfortable session: they are not bad for you, they simply leave the stomach slowly. Move them to the meals furthest from training and the problem generally disappears.

Fluid, caffeine and what to sip during a session

Being even slightly short of fluid makes a session feel harder than it is, and it is far more common than under-eating before training. You do not need a sports drink for an hour of weights; water is enough for almost everybody.

• Drink around 300 to 500ml in the hour or two before training, then sip as you go
• Pale straw-coloured urine is a good enough guide; you do not need to measure anything
• Caffeine, commonly about 3 to 6mg per kilogram of bodyweight roughly an hour before, tends to improve performance and how hard a session feels, though some people respond to as little as around 2mg/kg and responses vary a lot (Guest et al., 2021)
• Keep caffeine away from bedtime, since poor sleep costs you more than the coffee gained
• Sports drinks only start to earn their place beyond about 90 minutes of continuous hard work