Drinking even only very modest alcohol amount decreases your overall physical performance. A lot of people have this wrong. They actually think, that alcohol is a stimulant, which means that it increases your performance. Well maybe it increases courage to do certain stupid things but definitely not physical performance.
I can say about myself now, that I don’t drink alcohol at all. If I have 2 glasses of wine or beer in a week, that’s a very unusual week for me. However, I still remember drinking way more when I was in college and in a high competitive rowing team. I used to hang out at bars almost every day. Having a famous sports bar, right next to my college wasn’t helpful at all and I used to hang out there with my teammates between classes or before our rowing practice.
Oftentimes it will not feel like those drinks you had yesterday or 2 days ago are slowing you down. But they do. It takes our liver up to 72 hours from the time we have a drink to completely clean it from our blood. And even just a little bit of it in blood is a bad news for physical performance.
Drinking and performing when you are young.
When you are in your twenties, your body doesn’t need that much time to recover from alcohol. At least it feels like that. You drink night before an important athletic race, than you wake up, and do just fine. Your body is getting rid of alcohol much faster when you are a teenager or in your twenties. Yes, it wasn’t anything unusual seeing 15 – 20 years old people hanging in bars and smoking until late night. It was actually quite normal back than in Slovakia in 90-ties.
But even if you are very young and you thing alcohol doesn’t have much effect on your performance, you’re wrong. You won’t be able to perform at your 100 % potential even if you had 2 drinks 2 days before an important event or practice.
I used to have a drink at midday at nearby bar ocassionally before a very physically demanding rowing practice in the afternoon, that would consist of hard intervals on the water, racing against my teammates. It was very competitive and I remember, not giving it any thought, if I drunk alcohol before hard practice. I usually did very well, passing majority of my teammates.
Going out before the major race was a trend in our rowing team and whoever stayed in the hotel room, was laughed at. Yes! That’s how stupid we were. We didn’t realize what negative effect this would have on our performance.
Drinking, not resting and winning. Really?
I still remember winning international cup day after I had about 7 beers and couple of shoots of hard liqueur – usually vodka and sleeping 4 hours night before. Ha ha, that was youth, that wasn’t reality!
And just to make sure, you understand what kind of sport rowing really is. Rowing is not soccer, table tennis, tennis or any kind of collective fun game, where there is a plenty of time to rest between the plays. Rowing is plain performance event, where finishing 2000 meters in shortest possible time is a goal. For singles and doubles, which used to be my specialty, it takes about 7 – 8 minutes. It is not unusual to see rowers fainting after finish line from exhaustion. And sometimes you have more than 2 races per day.
If I could turn back time, I would do it much differently.
Yes, I won a lot of races and I still have a lot of trophies somewhere in garage in Slovakia, but mainly because of occasional drinking, I never really achieved my true potential.
In spite of my little successes I never achieved my ultimate college goal of qualifying for the Olympic games – consequence of occasional and heavy drinking, not sleeping enough and trying to be cool!
Drinking and never reaching true potential.
Rowing and competing was my life that time. And winning meant everything to me. Drinking and partying with my crew teammates seamed like a right thing to do. But of course it wasn’t. Even if we felt invincible and strong on the practice the same day we were having a drink, we didn’t really practiced and raced to our true potential. That’s why we never achieved what our rowing heroes from New Zealand or Germany did that time. Yes the posters of them were hanging in our rooms. We wanted to be great like them. But, while we were drinking beer and dreaming, they were drinking herbal teas and resting home, so they could give it their very best next day.
Alcohol drinking seriously decreases your physical performance.
Especially when you get older you are really hurting your physical performance by having occasional drink here and there. It is probably OK to enjoy few drinks with you friends occasionally, but be sure to face the consequences the next day and day after. If you exercise regularly every day, you are going to feel those drinks at your practice.
I just finished my routine 1 hour run today. It wasn’t like my usual run, when I feel strong and really enjoy it. It felt hard. I was dragging, looking at the watch constantly. It hurt. The reason for this was yesterdays mild drinking. I had 4 drinks. It was great. It was fun, but I am feeling it today and the distance I just covered during my hour run was way off my usual.
Impact of alcohol on physical performance.
According to many researches, drinking 1-2 days and longer before athletic activity decreases physical conditioning process and has been shown to significantly decrease aerobic performance and muscular strength.
Even low amounts of alcohol results in:
1. Slowed reaction times
2. Decreased hand-eye coordination
3. Decreased balance
4. Slowed running and other endurance activity times
5. Weak pumping force of heart
6. Decreased temperature regulation during exercise
7.Decreased speed and high jumps performance
8. Increased tendency to be easily fatigued during high intensity exercise
9. Dehydration
10. Increased risk of injury
Other damaging side effects of alcohol.
Alcohol is an “anti nutrient nutrient” , because of its negative effects on nutrient intake, digestion, absorption and metabolism. In normal word said: It slows everything negatively down in the body and it is a very poor source of energy.
Alcohol is very high in calories, and is often associated with weight gain. The body of the alcohol user has a strong tendency to store body fat and a very hard time gaining and maintaining lean body mass. It creates constant catabolic effect, which is the state when the body in not able to recover from physical activity. An alcohol user’s energy, strength and endurance levels will drop, hindering the desire to exercise and further complicating the process.
Plan your alcohol use.
If you want to have few drinks occasionally I don’t blame you. Alcohol is one of the great pleasures of life if you manage it well. It can even have some health benefits in men, but no women, which is I think very unfair. Alcohol is very dangerous for women body in even very small amounts.
The better time to drink is the day after important physical event, practice, game or other physical performance. And better time to have a drink is after a meal that is rich in protein. Protein and fat slows alcohol entry to the blood, reducing its negative effects.
Don’t drink on empty stomach. It allows alcohol to go much faster to your blood stream, highly increasing the bad side effects.
