Pre-sleep protein improves functional recovery?

Can pre-sleep protein improve exercise performance recovery?

Pre-sleep protein has shown to be digested normally and increase post-exercise muscle protein synthesis (the process driving muscle adaptation) during the night. Does this also translate to increased exercise performance recovery?

Soccer involves a lot of high velocity eccentric contractions (deacceleration after a sprint) and therefore results in quite a bit of muscle damage. Consequently, this impairs exercise performance in the subsequent days.

This study investigated the effect of 40 g of casein before sleep on exercise performance recovery after professional soccer players played a match in the evening.

When additional protein was ingested before sleep, counter-movement jump performance returned to baseline at 36 h after the match. In contrast, counter-movement jump performance was still below baseline at 60 h post-match when a carbohydrate placebo was ingested before sleep. In addition, pre-sleep protein also reduced muscle soreness.

These results are quite impressive, as the soccer players already ingested post-match protein (0.5 g/kg body weight) and had a high habitual daily protein intake of around 1.9 g/kg. Therefore, a high daily protein intake and/or good protein distribution may be required to optimize recovery in soccer players.

Study:
Abbott et al, Presleep Casein Protein Ingestion: Acceleration of Functional Recovery in Professional Soccer Players. Int J Sports Physiol Perform, 2019

Go to the next infographic in the protein series:
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