Bodybuilding and Alcohol

Since a lot of people make the decision to start bodybuilding after spending a long night at the local bar — or sitting at home with a beer — it’s not usually welcome news that alcohol and bodybuilding don’t mix. Sure, if you start bodybuilding, you can still enjoy a beer every now and then, but there are some restrictions. The way alcohol affects the body doesn’t mix with the regime required for bodybuilding, so which do you choose — nights out at the bar, or building muscle?

One of the reasons alcohol negatively impacts your bodybuilding efforts is the way it affects muscles. It doesn’t actually diminish the muscles, but it put up a barrier that prevents muscles from healing properly after small pulls and tears. Oxygen and other healers need to travel through the blood to the muscles to fix injuries, and if there’s alcohol in the blood, it can’t do this as effectively, so you’ll take longer to heal.

Those little injuries happen without you knowing it sometimes, and are quickly repaired, but you really shouldn’t go out for a beer right after you’ve finished bodybuilding. If you take three days off from working out, the second day is the best for having a few drinks.