Researchers have shown that Chocolate Milk works well as a recovery beverage.
Joel M. Stager, Ph.D., professor of kinesiology at Indiana University, said “Chocolate milk contains an optimal carbohydrate to protein ratio, which is critical for helping refuel tired muscles after strenuous exercise and can enable athletes to exercise at a high intensity during subsequent workouts.”
I’ve indirectly pushed moo juice here and here, not only for recovery but for weight loss, too. Plus, it just tastes great.
Which brings up something that’s been nagging at me for a couple of months. I started an as-yet unpublished exploration of how to set up a project to re-evaluate running and fitness memes by mining the blogs on the RBF. We’re somewhere north of 500 blogs, or a potential half of a person-millenium of raw data each year on real-life fitness. The advantage I’d see in mining RBF data as opposed to studies is that we’re essentially using real people, with real commitments, existing health issues, and lives to gather data on fitness, weight loss, injury and recovery, diet, etc. Most of the studies that current fitness wisdom is based on, like the one that Dr. Stager did, uses either groups of college atheletes or other easily identifiable controls to develop theories.
What I’d like to do, were I tech-savvy with a couple of weeks on my hand, would be to set up a flexible fitness correlary to Wikipedia, a place where we could list the various theories on weight loss or marathon training, for instance, and then tie them back to revelant real-world data. Answer questions like “What works for treating ITB syndrome?”, etc.
We’ve run the tests. We have the data. There’s an opportunity to re-write or confirm basic ideas about health, fitness, and going from a couch potato to a runner/cyclist/swimmer/whatever. Call it an “Open-Source Fitness” process; merge it with the work that the Cross-Fitters have been doing, whatever.
So somebody, please – write this up as a grant. Get yourself six months of funding and a new MacBook Pro out of the deal. Let us know things we’ve already told ourselves.
Technorati Tags: rbf, running, wiki, open source fitness, grant proposal, chocolate milk, big ideas
cool thinkin’ there Mr. Bill. If you need a place to set up a wikipedia, i can do it. My host offers one-click installs of the thing.
BUT, I don’t want to take anything away from you. If you follow through on this and intend on hosting it yourself, GO FOR IT because I think your a smarty pants for doing so.
Whatever happens, let me know how I might help.
:)
haha…that’s exactly what i prescribed for flipperhead’s post workout re-fuel.
hey…i’m going to point alison’s p to this post. he’s a brain when it comes to this sort of thing and would either find a way to do it himself, or know someone who would.
You are so right…it’s impossible to read them all, and I would love a site that collects the anecdotal as well as the research-based data.
fascinating. that is an awesome idea.