Pre- and post-workout nutrition is the most over-engineered corner of fitness. The truth fits on an index card: arrive fueled, leave fed, hit your daily totals. Everything else is a rounding error dressed as a protocol.
Before: arrive with fuel on board
Two to three hours out, a normal meal with carbs and protein does the job — rice and chicken, a sandwich, oatmeal and yogurt. Inside the last hour, keep it light and mostly carbs: a banana, toast with honey, a small smoothie. Training fasted at 6am is fine for easy sessions; for heavy lifting, even a small carb dose noticeably changes the quality of the last few sets.
The test is simple: if you're watching the clock instead of the bar because you're hollow, you under-fueled. If you're tasting breakfast on set two, you over-did it or ate too late.
After: the window is wider than you were sold
The famous thirty-minute anabolic window is mostly marketing. Recovery is driven by the next twenty-four hours of totals, not the next twenty minutes. That said, a real meal within a couple of hours — 30 to 45 grams of protein plus carbs — is a good habit, mostly because it guarantees the day's totals actually happen.
Post-workout is also where a shake earns its keep: not magic, just logistics for the client heading straight from the gym to a 9am meeting.
Hydration, the ignored variable
A two percent drop in body water measurably cuts strength output, and most people arrive at evening sessions already low from a day of coffee and air conditioning. A liter across the afternoon before an evening session, a glass on waking before a morning one. Salt your food normally — sweat is not just water.
Notes are general education. Training is specific. If you want the version of this written for your body, your schedule, and your city — that's the work.
Begin with Andre