What Alcohol Does After a Workout, and the Best Drink to Have

Nothing with alcohol in it helps you after a workout, and we make a drink with alcohol in it, so we are not going to pretend otherwise. If you search “best alcoholic drink after a workout” the honest answer starts there. Alcohol slows the muscle repair your body does after a hard session, it makes getting your fluid back take longer, and it changes how you sleep that night.

If you are going to have one anyway, and on a Saturday at 4:30 after a surf at Cardiff Reef most of us are, here is how we pick it and when we open it.

The short version

• Water first, then food, then one can. The hour after the session is where the damage happens, and water is the cheap fix.
• 5%, not 8%. A 12 oz can at 5% is 1 standard drink. An 8% can is a drink and a half.
• Still, not carbonated. Bubbles on an empty stomach after exercise feel bad, and one study found they speed up how fast the alcohol is absorbed.
• Water and real juice, not syrup. After exercise you want something that is mostly water, not something sweet.
• A neutral spirit, not a barrel-aged one. Fewer congeners, easier the next morning.
• Skip it on the hard days if you are training for something. The studies below are clear on that.

What alcohol does after exercise

Muscle

In 2014 a group at RMIT in Melbourne put 8 active men through weights and then cycling, gave them protein, protein plus alcohol, or carbohydrate plus alcohol, and measured how fast their muscles were building new protein over the next 8 hours. Against protein alone, the protein plus alcohol group built 24% less and the carbohydrate plus alcohol group 37% less. That is the paper in PLOS ONE.

A 2019 review went through 12 studies on drinking after lifting and found the same pattern, protein synthesis down and cortisol up. It also found that strength, power and soreness did not change, which is worth reading. One drink does not undo a workout. A lot of drinks every week does add up.

Fluid

The fluid part is older and simpler. In 1997 Shirreffs and Maughan dried people out with exercise in the heat, then had them drink the same volume of fluid at 0, 1, 2 or 4% alcohol, and found that up to 2% made no difference and 4% slowed down getting the fluid back.

In practice, drink water first. Alcohol is a mild diuretic, so a 5% can after a liter of water is a small thing, and the same can on an empty, dried-out body is a bigger one.

Sleep

The sleep part is the one people forget, and after a day in the sun it is the one you feel. A 2013 review of 20 lab studies in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research found that alcohol gets you to sleep faster and deepens the first half of the night at any dose, then fragments the second half, and pushes the first stretch of REM sleep later at every dose they looked at.

After a day in the sun you will fall asleep fine anyway. What the drink adds is waking up at 3am.

So the amount and the timing are what matter: one drink, after water and food, early enough that it is out of your system before bed. Everything below assumes that.

How to read the can: 4 things, in order

This is what we look at on a can, in order.

1. The alcohol number. A 12 oz can at 5% is the standard drink the government’s guidelines are written around, about 0.6 oz of pure alcohol. An 8% can is a drink and a half.
2. Whether it is carbonated. The carbon dioxide in a carbonated drink comes back out as gas once it warms up in your stomach. On an empty stomach after exercise that is the bloated feeling that makes a lot of people stop after half a can. There is also a 2007 study in which 14 of 21 people absorbed alcohol faster with bubbles than without.
3. Where the flavor comes from. A drink that is mostly water and real juice is close to what your body wants after exercise anyway. A drink that gets its flavor from syrup is a sweet drink with alcohol in it.
4. What the alcohol itself came from. The congener guide has the long version. The short version is that the controlled trials found a neutral spirit cut with juice or water to be the easiest on the list the next morning and a barrel-aged spirit the hardest, at the same amount of ethanol, and neutral grain spirit is the clear end of that scale.

Which is the recipe for a Hardwater

Put the 4 together, 5%, still, real juice and water, a neutral spirit, and that is the recipe for a Hardwater. SunGod is spring water from Palomar Mountain, an organic neutral grain spirit and real organic juice, no bubbles, 5%, with the whole ingredient list printed on the side of the can.

Where this happens around here

After a surf

Cardiff Reef is where most of us end up, a reef that breaks both ways and goes longboard-friendly at low tide. Swami’s is a mile and a half up the road for the days with a real swell and a crowd to match. In the city it is Tourmaline, the beach at the north end of Pacific Beach that has been surfing-only since 1963.

None of those beaches is where the drink happens (the question block at the bottom has the rules). The house 6 blocks back, the patio, or a campsite at San Elijo State Beach if somebody booked one, is. After a surf we open Minted Sol, cucumber, mint, lemon and ginger. It is the lighter of the 2.

Where to stock up on the way back:

• Surfed Cardiff: Seaside Market, the stop between the reef and the house.
• Surfed Swami’s: Moonlight Wine and Spirits on the 101.
• Surfed Tourmaline: Chips Liquor on Garnet or Crest Liquor on Ingraham.

Photo: Max Oltersdorf, CC BY-SA 3.0.

After a ride

The 101 from the Oceanside Pier south is the classic, mostly flat with a lot of lights until the Torrey Pines grade at the end, which on the outside road through Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve is about a mile and a half at 5%. The taproom runs in the run club guide end the same way a ride does, on a patio with dinner still 2 hours off.

Shops at the La Jolla end of the ride:

• Keg N Bottle on Torrey Pines Road.
• Valley Farm Market and La Jolla Liquor down on the boulevard.

After a river day

The river day is the one where the drink is part of the plan from the start. The Kern out of Kernville is the closest real whitewater to San Diego, about 5 hours up through Bakersfield, with a season the Forest Service describes as May to September in a normal water year and the Kernville outfitters posting what is actually running.

A day of paddling in the sun dries you out more than anything else on this list. What makes the river day work is a cooler that is half water, and the order: water in the lot, then dinner, then a Solar Drift, pineapple, coconut and ginger, once the sun is off the water. It is the rounder of the 2 flavors and the evenings up there get cold fast.

Nothing is stocked in Kernville, so it rides up from home, and if you are reading this from anywhere that is not San Diego County the buy button ships it to the door of whoever is driving.

The order we do it in

1. Water in the car. A full bottle, before the wetsuit comes off or the bike goes on the rack. The hour between the end of the session and the first real meal is where most of the damage above happens.
2. Food. A real meal with protein in it, not a bag of chips on the tailgate.
3. The one can. Sitting down, early, so it is out of your system before you sleep.
4. Skip it on the hard days. If there is a race in 2 weeks or you lift seriously, skip the drink on training days. The muscle study above is clear on that.

The rest of the time it is one drink, in that order, and the next morning is fine. The full list of shops is on the locator, and what is a Hardwater has the long version of the category.