Does consuming alcohol affect an athlete’s performance? Are there downsides to drinking alcohol? Will drinking alcohol shorten an athlete’s career? Yes!
Alcohol is poison for the body and the brain, causing irreparable damage that prevents an athlete from reaching his peak or staying there.
The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) HERE states that “from an athletic standpoint, the acute use of alcohol can influence motor skills, hydration status, aerobic performance, as well as aspects of the recovery process.” Consuming alcohol before exercise, according to the NCSA, results in depression of central nervous system activity, namely compromised motor skills, decreased coordination, delayed reactions, diminished judgment, and impaired judgment. Despite misconceptions that beer or other forms of alcohol can aid in the recovery process, the NCSA states that the negative effects of alcohol consumption after a workout outweigh any potential effects because beer and other forms of alcohol cannot replenish the glycogen, stimulate muscle protein synthesis (MPS), or restore fluid balance. Replacing or drinking alcohol in conjunction with protein-rich foods during the post-exercise recovery significantly decreases the critical MPS cycle that results in adequate recovery.
The NCSA also cites alcohol consumption as having a negative effect on sleep (more on the importance of sleep for an athlete in an upcoming WPH Wednesday Workout), recovery from injury, and the production of hormones associated with muscular growth. Alcohol also limits the inflammatory response necessary when suffering from soft tissue injuries.
The NCSA also cites the behaviors associated with consuming alcohol, to include but not limited to irregular eating patterns, increased consumption of unhealthy foods and poor sleep patterns lead to an adverse effect on an athlete’s body composition.
Perrin Braun of InsideTracker (HERE) echoes the sentiments of the NCSA, stating that consuming alcohol impairs muscle growth, dehydrates your body, making an athlete more susceptible to cramps, muscle pulls, and strains, prevents muscle recovery, depletes your energy, slow reaction time, impairs the functioning of the hippocampus, the part of the brain which is vital to the formation of memories, disrupts the sequence and duration of your sleep cycle, inhibits nutrient absorption,
WPH Coaching Center’s Boak Ferris discussed the importance of athletes avoiding alcohol in great detail in September’s WPH Coaching Center (HERE). Boak stated that as a proven neurotoxin, alcohol remains a danger to neurons in the brain and elsewhere (liver/heart/kidneys/blood vessels), and causes proven neuronal death, as approximately 40, 000 neurons are killed after imbibing one ounce or more of pure alcohol, which is equal to about 3.5 12-ounce beers, or two glasses of 12.5 % wine. (Remember, your whole body has neurons, in the spine, in the gut, at the sites of pain-receptors, where nerves command muscles, etc.) Though the brain has about 86 billion neurons, we don’t get to choose which neurons get killed by each bout of alcohol.
A couple of years ago, researchers across different disciplines discovered that alcohol first targets the neurons for death in the region of the brain that requires blood the fastest, (logical, right?), where the alcohol was being delivered fastest: to the ventromedial pre-frontal (vmPFC) cortex, where all top-flight human “executive functioning” occurs: decision-making, moral judgment, ethical judgment, perceptions of self-identity, perceptions of others, empathy, altruistic-thinking, and, especially for the purposes of this article, for athletes and combatants, tactical decision-making. That executive-functioning part of the brain is the most hungry for energy and blood pumped from the heart, while the brain itself requires about 40 % of your sum available biological energy.
Now, why would elite championship athletes elect to destroy the parts of their brains that give them the greatest tactical advantages over their opponents, the part of their brains that also calls directly to the hippocampus to remember and enact past successful tactics and biomechanics that ensured successes on the court? Furthermore, evidence exists that chronic alcohol-use renders the blood-brain barrier more permeable to specific biomolecules that target and alter neural wiring, while affecting connections between the vmPFC, the hippocampus (where memories are stored), and the amygdala, where emotions are generated. The adverse biomolecules also strengthen neural wiring that becomes addictions and imprints new habitual behaviors. We all know athletes and acquaintances whose reactions, decisions, judgments, and personalities have been adversely, and seemingly permanently affected, by chronic alcohol use.
Boak’s Example of the Dangers of Alcohol
In this respect, for example, Roger Federer’s coaching and sports-nutrition team failed him, because after he won his last Wimbledon, he went on a champagne binge, as he admitted in the news; understandable, but self-devastating. His team should have had the research about alcohol available, to serve their client, since he had already expressed a desire to win more Grand Slams. He has not done as consistently well since that binge, as measured by incorrect tactical choices made at key moments in high-valued tournaments, (references available on request), whereas prior to the binge he reliably found winning adjustments to remedy being behind during games and sets.
Refusal of alcohol, stop alcohol. A bottle of wine with a glass is crossed out with a red line. Flat design, vector illustration, vector.
For those of us who coach and follow his career closely, we have a pretty good idea about why he has failed to remember and enact tactics that won him past matches, prior to the binge. Those preciously hard-earned and crafted neurons in his brain were destroyed, (by alcohol-toxified, neural-cell-apoptosis) in one night, and they cannot be recovered, though he can go back to the (re)learning-book, study his past wins, and practice competition-scenarios, and generate new neurons, as the brain remains plastic through 90 years of age, plus. He could retrain what worked in about 3-6 months.
Before you think about drinking before a big match (or at all), read and reread the short and long-term damaging effects alcohol cited by the NCSA, Perrin Braun of InsideTracker, and the WPH’s Coaching Center’s Boak Ferris.
David Fink
WPH Fitness Director