Muscle and training
Protein, muscle and training
How much protein supports building or keeping muscle, when timing matters and when it does not, and what changes for men and women from around 40 onwards.
11 articles
- Can you build muscle in a calorie deficit?Some people can: beginners, people returning after a break, and people carrying a lot of fat to start with. For a trained person in a meaningful deficit, keeping what you have is the realistic aim, and the evidence for doing that is strong: higher protein groups in trials kept about 0.43 kg more fat-free mass.
Creatine and protein: two supplements, one questionThey are not alternatives. Protein supplies building material and creatine supplies energy for short, hard efforts, so it lets you train slightly harder rather than building anything directly. Creatine monohydrate is among the most studied supplements there is, and neither substitutes for enough total protein.
Do you need protein on rest days?Yes, and arguably more than on training days. Muscle repair and growth happen in the days after a session rather than during it, so a rest day is when the material is being used. The elevated response to training lasts well beyond twenty four hours, which spans most people's rest days entirely.
How much protein do you need to build muscle?Around 1.6 g per kilogram of body weight a day is where the returns stop. In a meta-analysis of 49 resistance training trials, protein intake beyond about 1.62 g/kg produced no further gains in fat-free mass. The sports nutrition range of 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg brackets that figure comfortably.
How much protein per meal?Roughly your daily target divided by the number of times you eat, which lands most people between 25 and 35 g. The underlying research measured it per kilogram: muscle protein synthesis plateaued at about 0.24 g/kg per meal in younger men and about 0.40 g/kg in older men.
Leucine: the amino acid that gets its own marketingLeucine is one of the nine essential amino acids and the one that signals muscle protein synthesis to start, rather than only supplying material. That makes it genuinely special and does not make it worth buying separately: a protein-rich meal already carries it, and building anything needs all nine.
Protein after a workout: how urgent is it really?No. Muscle stays more responsive to protein for many hours after training, and what you ate beforehand is still being absorbed during and after the session. The nutrient timing position stand puts total daily intake as the dominant variable. A shake afterwards is convenient rather than urgent.
Protein and recovery: what it fixes and what it does notIt supplies the material repair is made from, so an adequate intake is a condition for recovering well. It is not a treatment for soreness, and no amount of it compensates for too little sleep or too much training. Recovery is mostly sleep and training load, with protein as the input that makes both usable.
Protein for runners and endurance trainingMore than the general recommendation and generally less than a lifter. The sports nutrition guidance works in the range of 1.4 to 2.0 g per kilogram a day for active people, with endurance athletes toward the lower half and high training volumes pushing it up. Protein is not only for building muscle; it is also for repairing it.
Sarcopenia: what it is and how it is diagnosedSarcopenia is the loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength that comes with age. The revised European consensus diagnoses it on strength first rather than on weight: grip strength below 27 kg for men or 16 kg for women is the trigger, confirmed by a measure of muscle quantity. It can sit inside a perfectly normal body weight.
Starting strength training after 40No. Muscle responds to resistance training at every age that has been studied, including in people in their eighties. The response is smaller than in a younger person, which is an argument for starting sooner rather than for not starting, and it is why every set of recommendations for older adults pairs protein with exercise.