The post-session window, simplified

The window is a door, and it is wide

The idea that you have thirty minutes to get protein in or waste the session is one of the most profitable myths in sport nutrition. Muscle protein synthesis stays elevated for somewhere between twenty-four and forty-eight hours after a hard resistance session. You are not racing a clock so much as filling a long, generous window.

What the timing research actually supports is much duller: total daily protein matters most, distribution across the day matters next, and the precise minute matters least. If you have eaten well that day, a shake in the changing room adds very little.

When timing does earn its keep

There are two honest exceptions. The first is glycogen: if you are training twice in a day, or racing tomorrow, carbohydrate in the first couple of hours genuinely speeds resynthesis, and that is worth doing deliberately. The second is a fasted session, where you have arrived with nothing on board and the window is closer to a real one.

Everyone else is better served by asking whether they ate enough today than by asking how quickly they ate after.

What a good recovery meal actually looks like

Twenty-five to forty grams of protein, carbohydrate matched to how hard the session was, some colour on the plate, and fluid. That is the whole thing. It can be dinner. It can be Greek yoghurt with fruit and honey. It does not have to come out of a tub.

The one thing worth protecting is that it happens at all. The most common recovery failure I see is not bad timing, it is a woman who trained at six, got home at eight, and had a cup of tea.

• 01

  Hit the day's protein total before worrying about the clock

  First
• 02

  Front-load carbohydrate only when you train again soon

  Second
• 03

  Make the meal happen at all, whatever it looks like

  Third