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Abstract
Background
Attenuating muscle damage is important to subsequent sports performance. It is possible that pre-exercise protein intake could influence markers of muscle damage and benefit performance, however, published research provides conflicting results. At present no study has investigated protein and carbohydrate (PRO/CHO) co-ingestion solely pre-exercise, nor prior to basketball-specific exercise.
The purpose of this study was to answer the research question; would pre-exercise protein intake enhance performance or attenuate muscle damage during a basketball simulation test?
Methods
Ten well-trained male basketball players consumed either carbohydrate (1 g · kg−1 body mass) with protein (1 g · kg−1 body mass), or carbohydrate alone (2 g · kg−1 body mass) in a randomised cross- over design, 90 minutes before completing an 87-minute exercise protocol.
Results
The rise in creatine kinase (CK) from baseline to post-exercise was attenuated following PRO/CHO (56 ± 13U · L−1) compared to carbohydrate (100 ± 10 U · L−1), (p = 0.018). Blood glucose was also higher during and post-exercise following PRO/CHO (p < 0.050), as was free throw shooting accuracy in the fourth quarter (p = 0.027). Nausea during (p = 0.007) and post-(p = 0.039) exercise increased following PRO/CHO, as did cortisol post-exercise (p = 0.038).
Conclusions
Results suggest that in well-trained basketball players, pre-exercise PRO/CHO may attenuate the rise in CK, indicative of a decrease in muscle damage during exercise. However, unfamiliarity with the protein amount provided may have increased nausea during exercise, and this may have limited the ability to see an improvement in more performance measures.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-33) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Copyright comment
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-33) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Copyright comment
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago. The Whey protein was donated by Horley’s, Auckland, New Zealand. There are no conflicts of interest.
Competing interests
None of the authors have any conflicting interests.
Authors' contributions
HG, KB made substantial contributions to the study design, statistical analysis, data collection and interpretation and manuscript preparation. TL made substantial contributions to the study design, statistical analysis, data interpretation and manuscript preparation. AH statistical analysis, data collection and interpretation and manuscript preparation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.