Impact of Smoking on Muscle Growth After Workout
Smoking after a workout affects muscle growth. The effects of smoking can contribute to worse muscle regeneration and reduce the strength of your muscles and growth. It is recommended for an optimal result of your workouts to avoid smoking, both pre-and post-workout.
How Does Working Out Affect Your Muscle Growth?
Working out or exercising particularly resistance training, significantly impacts muscle growth.
Muscle growth involves increasing the size of skeletal muscle through the growth of its component cells.
Resistance training is known to increase muscle mass. In fact, only a single session can stimulate muscle protein synthesis and thus increase muscle growth [1]. However, muscle growth is specific to the muscle group being trained, and even that will plateau over time. [2].
However, muscle growth depends on a balance of protein synthesis and breakdown. The simple equation is that when the body deposits more protein than it removes, the muscle grows.
Therefore, resistance training and adequate protein intake are key to increasing the protein deposition rate. In turn, such a combination leads to protein synthesis and, thus, muscle hypertrophy [3, 4]
Importantly, the relationship between muscle growth and muscle size does not necessarily correlate with strength. Studies on this matter showed that muscle strength can increase independently of muscle growth [5, 6].
What Influences Your Muscle Growth After A Workout?
Muscle growth after a workout can be influenced by various factors. For instance, it can be influenced by the type of exercise, nutritional intake, and even an individual's hormonal response.
In particular, resistance training as a workout stimulates muscle growth. It increases muscle protein synthesis rate, leading to muscle hypertrophy over time. In addition, the intensity and volume of such exercise play a role. For example, lifting a lower load to failure can result in similar results as lifting a heavy load to failure [7].
Further, protein consumption is also essential for muscle growth. Consuming protein before and after exercise can impact muscle protein synthesis and lead to muscle hypertrophy [9, 10, 11]. Interestingly, in healthy humans, muscle protein synthesis is more sensitive to changes in protein feeding and loading. Therefore, protein intake is one of the primary factors determining gains in muscle mass [10].
In addition, the hormonal response of hormones such as insulin-like growth factor, testosterone, and growth hormone also impacts muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth [12, 13, 14].
The balance of muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown is essential in muscle growth. This balance is influenced by exercise, protein metabolism, and meals consumed 24-48 hours post-exercise [12].
Does Smoking After Workout Affect Muscle Growth?
Smoking after a workout does affect muscle growth!
According to research, smoking 100 g of tobacco a week results in a reduction of knee muscle strength in men by 2.9% and 5% in women [15].
Further, cigarette smoke consists of many complex molecules, some of which are reactive oxygen and nitrogen free radicals, toxic aldehydes, and more. These components of cigarette smoke may promote catabolism of skeletal muscle, which leads to muscle damage and impaired muscle maintenance [16].
Therefore, it is best to avoid smoking right after working out, as this may reduce the positive benefits of exercise.
However, smoking cessation has been associated with increased muscle mass, muscle strength, and bone density. In a study comparing smokers and smoking quitters, the quitters showed an increase in lean mass by 1.26 kg and handgrip strength by 3.6 kg [17].
In conclusion, working out stimulates muscle growth by increasing protein synthesis; however, smoking right after a workout can negatively impact muscle growth and strength. Therefore, it is advisable to avoid smoking, especially after workouts, for optimal muscle growth and overall health.