Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of chocolate milk consumption on muscular recovery from eccentric exercise. Recovery will be monitored by measuring muscle soreness for 72 hours following eccentric fatiguing exercise. The second measure of muscular recovery will be changes in performance levels form before and after the eccentric fatiguing exercise
Methods: 10 male university students aged 18-22, regularly training and competing for a sports team participated in a randomised cross over design. A best of three jump mat protocol was completed. Exercise induced muscle damage and subsequently delayed onset muscle soreness were induced via two eccentric exercise; a 30-minute downhill run at -20% gradient at approximately 7km/h, followed by 10 box jumps. Participants consumed 400 ml of chocolate milk 15 minutes and then again 2 hours post-exercise, the second week participants consumed no chocolate milk (or vice-versa). After 24 hours jump mat scores were obtained for a post exercise performance measure score. 24, 48, 72 hours post-exercise soreness scores were recorded via the completion of multiple visual analogue scales.
Results: The findings of this study found that exercise induced muscle damage was successfully induced as performance levels were significantly lower post exercise. 80% of participant’s performance levels dropped less when having consumed chocolate milk and collectively, the drop in performance was 16.2% less when consuming chocolate milk than when not. However, this difference between drink consumption was not significant. Pain intensities were significantly different across the 3 days, peaking at 48 hours and declining at 72 hours. Collectively pain scores were 16.51% greater without chocolate milk consumption than with ingestion, however this difference was again found to not be significant.