Drinking a carb mix with water after a workout—especially if you haven’t eaten—can give you a 4% boost in power during your next workout, as long as it’s within 4 hours.

If athletes eat a meal a few hours before working out, drinking carbs with water afterward doesn’t help their recovery as much as it does when they hadn’t eaten beforehand.

Adding protein to carbs and water doesn’t really help or hurt your workout performance if you're already getting the same amount of energy.

For endurance athletes, switching to a high-fat diet for six days and then loading up on carbs doesn’t seem to boost performance in a one-hour cycling test compared to sticking with a high-carb diet.

After a tough leg workout, drinking a sugary sports drink instead of water helps your muscles refill their energy stores faster, so you recover better after six hours.

If endurance athletes eat some protein with less-than-ideal carbs after a workout—especially when they have less than a day to recover—it probably helps their muscles refill energy faster and boosts performance a little bit next time.