http://propanefitness.com/iifym-alcohol-stay-alcobolic/
more geared towards body comp than performance but i try and go by this kind of strategy. 'alcobolic' lol.
I'll stop hijacking this journal with alcohol posts but this post made me think of one interesting point (I guess it's a counterpoint to my own as well).
My original point (which is agreed with my the article) is that alcohol in and of itself is not a positive thing for an athlete... However, there are a few cases where it's negativity can far greater or far less.
1) First there is a huge genetic variation for how bad alcohol is on the body... I think it's important to consider ones background when making the choice to drink or not... If you have had your genome sequenced or are knowledgeable about your ancestry you can make a much more informed decision about alcohol. I have african and european admixture in my background and for this reason probably don't tolerate alcohol as well as a Eastern European whose ancestors have been using alcohol for 5-10k years. I would probably be especially bad at the beer mile when compared to someone whose ancestry (and practice) allows them to be less negatively affected by alcohol.
2) The other big variable for alcohol is your body composition and goals. If your trying to cut or stay maximally lean (and most sprinters or jumpers are) then alcohol is far worse than for someone moving up a weightclass as a lifter for example. This is true about alcohol just as it is about all junk food. Basically, if you are already trying to stay in negative calorie balance and restrict calories to some level (say 1500 kcal) then adding 3 beers and 600 calories to your daily diet means you now have only 900 calories to get adequate protein and fat - something that's going to be a lot more difficult now...
However, if your naturally really skinny and don't add fat mass easily and want to move up a weight-class... This is far less a problem. In fact I have had ONE experience where an athlete got worse when they gave up alcohol (that is ONE out of many) but it's still one example... I was training a 6'6 185 pound eastern-european thrower/lifter who was trying to add strength and mass. With the initial dietary advice of "eat a bit more" I got his powerclean to 235 and squat to 300 and bodyweight to 195 (I tend to not get overcomplicated with athletes and first get their initial neural strength gains up). What's interesting is when logging diet I noticed that this guy would repeatedly drink 6+ beers (usually dark IPAs) at night time after work (finishing around 11pm and he would train at 8am). They usually went along with some type of meal. He stopped drinking (I advised it but he already thought it would be helpful) and his numbers in the gym plummeted... It was really confusing but when I looked over his diet logs and sleep logs it started to make sense.... The change was as follows:
Basic Lifestyle with alcohol:
0) 7am: wake, caffeine.
1) 8am: Train Weightlifting (post workout alcohol-free meal)
2) 10am-7pm: Work a stressful job (lunch break meal without alcohol, coffee break as well)
3) 8pm: Get home and medicate anxiety with 6+ beers and a large meal.
4) 11pm: sleep
After step 2 the athlete was probably at around 1500 calories. His morning cafffiene use reduced his appetite. Taking out the alcohol was a reduction of close to 1000 calories AND as he was someone who was pretty adrenergic without alcohol and used a lot of caffeine his evening appetite was smaller. He also couldn't get to sleep as well. So with alcohol we are talking about 3500+ calories and a non-ideal sleep and without we are talking about 2500 calories and even less sleep... The difference was clear. The fact that he used alcohol as a sedative anxiolytic probably doesn't bode well for his future ability to stay out of alcoholism but removing it in the short term had disastrous affects on his training...
So, there you go! An athlete who got worse when alcohol was removed from his diet! However, the exception rather than the rule! For most of us less alcohol is probably a good thing!