Does Vitamin C help with recovery?

Question

There is this gym legend going around where I train.

My intake is 1g in the morning and 1g at night.

My current training habit is:

• Weight lifting: (1 hour/5 days a week)
• Cardio: (1 hour of spinning OR walking OR boxing)

Answer 1

It does not help with recovery.

It actually seems like recovery gets a bit worse with excessive intake of vitamin C.

In our opinion, antioxidant supplements are, at the least, useless.

Antioxidant supplements in exercise: worse than useless? Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab February 15, 2012 302:E476-E477.

Results: The administration of vitamin C significantly (P = 0.014) hampered endurance capacity. The adverse effects of vitamin C may result from its capacity to reduce the exercise-induced expression of key transcription factors involved in mitochondrial biogenesis. These factors are peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor co-activator 1, nuclear respiratory factor 1, and mitochondrial transcription factor A. Vitamin C also prevented the exercise-induced expression of cytochrome C (a marker of mitochondrial content) and of the antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase.

Conclusion: Vitamin C supplementation decreases training efficiency because it prevents some cellular adaptations to exercise.

Gomez-Cabrera MC, Domenech E, Romagnoli M, Arduini A, Borras C, Pallardo FV, Sastre J, Vina J. Oral administration of vitamin C decreases muscle mitochondrial biogenesis and hampers training-induced adaptations in endurance performance. Am J Clin Nutr 87: 142–149, 2008.

Answer 2

I've found Vitamin C to help with sleep (not sure why, it's usually Cal-Mag that's recommended for sleep), which is pretty crucial to recovery. If you're getting enough sleep then it probably wouldn't help, but if you're not, then it could be worth doing for the potential sleep benefits.