is sugar counterproductive for muscle? even if you have a high protein diet? my friend who works out just like me gets barely any protein and eats a lot of sugar all the time, he has a fast metabolism though so he is skinny, but he gets like no protein after a workout at all and he is about as strong as me but his muscles are a lot smaller, he is going to buy weigh protein and start having a shake after his workouts, do you think this will make a drastic change is his muscle mass or strength? like this guy seriously gets barely any protein his main diet is sugar

sugar is not counter productive for muscle growth. research has actually shown sugar (as in blood glucose) along with insulin is very necessary for muscle growth.

This doesn't mean you need to stack the snickers bars to gain mass. It just points to the fact that sugar is not counterproductive to growth. I'm not saying anything about types of sugar and amounts ingested.

Protein is a building block of the body and is in many cells, not just muscle. Not getting enough protein is definitely not a good idea if you're trying to build muscle. Similarly, excess protein doesn't do anything for your body and is just processed by your liver before being excreted.

That said, carbohydrates are necessary to "power" your muscles while you're doing a workout. You can get the energy from fat or protein instead but it's best if your energy comes from carbohydrates. That said, some people (myself included) are not particularly good with carbohydrates when they're not exercising, so eating carbohydrates just makes them more tired and hungry. I've found that if I eat a lot of carbs in the morning, I feel lazy and just want to go back to sleep but if I don't eat much in the way of carbs, I have plenty of energy. I do eat carbs before, during and after my workouts though or I can't get through them without becoming exhausted.

Spot on... well, strangely enough there have been studies that have shown the reverse of what you've said- If you get too much sleep you're body will tend to crave more carbs. Type I muscles rely almost entirly on oxygen in the blood to power up (slow twitch, good for high reps) type IIa use a mixture of carbs and oxygen (also called fast oxidising glucosamine muscles or FOG) and Type IIB muscle fibers don't rely at all upon oxygen for their power (FG) so its carbs or nothing. If your body doesn't get enough carbs it can the liver can metabolise sugars from protien and fat to continue to run your FG muscles though its not as quick and you'll need higher water intakes to counter