For Lagree in Lisbon, Fine Club (Rua de Campolide 293A) is the city's first Lagree studio, with Aura's wellness bar inside. Around a 45-minute class: water or a light juice before, a protein smoothie after.
Because we work inside the studio, what to drink around a class is a question we hear at our own counter. Before: water, or a light cold-pressed juice like SERENITY. After: ENERGY if you trained in the daytime, caffeine-free BLISS if you trained in the evening.
Lagree is a slow-tempo strength method that never lets a muscle rest
Lagree is a strength method created by Sebastien Lagree and performed on a patented resistance machine. The tempo is deliberately slow — roughly four counts out, four counts back — so the working muscle never gets a moment off. That continuous time under tension recruits slow-twitch fibres, the endurance fibres that quick, momentum-driven reps tend to skip. The transitions between exercises are short enough that your heart rate stays high for the full 45 minutes. At the same time, the method is genuinely low-impact: no jumping, no load slamming through knees or spine. It looks like Pilates from across the room, but the intent is different — Pilates trains control and alignment; Lagree trains muscles to the point where they shake.
Before class: water is the default, and light liquid stops 30 to 45 minutes out
Water is the honest default, and for a morning class most people need nothing else. Starting even mildly dehydrated makes the same set feel harder and shortens how long you can hold it. Aim for around half a litre spread over the hour or two beforehand. If you want something in hand, keep it light: SERENITY (€5.50) is celery, pineapple and mint — a small dose of natural sugars for the class, minerals from the celery, and nothing that sits heavily. Skip anything creamy before training; the protein belongs afterwards.
What is in your stomach matters as much as what is in your blood. Lagree lives in planks, lunges and long core holds under load. A heavy meal or a thick shake within an hour of class will make itself known in the first plank. Leave 60 to 90 minutes after anything substantial; light liquid 30 to 45 minutes out is the sweet spot.
Caffeine deserves its own rule. Before a morning or lunchtime class, an espresso is a legitimate tool — caffeine reliably lowers perceived effort. But Lagree studios fill up after work, and caffeine has a half-life of roughly five hours: a coffee at 17:00 is still half in your bloodstream at 22:00. The recovery you are training for happens mostly in sleep, so if your class is in the evening, stay with water or SERENITY and keep the caffeine for daylight.
During class: the slow tempo removes any real chance to drink
Because slow does not mean gentle. Holding a lunge under continuous tension is sustained work, and most people sweat more in a Lagree class than the tempo suggests. There is no real pause to drink during the 45 minutes. The useful window is what you did beforehand, plus small sips of water between blocks if the studio allows it. Everything about timing before class exists to get you through this stretch without the set feeling harder than it needs to.
After class: protein earns its place, matched to daytime or evening
A meta-analysis of protein-timing studies found that total daily protein matters more than hitting a narrow post-workout window (Schoenfeld et al. 2013, DOI: 10.1186/1550-2783-10-53) — so there is no panic if you shower first. But the hour after class is a convenient, appetite-friendly moment to bank a serving. Both of our post-class smoothies are built on a full serving of protein powder.
ENERGY(€10) is the daytime choice: chocolate protein, banana and dates for the fuel you actually spent, with cold brew, ginseng, rhodiola and maca layered over it. It was designed for the hour after a workout — but the cold brew is real caffeine, so treat it as a morning-and-afternoon smoothie.
BLISS(€10) is the evening choice: vanilla protein under mango and pineapple, with ashwagandha, CBD and turmeric, and no coffee or matcha anywhere in it. Ashwagandha is one of the better-studied adaptogens — a randomised trial recorded significantly lower cortisol and perceived stress after 60 days (Chandrasekhar 2012, DOI: 10.4103/0253-7176.106022). That is a reasonable profile for a body you are asking to wind down after a late class.
If soreness is your usual pattern, a SUNNY SHOT (€4) — ginger, lemon, orange and turmeric — is a sensible add-on. Both ginger and curcumin have been studied for exercise-induced muscle soreness, with modest effects across several trials. And whatever you order, drink water alongside it — a smoothie is food, not rehydration.
Where to find it at Fine Club in Lisbon
Our counter sits inside Fine Club itself, at Rua de Campolide 293A in Campolide, a few minutes from Amoreiras and Campo de Ourique. The distance between your last rep and a smoothie is the walk across the studio, which is about as far as anyone wants to go with shaking legs. Details and hours are at Aura at Fine Club, Lisbon's first Lagree studio, and everything above is on our functional smoothies menu. Training in Porto instead? The smoothies are also at our bar inside Prescription in Porto, our partner studio on Rua Fonte da Luz.
The practice is small and repeatable: water before, nothing heavy in the hour beforehand, protein within the hour after. Do that consistently and the class stops fighting your stomach — it just becomes the 45 minutes where your legs shake, with the right smoothie already waiting at the counter across the studio.