UNDERSTANDING BCAAS: WHY THEY’RE ESSENTIAL FOR ATHLETES
Do you train hard, pushing the boundaries of your body and mind?
Would you love to maximize your athletic abilities?
Have you uncovered the precise steps to ensure proper nutrition, an integral step to success?
What you eat matters. When chosen correctly, the foods you consume power your performance, resist fatigue, and speed recovery — contributing to stronger, more precise, and explosive results.
Branched-chain amino acids, particularly, are essential for athletes. This protein can change the game.
The Low Down on Branched-Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs)
Amino acids are the building blocks of life. Forming cellular structures, mending damaged tissues, producing enzymes and hormones, boosting immune function, and playing a vital role in muscle development and energy generation. Without amino acids, life is unsustainable.
There are two groups of amino acids: essential and non-essential. Your body can produce non-essential amino acids but not essential amino acids. That’s why they’re dubbed “essential.” We must consume them through the diet.
BCAAs are a particular group of essential amino acids that contains leucine, isoleucine, and valine. They’re called branched simply because their structure branches like a tree.
The Importance of BCAAs for Athletes
Your body must be finely tuned to perform at your best. The better you can tweak the variables, the greater the chance of success. This is where BCAAs come in.
Branched-chain amino acids drive muscle growth and strength, diminish exercise fatigue, and reduce delayed onset muscle soreness.
Effortlessly Drive Muscle Growth
Perfectly proportioned, healthy skeletal muscles are a must-have for athletes; they literally drive performance.
Muscles provide the power to balance, coordinate, endure, jump, lift, speed, sprint, throw, and engage in rigorous activities; performance is drastically improved with sufficient strength and capacity. Precision function is a critical component of an athlete’s toolkit.
Muscles also shield bones, joints, and tendons, absorbing shock, reducing impact during strenuous physical activities, and helping to prevent falls, mishaps, and injuries.
So, as an athlete, building and strengthening muscles is necessary and sensible. This step will enhance your performance and promote athletic longevity.
Enter branched-chain amino acids.
An article published in the journal Amino Acids reviewed the BCAA leucine. The authors noted that this amino acid plays several roles in heartily building muscle tissue.
Leucine:
— activates a signaling pathway that “tells” skeletal muscles to grow
— boosts energy metabolism, providing the mojo required for protein (muscle) synthesis
— prevents the breakdown of protein, meaning muscle mass is — at minimum— maintained
Diminish exercise fatigue
There’s nothing as annoying as suboptimal training due to dropping energy and rising fatigue! You’re there, present, and trying to push through. No matter how hard you try, your body won’t have it.
But there is a way to keep fatigue at bay.
Increasing time until exhaustion allows you to train harder for longer. Twenty grams of BCAAs one hour before training may be the secret power.
A study published in the Journal of Human Kinetics investigated the effects of BCAAs on 16 male long-distance runners. A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized crossover design — a gold standard in research — was used.
One hour before hitting the treadmill, participants ingested either 20 grams of BCAAs or a placebo (an inactive “sugar” pill). The results showed that time to exhaustion took longer in the branched-chain amino acids group. Yes, they could exercise for an extended time. Fatigue took longer to settle in!
Reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)
Post-workout pain is no fun. This type of soreness can lead to understandable delays between when DOMS hits and your next session, which can diminish athletic performance and improvement. So, what can you do?
Researchers investigated if BCAAs could be used to supercharge successful recovery. They conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis, combining past studies to gain valuable insight. In athletes, they found that:
“The overall effects of BCAA on DOMS after a single session of exercise were considered useful for improving muscle recovery by reducing DOMS in trained subjects.”
Branched-chain amino acids may be the perfect DOMS antidote. Allowing you to get back to training faster, with less pain.
Where can you find branched-chain amino acids?
With potent athletic benefits like enhanced muscle growth, reduced fatigue, and superior post-exercise recovery, consuming adequate BCAAs is a no-brainer.
Here’s a list of foods rich in this nutrient:
— red meat, including beef
— poultry, like chicken, duck, goose, ostrich, pheasant, and turkey
— fish, including bass, eel, sardines, sockeye salmon, snapper, swordfish, trout, and yellowtail
— eggs
— legumes, including beans, chickpeas, and lentils
— nuts and seeds
— tempeh and tofu
Jump on your preferred search engine and get creative in the kitchen. Once you’ve got a few tried and tested delicious recipes, whipping up a BCAA-rich storm will become second nature. Your athletic mojo and body will thank you.
But how can you ensure you consume enough? And that your intake can be timed to perfection?
The performance promise: ensuring you consume adequate BCAAs
While consuming BCAA-rich food is advisable, cooking a steak or preparing a legume dish to eat an hour before you hit the gym can be tricky. So can knowing exactly how many grams you will consume. That’s where high-quality supplements come in.
With 3000mg of leucine, 1500mg of isoleucine, and 1500mg of valine in every serving, plus a range of additional nutrients, AminoLoad is a crowd favorite. It’s been formulated with athletic performance in mind.
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