If you’ve ever taken a lap around the weight floor of your gym then you’ve probably seen a sea of shaker bottles filled with mysterious, colorful beverages. There’s a high probability that these fitness enthusiasts are drinking BCAAs during their workouts. BCAAs and other amino acid supplements offer a helpful boost on the weight floor, track, field, court, etc. Here are 5 reasons you should consider including BCAAs into your supplement circulation:
1. Regenerate lean muscle tissue.
The purpose of BCAAs is to help regenerate muscle tissue damaged by the stress of exercising. Sipping BCAAs continuously throughout your workout provides a steady, continuous drip of quickly absorbable leucine, isoleucine, and valine directly to the muscle for repair. The BCAAs I take, Scivation Xtend or Scivation Xtend Perform, also include Glutamine, Citrulline, and Peak02 (Scivation’s patented ingredient for their Perform line).
2. Maintain lean muscle while burning fat on a diet.
Preservation of lean muscle is critical when embarking on a fat loss diet. Sacrificing your hard earned results in order to burn a layer of belly fat is counter intuitive. BCAAs help you maintain lean muscle while you burn the layer of fat on top of the muscle.
Advice: drink BCAAs while you perform High Intensity Interval (HIIT) Training, Sprintervals, or Cardio Acceleration workouts to decrease your chances of burning muscle in the name of burning fat.
3. Decrease fatigue time.
Needing 60 seconds to recover versus needing 45 seconds to recover is sometimes all it takes to spark significant changes in your physique. BCAAs help by buffering lactic acid build up and instantly repairing muscle tissue micro-tears. Amino Acids like Beta-Alanine, Citrulline, and Agmatine help buffer lactic acid and increase blood flow through vasodilation. Look for a Pre-Workout with Beta-Alanine and/or Agmatine, and an Intra-Workout with BCAAs & Citrulline.
4. Improve hydration.
Studies show that people generally drink more water when it’s ice cold and flavored (hence the explosion of water flavoring products over the last several years). Fill up your shaker bottle with ice, 1 scoop of BCAAs, and water and sip throughout your workout. Most BCAA supplements include a proprietary blend of electrolytes to help replenish what you sweat out.
Click here for more tricks to improve hydration.
5. Decrease recovery time.
BCAAs help decrease the amount of time needed to recover following a workout so it may take 1-2 days to fully recover as opposed to 2-3/4 days. I generally enjoy a scoop of BCAAs with 24 oz of ice cold water on my rest days to help my body stay hydrated and repair beat up muscle tissue. I also follow my 4 keys to faster recovery and my 4 ways to heal sore muscles.
For more advice, recipes, and awesome workouts check out my Instagram and Facebook page! Follow me on Twitter now too: @acurtisfitness.
Alex Curtis 