You’re crushing your workouts; you feel great inside and out and you’re seeing the results you’re working hard for. You feel like you can’t live without your pre-workout because it gives you that extra boost you need to power through anything – but what makes your pre-workout so magical? Different ingredients are added to pre-workouts, each with a specific purpose. These ingredients ultimately come together to achieve the same goal: to amplify your performance. Let’s learn more about one of the fantastic ingredients found in pre-workouts: BCAAs.
What Are BCAAs?
You’ve probably seen these four-letters: BCAA. But what do they stand for and how can you benefit from them?
BCAAs, (also known as branched chain amino acids), are a specific category of three amino acids. Amino acids are the basic building blocks of proteins. In total, there are twenty amino acids, nine of which are considered essential. They are essential amino acids because our bodies cannot make them on their own, which means they must be consumed through food or workout supplements. BCAAs are most commonly found in animal-based foods, such as chicken, fish, eggs, and milk. BCAAs make up three of the nine essential amino acids. These key frontline players are leucine, isoleucine and valine, which comprise 35% of our muscle protein1.
Read More: Complete Pre-Workout Guide: What It Is, Benefits, Ingredients And More
What Do BCAAs Do?
During long training sessions, you may start feeling fatigued. BCAAs provide additional fuel for working muscle, giving you the extra push, you need to crush your goals. BCAAs help to preserve muscle glycogen stores – our primary fuel for energy production. Having enough muscle glycogen becomes especially important during sustained aerobic exercise. Once glycogen stores are depleted, metabolic pathways tap into muscle protein to release energy. Consuming a BCAA supplement or pre-workout containing BCAA’s may delay muscle glycogen loss and protect lean muscle.
BCAAs can also help offset exercise-induced muscle damage, and work to signal pathways that promote muscle-protein synthesis – the process of building muscle mass.2 That’s just one of the many reasons BCAA supplements are so popular among athletes and fitness enthusiasts who exercise regularly.
Read More: Amp Up Your Results with BCAAs
What’s the Science Behind BCAA’s?
Now that we know what BCAA’s are and why exercisers like to supplement with them, let’s dig into the science. Are BCAA’s really all they’re cracked up to be? As it turns out, the answer is: YES! According to a comprehensive review, results from 11 scientific studies showed a positive impact of BCAA supplementation on exercise-induced muscle damage. These benefits were observed at a high dose of BCAAs – over 200mg per kg of body weight per day. To put this into
context, a 165-pound individual would need to take at least 15g of BCAA daily. Positive effects were also seen with multiple doses of BCAAs (two or more per day) following supplementation for 10 days or more3.
In another study, 11 resistance-trained males consumed 20g of BCAAs or a placebo. The doses were divided into two equal quantities of 10g each and given before and after strength training sessions. Findings showed that a 20g split dose of BCAAs decreased fatigue and improved the power producing abilities of strength trained men compared to a placebo4.
The Take Home Message
If you’re looking to support lean muscle and reduce breakdown, consider taking BCAAs before and after your workouts. BCAA-containing pre-workouts have the potential to improve the quality of your workouts and decrease recovery time, allowing for more high-quality training sessions to help you reach your goals. GNC offers a variety of BCAA supplements as well as pre-workout products containing BCAAs to help fuel performance. Trust the experts at GNC and the researched-based findings of BCAAs to optimize your performance and tackle your training goals
References
1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Office of dietary supplements – dietary supplements for exercise and athletic performance. NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. Retrieved June 27, 2022, from https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/ExerciseAndAthleticPerformance-HealthProfessional/#bcaa
2. Michael Gleeson, Interrelationship between Physical Activity and Branched-Chain Amino Acids, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 135, Issue 6, June 2005, Pages 1591S–1595S,
3. Fouré, A., & Bendahan, D. (2017). Is branched-chain amino acids supplementation an efficient nutritional strategy to alleviate skeletal muscle damage? A systematic review. Nutrients, 9(10), 1047.
4. Gee, T. I., & Deniel, S. (2016). Branched-Chain Aminoacid Supplementation Attenuates a Decrease in Power-Producing Ability Following Acute Strength Training