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BCAA: The Secret to Muscle Building

Posted on August 10, 2022August 11, 2022 by Frank Miller

Branched Chain Amino Acids

Wondering what’s the fuss about BCAA supplements these days? The branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), as their name suggests, belong to the category of amino acids that produce amazing results for the human body, including

Boosting muscle growth
Supporting muscle growth
Giving fuel to the muscle
Sustaining energy in the body
Improving concentration
Curing different illnesses, including Lou Gehrig’s disease and certain bran conditions from liver disease

If your prime goal is to pack on new slabs of muscle, then BCAAs are the key. Let’s see how.

What are BCAAs?

BCAAs are a group of three essential amino acids, including valine, isoleucine, and leucine, whose chemical structure is in the form of a forked outcropping that relates to a tree branch. This is why they are named branched chain amino acids! Since your body does not produce these essential amino acids, you must get them through diet to support different bodily functions related to energy production. When you are focused on muscle and body building, your body requires these amino acids in adequate amounts

during exercise to improve concentration and performance, prevent fatigue and reduce muscle breakdown
after the workout for repairing muscles

A study presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the International Society of Sports Nutrition confirmed that BCAAs support muscle growth and strengthen muscles. The study showed that lifters taking a BCAA supplement for 8 weeks gained double the muscle and strength compared to those supplementing their diets with only a whey protein shake.

What is Their Metabolic Process in My Body?

When you ingest amino acids, they travel to the liver, where they are either broken down into fuel or transported to the muscle tissue. Unlike other amino acids, BCAAs are not directly metabolized by the liver, rather, sent to the bloodstream so that they can be used by muscle as fuel or for repairing or building itself. BCAA supplements thus are highly relevant to athletic training, which act as a fuel source during workouts, build and repair the muscle after the training. This explains the need for taking BCAA products before, during, and after an exercise.

The more intense the workout, the more BCAAs the muscles will need for fuel. This means you can easily boost energy before a workout by supplementing your diet with BCAAs and train with more vigor and intensity until the end. First-time users of BCAA supplements enjoy their workouts more than ever and are able to better manage them.

What are the BCAA Benefits for Me?

There is too much buzz in the bodybuilding circles around the use of BCAAs for muscle growth. This is because your body needs BCAAs 25 times more than other amino acids for stimulating muscle-protein synthesis. A number of studies indicate that BCAAs, especially Leucine, supply the body with the protein needed for boosting muscle growth. In fact, Leucine triggers the process of binding amino acids together to make muscle protein and thus boost muscle growth. Leucine is also known to boost insulin level for further stimulation of protein synthesis.

While experts do not recommend using large doses of Leucine alone, you can supply your body with the essential amino acid through BCAAs, which are key building blocks of the body and play a key role in muscle growth, recovery, and tissue synthesis.

During workouts, your muscle contacting tissues are degraded for energy. As a result, there is a breakdown of non-contractile muscle proteins during and after exercise.

By adding BCAA supplements to your before and after workout routine, you can trigger a ‘muscle sparing’ effect and stimulate muscle synthesis.
With BCAAs, you can effectively reduce the degradation of proteins and exercise recovery and boost protein synthesis.
Supplying your body with adequate leucine through BCAA supplements can help you prevent the loss of muscle during dieting.
According to a research done by Italian scientists, BCAA supplementation for one month raises the level of growth hormone after exercise. The higher the GH level post-exercise, the more the boost to your muscle size and strength.
Taking BCAAs lowers the level of cortisol hormone during exercise. Cortisol is known to encourage muscle breakdown. A decline in cortisol levels during workouts inhibits muscle breakdown while boosting muscle growth. Research confirms that regular use of BCAA supplements helps significantly reduce muscle breakdown and boost muscle recovery after workouts.
Besides boosting your workout intensity, branched chain amino acids influence the brain functioning to delay fatigue. Neurotransmitter serotonin is responsible for sending a signal to the brain during workouts that the body is tired, causing a decline in muscle strength and endurance. However, the intake of BCAAs before an exercise reduces the level of tryptophan and inhibits its functioning in order to delay physical and mental fatigue, thus helping keep you sharper mentally.
Another important reason for using BCAAs is that these mass-building supplements can also help in fat-loss. According to a 1997 research study performed on competitive wrestlers, those supplementing with BCAAs experienced a quick loss of fat around the waist than those taking a placebo. Another 2009 study found that bodybuilders supplementing their diet with BCAA supplements experienced amazing fat loss results, losing about twice the body fat compared to those taking only whey protein.

BCAA Dosage: How Much Do I Need Per Day?

There isn’t anything like one size fits all as far as supplementation with BCAAs is concerned. The dosage typically varies from one individual to another, depending on age, body mass and size. You can include BCAAs in your pre- and post-workout schedule, taking even amounts of these amino acid supplements.

For those with an eye on building muscle mass, taking a 5-10 gram dose of BCAAs early in the morning can help prevent the breakdown of muscle after a long night of fasting as you are sleep. Taking BCAAs benefits you in more ways than one – boosting physical and mental energy, promoting muscle growth, helping fat loss, and reducing hunger.

Top 5 Myths BUSTED about women working out

Posted on July 23, 2022August 10, 2022 by Frank Miller

As a personal trainer, I have heard a variety of reasons women give for not wanting to workout a certain way. Where these ideas even stem from, I have no idea. What I do know, is that these myths have stood the test of time and still loom the thoughts of most women entering the gym. I have compiled a list of what I think are the TOP 5 myths about women and working out. Hopefully this changes the training dynamic for women…

5) MYTH: “As long as I workout I can eat anything”

BUSTED: Your reward for a hard workout should be some lean meat and “good” carbohydrates, not cake. It is a fallacy that not only women, but a lot of people think about their workouts. If you just worked out for an hour and burned about 500 calories, fantastic! You are really hitting it hard! Then you say “now that I burned those extra calories, I can have a donut and maybe even some ice cream.” Well, all you would be doing is putting back on those 500 calories (probably more) onto your body with “zero nutritive” foods. You’d essentially be going right back to where you started…zero results. Good workouts should be rewarded with good nutrition and it is THE ONLY WAY you are going to get a slim waistline or a tight butt in the long run.

4) MYTH: “Weight training is dangerous”

BUSTED: Well, so is driving a car in rush hour traffic, eating raw fish, and drinking alcohol. I am sure we could all make valid arguments for why all those things are dangerous; and we probably do those things way more than weight training! The thing is, weight training can be dangerous; if you don’t know what you are doing (just like all the other things). Don’t be like the woman in the picture, who by the looks of it, has no clue what she’s doing. If you are weight training, you just need to make sure you are doing exercises with correct form and posture. Weight training not only builds muscle, but it helps increase you metabolism, strengthen joints and bones, improves energy and mobility, and even burns fat! It is probably the least dangerous of things of the said above examples and also has the most benefits.

3) MYTH: “If you are using weights, they should be light”

BUSTED: This is common recommendation given to women from all sorts of “expert” sources and even personal trainers. Look, this may have a shred of validity to it depending on the woman’s physical condition as well as a variety of key health factors. However, working out with soup cans is not quite going to cut it. With any weight training routine, putting a certain amount of “load” or resistance on the muscles is the only way for the body to change. If you are doing bicep curls with 8lbs for 20 reps with ease at the beginning and the same 2 months later, did you really make any progress? Probably not. Ladies, you CAN train with heavier weights. You CAN do the challenging exercises that men do too. There is no such thing as “manly exercises”. By challenging your body with more weight you are forcing your body to adapt to a tougher routine. And a routine that forces your body to adapt, you will attain more lean muscle and less body fat.

2) MYTH: “Weight training will make me bulky, I don’t want to look like those bodybuilding women”

BUSTED: As a trainer, and as a trainer who knows his stuff…I can’t even tell you how nuts this makes me. First, unless you are eating a colossal amount of calories, and I mean 3000-4000 with no problem (which the average woman would NEVER eat that much anyway), you are NOT going to put on size. Second, a females body just does not have the amount of testosterone as men do to synthesize proteins to form “huge” muscles. Biologically, it’s just not going to happen. And as far as those huge female bodybuilding competitors, they are possibly adding a little something extra to their bodies to get that way. With a progressive weight training routine with a proper load, women can get stronger, leaner, and lose more body fat than typically all other training methods. Which leads us to our final myth…

1) MYTH: “I don’t need to use weights to be skinny, i’ll just do cardio”

BUSTED: Your primary goal is to “lose some weight and get a little toned up.” This is the most common goal women have when it comes to working out, and usually said in that particular way. I feel as if doing cardio on a treadmill or elliptical is almost a preset in most women ‘s minds when it comes to working out and that it is the only way to get skinny. Not only with women but with most people new to exercise I feel as if they maybe correlate moving fast on a treadmill and being hot entails the “burning” of fat; that the fast paced exercise for a long period of time must have a useful effect because of how much they are sweating. Perhaps it is a psychological stigma that has been drilled into our minds about what we think we know about exercise. The fact is, in order for women to get skinny and toned, it takes a COMBINATION of both weight training and aerobic exercises. Doing an excessive amount of cardio alone will just end up burning both fat and muscle, and probably more muscle if you are not dieting correctly. Your cardio should be done to help burn extra calories while the weight training will enhance your muscle tone, definition, skin tightness, all while still burning calories and fat!

So, you are ready to tackle the weight room with a whole new perspective on weights! Now just don’t forget about the diet!

TOP 3 MISTAKES you are making in the gym

Posted on July 10, 2022August 10, 2022 by Frank Miller

There are a variety of interesting things I see people doing at the gym that really serves them no real benefit. I’ve narrowed it down to these TOP 3 mistakes…

3. Steady-State-Cardio

If you are still stuck on the elliptical for the past year with minimal results, its time for a change. High Intensity Interval Training has been shown to be more effective in anaerobic and aerobic capacity as well as burning fat. These exercises are short, explosive bursts of energy followed by a minimal to moderate rest. There are numerous studies out there that state High Intensive Interval Training burns 9 times as many calories as jogging on a treadmill! So if you want maximal fat loss in a 1/3 of the time you’d be on a treadmill, you need to do some interval training!

2. Improper warm up

To many times I have seen people head right to a treadmill, run for 5 minutes and then go bang out some chest and triceps. Or better yet, doing a few warm up arm circles just before they hop on the bench press. My question to them is, how is working on your aerobic capacity a warm up for your anaerobic exercises? And how was swinging your arms around for 10 seconds helpful? It’s not. In this example, if you are training chest, you should be performing a variety of shoulder exercises such as internal/external rotations (as seen in the picture) to warm up the rotator cuff, then do a couple of sets of the exercises you are performing to get the muscle active. That, is the proper way to warm up.

1. Improper Form/Technique

Are you a gym goer that has had some sort of lower back pain or annoying shoulder pain? It is most likely due to improper form or poor technique over a period of time. On any given day I would dare to say that 50% of the people in the gym are not doing exercises correctly. It is very difficult to bite my tongue when I see people doing deadlifts with a rounded back or a lat pull-down with an abdominal crunch thrown in the mix. Proper form is absolutely crucial to your results. It is the difference between increasing muscle protein synthesis and fat burning or potentially injuring yourself. My suggestion to you is to get an experienced trainer even if its just for 2 or 3 sessions just so you can learn how to PROPERLY workout. With proper form you can maximize your results more quickly and efficiently!