BCAA’s – Branched chain amino acids

Now if there is one supplement that is getting a lot of research in the scientific literature at the moment it’s amino acids, and more specifically branched chain amino acids, or BCAA’s for short. BCAA’s hold a plethora of benefits, so that is what I shall focus on during this article, when both cutting, and bulking.

Branched chain amino acids have been focused on for two reasons currently in the literature, their anabolic potential while training, and their use during training when you are in a fasted state. This has been popularised by the recent growth in a technique called Intermittent Fasting, which uses BCAA’s as an essential part of its training toolkit.

This is because you should try train in a fasted state, only ingesting these branched chain amino acids. In any weight trainers training psyche there is the worry of losing muscle mass, now while this is quite hard if you are consuming enough calories, this might not be the case while using fasting protocols or if you are trying to lose weight and be are eating a calorie deficit. Which in this case it is even more of a reason to use BCAA’s during your training program.

Brached chain amino acids are great at preserving muscle tissue, this is because when the body is short of fuel it will break down muscle tissue, into BCAA’s, and use it as a fuel substrate in the Krebs cycle. But if we take BCAA’s before and during training we negate this ever happening. And seeing as one of the key amino acids in branched chain amino acids is leucine, the most anabolic amino acid, then we can be safe that we are getting many benefits from their ingestion.

Leucine has been shown to increase the anabolic environment in the body by increasing leucine oxidation. This is essential in any weight training scenario as we always want to try be more anabolic than catabolic.

When dieting you want to preserve as much muscle mass as possible, so BCAA’s would be essential while training, even more so than a protein shake that many people often take. Plus when bulking we want to maximise the anabolic environment as much as possible, another excuse to use BCAA’s during training. So what about dosage? I would shoot for 10g pre workout, and then another 5g 30 minutes into your workout, and as long as you are having a shake or some real food after your training session then this should be plenty sufficient.

On top of straight up BCAA’s you might want to consider a blended product that has some other added benefits, such as Scaviation’s “Extend”. Extend is full of BCAA’s as well as lactate buffering agents. This gives you the benefits of increasing the anabolic environment, preserving as much muscle tissue as possible, and being able to push your muscles harder and for longer with the aid of lactate buffering agents such as citrulline malate (and beta alanine in other products). Many products like Extend are also flavoured and more absorbable in water, which is great as BCAA’s can often be hard to take in raw powdered form due to their horrible taste and poor mixability. So get the best of both worlds and get a intra-workout product like Scaviations Extend.