Essay on Branched Chain Amino Acids On Sports Performance

BCAA stands for Branched-Chained Amino Acid and consists of three important amino acids: leucine, isoleucine and valine. Research clearly shows that BCAA improves your energy levels, burns fat and builds muscle. This valuable supplement is available in drink form but tastes horrible, so those who don't want to torture themselves right after a heavy-duty workout will probably want to take BCAA capsules instead.

"How can I build muscle, boost my performance and lose fat?" This question has generated hundred of books and magazine titles. Many people even risk their health in a chance to look "buff." If you spend the time reading these articles you will certainly find no shortage of proposed answers, complete with picture documentation of the results with the use sport supplements. Even recreational athletes who might play softball on the weekend or shoot a game of hoops on occasion find it hard to resist the messages that promise the bigger muscles, and thinner body, and all from a bottle or pill.

BCAAs can account for 15 to 30% of your total energy during intense workouts. BCAAs also help with protein synthesis. The most critical time to take BCAAs is around workouts; before, during and after, this maximizes the benefits of these amino acids. Taking a BCAA supplement before working out can be great for those that train fasted in the morning. Research has shown that taking BCAA supplementation can have a fatigue reducing effect allowing you to perform just as well as you would with a prior intake of food 2 hours before. Taking a BCAA supplement during training helps reduce fatigue helping you push through more intense longer workouts. Taking BCAAs post training is great for muscle recovery and repair. The BCAAs help your muscle fibers to heal and the absorption is rapid and fast acting. If your goal is to build mass, also consider taking a dose of BCAAs first thing upon waking to help stop the muscle breakdown that is turned on during your night of fasting while you sleep. You can also take a dose of BCAAs at any other time of day to get a mental energy boost, reduce hunger, and aid muscle

Athletes, bodybuilders, and fitness enthusiasts often use BCAAs or branched-chain amino acids to supply their body with the necessary nutrients it needs to help boost their physical performance. Thus making the ProSupps Hydro BCAA a popular supplement for active individuals. Whatever sports or fitness routine you are into, your body requires sufficient amounts of BCAAs to prevent the breakdown of your muscles, especially when it is constantly exposed to regular physical activities.

From the beginning of history, professional and amateur athletes have tempted to use legal or illegal drugs to enhance their performance (1). Athletes have used pharmacological agents, called Performance-enhancing drugs(PEDs), to enhance performance or to become leaner or more muscular (2). In sports, administration of drugs that are forbidden by international world anti-doping agency (WADA) is referred as doping (3). Anabolic androgenic agents (AASs) are the most popular agents that are abused by the athletes, especially bodybuilding athletes. Besides these agents, other classes of drugs such as stimulants and peptide hormones (growth hormone and insulin) are new PEDs that are abused by a lot of athletes in the different sports (1). Other than these compounds, athletes often use dietary supplements like creatine, protein, and vitamins to enhance strength and increase body mass (4-6).

Creatine (Cr) is a popular dietary supplement used by athletes to increase sports performance, muscle mass, and strength. Creatine was first discovered in “1835, when a French scientist reported finding this constituent of meat” (Demant & Rhodes, 1999). This organic compound is manufactured endogenously by the liver and kidneys “from the amino acids glycine, arginine and methionine” for energy stipulation during muscular contraction. (Arazi, Rahmaninia, Hoseini, & Asadi, 2011). Creatine is either converted into free form Cr or phosphorylated form as known as creatine phosphate (CP). The endogenous production and exogenous consumption of Cr yields about 1 gram a day for the average person (Cooper, Naclerio, Allfrove , & Jimenez, 2012). In

As the use of performance enhancing drugs is becoming more popular amongst athletes, many of them do not understand the risks involved in taking these drugs. Many people are looking for a quick way to build muscles, or to get stronger the fastest way possible. Using these performance aids may very well be a quick fix for many athletes, but taking the drugs is unethical and dangerous. Using special drugs to boost an athlete’s performance is degrading to sports and to the athlete, but after they stop using the drugs and lose some strength, you become

From a very early age sports are introduced upon both young boys and girls. Although it begins with sportsmanship and teamwork, it begins to evolve into new objectives when these young athletes enter high school. In fact, high school sports are vastly different. Your mind is trained to obliterate the opponent and win at all costs. This mentality can often lead many young athletes to turn to supplements to assist in muscle building. The most common supplement in use currently is Creatine. While athletic departments and sports nutrition stores claim that it is harmless, why do so many high school athletes end up with severe muscular and pulmonary damage? The answer has yet to be clearly

The evidence I will provide is strictly scientific, the information comes from the Journal of Sports Nutrition. The article is written by Richard B. Kreider, Exercise & Sport Nutrition Laboratory Department of Human Movement Sciences and Education The University of Memphis. The author has many credentials, such as his testing of finding the effects of six weeks of creatine monohydrate supplementation in male and female track athletes, which can be found in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning. All of his research is peer reviewed.

BCAAs can help reverse this situation by reducing or slowing down the rate of proteins breaking down and by stimulating protein synthesis. Leucine is the primary BCAA that produces these results, and its effects may be stronger than regular protein on its own. BCAAs may also help people to workout for longer periods of time with more intensity by inhibiting the amino acid tryptophan from entering the brain and converting into serotonin which cause a sense of fatigue.

In recent years, oral supplements of creatine monohydrate have become "increasingly popular among different athletes for use as a natural ergogenic aid (Stout et al., 1999). A surge in the use of creatine began in 1992, when "Harris et al showed that oral supplementation with high doses of creatine

Substances that improve an athlete's performance are called ergogenic aids. There are many of them, and some have bigger effects on athletes than others. The variety of ergogenic aids is so wide you can be taking one and never even know. Some athletes like myself try to experiment to get better performance or to be accepted in their sport. They might feel peer pressure to try them or to improve their performance. All they are thinking about is a desired outcome not the fact that it can actually can hurt performance. (Kenney 396)

The basics of creatine are a compound formed in the protein metabolism and are present in most living tissue. It is involved in the supply of energy for muscular contraction.

The scene is set. It is 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, and the final heat of the Olympics is about to commence. The sprinters have been training their entire lives for the opportunity at hand, and the outcome of the most important event of their lives is going to come down to mere milliseconds. With a gold medal on the line, these athletes will be looking for any advantage they can get, whether big or small. One direction these athletes turn for an advantage is supplements. Supplements have emerged as a way for athletes to increase their performance, yet their use is very controversial. Supplements, varying from simple multivitamins to complex chemical supplements, are used by almost every athlete, whether recreational or professional,

In today’s society in athletics, muscle mass and strength seem more important than in years past. It is believed that many athletes use anabolic steroids to increase their muscle mass and also their strength. Anabolic steroids are a group of synthetic hormones that promote the storage of proteins and the growth of tissue, sometimes used by athletes to increase muscle size and strength. Before the mid 1970’s the use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) was used mainly by highly trained athletes especially those involved in weight training. Since then other athletes including those involved in recreational sports and non-competitive sports have started using the steroids. Steroids are also being used by many school age children