Muscle Talk
Jaime Filer
Jaime Filer graduated with a kinesiology degree from York University, where she was a varsity athlete. She’s also a former competitive bodybuilder who competed in drug-tested events throughout North America. If something new is trending in fitness, chances are Jaime’s already tried it!
Print
Supplement Zone
Beta-Alanine for athletes and gym rats alike
We've heard a lot about beta-alanine’s performance-enhancing effects in gym rats, but what about its ergogenic properties for athletes? In a recent study, serious runners were given 6 to 7 grams of beta-alanine (calculated at 80 milligrams per kilogram of body weight) for a period of four weeks. The effects were immediately obvious, as the runners’ 800-meter time decreased by 3.64 seconds after four weeks of supplementation. Beta-alanine works by buffering lactic acid, meaning that you can go harder in that fi rst one to two minutes of allout intensity. This is just a small preview of the potential that beta-alanine has to improve sport performance on the fi eld and in the gym.
CACAO FLAVONOID INHIBITS MYOSTATIN & STRENGTHENS MUSCLES!
Cacao is getting a lot of hype in the Paleo and “raw diet” communities for its health benefi ts. But people know very little about its performance-enhancing properties. Cacao contains epicatechin, a flavonoid that has been shown to improve endurance performance, and has been shown in animal studies not only to enhance the results of steady training but also to help maintain the animals’ results if they stop training. In mice studies, researchers found that epicatechin had an anabolic effect and was also an effective myostatin blocker.
LYCHEE FRUIT FOR PERFORMANCE
The lychee fruit has myriad beneits that you may not even know about: inhibiting inlammation, protecting the brain against signs of aging, reducing the chance of getting the flu, and killing potentially cancerous cells in the gut/breast tissue. The most recently discovered benefit, courtesy of Japanese researchers, is an ergogenic one. Endurance athletes who took 200 milligrams of lychee extract daily for a month can perform at a higher intensity for longer. After completing a sub-max (80 percent) VO2 test, men who had taken the lychee extract ran 3.87 minutes longer than their baseline times a month before. That’s a very signiicant diference, and it can have huge applications in the sport performance world.
For more Supplement Zone facts, read Jaime Filer's column here!
Photos courtesy of ThinkStock
Categories: