Should you be taking an intra-workout fuel?

Taking an intra (during) workout supplement is not something most trainees do, focusing more on the post workout protein shake, but is there much validity to taking some form of nutritional supplement during your workout.

The Edge Personal Trainers started to take intra workout nutrition from  advice via the legendary strength coach Charles Poliquin, who recommended adding high dose BCAA’s (Branched Chain Amino Acids) for many potential positive effects (including increased training drive, increased MPS (Muscle protein synthesis) to name a few.

If you’ve trained in The Edge you would have noticed the majority of our trainers and clients carrying around the luminous coloured drinks 🙂

Has much changed? Well yes!

More recently, research has pointed towards EAA’s (Essential Amino Acids) as a more appropriate intra-workout fuel. A study was conducted using randomly assigned groups.

Group 1: Were given a placebo (Artificially sweetened water)

Group 2: Were given a carbohydrate drink

Group 3: Were given EAA’s

Group 4: Were given EAA’s and the carb drink.

The 4 groups were made train for 12 weeks and the difference in between groups was quite significant.

The EAA and Carb drink group doubled the lean mass gains of the next group, increasing muscle tissue by a whopping 4.1kg! In terms of adding muscle, that’s pretty huge.

The reasons for this is that the mixture of EAA’s and Carbs decreased the amount of cortisol the body produced as a consequence of training by an enormous amount, and helped repair tissue and build new lean muscle more rapidly. After every training session you do, your body increases its stress hormones, which, when elevated, has a negative effect on muscle tissue formation and bodyfat production. Adding in this mixture negated this effect and, not only preserved muscle tissue, but added in some new tissue too!

In terms of EAA’s Vs BCAA’s what’s the better approach to take?

Well, muscle tissue needs a huge variety of amino acids to make new proteins so the EAA’s trump BCAA’s on sheer quantity and variety of amino acids., but the body uses huge amount of one the BCAA’s especially when exercising.

The Edge: Performance

The Edge has developed a Mixture of EAA’s and BCAA’S called Amino Fuel.

1 scoop equates to the required dose to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Our recommendations are if you are looking to add muscle mass, add our Amino Fuel to a carb drink like lucozade, roughly a carb drink with 25-30grams of carbohydrates.

Or if you’re looking for more of a muscle sparing fat-burning effect, leave the carbs out of the mix. You can top up here!