My Magic potions: BCAA

Peoples eyes tend to widen like that of a deer's caught in the headlights when supplementation is mentioned. Spangly pills and potions in fancy looking tubs line the shelves of gyms, health food shops and countless internet merchants. Its hard not to be drawn into the marketing and lofty promises laid out on the table.

Do you want my take on supplements? Yes no, well considering im writing this now and the reader doesn't have a choice then im going to proceed. :)

My opinion is that supplements should be just that, a supplement to stong finely tuned diet! To me consuming fine and fancy supplements with a terrible diet is like putting a nitrous kit on a ford fiesta. Its expensive, its not going to work as well as it could and its a little unecessary. Learn how to harness your diet, put yourself in a positive muscle building enviroment with this and then add in the supps to give you the extra edge! Add up all the small parts to make the larger picture.

Im going to talk a little on a plan thats going to be put in place on what supps I will be using for the forseeable month.

Branched Chain Amino Acids:
I have 500g odd of these I would like to use up. The voices of umpteen muscle heads dictates thier usage usually for pre cardio to help maintain muscle mass and stave off catabolism, to which I will be running 5g before my morning cardio for this very same purpose. The BCAA will be absorbed more rapid than a typical whey protein concetrate as they do not need to be stripped down to Aminos as protein would before absorption would occur. I would deem them ideal for fasted cardio due to a quick and painless uptake aswell as not providing a great deal of energy that could possibly detract from the reasoning of our fasted cardio session.

10g will also be sipped on during my weight training although it has been argued that 10g of Whey protein before training would be a cheaper way to skin the same cat as Whey contains a high ammount of BCAA's once broken down. As much as I value whey and use it regularly im trying to minimize it's usage as I prefer a solid source of protein for both taste and satiety reasons.