Athletes are more likely to take ergogenic aids, which are dietary supplements marketed as enhancing endurance/strength, boosting exercise efficiency, increasing exercise tolerance, and attaining exercise goals more swiftly. Such workout supplements have been used by athletes to prepare for exercise, help with recovery, and decrease the chances of injury. But these supplements aren’t reserved for elite athletes. They may help you boost your performance and achieve your personal fitness goals, but a proper diet with all the required supplements will certainly be a boon for all your pre and post-warming-up sessions.
Expert says that some workout supplements may be aimed at benefiting people with specific goals, like running a marathon or boosting muscle mass, or those dealing with joint pain.
Why Workout Supplements are needed for Physical Activity
For any physical exercise especially before a sports game preparation, a workout supplement is hereby required to fuel ourselves with the required energy for the workout. When we exercise, our body uses three main sources of fuel consists of carbohydrates, fat, and protein. Carbohydrates, which are stored in the liver and skeletal muscles in the form of glycogen, provide the most efficient source of energy during exercise. Glycogen can be easily metabolized into glucose, which provides immediate energy to fuel the brain, nervous system, and muscles during exercise. The body’s glycogen supply can provide enough fuel for 90–120 minutes of vigorous activity. The depletion of glycogen stores in the body creates the feeling of hitting a wall during exercise. As glycogen stores are depleted, the body begins to break down fat to burn for fuel, especially during low- to moderate-intensity activity. In the latest stages of prolonged exercise when glycogen stores are at their lowest, the body begins to break down skeletal muscle protein for glucose production.
Physical activity can also induce muscle growth, also known as hypertrophy. Weight lifting and other resistance training exercises are commonly used to increase skeletal muscle mass, but cardiovascular exercises like running can also spur muscle growth. Physical activity causes structural damage to muscle fibres, especially when muscles are challenged with multiple repetitions of heavy weights. The body’s repair response involves fusing broken muscle fibres together to form new muscle protein strands, which in turn increases muscle size. A variety of factors influence how rapidly muscles grow with exercise, including the amount of weight lifted and the number of repetitions.
Benefits of Workout Supplements
- Workout Supplements keep you stronger for longer – Typically, when performing resistance exercise, you won’t be able to lift as heavy, or complete as many reps, on your last set as you did on your first. Having a nice workout supplement could help delay this muscular fatigue, by allowing you to perform more reps before your muscles give out.
- Improves Endurance – Taking workout supplements also increases endurance. For example, in one study, participants who have consumed supplements before a treadmill exercise trial were able to run for 12.5% longer than those who didn’t take it.
- Improves body composition – Long-term consumption of workout supplements, in combination with a resistance training programme, has led to greater increases in lean muscle mass. If you are new to training, pre-workout could help you lose more fat mass than the exercise alone.
Best Workout Supplements to Enhance Athletic Performance
1.) Beet Root Juice
Consumption of supplements enriched with beetroots helps to dilate blood vessels in exercising muscle, boosts energy production, and decreases oxygen use. Although results are mixed, limited clinical trial data suggested that beetroot juice could ameliorate athletic performance or endurance in time trials and time-to-exhaustion tests in swimmers, runners, rowers, and cyclists.
2.) Creatine
Creatine is a popular workout supplement marketed to increase athletic performance, especially for weight training. Research suggests that creatine supplementation increases muscle availability of creatine, which in turn can enhance exercise capacity and training adaptations in adolescents, younger adults, and older adults. This widely-studied supplement supplies muscles with energy for short, anaerobic bursts Creatine has been shown in clinical trials to increase strength, work, and power for maximal-effort muscle contractions. Over time, it may aid athletes in adapting to training regimens. However, creatine’s benefits are negligible for endurance sports.
3.) Caffeine
Clinical trials consistently support that when taken before physical activity, caffeine can improve performance, particularly in endurance activities, such as running, as well as in intermittent, long-duration activities like soccer. Caffeine is a key ingredient of most pre-workout powders and is responsible for performance-enhancing effects. It enhances endurance performance, increases alertness in skill and accuracy-based sports, and is useful for team sports by improving passing accuracy, sprinting, and jumping.
4.) Protein
Protein offers loads of nutritional benefits, and from a fitness perspective, it is prized for enhancing muscle growth and repair and appetite control. Athletes who exercise at higher volumes may want to increase their protein intake to maximize the muscle-repair benefits. That’s why some athletes supplement with plant-based protein, such as pea or rice protein or animal-based protein, such as whey, which often comes in powder form and fits well for any dietary intake.
5.) Iron
During exercise consumption of iron-based workout, supplements boost uptake of oxygen, lowers lactate levels and decrease heart rate. Although clinical trials have shown mixed results, some evidence indicates that this essential mineral improves work capacity when correcting for anaemia. However, it remains to be elucidated whether iron is ergogenic in people with milder anaemia.
Conclusion
Well, workout supplements have been always good for the purpose of your exercise as it offers the right energy to perform all types of rigorous physical activity. However, it is to be noted that apart from supplements you should also rely on the consumption of a healthy diet with adequate amounts of healthy carbohydrates, protein, and water, as it offers to fuel your body for moderate amounts of physical activity, such as an hour of jogging or bicycling. However, before consumption of any supplement, it is highly recommended to consult a doctor to evade any possible side effects.
Disclaimer:
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a health advice. We would ask you to consult a qualified professional or medical expert to gain additional knowledge before you choose to consume any product or perform any exercise.
