Dean's Blog

Well, ok, so this post is about supplements in regards to strength training and all that jazz. So, one might be lead to ask the question, what is it with all the horse pills and sludge that athletes gobble down all the time? Well, I’m no expert, but I’ll toss in my two cents.

When you exercise, you break down muscle tissue. This tissue breakdown, along with the chemical reactions that take place during energy depletion causes a few things to occur. One, your body needs protein to repair (and build new) muscle fibres. So, you can eat 2 pounds of chicken and fish a day, or you can be like most people, myself included, and take your protein from protein shakes, at, on average, 24g of protein per serving. The recommended rate of consumption is 1g of protein per one pound of bodyweight. So, you can see how it adds up real fast. Plus, you can’t do it all at once, cause you’ll just pee out all the stuff you don’t use up within three hours.

Next, BCAA, or branch chain amino acids, glutamine, and all those other muscle preserving and building bits are destroyed or used up during exercise, and have the side effect of retarding your immune system a bit if not replenished, so hence the need for various L-Glutamine and BCAA powders. I won’t get into Creatine, it’s too complex to type about in a blog entry. Well, at least today

Finally, all that breakdown has released deadly oxidizing chemicals into your system, and so topping off the recovery nutrition is the simple anti-oxidants. You’ve heard about these. Some kinds of fruits, teas, etc, have anti-oxidant properties. So, you can gobble down a handfull or two of blueberries, or take a Vitamin C tablet and Calcium.

That’s it really. There are other things, like simple carbs at a 2:1 ratio to your protien after you workout to replenish blood glucose and cause an insulin spike that speeds up Active Transport to the cells. The bottom line though, is that things can get expensive, so here is my endorsement of the day. Optimum Nutrition’s 100% Whey, Chocolate. It’s the best tasting whey powder I’ve ever had, more like Nestle Quik than a protein shake.. It mixes great, and it’s cheap. 5 lbs for $45.00 vs $40.00 for 2 lbs of GNC pro performance whey isolate that tastes pretty poor and mixes horribly.