Supplements play an essential role in your bodybuilding or exercise regime. Just like a pre-workout supplement, your body needs the right post-workout supplements too, as your body loses lots of fluids during heavy exercises.
The supplement plays a vital role in providing essential nutrients lost during endurance workouts. Here is a list of important information about post-workout nutrition.
Purpose of Post-workout Nutrition
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Post-workout supplements have the following three purposes:
- Reduce protein breakdown
- Replenish glycogen
- Enhance protein synthesis
Athletes and bodybuilders take these protein supplements for the following reasons.
- Repair any muscle damages caused by the heavy exercises
- Refill body’s energy stores
- Improve muscle quality
- Increase muscle size
By taking post-workout nutrition, they want to keep their bodies injury-free, improve their appearance, and increase performance. Some of the advantages of post-workout nutrition are:
- Enhance the body’s ability to use body fat
- Improved recovery
- Enhanced bone mass
- Enhance the body’s ability to build muscle
- Reduce muscle soreness
- Enhanced immune function
The benefits of taking post-workout nutrition are the same for everyone, regardless of age.
Nutrients in Post-workout Supplements
Most supplements include nutrients like casein protein, BCAAs, and glutamine. Let’s understand the importance of these nutrients for your health and fitness.
Casein
Casein protein forms a significant part of milk protein around 80%. It is slow absorbing, which means the body needs a longer time to digest this protein. Casein is useful in muscle recovery after exercise, and it also boosts muscle growth. If you are looking to get the most out of your workouts, you need to choose the right post-workout supplements.
Strength training often caused muscle fibres to tear. You must provide your body with the right nutrients after a workout for tissue repair. The amino acids in Casein help facilitate the muscle repair process.
BCAAs
BCAA is short for branched-chain amino acids. They are generally found in protein-rich products like dairy products, eggs, and meat. Post-workout nutrition also contains a fair amount of BCAAs as it provides several benefits to your body post-workout.
Leucine, a vital amino acid of BCAA, accelerates muscle protein synthesis, an essential part of muscle building. BCAAs are also known to reduce muscle soreness after a workout. It is common to feel muscle soreness after 2-3 days of training, especially if your exercise regimen is new. The muscle soreness develops after 12 to 24 hours after activity and may last up to 72 hours.
BCAAs are known to reduce muscle damage and can decrease muscle soreness intensity and length. People who consumed post-workout nutrition experienced less muscle soreness compared to people who did not take it.
Glutamine
Glutamine is an essential building block protein of the human body. It is also a critical part of our immune system. Glutamine is present in many foods, and your body also produces. Supplementing the body with additional glutamine can improve exercise performance and muscle gain. Studies have proved people who take post-workout nutrition with healthy amounts of glutamine show improved strength and muscle mass.
To sum up, when choosing post-workout nutrition, make sure it contains necessary amino acids and protein required by the body to carry on with muscle repairs and fluid replacements.
