Endurance training places extreme physical, mental, and energetic demands on the athlete. But with the right set of supplements, you can save time, increase your productivity and recover faster, and achieve impressive results.
Can You Increase Endurance With Supplements?
Of course, a balanced diet when working on endurance is necessary. It helps the body recover and supplies energy, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. However, only some have the time or opportunity to cook nutrient-dense meals, leading to the need for supplements if you want to have a healthy, strong, and resilient body.
In addition, supplements allow you to create energy reserves and increase blood flow to the muscles, maintain hormonal balance, adapt to stress, and increase mental focus, which will allow you to train harder and longer, improve oxygen transport to the muscles and block muscle fatigue.
Supplements do unique things and help you achieve impressive results, but only when combined with training and a diet that contains vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats.
Top 5 Endurance Supplements
1. Beta-alanine
Beta-alanine increases stamina, improves mood, restores strength, and maintains blood sugar levels. All this allows you to use it to increase the performance of training. In addition, beta-alanine is beneficial for heart health as it prevents blood clots.
During very intense workouts, the body builds up hydrogen ions, contributing to decreased pH and eventually leading to fatigue. Beta-alanine has been shown to increase muscle carnosine content, increasing the body’s ability to buffer hydrogen ions. This helps to delay fatigue, increase exercise efficiency training volume and reduce the perception of fatigue.
2. Caffeine
Caffeine has long been used successfully by endurance athletes. It effectively improves performance, concentration, and working capacity and reduces fatigue during exercise. Caffeine can reduce the perception of effort, helping delay the onset of fatigue. This is supported by many studies highlighting the benefits of caffeine consumption for endurance, including improved performance in cycling and cross-country skiing. As a bonus, caffeine increases fat oxidation, which can help with weight loss and losing excess fat.
Don’t be afraid of its diuretic effect: While caffeine does increase urine production, a recent review article by researchers at the University of Connecticut suggested that caffeine intake does not cause fluid/electrolyte imbalances or reduce exercise and heat tolerance.
3. Creatine
Creatine is widely used to improve endurance, strength, and muscle mass, as it plays an important role in restoring cell health after exercise. In addition, a 2003 study found that elite rowers who took creatine increased their lactate threshold. The lactate threshold is the intensity of exercise you can maintain for an extended period without fatigue.
However, unlike most other substances, creatine is not synthesized in the human body but comes from outside. It is found in food but in very small amounts. Therefore, to compensate for the lack of creatine, it is necessary to take special supplements.
4. Citrulline
Citrulline is effective in both strength and high-intensity exercises. It is also necessary to restore muscle performance. The mechanism of its work is associated with the ability to remove ammonia and lactic acid from the body, increase the production of ATP and stimulate the flow of blood and oxygen to the muscles, which further increases the athlete’s endurance and efficiency. L-citrulline has been shown to significantly improve subjective muscle fatigue and concentration immediately after exercise.
Take the supplement 15-30 minutes before training or at bedtime. In this case, the normal production of arginine will begin in an hour, and the effect will last almost a day.
5. Spirulina
Spirulina is a blue-green alga that is 70% protein. In its composition, spirulina has all the amino acids necessary for the human body, which it cannot produce independently. It also contains many vitamins and nutrients, including B vitamins, vitamin E, and beta-carotene, as well as antioxidants, minerals, and chlorophyll.
In a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial conducted by the Ohio State University Department of Human Nutrition, a group of men was given 3 grams of spirulina per day before doing 30 minutes of aerobic exercise on a cross-trainer. The study showed a statistically significant improvement in physical endurance, providing important clinical evidence that spirulina may benefit people who exercise.
No supplementation will take you to the podium without regular and hard training and proper nutrition. However, if you’re already doing your best in diet and exercise, adding gold standard whey uk nutritional supplements can help boost your workouts and help you move to the next level of performance.