If you told us we had to dump all of our supplements except for two, we’d stick with whey and creatine. And then maybe wrestle you for the opportunity to add arginine to the mix. And a multivitamin. OK, you get the idea.
Creatine is vitally important to the process of growing muscles. It increase energy and muscle strength, can benefit cardiovascular health and mental performance, and can even increase muscle size by drawing fluid into muscle cells. Now, evidence shows that it might also help you get lean.
Research
A study conducted at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and published in the journal Amino Acids divided subjects into two groups and gave one group 10 grams of creatine per day and the other a placebo for three months, during which time both groups engaged in moderate aerobic activity.
———-Those given creatine had lower blood sugar, apparently because creatine had lower blood sugar, apparently because creatine had pulled more of it out of the bloodstream and into the muscle cells.
This is good for several reasons
- Your muscle cells will have more fuel to burn, allowing you to work out longer.
- Burning more glucose prevents it from being stored as fat, which will keep you leaner.
- Storing more glucose in muscle cells also increases the size of those muscle cells, which can also increase muscle size. Add those to the overwhelming list of reasons to keep taking creatine.
SIMPLYSHREDDED!
SimplyShredded’s guide to the top protein picks for optimum muscle growth.
This is the first of a 4 part series of different supplement stacks for achieving different goals!
STUBBS ON CHINS
“I like doing chins first and with different grips, because this really warms up the various back muscles and stretches them out. When I change my hand positions, I feel different muscles working in different ways. I feel more of my upper lats and rear delts working with the wide forward [overhand] grip. With the hammer [palms facing each other] grip, I feel more of the traps tying into the rhomboid area. With the reverse [underhand] grip, I feel more of my rhomboids and the lower part of the lats.”
Ellagitannins are bioactive polyphenols abundant in somefruits and nuts, such as pomegranates, black raspberries, raspberries,strawberries, walnuts and almonds. Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) fruits are widely consumedfresh and as a beverage, such as juice. If you have been reading the news lately, pomegranate juice has been found to have a protective role in preventing heart disease, high blood pressure and prostate cancer— and now it can even protect skeletal muscle!
A previous study reported that tart cherry juice prevents muscle soreness via potent antioxidant effects; pomegranate juice seems to also provide protective effects from muscle damage. The mechanisms mediating polyphenol supplementation from fruit are not clear, but may be linked to a reduction of oxidative stress and inflammation, which is caused by intense exercise.
Subjects consumed pomegranate juice twice daily and then performed a bout of maximal eccentric exercise— the most muscle-damaging form of exercise you can perform. After the intense workout session, the group that consumed pomegranate juice recovered from exercise faster than the group that did not consume pomegranate juice, and had less muscle soreness. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that twice-daily pomegranate juice consumption rich in ellagitannin supplementation over a nine-day period improves strength recovery 48-72 hours following a damaging bout of eccentric exercise.
