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Why EAA's Are Essential For Recovery

Arnold

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Why EAA's Are Essential For Recovery

When you think of recovery in the sense of muscles, what comes to mind? Muscle soreness? Muscle growth? Nutrient replenishment? All of the above? When it comes to exercise, recovery is a necessary response to tearing down muscle fibers and using up key nutrients that allow muscles to function properly and efficiently. Should the muscle not recover properly, it can lead to deficiencies within the muscle, which can then lead to issues in performance and the possibility of muscle catabolism. That’s where EAAs come into the equation.

What are EAAs?
EAAs are essential amino acids and consist of histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylethylamine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. What deems them “essential” is the fact that the body cannot manufacture them on its own – yet they are necessary for proper functioning and therefore need to be included in the food we consume or the supplements we take.

Should you decide to take in your EAAs through whole food sources, look for items such as beef, eggs, fish, pork, Greek yogurt, and even quinoa.

Amino acids are the building blocks for muscle tissue growth. Without proper amino acids, your recovery and muscle-building efforts can be snuffed. For that reason, if you exercise regularly, you need to pay special attention to your amino acid intake.

When Should You Use EAAs?
There really is no right or wrong way to use EAAs, but there are some instances that may bode better than others.

You can use EAAs pre-workout to improve muscle protein synthesis. You can use EAAs during your workouts to help your body stay anabolic and prevent muscle tissue breakdown to fuel your training session. You can use EAAs post-workout to kickstart the recovery process. And finally, you can use EAAs throughout the day, such as between meals, to further increase muscle protein synthesis.

Regardless of when you want to supplement with your EAAs, there are advantages you can benefit from when it comes to staying anabolic and putting yourself in a prime position to build lean muscle tissue.

How Do EAAs Improve Recovery?
For those who exercise regularly, you are continually breaking down your muscle fibers and causing micro-tears that need to be repaired and rebuilt. Through this process of repair, your muscle fibers are able to become bigger and stronger (muscle hypertrophy). This process also creates DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness) that can last several days. The good news is, EAAs have the ability to help diminish DOMS and reduce overall muscle soreness.

Even those who are not interested specifically in building lean muscles need to focus on their recovery through EAAs. Any form of exercise you engage in will tax the muscles and system – therefore, needing to be replenished and refueled through amino acids.

Nitrogen Balance
An essential part of muscle growth comes down to nitrogen balance. The goal should be to have yourself in a net positive nitrogen balance. This can be achieved when your rate of muscle protein synthesis is greater than your rate of muscle protein breakdown.

Researchers looked at trained individuals and had one group supplement with EAAs while the other group was the control. They found that following intense bouts of training, the group who supplemented with EAAs showed a greater net nitrogen balance – priming them for muscle growth compared to the control group.

When your body is in a positive nitrogen balance, it allows your body to be put in an anabolic state to help build lean muscle tissue.

Quickly Kickstart the Repair Process
Following workouts, many individuals prefer to consume a protein shake. While there’s nothing wrong with this, there may be a faster option – which is through EAAs. When you consume a protein shake, the protein source needs to be broken down into usable amino acids. This is an extra step when compared to supplementing with EAAs, which are already in a usable form that the body can quickly pull from and utilize.

Preserve and Build Muscle Tissue
Regardless of your goal, EAAs have the ability to help preserve and build lean muscle tissue. Why is this important? It’s important because if you do not provide your muscles with the necessary nutrients to support the lean muscle tissue, it can be broken down and used as fuel for the body. This becomes incredibly important to those while on a cut where you’re in a caloric deficit, and the body is looking for energy.

Through the use of EAAs, you can provide your muscles with the nutrients they need to repair muscle tissue fibers while staying anabolic to preserve your hard-earned muscle. Should you forgo putting your focus on EAAs, not only could you potentially lose muscle, but you could also slow down your metabolism, which can lead to weight gain.

High-Quality EAAs Are Essential for Proper Recovery
Now that you better understand the power of EAAs, it’s time to take action. If you choose to consume more foods such as beef, fish, pork, and eggs to provide your body with a higher concentration of amino acids, that’s fine. However, a much easier, faster, and enjoyable way is through a delicious EAA supplement like GAT Sport Flexx EAAs + Hydration.
 
5 Benefits Of Supplementing With EAA's

Right now, there is a massive push for EAAs (essential amino acids), and while many have jumped on the bandwagon, some are still a little skeptical. For those who are unsure whether or not they want to include EAAs in their supplement regimen, this article will showcase five benefits that you can achieve through their use.

Many fitness enthusiasts have been used to taking BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids) intra-workout or even throughout the day. However, more and more research is being published showing that while leucine, isoleucine, and valine are helpful BCAAs, the real power comes into play when all nine essential amino acids are supplemented together.

The nine EAAs we should all become familiar with are phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, methionine, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, and histidine.

Below, you will find five of the top reasons and benefits you should include EAAs in your supplement regimen. Regardless of your health and fitness goal, EAAs can help make the process easier.

1. Build Lean Muscle Mass
If you want to add some quality lean mass to your frame, EAAs can help you accomplish this. One of the amino acids with the most significant contribution to muscle growth is leucine, which helps increase protein synthesis.

EAAs have also been shown to help increase strength, which the more weight you are able to use, the greater your muscle growth potential. The ability to overload the muscle provides an increase in fiber recruitment, and the more muscle fibers you can bring into an exercise, the better able you are to break down those fibers and create many micro-tears that need to be rebuilt so they can come back bigger and stronger.

2. Prevent Muscle Tissue Breakdown
There may be nothing more defeating than losing your hard-earned lean muscle mass. This can be due to inactivity or even putting yourself in a caloric deficit when cutting or trying to lose weight.

For the majority of those reading this, you’re probably active and currently looking to gain lean muscle or drop stubborn body fat. In the case of dropping body fat, when your calories are decreased, your body may actually start breaking down lean muscle in order to increase energy and fuel. If you were to lose lean muscle tissue, not only would it decrease your overall musculature, but your metabolism would also take a hit since muscle burns calories all day long as there’s a demand for energy and muscle recovery.

If you use EAAs, you have a better chance of preventing catabolism and muscle-wasting. You can even use EAAs at night to help you stay anabolic while you sleep.

3. Improve Workout Performance
In the gym, you want to effectively target and annihilate the muscle group you are hitting. However, if you hit the wall two sets in, your results will be minimal at best. Adding EAAs to your supplement regimen can improve your endurance and overall workout performance.

With the ability to prolong your muscular endurance and decrease muscle fatigue, you can push yourself further and harder during your workouts. The goal with any workout should be progressive overload where each workout you are improving upon the previous and either adding more weight, reps, or sets to effectively tax the muscle.

EAAs make the perfect pre- and intra-workout supplement. They have been shown to be helpful even in those who do no train regularly. In fact, supplementing with EAAs have been shown to increase the strength of those who do not work out at all – imagine what it can do for you, someone who works out regularly.

4. Aid in Weight Loss
Studies have been published that show EAAs have the potential to stimulate fat loss. These studies looked at individuals who were actively training and implemented daily EAAs into their nutrition program. What they found was that the individuals who were part of the study were able to significantly decrease their body fat percentage when compared to the control group who did not receive EAAs.

Add this into the equation with its ability to preserve lean muscle tissue, and you have yourself a potent and effective fat loss agent.

5. Boost Recovery
The bottom line comes down to your recovery when you look at muscle growth. You can train at a high intensity, but if you aren’t recovering following your workouts, your results will suffer. In fact, you could actually lose lean muscle mass if you aren’t recovering properly and allowing your muscles to repair before hitting the muscle group(s) again.

EAAs help improve muscle protein synthesis, which is incredibly important to accelerate muscle recovery and growth.
 
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