Mark Greene
Building muscle plays an important role in physical strength, fitness, and overall health. According to Healthline, you can add supplements to a balanced diet, exercise, and sleep schedule to help you reach your goals.
With the market flooded with supplements, each claiming to give you outstanding results, it can be difficult to figure out which ones are best for supporting, building, and maintaining efficient and effective muscle growth.
Experts at Forbes, Men’s Health, and Sports Illustrated agree that crucial compounds such as creatine, beta-alanine, and other essential amino acids can boost muscle development when combined with healthy eating, lifestyle habits, and resistance training.
Check out these 5 best supplements for building and maintaining muscle this year.
The 5 Staple Supplements for Building Muscle & Strength
It’s vital to choose proper nutritional supplements that will support and enhance muscles that are developed through diet and exercise instead of miracle supplements that claim to do wonders in a short time. All these supplements can be purchased from brands like huge supplements.
Foundational supplements can enable you to get the most out of your exercise routine and help you feel stronger and more active while achieving your goals.
1. Try Creatine
Want to build muscle? Creatine is one of the molecular building blocks that support healthy muscle growth. Your body produces creatine naturally, which creates energy that’s directed to your muscles and other parts of your body.
Most people don’t produce enough creatine naturally to make a difference in muscular development. Studies have shown that taking a creatine supplement can boost creatine in your muscles to more than 40% of its usual level. In turn, more creatine drives more energy to your muscle cells, which helps you have a better exercise routine, and fuels muscle gains and strength.
The good news is that if you’re trying to add muscle, creatine swells the water content in your muscles at the cellular level which helps boost muscle mass and prevent protein in muscles from breaking down.
2. Add Beta-alanine
Amino acids such as Beta-alanine can help your body build muscle in an unexpected way. This amino acid specifically lowers fatigue and may result in better exercise performance and muscle mass.
According to a 2011 study, football players and university wrestlers who took just 4 grams of Beta-alanine each day for two months saw lean muscle mass growth than the group that took a placebo pill. Another research study found that taking the same amount for 8 weeks saw lean muscle mass increase by one pound.
While more research is needed to determine different dosages for different muscle results, evidence shows that it can increase muscle growth in people who are already exercising.
3. Take Branched-Chain Amino Acids
Chances are that you’re already getting a lot of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) if you’re eating a balanced diet, but several studies show that taking BCAAs can help people gain muscle and slow muscle loss.
BCAAs are three separate amino acids, valine, leucine, and isoleucine, that are located in foods such as chicken, turkey, beef, dairy, eggs, and fish. These amino acids compose 35% of the amino acids in your muscle cells.
Taking a BCAA supplement can work for people who aren’t getting a lot of high-quality protein from their everyday diet. Keep in mind that this supplement may not reduce muscle loss if you are also doing a weight-loss program.
4. Boost Protein
If you’ve tried to gain muscle for a while but aren’t making any headway, it’s time to check if you are eating enough protein to support muscle growth.
All that time in the gym may not pay off if you’re not getting enough daily protein. Your body breaks down protein during its digestive and repairing processes and protein plays a big role in muscle structure. That’s why you need to eat more protein than your body uses. Research demonstrates that adding protein can cause bigger muscle gains than adding more carbs to your meals.
Even if you’re eating foods that are rich in protein, some people can struggle to absorb enough protein from food alone. Many popular protein options range from whey, egg, and casein products to vegetarian or vegan choices like soy, rice, split peas, legumes, or hemp.
Most active people who want to build muscle need to eat an average of 0.6 to 0.9 grams of protein for each pound of body weight to achieve results. Keep in mind that if you’re already following a high-protein diet, you may not see as dramatic results compared to someone who isn’t getting enough protein each day.
5. Consider Weight Gainers
Somewhere along the road to your fitness goals, you’re likely to hear about weight gainers. These supplements optimize your system to absorb more protein or calories. If you’re eating lots of protein and resistance training, but aren’t seeing muscle results, consider adding a weight gainer supplement.
If you gain weight or put on muscle easily, weight gainers may not be the right supplement for you, since some supplements may contain more than 1,000 calories in a single serving.
Keep in mind that most of these calories come from carbs instead of protein, so taking this kind of fitness supplement may undo some of your fitness goals if you don’t process carbs efficiently. It all depends on your body, what other foods you are consuming, and how your body absorbs protein and responds to weight training.
A weight gainer supplement isn’t a miracle pill, but it can help people who have difficulty consuming enough food or who prefer to take most of their meals in a shake form to get enough calories to start building muscle the right way.
