BCAAs
Summary:
BCAAs are useful if you’re training fasted, or if you’re a vegetarian / vegan looking to maximise muscle protein synthesis.
Providing the quality and quantity of your protein intake is adequate (whole foods and/or good quality protein powders), BCAAs are not strictly necessary.
BCAA stands for “Branched Chain Amino Acids”, or more specifically the amino acids leucine, iso-leucine and valine. Think of this as like “pure” protein. This sounds amazing right?! Pure protein?! That must be so much more effective.
Not so fast.
You see, the majority of protein sources – so, foods such as chicken, beef fish, dairy etc. – contain all of the essential amino acids including leucine, iso-leucine and valine. So, you are in fact getting the BCAAs when you’re eating whole foods. Which really begs the question: why would you take a supplement containing BCAAs when you are getting them already?
Providing your protein intake is adequate and your protein quality is sufficient (whole foods and/or good quality protein powders) then there really is little reason to be taking BCAAs.
There are, however, a couple of scenarios whereby we would recommend supplementing with BCAAs:
- If you train first thing in the morning and physically can’t stomach any food or a protein shake before training. In which case, BCAA capsules before training or BCAA drink during training may be a good idea. It would still be more beneficial to take a good quality protein shake pre-training though as this will contain all the BCAAs as well as the other amino acids. In this case, we would recommend anywhere from 10-20g of BCAAs.
- If you are vegetarian or vegan and want to maximise muscle protein synthesis. Many vegan and vegetarian protein sources contain a weaker amino acid profile, typically being lower in the BCAAs. Therefore, there may be credence to supplement with BCAAs alongside meals to level out the amino acid profile. In this case, we would recommend anywhere from 3-5g of BCAAs to be taken with each meal.
