Achieve Your Fitness Goals Without Breaking the Bank
For anyone who takes their training seriously but finds their supplement options constrained by a tight budget, a peri-workout plan is the ideal option to get the most bang for your buck.
A comprehensive peri-workout strategy that encompasses pre-, intra-, and post-workout supplements works for numerous reasons, helping to prime your muscles for growth, sustain your performance during training, and supercharge your recovery afterwards.
Primed for performance with a pre-workout
Pre-workout supplements contain a range of ingredients that help prepare the body to get the most from every rep and limit muscle damage while training.
For example, an effective product like Primal PRE high-potency pre-workout contains a key combination of critical ingredients, which have been shown to enhance training and increase performance, with 2g BCAAs, 3g Beta-alanine and 300mg caffeine per serving.
The BCAAs help limit muscle damage, with a landmark 2001 study¹ finding that weight lifters may benefit from increased muscle growth (anabolism) by consuming carbohydrates and amino acids before working out.
While Beta-alanine is a non-essential amino acid, it serves as a building block of carnosine, which helps to buffer the effect of exercise metabolites that build-up during physical exertion and can limit performance and endurance.
A 2010 study² published in the journal Nutrients found that taking 800mg of beta-alanine multiple times a day elevated muscle carnosine levels by as much as 66%, which can delay muscle fatigue to improve workout performance.
And caffeine is a popular inclusion in pre-workout formulations for its proven ability to give you a mental boost. Taking caffeine before a workout may enhance your performance as it blocks adenosine receptors in the brain, increasing alertness and reducing perceived effort.
Sustain your efforts with an intra-workout
Intra-workout products provide essential nutrients to sustain your mental and physical energy levels, help limit muscle breakdown and kick start the repair process.
A product like Primal BCAA 12:1:1 offers a powerful ratio of L-Leucine, L-Isoleucine, L-Valine – the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), providing muscles with optimal quantities of these amino acids to ensure you are able to train harder for longer.
Every serving contains 8g BCAAs to limit muscle damage during training and support the anabolic repair process, along with 5g of glutamine to support the recovery process.
Support your recovery with post-workout protein
After training, it is vital to keep supplying your recovering muscles with amino acids to repair and rebuild muscle tissue.
While a whey product like Primal Whey is the gold standard in post-workout recovery supplements, a protein blend like Primal Blended Whey offers a more budget-friendly alternative (R349.95 versus R539.95 per 750g tub) that does not compromise your protein intake.
In fact, a blend may offer additional recovery benefits with a diverse amino acid profile, which break down at different rates in the gut to deliver a more sustained amino acid release, perfect for those who need to stretch each tub over the month.
With its blend of whey protein isolate and concentrate, pea protein isolate, rice protein concentrate and calcium caseinate, Primal Blended Whey provides a source of high biological value faster and slower digesting proteins.
By strategically combining pre-, intra- and post-workout supplements, gym-goers can optimise their training, accelerate recovery, and achieve better results without breaking the bank.
References:
- Tipton KD, Rasmussen BB, Miller SL, Wolf SE, Owens-Stovall SK, Petrini BE, Wolfe RR. Timing of amino acid-carbohydrate ingestion alters anabolic response of muscle to resistance exercise. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2001 Aug;281(2):E197-206. doi: 10.1152/ajpendo.2001.281.2.E197. PMID: 11440894.
- Culbertson JY, Kreider RB, Greenwood M, Cooke M. Effects of beta-alanine on muscle carnosine and exercise performance: a review of the current literature. Nutrients. 2010 Jan;2(1):75-98. doi: 10.3390/nu2010075. Epub 2010 Jan 25. PMID: 22253993; PMCID: PMC3257613.