Beta-alanine for bodybuilding, everything you need to know about its effectiveness
Many bodybuilders and powerlifters supplement their training with beta-alanine. But the benefits are not limited to sports. Thanks to its major role in combating fatigue during relatively intense exercise, particularly as a pre-workout supplement , it has become a legal and popular molecule in the sports world. Its purpose is to improve overall sports performance.
What is beta-alanine used for?
As its name suggests, beta-alanine is a non-essential amino acid that occurs naturally in the muscles of the human body. However, it is responsible for increasing intramuscular buffer capacities through its combination with L-histidine to form carnosine. It is this substance that offers a very particular advantage for bodybuilding and most often for short-term efforts.
Regarding this substance, it can be reminiscent of creatine, which has somewhat similar effects and whose use is endless. In truth, the research that has already used beta-alanine, affirms that it presents a real effectiveness.
Beta-alanine, how does it work?
First of all, beta-alanine is a carnosine initiator. Deficiency of beta-alanine can limit the amount of carnosine available in the body. This is why using more beta-alanine is instantly linked to an increase in muscle carnosine levels. It would even be a more convenient and inexpensive way to increase carnosine than consuming carnosine itself immediately.
Carnosine has a role as a buffer for lactic acid produced by muscles during exercise, particularly during short and deep efforts. However, the collection of lactic acid released by exercise leads to muscle fatigue.
Get the complete guide to sports nutrition for free
Find in this Guide all the essential information you need to know about nutrition (nutrients, superfoods, GI, etc.) to achieve your goal of drying out or gaining mass!
What effects can be expected from using beta-alanine?
Since beta-alanine increases the percentage of carnosine in the muscles, they can suffer less from the impact of lactic acid and can perpetuate their effort. Therefore, it improves the athlete’s performance in intense work, similar to that performed during a short training session. In addition, studies have shown that beta-alanine intervenes positively in this type of effort in athletes who have taken it for a while.
As athletes can improve the workload during the bodybuilding session, the muscles are more coveted and the muscle increase becomes greater. In addition, it accesses the solicitation of several painful muscle fibers. The use of beta-alanine could also cause an unsurpassable muscle contraction by stimulating several nerve cells. This consequence would seem to associate with that of caffeine by improving efficiency even if it is also necessary to evaluate.
SPECIAL OFFER: Take advantage of our exceptional offer BORN OF RAGE from Laboratoire Eric Favre® is a powerful PRE-WORKOUT powder composed of an explosive cocktail of 11 ingredients selected to ensure explosive and intense training sessions including vitamin B3 which contributes…
View product
Be careful, similarly for creatine, you should not estimate the prodigious effect of beta-alanine. The effect produced is not very intense and can only have a slight increase in performance. However, over several months of use, this little extra can make the distinction and help the user. It can still allow to exceed a milestone when the athlete remains and does not succeed in exceeding his limits. It can be captivating to combine beta-alanine with the effects of creatine, because these two alexines will participate in increasing performance by attacking on two fronts.
Benefits of consuming beta-alanine
The benefits of beta-alanine are undeniable when it comes to bodybuilding. They are much more visible for those who follow a regular training. Those who are quite the opposite of those who have no regular physical activity. As a supplement, beta-alanine has positive and excellent effects in athletes:
Beta-alanine, what dosage should i take?
Beta-alanine seems to work like creatine in that it builds up in the body. Therefore, it takes a certain phase of use before carnosine levels multiply sufficiently. This allows the user to feel the effects. Therefore, it is necessary to use for a certain number of weeks before being able to enjoy its effects. However, it is also possible to perform a loading phase in order to accelerate the functioning. Once or twice a week of loading can be satisfactory. Then, it is necessary to take 6 to 8 grams of beta-alanine per day during this period. During the following weeks, a dose of 3 to 4 grams should be sufficient.
Beta-alanine should rather be used in the long term to take full advantage of its benefits during the training session especially to be able to take advantage of more intense exercises that will multiply the improvement in performance and muscle growth. Therefore, it is better to take beta-alanine in an acceptable way by respecting the prescribed doses. Thus, the first dose should be swallowed before training and the second after training in order to improve recovery.
What are the side effects of beta-alanine?
The major side effect of beta-alanine can cause a tingling sensation in the hands and also in the feet. This sensation is rarely felt after taking it and can therefore be an indicator of the productivity of beta-alanine. In general, the tingling only lasts temporarily and is perceived differently by each individual. Apart from this tingling, beta-alanine has other side effects such as preventing sleep, hours after the session. The supplements ingested before the exercise session are full of caffeine and thus provide energy during the session. And it is thanks to the existence of caffeine that the use of beta-alanine prevents users from sleeping. The amino acid arginine is a typical vasodilator and increases the level of nitric acid in the body. In addition to these effects, beta-alanine can be well tolerated by the body.
