The Best Everyday Sporting Supplements You Can Use To Boost Your Peak Performance Levels
A lot of beginners, and even experienced athletes, weightlifters, bodybuilders, and people who just love physical activity, rush to buy expensive supplements that they don’t necessarily need.
Now, to be clear, I do advocate the use of good quality professional grade supplements in moderation. I discussed this on my blog often, because they can have real strong benefits with absolutely zero side effects.
However, if you haven’t got the money, or you want to try and work out as naturally as possible, then there are everyday supplements you can use which can make a significant difference. The problem is that people just don’t make enough use of them, or do, but not in sufficient quantity over long enough to feel the benefits.
I’m going to talk you through a stack of five natural substances that put together give you a perfect bodybuilding boost.
But not just for bodybuilding, for any physical activity where you need strength, endurance, and to make continual progress in order to reach your goals.
How Much Difference Will Basic Supplementation Make?
I don’t want to overemphasize things and give you the wrong idea. Basic supplementation will not transform you from mediocre to incredible.
You’ll feel a boost, you’ll see slightly better results, you’ll recover slightly quicker. But I’m talking maybe 10%, not 50% better.
But if you are in a plateau, or just starting out, then that 10% could be really significant. It’s the difference between exhaustion, giving up, and making sustained progress.
So don’t expect miracles, and I always say that about things like SARMs as well. You have to work hard, you have to be progressive, you have to push yourself to higher levels consistently, and you have to back it up with excellent nutrition and supplementation.
Do Not Focus On Supplements: Focus On Working Hard
Another mistake I see even experienced people make is to focus on the supplements rather than what they are actually doing physically.
If your routine is not progressive, if you’re not continually pushing yourself, then you are merely maintaining.
What I see so many newbies do is hit the ground running, and then plateau. They then turn to supplements because they think they can’t physically push themselves further, but that’s simply untrue, they got into a comfort zone and are simply in denial.
To be clear, even the best supplements will only give you an edge. Of course things like SARMs can be incredible, but you still have to work really hard and push your muscles to get the results.
So don’t think that just by cramming a few supplements down your throat you will magically start to hit new personal bests, develop stronger muscle tone, and never plateau.
Look at your gym routine. Look at what you do between sessions. Look at your diet and nutrition. Have you plateaued? Have you got into a comfort zone?
Once you have set yourself new targets, and pushed yourself harder, then is the time to start looking at supplementation in order to get you over bumps in the road.
There are thousands of different supplements out there. Walk into any health food store and you will see a myriad of them.
But most of them are expensive and pointless. What I’ve done here is boil it down to 5 essential natural supplements that are easy to obtain, cheap to use, and that will give you that 10% boost you need on a consistent basis.
All I will say is you have to use them consistently at the right dosage levels for several months to get the effects. You can’t just take them for a week and expect to feel different, it just doesn’t work like that. Some of the supplements take weeks to reach saturation point in the body.
So without further ado, let’s talk you through the top five natural supplements that you can use to give yourself that 10% boost once you have addressed your routine and nutrition.
1. Protein
Protein builds muscles. It helps with recovery and repair, and reduces inflammation.
People will obsess over protein supplements. They will pack tons of protein into their body. Most of it is completely pointless though. The truth is that you only need about 40% proteins, even as an elite athlete, in order to give your body enough to fuel your muscle repair and development.
But the thing is that getting your protein purely through food is not as efficient as taking a supplement. For a start you don’t leave the gym and instantly go home and eat most of the time. Even if you do, it’s hours and hours before that protein is broken down and gets to work.
That’s why it can be beneficial to substitute some of your natural protein intake for high quality whey protein supplement. Affordable, easy to make up into a shake, you can be drinking one within five minutes of finishing your workout which means it’s getting to work within one hour.
When you work out, in fact any physical activity that is really strenuous, you are tearing muscle fibers. You need to repair those as quickly as possible to aid recovery, reduce inflammation, and to encourage superior regrowth.
Also, you should look at slow-release proteins if you are really pushing myself at that point. For example, you could look at casein as a supplement after particularly intense sessions.
Taking slow-release proteins late in the evening means that they will get to work while you sleep. Although you can get slow-release proteins and some foods like cottage cheese, I doubt there’s many of us who want to be scooping that down our throats at 9 o’clock at night.
The having that slow-release protein working through your body in the night time hours means that you are fueling your body far more efficiently.
For me, I will take 20 g of casein, +5 g of creatine late in the evening when I’m really pushing myself the gym.
But don’t ignore food, chicken breast, state, avocado, eggs, all excellent sources of protein that can be worked into your diet alongside vegetables with no sweat at all. Too many people cram incredible amount of additional protein into their diet, and it’s just removed from the body without being used at all. Get the balance right, and supplement at the right time.
2. Caffeine
Everybody knows that caffeine is a stimulant. Drink caffeine and you will be more alert and have higher level of energy, and be more resistant to exhaustion.
So caffeine is great for endurance and focus. But surprisingly, many athletes don’t take enough caffeine prior to working out.
The truth is it will allow you to work out at a higher level of power output, and for longer. So you shouldn’t be ignoring it.
Lots of people talk about high doses of caffeine though. Be careful because it can stress your heart and cause problems mentally as well.
When people talk about 250 mg, or 400 mg, of caffeine prior to working out, those are the doses you should be taking as an athlete who’s built up to that dose over several months. Just chucking that into your body is not good.
A single espresso contains up to 100 mg, often less, caffeine, and I wouldn’t recommend higher than that in the beginning.
In studies, around 75 mg is the level around which significant increases in alertness and endurance start to occur, so I would start with 100 mg and not go above 200 mg after around one month.
Take the caffeine prior to working out. If you find you are getting jittery, then you can also take a capsule of L-Theanine alongside it. This has been found in numerous studies to smooth and channel the effects of caffeine, as well as keeping you calm and focused. It is strong natural nootropic and sporting supplement combo.
Also, don’t do this every day. Overall, I would keep your caffeine intake to a minimum. There are two reasons for this.
Firstly, caffeine can be addictive. You don’t want that. It can also cause other problems, and we want to be as clean as possible.
Plus, you want to feel the effects strongly when you need it. Two or three days of zero caffeine and then a 100 g dose 30 minutes before you hit the gym will give you a significant kick for a couple of hours, right when you need it.
3. Creatine
Number three in a list of the top five simple supplements that anyone can use a given cell boost is good old creatine.
Creatine is excellent for any high activity sporting activity because of how it helps to fuel muscles, both in action, and post workout.
The usual doses around 5 g. That doesn’t sound a huge amount, but you would have to eat around 1 kg of meat, poultry, or fish each day to get that naturally.
You’ll get this stuff as creatine monohydrate supplements. It’s been proven over multiple studies to help improve endurance and fuel muscle recovery and growth.
But I wouldn’t advise you are taking this every day as a supplement. Like protein supplementation and everything else I recommend here, this should be focused on when you work out.
If you’re having a boosting drink before you hit the gym, something like a caffeine drink or sporting drink with glucose in it, add a couple of grams of creatine into it. That will help with your endurance during your workout alongside caffeine.
Then put the remaining 3 g into your protein shake that you have immediately post workout. That will help the muscles with faster recovery and sharper growth.
Some experts recommend creatine for endurance training, while others don’t recommend it. For me, because there is no consensus, I would stick to using it as part of the pre-workout natural supplementation routine, and post workout with proteins in order to boost recovery and muscle growth.
4. Beta-Alanine
Beta alanine should be dosed at around 3 g per day. You can get it as a powder or in more expensive capsule form.
It’s a naturally occurring amino acid that is found in various foods, unsurprisingly most meat, poultry, and fish. In not enough quantities to get the boost we are looking for.
In the body, it’s combined with histidine to create something called carnosine. This increased concentration level helps to reduce the buildup of lactic acid, which builds during high intensity exercise.
The buildup of lactic acid starts to decrease performance levels during short burst high intensity workout routines, so things like heavyweights, sprinting, and other rapid burst activities. It’s basically a protection system to stop you over exerting beyond your capabilities.
It helps you to push yourself harder during those times. A buildup of lactic acid starts to lower your endurance, and leads to that burning sensation you get your muscles. By reducing that buildup, you won’t get such an intense feeling in your muscle tissue when you really push it hard.
So don’t go overboard with this stuff, you certainly don’t need to dose every day. But just prior to your workout, along with the creatine and caffeine, this can really help you when you are going to be doing short burst activities.
5. Omega 3/Fish Oils
Fish oils are essential for many purposes, but they can really help with people who are serious about working out, and are criminally overlooked by many.
Unless your diet is really strong and oily fish, or things like walnuts, then you probably aren’t going to be getting enough to get the additional boost you can. High dose supplementation is the way forward, at around 1000 mg per day.
Omega three is an essential amino acid that helps with heart health, and general health. High levels of fish oils in your diet can also help to balance hormone levels and give us peace and calmness.
During physical workouts, it can improve muscle protein synthesis. So you’ll get better recovery, and sharper growth in torn muscle fiber tissue.
So overall, these five are essential if you are push yourself hard. Start with low levels, and work up to make sure you don’t overdo it.
If you are really pushing your body and mind, then even the simple supplements could be enough to give you that 10% edge which helps you over bumps in the road, and it’s why nearly all professional sports people take this five supplement stack regardless of what else they are supplementing with.