Mass building supplements

Everybody wants to know what the best supplements are for gaining muscle mass. It’s completely understandable and natural for people who are on the ball with their diets and training to look for that extra edge; be it on the competition or their own bests, we all strive for excellence and achieving our potential.

That’s just human nature. It’s how we’ve evolved.

But there seems to be a confusing factor when it comes to picking the right supplements as they pertain to your goals, and mass building is no different in this regard, hence this article. The purpose is simply: educate, inform, and allow you personally to choose the right arsenal in your attack on gaining muscle. This is mass building supplements 101.

The Weight Gainer

I hate to sound like a broken record, but to grow, you need the right nutrients. That’s just the thermodynamics. And while I can’t promise to alter the laws of physics, I can provide you with the tools needed to serve them well.

To add mass, we need what is known as a ‘calorie surplus’. This simply refers to consuming more energy than we burn off as energy. The easiest formula I have found for effective weight gain across the whole spectrum of individuals is this:

‘Lean’ Bulking = bodyweight in lbs x 16 = calorie target

‘Fast’ or ‘Hardgainer’ Bulking = bodyweight in lbs x 18 = calorie target

Ok, now we’ve got the mundane science & mathematics out the way in quick succession, we can focus on this category of formulas and how they can assist you.

Weight gainers, in a nutshell, are calories in powdered form – the same as protein. What better way to pile on the mass than drink a shake that rapidly fuels your body with 500+ calories without having to sit down, prepare and eat large meals? Time’s are notoriously busy and society is hectic. The beauty of protein formula’s and weight gainers is that they’re convenient, easy to drink, often tasty, and very often comprehensive formulas with excellent quality of nutrients. Quite frankly, they should be the foundation of any mass gaining supplementation strategy. Without the calories, you ain’t gonna grow!

Every man and his dog has heard of Creatine, yet there still remains a great deal of scepticism about what on earth it actually is or does. Chances are, if you’ve been training for a short period of time you’ve either came across somebody talking in the gym, or murmurings about what it does. Which is what, exactly?

Creatine’s beauty is its marvellous simplicity. In laymens terms, your body has an energy system for every biological energy process in the body called ATP (adenosine triphosphate). ATP is inevitably the energy process used to generate muscular contractions in the body, thus producing force output. What creatine does with wondrous efficiency, is recycle ATP production supremely effectively. Since creatine is found within 95% of skeletal muscle tissue, it’s in our best interests to maximise creatine content for this reason alone. Thus, supplementation came into effect.

So what does this generally mean for you? If creatine makes us stronger and increases the quality of muscular contractions, how does this correlate into the formation of new muscle tissue? It’s actually quite simple: the more stress you impose upon the body with resistance, the greater the stimulus is to grow. Ever seen a small guy bench 180kg? Me neither. Creatine is an extremely anabolic, natural substance that any athlete can use to their advantage – even runner’s! For a comprehensive overview of creatine, we recommend reading our FAQ article.

Beta-Alanine

Beta-alanine is another widely renowned performance based supplement displaying incredible scientific efficacy. I’m here to tell you why it’s a great tool for mass building, too.

When we exercise with sets and reps, we’re essentially trying to produce a stimulus for the body to grow. Everybody who’s performed a strict set will know of that deep, gruelling burn that prevents you hitting your maximum threshold. What this is is a build-up of metabolic byproducts, including hyrogen ions accumulating in the working muscles.

Now, there’s another important compound you need to know about before we talk about how beta-alanine works, and it’s called carnosine. Carnosine plays an integral role in many physiological activities in muscle tissue, including serving as a primary PH buffer, an antioxidant and increasing cellular sensitivity to calcium, which is a trigger in muscle contractions. Carnosine also helps protect muscle proteins from oxidation and glycation

Testosterone Boosters

Chances are you’ve came across this alluring suggestion before. Testosterone is a steroid hormone naturally occuring within the body and has innumerable affinities to muscular growth and performance. It stands to reason that if we want to maximise time spent in the weight room, we should put some effort into maximising testosterone levels too.

The problem is that there is a plethora of natural testosterone boosters on the market, and only a very select few produce stellar results and contain ingredients in noticeable amounts for optimal performance. By ‘natural’ testosterone boosters, we’re referring to compounds that use natural biological pathways in the body to increase quantities of the hormone, not synthetic or artificial forms which suppress our body’s natural production of them.

Arachidonic Acid

Arachidonic Acid (ARA) is an omega-6 fatty acid (EFA). Our interest to us is this is no ordinary fatty acid; it is one that serves as a precursor to several anabolic hormones in the body including prostoglandins, leukotrienes, lipoxins, thromboxanes and epoxyeicosatrienoic acids. Quite frankly, this makes ARA integral to several important biological functions for mass seeking lifters, most namely nutrient parititioning, insulin signaling, bone mineral density, vascular homeostasis and much more.

Conclusions

None of these products are intended to replace a solid diet and training program. Those two imperative aspects are necessities and the foundation on which any successful program is built upon. Hopefully, however, this has given you an insight into some of the weapons we can have in our arsenal when it comes to an attack on gaining muscle mass. When the battle commences, you better be ready. Time is of the essence, so get your act together and get focused on that definitive goal!