What's up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj at www.SeanNal.com and in this video today I’m going to be discussing what
I believe is the single biggest rip off currently in the bodybuilding supplement industry.
Now, there are a lot of supplements out there that are ineffective or waste of money, some
that are potentially unsafe, but the reason why this particular supplement is now number
one on my list is because of its ineffectiveness relative to how popular it is.
Meaning that it almost certainly isn’t going to help you build muscle, it could even be
counterproductive, which I’ll talk about in a second, and yet millions and millions
of dollars are just spent on it.
Supplement companies continue to aggressively market it.
And it is one of the most common supplements that people use nowadays.
Now, because it’s so popular I already know that this video is going to get a bunch of
dislikes from people out there who believe that they're benefitting from it or who have
a sort of emotional investment in it because of all the money they’ve spent on it over
the years, but when it all comes down to it my only goal here is to help out my viewers
and subscribers to give the objective facts and to make your fitness program as efficient
and as cost effective as possible.
I have no emotional or financial stake in this advice.
I'm basing this on concrete research and on firsthand experience, so it is what it is.
So without further ado, the single biggest bodybuilding supplement rip off right now,
in my opinion, are BCAAs, Branched-Chain Amino Acids.
BCAAs from food sources were useful but BCAAs in supplemental form are not.
As a standalone supplement they don’t build muscle, they're not cheap and millions and
millions of people continue to purchase them every month.
Right now as we speak, somewhere out there is a bodybuilding newbie being convinced by
a supplement store salesmen to spend forty dollars on watermelon flavored BCAAs that
he really doesn’t need.
It’s very sad.
I actually had a video on this last year where I broke down step-by-step exactly why I don’t
think they're necessary.
And that’s because as long as you're eating enough total dietary protein for the day as
a whole, around 0.8 grams per pound of bodyweight, you're already getting all of the branched-chain
amino acids that you need to maximize protein synthesis.
And just dumping more and more BCAAs on top of that isn’t going to give you any super
benefit.
There's a finite cap on how much muscle your body can build in a given day.
There's a finite cap on how much protein synthesis can be elevated.
And you can reach that cap just through regular food alone and once that cap is reached additional
supplementation is futile at that point.
It doesn’t do anything except make your bank account smaller, basically.
Now, the reason why I'm revisiting this topic again is because of a new meta analysis that
was published recently, which basically just means combing the data from multiple studies
to reach an overall conclusion.
And not surprisingly it basically confirms what I've been saying on this and what a lot
of other people have been saying as well, which is that BCAAs essentially have no anabolic
properties when you take them in isolated form as a supplement.
And not only that but this analysis actually shows that it’s possible that they might
even produce muscle loss.
That would be to a very small degree, but it is interesting regardless.
And I’ll link this in the description box below if you do want to check it out.
To put it in simple terms, L-Leucine, which is one of three BCAAs and is usually, treated
as the most important one because it’s one of the main trigger of protein synthesis.
L-Leucine does trigger protein synthesis but the problem is that without the other essential
amino acids there your body has no raw material to actually build new muscle mass.
So taking BCAAs without other amino acids is kind of like a construction team showing
up to build a house but not having any tools or bricks or woods to actually build it.
Nothing useful is going to come out of that.
Or the other thing that might happen is that protein synthesis gets stimulated in a given
muscle but since there's no other amino acids around to be used for growth, the body will
actually break down other muscle groups to get the amino acids that it needs.
So maybe you take your BCAAs and you train your chest, protein synthesis is stimulated
in your pecs and then your body breaks down muscle in your shoulders to get the amino
acids that it needs to build your chest.
So if you're taking pre-workout or intra-workout BCAAs in isolation every time you train, you're
probably just running in circles because it’s not giving you a nett gain in muscle growth.
And for that reason, at this point I don’t even recommend taking BCAAs for fasted training
anymore.
I just don’t see what use they really have.
And to quote the research, it says, “We can conclude from these two studies that BCAA
infusion not only fails to increase the rate of muscle protein synthesis in human subjects,
but actually reduces the rate of muscle protein synthesis and the rate of muscle protein turnover.
The catabolic state was not reversed to an anabolic state in either study.”
So if anything if you're wanting to train fasted or you're doing intermittent fasting,
you're actually better off to just ditch the BCAAs altogether and to consume a blend that
contains all of the essential amino acids instead.
But if you do that and you're technically not training fasted anymore anyway, you might
as well just have a small serving of lean protein or a scoop of whey protein or some
other protein powder.
Now, some people are going to say, why not just take the BCAAs and have them along side
regular dietary protein, because that way your body gets the increase in protein synthesis
from the BCAAs and then has the extra amino acids that it needs to use for muscle growth.
But the thing is, if you're eating regular dietary protein to begin with, you're already
getting the BCAAs that you need from that.
So a BCAA supplement still isn’t going to be necessary.
So basically, either you take BCAAs in isolation and you stimulate protein synthesis but get
no actual growth, since there's no other amino acids there to build the muscle, or at worst
you stimulate breakdown in other muscle groups to get the amino acids, or you just eat regular
whole food protein and you get the BCAAs to stimulate protein synthesis form that plus
the other amino acids that you need to build muscle.
And your other muscle groups are left alone as well.
I think that’s pretty clear and a pretty obvious choice.
So, the bottom-line here is that based on the research and just the logic behind all
of this, BCAAs don’t appear to have any real use for muscle building purposes and
at worst they could even be very slightly counterproductive.
If you're eating enough total protein for the day as a whole then you're already getting
more than enough to maximize protein synthesis.
And if you're training fasted or doing intermittent fasting, taking BCAAs in isolation doesn’t
really seem to have any use either.
Now I know there's going to be a bunch of comments where people basically say that I'm
full of shit because they use BCAAs and it worked for them, but I just point out that
even if BCAAs were theoretically effective, the benefits would be small enough to where
it would be very hard, if not impossible, to clearly notice them and to be able to pin
down that it was specifically the BCAAs that were actually improving your results, okay?
Muscle growth is a very slow and very gradual process, and any supplement that improve muscle
growth slightly over the long term, it’s going to be almost impossible to isolate its
effectiveness, unless you're living in a vacuum and you're tracking every single variable
of your lifestyle, your training, nutrition and your supplementation.
For example, let's assume a realistic rate of muscle growth for a relative beginner of
around one pound per month.
And let's say BCAAs increased your gains by twenty percent, which is hugely generous to
being with, that would mean that over the course of ten months you’d gain an extra
two pounds of muscle.
So with BCAAs you’d get twelve pounds of muscle growth and without them you would get
ten pounds.
There's no realistic way that you're going to be able to specifically track that or know
that the BCAAs were responsible.
Or know that the gains you've got were greater with them than they would’ve been without
them.
Especially if you were a beginner, and especially considering all the different factors that
are involved in your program.
And then if you're more advanced, muscle growth is happening even more slowly at that point.
In which case it’s going to be virtually impossible to decipher.
So for that reason, when it comes to supplements like this, you have to rely on logic and reasoning
and concrete research to make these supplement decisions.
Because the effects are so small and so long term, so if you did take something like BCAAs
and in a few weeks or even a couple months you'd think you’ve gain more muscle, there's
virtually a one hundred percent chance that that is just a simple placebo effect.
It’s in your head and it’s not based on reality, it’s placebo.
Supplements that have more immediate effects like creatine, because of the water weight
gain or certain pre-workout compounds that works within thirty minutes of taking them,
those you can pin down more accurately.
But BCAAs are not something that you're going to notice from week to week.
So doing proper research is going to be your best bet here.
But anyway guys, that's pretty much all I wanted to say.
BCAAs are hugely popular but that doesn’t mean that they're effective.
There are tons of things that masses can be influenced to follow that turnout to be incorrect.
And the evidence overwhelmingly shows that BCAAs are most likely a waste of money as
long as you're eating enough dietary protein.
A few basic supplements can be useful to maximize your overall progress: protein powders, creatine,
fish oil, certain vitamins and minerals, certain pre-workout compounds, but BCAAs just aren’t
one of them and I'd highly encourage you to save your money, because it could be put to
a much better use.
So I hope you guys found this advice helpful.
If you appreciate this no non-sense, science based approach when it comes to building muscle
and losing fat, then you can check out my complete Body Transformation Blueprint by
clicking the icon at the top of the screen here, or by heading over to www.BTBluePrint.com
using the link in the description box.
That program will give you all the tools you need to optimize your results, the workouts,
the meal plans, the supplement guides and one-on-one coaching.
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The links for that are also in the description box.
Thanks for watching, guys.
I’ll see you in the next video.