Supplement Spotlight: Beta-Alanine

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I made a decision to begin crafting my own pre-workout supplements, comprised of individual amino acids. This not only gives me flexibility to dose at the levels appropriate for my bodyweight and goals, but also gives me the ultimate control over what I am ingesting.

I spoke about the power of Citrulline Malate- one of the main building blocks of my everyday preworkout cocktail. Another building block is Beta-Alanine.

Beta-Alanine is a precursor of the amino acid Carnosine. Supplementation with Beta-Alanine has been shown to increase the concentration of Carnosine in muscles which leads to decreased fatigue in athletes and increased total muscular work done.

To put this in layman’s terms, Beta-Alanine is going to make your workouts better by increasing your endurance- you won’t tire out as quickly. You will eek out a few extra reps during your exercises, and maintain higher energy levels deeper into your workout, compared to not using BA. This is incredibly important as these few reps often make the difference between exhausting the muscle and truly achieving hypertrophy, leading to more significant growth. To really break this down, being able to do more reps than usual, while maintaining the same poundages, means you are STRONGER. In addition to augmenting performance, there is more than one study that suggests Beta-Alanine can stimulate lean mass accrual, leading to a more favorable body composition.

You can see how Beta-Alanine complements Citrulline Malate nicely. Citrulline is going to increase blood flow and help you recover faster, while Beta-Alanine aids in amount of work your muscles can effectively do before exhaustion. All of this is going to lead to increased hypertrophy, increased growth, increased strength.

The recommended dose for Beta-Alanine is between 2-5g. I take 4g preworkout. One thing to take note of is that BA will cause paraesthesia-  essentially, a tingly feeling right on the last layer of your skin. This is harmless but does bother some people- I’d say start small and asses your tolerance.

The best bang for your BA buck is going to be NOW Foods Beta Alanine Powder. For $23 you get 500g. If you take 4g on training days like me, this will last you almost eight months. See what I was saying about making your own preworkouts being cheaper?

As always, I’d encourage you to do your own research. One of the best sites in the industry is Examine.com, here’s a link to the Beta-Alanine page.

So far, our preworkout looks like this:

8g Citrulline Malate

4g Beta Alanine

Stay tuned for articles on the other four components!