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2006 NFL Draft: The Reggie Bush Sweepstakes
While it's still quite a few months before the NFL Draft, with the regular season winding down, it's a good time as any to take a glance at the teams who are "competing' for the league's worst record and the right to draft the lone "can't miss"...
A Great Day of Cat Skiing
Snowcat skiing offers strong-intermediate and expert skiers the ultimate powder snow experience.
Operators provide full-service guided tours into remote high-mountain regions. Powder snow and “fresh tracks” are the norm. Uphill transportation is...
Is Baseball Gear Any Safer Today?
Baseball is at 150 years old, one of the most popular spectator sports in the United States. How have such conditions like technology, economic resources, a need for higher standards for safety and protection, make the basic baseball gear better? ...
Online shopping for bike accessories
At one time you could only buy bike components at your local bike shop, if they had what you wanted or you had to hope they could order it and then you would have to wait for it to come and hope it was the right size, colour or price. Then bicycle...
The Great American Pastime; Watching
The great American pastime is watching sports. Someone once described a football game as 30,000 people in desperate need of exercise watching 22 people in desperate need of rest.
No matter the sporting event, Americans love...
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Know Your Bodybuilding Supplement - BCAA's
BCAA stands for branched chain amino acids and is increasingly being recognized as an important supplement in the field of sports nutrition. In short the term refers to three essential amino acids - leucine, isoleucine and valine.
Amino acids are widely known as the building blocks of protein. When protein food is eaten it gets digested into individual amino acids and short chains of amino acids that are sufficiently small to be absorbed into the bloodstream. They are then used by the body to build and repair tissues amongst other things.
Amino acids are split between those classed as essential and those labelled non-essential. This simply means that essential amino acids cannot be made by the body, whereas non-essential amino acids can. There are nine essential amino acids and each must be obtained from the diet. The nine essential amino acids are histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine.
Non-essential amino acids are just as important as the essential variety and the term simply means they can be made by the body from vitamins and other amino acids. The
non-essential amino acids are alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, cystine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, proline, serine and tyrosine.
The BCAA's are especially important to athletes because they are metabolized in the muscle rather than the liver. This means that they can be used either to build new proteins or be burned as fuel to create energy. Supplementing with BCAA's has been shown to result in measurable gains in both muscle strength and size. Taken before a workout BCAA's can improve performance and delay the onset of fatigue. They also operate as anabolic agents allowing the body to burn fat and not muscle.
As a supplement that has no reported side effects, branched chain amino acids offer many benefits to the serious bodybuilder.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Mitchell is the creator of the bodybuildingadvisor.com website that provides guidance and information to athletes at all levels of bodybuilding experience. Go to Bodybuilding Advice to learn more about the issues covered in this article.
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