EndurElite Chief Endurance Officer Matt Mosman discusses the three endurance supplements you should take everyday for maximum benefit.
Video Transcription:
Good morning, fast endurance friends, Matt Mosman, the chief endurance officer over at EndurElite. Today we're gonna be talking about three endurance enhancing supplements you should be taking every day to get their full benefits. Now in case you don't have time to watch this whole video, the three supplements are beetroot powder, Beta Alanine, and Creatine Monohydrate. Now I realize some of you don't take supplements or don't like supplements, and that's perfectly okay, you know. Supplements are just that. They're there to supplement your diet. But for those of you who are taking either one or all three of those supplements, you're really not doing yourself any favors as far as getting the full benefits of each unless you're taking them every day. And the short answer to why this is is each of those kind of require a loading phase to increase levels of each supplement in the body where you get the full benefit. Now with beetroot, there's a minor acute benefit from one-time consumption, but we're gonna see here in a minute why if you take it over a longer period of time, you'll get a greater benefit from them.
Supplement #1 You Need To Take Every Day: Beets
So let's delve into this a little bit deeper and start with beetroot powder. Now, from all the other videos we've done, we know that beetroot lowers the ATP cost of exercise, so harder exercise basically requires less energy when you're taking beetroot powder. Now, with the beetroot powder as far as what you want to take, you can either get it in the form of beetroot juice daily, eating beets or supplemental beetroot powder. Now if you're eating beets on a daily basis, you want to eat at least about 500 grams of beets a day, which I don't know anybody that likes beets that much, but I'm sure they're out there.
How Much Do You Need?
With the beetroot juice, you would want to drink 500 milliliters a day. And then lastly, for supplemental beet root powder, you want to be getting at least 1,600 milligrams daily and why these amounts are what you want to get is those yield about 500 milligrams of nitrates, which is the main compound that makes beetroot powder an ergogenic aid. Now timing on beetroot powder, it doesn't matter too much, but if you're gonna use it before exercise, I would take it about an hour before. Now, acute beetroot supplementation, so if you take it an hour before and just one time, it has been shown to increase performance by anywhere from like 2% to 3%, but if you go above that and take beetroot over the course of seven days and beyond, it's not unheard of to see improvements in performance of up to 15% to 25% which is pretty darn significant. Now the 25% is probably a little bit on the higher end, but you can basically expect to see significant improvements in endurance performance when you either supplement with beetroot powder, drink beetroot juice or eat beets on a daily basis in those recommended amounts. And again, you can do it through a whole food diet or supplemental. It doesn't really matter there. Now for the next two ingredients, you're definitely want to get in supplemental form because there is no way you could eat enough food to basically increase the levels of each found in your body to an amount that's gonna be deriving that full benefit.
Supplement #2 You Need To Take Every Day: Beta-Alanine
So let's just jump right into this. Beta Alanine. Again, we're pretty familiar with Beta Alanine. Beta Alanine saturates muscle carnosine stores. And muscle carnosine acts as a muscle acidity buffer, as exercise intensity increases, and it's extremely effective for really hard, intense bouts lasting anywhere from 60 seconds to 240 seconds. So think sprinting, breakaways, hard intense efforts.
How Much Do You Need?
Now, the recommended dose of Beta Alanine you want to get daily is anywhere from 3.2 grams to 6.4 grams. Now if you do this every day, muscle carnosine stores can be increased by about 60% to 80% in anywhere from 20 days to 28 days. Now, Beta Alanine is not going to do jack squat for you if you just take it once, you're going to get no benefit at all. It absolutely requires a loading period. Now, as far as timing, when you want to take it, again, when you take Beta Alanine, it doesn't really matter. I mean you can take it before you go workout in supplemental form, but just don't expect it to give you any benefit if you just take it one time. So again, just to repeat myself, to get the full effects of Beta Alanine, you want to take 3.2 grams to 6.4 grams daily to increase muscle carnosine stores by 60% to 80%
Now, what if you stopped taking Beta Alanine? Well, if you stop taking Beta Alanine, the benefits aren't going to go away. For every two weeks that you're off Beta Alanine, you're going to see about a 2% decrease in muscle carnosine stores. So, if you want to cycle off, I mean that's fine, but if you want to get the full benefits of the Beta Alanine/saturating muscle carnosine stores, you're definitely gonna want to take it every day. And there's no harm in taking it every day. That's not something you really need to cycle off of. So that is Beta Alanine.
Supplement #3 You Need To Take Every Day: Creatine
Now, the last one is Creatine Monohydrate. And a lot of you might be saying, isn't Creatine for those meatheads? Yeah, Creatine has some awesome, you know, strength and power benefits, but it's also been shown to enhance endurance, improve intercellular hydration, and lots of other endurance enhancing effects.
How Much Do You Need?
Now, like Beta Alanine, Creatine needs to be taken every day to be effective. Now your typical kind of loading strategy is one of two things. One, you can take five grams five times a day and that will saturate muscle Creatine stores in about 10 days or so. The other method is to take five grams of Creatine Monohydrate every day and then Creatine stores will be saturated in about 28 days. Now, as an endurance athlete, one of the downsides of Creatine supplementation is it can cause weight gain, which that may not be a problem. So as an endurance athlete or talking to you, what I usually recommend is take about half the amount or about two to three grams of Creatine Monohydrate daily to get the benefits of Creatine without the weight gain. And when you do this, it may take a little bit longer to saturate muscle Creatine stores, but in the end, again, you'll get the benefits of Creatine without the weight gain.
And again, with something like Creatine, there's absolutely no way in God's green earth you can eat enough meat. Well, maybe you could eat enough meat on a daily basis, like 20 steaks to saturate muscle Creatine stores. This is why supplemental form is the best way to do it. It's cheap, it's effective. It's one of the most proven supplements out there and it's not uncommon to see enhancing endurance performance anywhere from 3% to 10% as far as like time to exhaustion or increases in muscle power which come into play when again, you're sprinting or climbing a rope really rapidly and OCR, other things that require power.
So those are the three ingredients that if you are taking our supplements that you definitely want to take every day to get full benefits. Now that is why we recommend taking PerformElite every day. Two of those three ingredients that I mentioned are in PerformElite. So we have the beetroot powder, we have the Beta Alanine in there as well. And again, you really need to load these and them every day to get full benefit. If you're not taking PerformElite every day, I would highly recommend getting a standalone beetroot product and a standalone Beta Alanine product. With the Creatine Monohydrate, I would just buy an individual canister of that. Again, it's dirt cheap. You can mix up to two to three grams and like your recovery drink to get it that way. So that is all I have for today, my endurance friends. If you have a buddy that takes one or all three of these ingredients, please share this video with them. If you want other videos on endurance training, nutrition, and supplementation, subscribe to the EndurElite Youtube channel or head on over to the EndurElite blog at www.endurelite.com. Get social with us on that Instagram and Facebook. And until next time my endurance friends, stay fueled, stay focused and stay fast.
