lordoftheoctagon's picture
lordoftheoctagon
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BCAA's or shake before FASTED cardio?

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What's your guys thoughts on this? I do LISS and HIIT, I just mix up the cardio from time to time. Just curious to see how you guys perfer your fasted cardio, with BCAA's or a protein shake before the cardio?

DBG's picture

BCAAS...
...wake-up, mix-em up and start sipping on your way to the gym. Take lil' sips and make it stretch as long as you can and then switch to water or some other vitamin/mineral infused water.
See...a shake being MOSTLY protein, which we all know is a macronutrient, consists as being bascially a "meal" OR really a "snack-like meal", so if you drink a whey shake pre-cardio(AM fasted,etc.)...you more or less have put a halt to ANY fasting going on(or well, you impede your chances of fasted cardio being successful), and your body will begin looking for stored glycogen(carbs) in your muscles as the primary fuel to burn for the cardio. When your body starts burning away stored glycogen in your muscles and liver without food "in the tank", then you run the risk of your body eating away at your lean muscle mass as well. And this is exactly what you do NOT want your body doing for fasted cardio...you want it to be looking for your fat stores to burn.
The good thing about BCAA's(and glutamine) is that your body recognizes each gram(1,000mg) as a protein gram...so even though you are still fasting, you are kinda not as your body can at least utilize that lil' 5-10g of BCAA's you ingest pre- and during your cardio as a buffer from catabolism.

j0n's picture

BCAA's all the way bro. I typically will take a BCAA shake mixed with an Emergen-C packet before my 30 minutes of fasted cardio

lordoftheoctagon's picture

He's refering to the aminos in the food. Just using the amino powder, thats all. Your muscles see aminos as food.

Monster666's picture

why not both?

lordoftheoctagon's picture

Well I do both from time to time but as always, there is much debat with this topic. Just curious what other people like to do.

Monster666's picture

I know Viking prefers a whey shake with water.

lordoftheoctagon's picture

Dude I tryed like 3 times to contact Viking....never responds.