I try and create write ups for things that have helped take me to the next level. Yes steriods are involved in growing, but without hard training and a good nutritional foundation, we can use all the gear we want and we wont grow. In this write up i will cover intraworkout nutrition, which in my opinion is very overlooked. Since I started experimenting with intraworkout drinks, the benefits have been so profound, I havnt looked back. I hope to share with you guys what I have learned and hope that some of you can learn and incorporate intravenous nutrtion into your diet.

In my opinion, the three most crucial times for nutrition are preworkout, postworkout, and intraworkout. Dont get me wrong, nutrition throughout the day is also VERY important and can obviously not be ignored. A good preworkout meal provides us with the fuel we need to train hard. A good postworkout meal will help us replenish glycogen and initiate the recovery process by stimulating protein synthesis. The focus of this write up will be on the importance and variations on INTRA (or during) the workout nutrition.

Some benifits in my experiance with a good intraworkout nutrition protocol include: enhanced recovery, better pumps, increased workout duration (especially precontest), a better ability to stay full while dieting, an easy way to add some calories (carbs specifically) in offseason at a time when your body is most ready to use them.

I am sure a lot of you guys are already using the most basic form of intraworkout nutrition, which would be sipping on BCAAs while training. BCAA's, specifically leucine are great for stimulating protein synthesis. This is a great start to intraworkout nutrition, but we can take this and enhance it.

When we look at intraworkout nutrtion, the first and foremost thing is that it is easy to digest. The last thing we want is to be bogged down with a drink that is going to sit in our stomach and take blood away from our muscles to digest. This is imperative when we begin looking at choices for intraworkout drinks. The basics of a good intraworkout drink includes a source of aminos, carbohydrates, electrolytes, and possibly some other fun things like creatine etc that i will get into.

When looking at aminos, there are a few choices. BCAAs are obviously great, they are inexpensive, have a good dose of leucine, and dont sit in your stomach. Taking it a step further, i feel that EAA's provide just a little bit better amino profile than BCAA's. I notice my recovery is a little better with EAAs. the only downside of EAA vs BCAA is that EAAs tend to be slightly more expensive. For an intraworkout drink i would recomend somewhere around 15g aminos total. another choice that is great, which was made popular by John Meadows is hydrolyzed casein. Now typically when you think of casein you think of micellar casein, the thick clumpy stuff that takes 8 hours to digest, hydrolyzed casein is totally different. Hydrolyzed casein is basically a predigested casein protein. Since it is already basically digested and broken down into the most simple and available form of aminos it is in and out of your stomach rapidly. It is available from true nutrition under the brand name peptpro. This would probably be the BEST choice of an intraworkout amino choice. 10-15g of protein from hydrolyzed casein is plenty. Hydro casein does have it draw backs though. First off it is VERY expensive. Secondly, it does not mix great and requires a large amount of liquid to mix well. and lastly, plain and simple is that it tastes disgusting.

For most people I would say that BCAA or EAA are more than sufficiant. Another added benafit to EAA or BCAA is that they generally already have a good amount of electrolytes included in them. I have used hydrolyzed casein, and while i did notice a nice boost in my recovery. The added expense to benifit ratio just didnt quite add up for me. So at this point i use EAA's.

The next thing we look at is a carbohydrate source for our drink. Why carbs in our intraworkout drink? Carbohydrates cause our bodies to release insulin, a highly anabolic hormone. Generally the only time you really want an elevated insulin is during and after a workout. This signals the muscles to take in carbohydrates. Let me be clear, I am not talking about supplementing insulin, which is very dangerous. This is our bodies natural response to carbohydrate intake which we are intentionally trying to take advantage of by drinking carbs during our workout.

Again, you sort of get what you pay for here. We want a carb source that has an osmolality that is close to water. what that means in english is, we want a carbohydrate that is similar in molecular weight to water when mixed. If the osmolality is too heavy, the carb source will end up sitting in our stomachs. The two best choices here are highly branched cyclic dextrins (HBCD) and karbolyn. HBCD are basically a dextrose that has been modified to have a similar osmolality to water. it does not really sit in the stomach at all. This is the idea carb choice. Glycofuse by gaspari is pure HBCD. It is also available at true nutrtion with a variety of flavors. The second best choice would be karbolyn. This is basically a potato starch. It is very well digested and provides a more stable blood sugar profile than something like glucose or dextrose. Waxey maize in my opinion is a poor choice. It sits in the stomach and doesnt digest well. Dextrose or maltodextrins are not ideal either, while not as heavy in the stomach as waxey maize, its defiantly noticeable during the workout in my experience.

I use carbohydrates at all phases, year round basically. I use them in the offseason, typically around 50-75g carbs during the workout. Even when dieting precontest, I find that keeping in intraworkout carbohydrates helps my recovery, pump, retain fullness, and overall workout quality. Depending on how low my carbs are, i generally try to keep these around 30-40g even if it means a slightly smaller preworkout and postworkout meal. The benefit is that noticeable to me.

There are tons of other things you can add to your intraworkout drink. Creatine, Glutamine, acetyl l carnitine, beta alanine, taurine, etc etc. I wont get into the bennifits of what each of these does, but its pretty basic stuff. Add in what you feel would be helpful to you.

To summarize, i think the most reasonable choice in terms of effectiveness and cost is a basic shake of either BCAA or EAA, mix with either HBCD or karbolyn. For the sake of being thorough i did cover a few other choices, but the mix i just listed should be a good start

Personally my intraworkout shake consists of:
50g carbs from HBDC
15g EAA (w/ 8g leucine)
5g creatine
5g glutamine
2g beta alanine
1g acetyl l carnitine

in a pinch, a big gatorade and 3 scoops of BCAA will get the job done.

there are some intraworkout formulations that are available premade as well. I have preferred to mix my own as it ends up being cheaper and i can modify the amino to carb ratio. Intra MD by Prime is a GREAT product. I would use it exclusively if it wasnt so much cheaper to make my own. Very convenient, tastes good, mixes well. Overall an awesome product.

hope this write up proves helpful to some of you guys. let me know what you think! Thanks -Slowbro