Hey Jordan, I just finished watching your excellent new YouTube video on macros. I do have a question for you. Due to work circumstances I’m stuck training in the morning currently. I typically wake up and take some BCAA’s and HMB along with a banana 30 minutes pre-workout. Typically my post workout meal (for completion sake: 20g whey, 3 eggs over medium, and 60g oatmeal with 50g raisins and 1/2 ounce cashews) winds up exactly 2 hours and 30 minutes after consuming the BCAA’s and HMB. Do you think these pre-workout BCAA’s would block my post workout MPS? If so, would I be better off skipping the BCAA’s altogether? Or swapping them out by taking the whey pre-workout instead (so only the protein in the eggs are void of MPS benefits)? Or just re-routing the shake to something like before bed where it has a 3 hour window open prior?
P.S. I saw in the newsletter that you’re thinking of coming to AZ for a seminar in the spring. Me and a couple of friends are planning on going if you do.
i have a follow-up questions linked to what the OP asked.
Let’s say you eat a protein rich meal (with enough leucine to spike MPS) 60 to 90 min before your workout. Workout for around 90min, then eat another protein rich meal maybe 30 to 60 min after that. So to recap, we have 2 protein rich meals spaced by approximately 4 hours with a workout in-between.
If i understand well what you said in your lecture, this should provide everything needed Protein and BCAAs wise to trigger maximal protein synthesis and allowing a long enough refractory period between the two meals. Now let’s say we add some pure BCAAs in supplement form right before and right after the workout (somewhere in the middle of the refractory period).
How would this not blunt MPS for the meal 30 to 60min post workout ?
Is this a property of pure BCAAs metabolism ? (compared to peptide-bound form, from what i have read) They go more or less directly to the blood stream without going through the liver and thus, in the absence of other essential amino acids in the blood stream, will not interact with MPS but be used as energy substrate to reduce fatigue during a workout ?
And slightly off-topic,
for the sake of reducing environmental footprint, i try to convince myself to eat one vegan meal per week. Looks like the PDCAAS score of tofu is not so bad and comparable to beef, to my surprise… but with insufficient leucine content. Would supplementing this kind of meal with a bcaa supplement make it more gainzzz friendly and acceptable in the context of performance once in a while ?
All this said, i can’t thank you enough for making such great content available.
If you eat 60 min prior to workout, then train for 90 min, you should wait 30 min to eat. BCAAs free form do not blunt MPS, nor do they have a refractory period.
Yes
It doesn’t matter if it’s once a week, but your environmental footprint isn’t any better either so…