Your goal as an athlete is to improve your performance with every workout, maximize your efforts and achieve better performance results at the end of the day. Pre-workout supplements are one of the ways to maximize your athletic performance. You may have encountered beta-alanine as a pre-workout supplement along with others like creatine. Although beta-alanine can help you go extra steps in the gym, there is still a lot of misinformation surrounding it. But worry not. You are about to learn everything you want to know about beta-alanine supplements.

What is beta-alanine?

Beta-alanine refers to the beta form of the amino acid known as alanine. Although they have the same composition, the structure is slightly shifted in beta-alanine. This vital amino acid is the gateway to carnosine, which prevents the reduction of PH in the muscles during exercises. In essence, beta-alanine provides your body with more ability to produce carnosine, usually stored in the muscles. Beta-alanine binds with histidine forming carnosine. When you work out, the carnosine in your muscles limits them from becoming acidic too quickly. When your muscles become acidic, you get tired. So you may be wondering, why not take carnosine instead of beta-alanine supplements? This is because carnosine gets broken down in the gut, so the resulting beta-alanine is what gets absorbed to increase your carnosine levels.

Beta-alanine supplements increase workout capacity.

Overall, beta-alanine supplements increase your work capacity by 1-2 extra reps when you are in the gym. According to one study, beta-alanine improves endurance by 2.88% in performance, including interval training, where individuals exhibited increased performance in repeated bouts of sprint intervals. But how does beta-alanine improve performance? The most understood cause of muscle fatigue is the build-up of hydrogen ions which reduce the PH in the muscles causing local acidity. On the other hand, beta-alanine increases the production of carnosine, which boosts the capacity of the muscles to handle hydrogen ions increase and slows down the onset of fatigue.

Beta-alanine also accelerates fat loss.

Besides improved muscle endurance and performance, beta-alanine also accelerates fat loss. However, researchers are not sure if the increased fat loss is directly due to beta-alanine supplementation or the increased performance—all in all, beta-alanine increases the training volume, which results in reduced fat mass.

Beta-alanine works well with creatine.

Athletes looking forward to increased performance in their aerobic training often stack beta-alanine and creatine supplements. It is an excellent combination that can be a game-changer in your performance. Ideally, there are two anaerobic systems in your body: glycolytic and phosphagen. Therefore beta-alanine supplements augment the glycolytic system while creative augments the phosphagen system. Even though they have separate working mechanisms, both are scientifically proven effective.

Beta-alanine works through bioaccumulation in the muscles

Many people take beta-alanine as a pre-workout supplement believing that it will increase their performance in the next workout. However, beta-alanine works through bioaccumulation in the muscles. Therefore you can only experience noticeable effects after taking it for some weeks.

In conclusion

A good thing about beta-alanine supplements is that there is enough evidence to support their use.