Why should you take supplements for basketball? Sounds like a simple question, but many people don’t think supplements are necessary if they’re eating well. Sure, your diet is by far the biggest factor, but can these people honestly say they’re optimizing their diet on every front, so it boosts their performance on the court?
Supplements can fill the gap, but they can go much farther than that. They can provide you with the extra 5% you need, and ultimately give you and your team the edge over competitors.
We’ll cover some of the heavy hitter supplements every basketball player should be taking, as well as our favorite pick – Performance Lab Whole-Food Multivitamin – in a moment. In fact, we’re so impressed by the Performance Lab range from Opti-Nutra that we’re going to recommend a few of their other products as well.
Do Basketball Players Need Supplements?
Short answer? Yes.
Basketball players are athletes and are limited by the same factors. So, whether you’re a basketball amateur looking to improve your game, or you’re serious about the game and you’ve hit a plateau in your training, supplements deserve your attention. The right ones do, anyway.
Before we break out the ingredients you’ll want to look out for, it’s important to note that although supplements can be a game changer, they’ll only make an impact when taken with a structured diet aimed at optimizing your recovery.
Make sure you’re drinking enough water to stay hydrated — keep that sports bottle on you all day. Fuel up on complex carbs throughout the day, things like brown rice, oats and cereals, whole grains, as well as fruits and veg. Some simple, high GI carbs post-training will give you a boost to your recovery.
In fact, your carbs should make up about 50% of your calories. A big chunk of which should be consumed after your workout to refuel and provide the energy for muscle building. You may also want to take a great post-workout supplement like Performance Lab SPORT Post-Workout; more on that later…
Where carbs are the fuel for recovery, proteins make up your building blocks for muscle repair, as well as being a vital component for daily metabolism. Quality protein can be found in food such as chicken, red meat, fish, pulses and eggs and dairy products.
Best Supplements for Basketball Players and Athletes
One of your first supplements should be protein. You know it, we know it. Whether it’s whey, casein or vegan alternatives, protein is well researched, proven to boost lean muscle mass and packed with amino acids — the molecules that make up proteins.
You should be aiming for about 1.5g of protein per pound of lean bodyweight every day.
Today we’re going to dig deeper than protein and that starts with priming your body for performance.
Creatine is going to be a must in your supp regime. As well as cognitive benefits, creatine saturates your muscles with the first line of energy needed in explosive exercise and is proven to increase power output and endurance.
BCAAs (Branched Chain Amino Acids) and glutamine are also key ingredients you’ll want to look out for. BCAAs are three non-essential amino acids (leucine, isoleucine, and valine) that have been linked with muscle growth, the main contender being leucine because of its ability to kickstart muscle protein synthesis (muscle building). Performance Lab SPORT BCAA contains the three amino acids in the favored 2:1:1 ratio.
Glutamine is a conditional essential amino acid — meaning it’s necessary for normal bodily function during certain events. Glutamine is a highly effective amino acid when it comes to supporting the immune system and prevent muscular wastage.
With all this in mind, in order to craft your peak health, you need to make sure you’re getting the nutrition you may miss in your diet. Something basketball players and athletes alike could benefit from is a quality multivitamin, like Performance Lab Whole-Food Multi.
Less sick days mean more training days.
You need a real vitamin blend that’s engineered to boost your energy and support immune health and general wellness. There’s no point in grinding out a hard training session if it runs you down and knocks you out for a couple of weeks.
About Performance Lab Whole-Food Multi
We recommend Performance Lab Whole-Food Multi which is provided in two blends, one designed for men and one for women. This is becoming more and more common in the high-end vitamin market because it gives the manufacturer the power to really target the vitamins that fit the different requirements of a typical male or female body.
The other end of the spectrum, you tend to see companies packing every possible vitamin into the supplement, leading to either increases in the cost of the multivitamin or a dropping off of the quality.
Performance Lab Whole-Food Multi delivers the highest quality vitamins in an intelligent blend at the right doses, including a plethora of Vitamin Bs which can clear away drowsiness, enhance your metabolism and boost energy levels.
Performance Lab Whole-Food Multi also contains the immune supporting Vitamin E, and minerals such as magnesium, zinc, which play a huge role in regulating the levels of muscle-building hormones like testosterone.
So, let’s assume you’ve got all this down. Your diet’s pretty good, you’re filling in the cracks with a serious multivitamin like Whole-Food Multi, you’re healthy, you’re ready to go. So… what gives you that extra 5% we keep talking about?
That’s where the other products from the Performance Lab SPORT range come in…
Performance Lab SPORT Pre-Workout
You might read ‘pre-workout’ and think of caffeine jitters and sleepless nights, right? Well that’s the first benefit of Performance Lab SPORT Pre-Workout, it’s stimulant free.
This pre-workout is specifically designed to provide your body with what it needs to boost endurance and spike energy without crashing, all while GMO-free and made from natural ingredients. It includes:
Creatine
Packed with 1250mg of creatine — Creapure® pH10 which comes in at 99.5% pure creatine monohydrate – this does exactly what all the research says it should, without the bloating that’s reported with cheaper creatine.
Creatine saturates your muscles with ATP chemical energy, keeping them fueled when they’d otherwise fail and allowing you to peak for longer on the court.
Creatine also fights lactic acid build-up in the muscles, adding another layer to its endurance-boosting effect.
Nitric Oxide
Ever heard of Nitric Oxide (NO)? It’s a molecule that occurs naturally in the body during intense exercise, increasing blood flow to your muscles and boosting endurance. It’s currently at the forefront of natural sports supplementation, and Performance Lab SPORT Pre-Workout does not miss the mark.
Performance Lab tackles the big problem with NO: sustaining levels that typically drop off mid-workout and result in losing those fatigue-fighting effects. They accomplished this by engineering an intelligent formula.
Along with other ingredients that boost NO, like Pine Bark Extract (standardized to 95% Proanthocyanidins) and the amino acid Citrulline (a highly potent stimulator of NO), they also add glutathione to the mix, via their Setria® Performance Blend.
Glutathione not only encourages cells that don’t respond to the citrulline to do so, but it also promotes the production of NO down another pathway. Increasing the potency and allowing more NO to be produced.
With this formula, Performance Lab saw the desired NO concentration lasting up to 30 minutes post-workout, which puts them at the cutting edge of stimulant free pre-workouts. But more than that, this gives you the sustained benefits of heightened NO throughout your training or the advantage while you compete.
Performance Lab SPORT Post-Workout
Performance Lab designed their products to run together as a part of a peak-performance program of supplements. This means they work together with your body from pre-workout, post-workout and into recovery, which we’ll get to.
Post-workout is as relevant to basketball players as it is to athletes. When you walk off the court, your body is depleted, and the sooner you replenish lost nutrients and halt muscle breakdown, the sooner you can recover, build muscle and prepare for the next game or training session.
Performance Lab SPORT Post-Workout has been formulated with this in mind and engineered to deliver with the same impact as their pre-workout.
As well as replenishing electrolytes and minerals with natural Himalayan Pink Salt and BioGenesis™ Potassium, Performance Lab SPORT Post-Workout nourishes your muscles with lost creatine that would otherwise hold back its ability to retain water and recover after training.
Ajinomoto® Glutamine
Another absolute key ingredient for basketball players, and post-workout is the time to take it. Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in your muscles, and concentrations are seen to drop during intense exercise where muscle is broken down.
Supplementing with a quality, highly absorbable form of glutamine, like the plant-based, micronized Ajinomoto® glutamine, not only protects muscles from break-down, but also reduces inflammation and supports the immune system after hard exercise.
Performance Lab provides you with 600mg of the highest quality glutamine on the market as part of their recovery-focused SPORTS Post-Workout formula.
Performance Lab SPORT BCAA
The final piece of the puzzle for your supplement is a BCAA. Your leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Proven to promote muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth when taken consistently. BCAAs are needed post- and pre-workout in order to prevent their depletion in the blood.
During hard exercise the concentration of BCAAs in the blood drops and can eventually result in the production of fatigue-causing chemicals that block serotonin.
Protein powder and meats and dairy products contain high amounts of BCAAs, but the key here is quick recovery for the next game or training session.
A fast absorbing form of BCAAs either side of your workout is what you need. Performance Lab SPORT BCAA delivers exactly this in the optimal 2:1:1 ratio of plant-based Branched Chain Amino Acids designed to activate muscle growth and, over time, elevate your strength and performance.
Also, Worth Noting…
Just like the Performance Lab SPORT Pre- and Post-Workout formulas, their SPORT BCAA is specifically designed to stack with their Whole-Food Multivitamin. Together they provide you with anti-fatigue, and wellbeing and immune-boosting ingredients to ensure your game isn’t limited by inadequate nutrition.
If you’re interested, you can buy Performance Lab supplements from: www.performancelab.com
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