Athletes who require muscle mass are often presented with a dilemma. The exertion of their sport burns up a lot of kilo-joules, making retaining mass quite hard to do. The more they exercise the worse the problem becomes. At the elite level no amount of eating meals will make up the deficit. That is why most use supplements to ensure they retain muscle mass. This avoids needing to add extra meals which not only take up time but use a lot of digestive energy and can make training hard. Supplements are easy to digest and add a lot of kilo-joules fast. But not just any kilo-joules will do – the ingredients need to be of the highest quality and the right ones to ensure muscle is added and not fat.

What ingredients are needed in a weight gainer?

A weight gain supplement should have a range of high quality protein sources, carbohydrates for assisting with protein absorption, and it should be low on simple sugars which can cause an insulin ‘spike’. An insulin increase can make the body retain fats which no athlete wants. Some fats are okay of course and help with energy and even supplying Omega 3 which helps with brain function. A major area where a weight gain supplement needs to stand out is in the high quality protein sources it uses which may include:

  • Whey isolate. This is an easy to digest source of protein that allows the consumer to take on a lot of protein without too much strain on the digestive system. Derived from milk it contains plenty of the amino acids required to form protein and in its purest form contains very little lactose and cholesterol, both of which can be problematic if in excess. In the kind of concentrated form found in supplements, whey isolate is a rich source of weight gain friendly proteins.
  • Casein is a great protein to have in conjunction with something like whey, which tends to digest quickly. Casein actually forms a kind of gel in the stomach and takes much longer to digest, meaning that the protein can be absorbed while you sleep.
  • Many people will recall those iconic scenes in the original ‘Rocky’ film where he ate raw eggs for breakfast. It is commonly known that eggs are a great source of protein, and the great thing about having egg in a supplement form is that the good bits have been retained while a lot of the unnecessary fats have been removed. If you balk at drinking raw eggs a supplement can give you all the benefits, but in a much more palatable form.
  • Soy is another excellent protein source and again supplements can give you a concentrated amount that would be far too much to digest in the form of a meal.

Today’s supplements have been developed in conjunction with scientific research to ensure that the finest ingredients are delivering exactly what you need, when you need it, to achieve maximum muscle growth and retention.

Why buy high quality weight gain supplements?

Gaining muscle mass is not just about adding weight. You do not want to be ingesting too much of the wrong fats or simple sugars, that will translate into extra fat on your body. Equally you want to be able to retain muscle mass even if you are training hard. A balanced diet and exercise program is vital, but if you are ‘burning’ a lot of kilo joules you may not be able to put more in than what exercise is taking out. Weight gain supplements neatly avoid this problem, meaning you can take in what you need in an easily digestible drink, and get back to doing the exercise you need to do to achieve the exceptional results you are capable of.