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Channel: Denis Faye, M.S., Author at BODi
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I’m Not an Athlete. Do I Need the Beachbody Performance Line?

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If you’ve seen the ads, you probably know that the Beachbody Performance Line is packed with awesome science that can make already awesome athletes even awesomer (yes, that’s a word—trust me). And while that’s all well and good, the real question is: “What can Beachbody Performance do for everyone else?”

The short answer is that it depends on how hard you’re willing to work. The reason Beachbody Performance works for athletes is that they hit every workout really, really hard. If you’re willing to commit to your goals and push your limits, Beachbody Performance can help make you awesomer too.

So let’s take look at how the Beachbody Performance Line can make that happen — without getting lost in all that science.

 

The Beachbody Performance Line as a Whole

First things first: You don’t need supplements to live, and that includes Beachbody Performance. You do, however, need food. But even then, you don’t need good food. As The Martian taught us, you can subsist for a long time on a terrible diet — even dehydrated potatoes and protein rations. You’ll feel terrible and smell worse, but your body is pretty smart about pulling nutrients from even the worst foods, so you’ll (probably) survive provided a sandstorm doesn’t destroy your Hab and suck you into an oxygen-free environment.

If, however, you do eat good food, you’ll feel better and be healthier. Indeed, you’ll get the right stuff to not only survive, but also thrive.

The same can be said for good supplements. If you have a solid, healthful diet, you’re doing great! But sometimes, adding the right supplements to the mix can fast track your progress toward your goals, whether they be wellness, relaxation, immunity, fitness, or weight loss. In the case of Beachbody Performance, the focus is on fitness. These supplements are designed to help you exercise harder and recover from exercise faster.

Formulating the Beachbody Performance line was as much common sense as it was cutting-edge science. In the end, what Beachbody’s R&D department did was strategically combine the perfect ratios of a handful of nutrients that are scientifically proven to aid exercise and support performance. Honestly, if you had a working farm and a basic knowledge of chemistry, you could probably re-create most of the Beachbody Performance Line on your own. The results would taste like fanny and be insanely expensive and time-consuming — but, hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?

This simplicity sets Beachbody Performance apart. Each product contains just a few quality ingredients in amounts clinically proven to be effective.

 

Energize
This stuff helps you exercise harder. The three main ingredients are caffeine, beta-alanine, and quercetin. Caffeine is, well, caffeine. Too much makes some people jittery, so Energize contains about a small cup of coffee’s worth — just enough to get you going.

Quercetin is a phytonutrient you’ll find in citrus fruits, apples, onions, berries, and a bunch of other produce. It has been shown to provide a shot of “get-up-and-go” when you exercise. Researchers think this happens because quercetin increases the production of mitochondria, which are best described as little batteries inside your cells. Quercetin is also the stuff that gives Energize its distinct, disco yellow color.

Beta-alanine is a little more complex. Supplementing with it starts a chain reaction that reduces the rate of acidification in your muscles during exercise, thus lengthening the time before you poop out. Unfortunately, unlike caffeine and quercetin, the effects aren’t immediate. You need to take it for a while — about a month or so — before enough builds up in your system for you to realize its benefits. Some people experience a tingling sensation as a side effect of beta-alanine use. If that happens to you, don’t freak out. It’s harmless. Personally, I dig it because it tells me Energize has kicked in and I’m ready to kick butt.

 

Hydrate
Exercise makes you sweat. When you sweat, you become dehydrated. When you become dehydrated, you can’t exercise as hard.

The obvious solution is to drink water, and if you’re doing a shorter workout, that’s fine. But when you sweat, you lose more than just water—you also lose minerals called electrolytes, including sodium, potassium, and magnesium. Hydrate gives those electrolytes back.

Also, when you work out, you burn up energy, so Hydrate provides a little sugar to help with that. It doesn’t taste as sweet as most sports drinks, and that’s on purpose; if you drink a sports drink infused with too much sugar, you not only prevent the body from absorbing the liquid, but also cause your body to use some of its own fluids to dilute the sports drink. The result is the very thing you were trying to prevent in the first place: Dehydration.

By providing an ideal balance of electrolytes and sugars, Hydrate lives up to its name, maximizing absorption and optimizing hydration. The fancy term for this is osmolality. If you want to dive down that particular rabbit hole, click here.

 

Recover
When you exercise, you break down muscle. Your body then rebuilds that muscle, making it stronger and larger. Unfortunately, that breakdown can make you sore. Recover helps with that in two ways.

The first is by providing your body with protein. When you consume protein, it’s broken down into amino acids, which are the building blocks your muscles need to rebuild and grow.

Recover contains three kinds of protein: Whey protein, which comes from dairy and absorbs into your system quickly; pea protein, which comes from rutabagas (not really — just seeing if you’re paying attention), which absorbs at a medium rate; and casein protein, which also comes from dairy, but absorbs more slowly than whey (and pea protein, for that matter). By providing three proteins with three different absorption rates, Recover ensures that your muscles have the building blocks they need to fuel hours of repair and recovery.

Recover also has pomegranate extract, which contains ellagitannins — a class of phytonutrients shown to reduce inflammation caused by exercise. This means it helps with muscle soreness and weakness, so you feel better when you’re not exercising, and work harder when you are.

 

Recharge
Recharge basically does the same thing as Recover, but it’s designed to work at a very specific time — bedtime.

There are two times when it’s particularly smart to target muscle repair. One is post-exercise, thus Recover. The other is when you’re sleeping, thus Recharge. To take advantage of the six-or-so hours during which your body really does this repair, Recharge contains casein, the aforementioned slow-release protein (this means it takes a while to absorb into your system) that makes the most of this longer window. Recharge also contains tart cherry powder, which is packed with phytonutrients called anthocyanins. Like ellagitannins, anthocyanins have been shown to reduce exercise-induced muscle soreness.

If you’re an exercise veteran, drinking the kind of potions mentioned above will likely be old hat to you. If you’re new to the game, it might seem kind of decadent. And, to be honest, it is — but only if you lollygag through your workouts. If you bust your tush every time you hop on the bike, lace up your running shoes, or push play on a DVD or streaming workout video, they become powerful training tools, helping you push yourself harder, recover quicker, and reach your goals faster than you ever thought possible. So drink up, and crush every workout.


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