CREATINE, BETA-ALANINE & L-CARNITINE POST-WORKOUT?!
Timing is everything – that’s why you take CVOL right after you train. Research study after research study confirms that post-workout supplementation of Creatine, Beta-Alanine and L-Carnitine is optimal.
CVOL has been formulated with 5 g of 4 types of Creatine, 2.5 g L-Taurine, 1 g L-Carnitine L-Tartrate, 800 mg Beta-Alanine and 800 mg Betaine; a rock-star list of the “go-to” ingredients, dosed at effective levels for rapid recovery from intense training. It’s absolutely delicious, 100% sugar-free with next to no carbs.
CREATINE
High levels of Creatine in your muscles are essential to creating the high-intensity, short-burst power that you need to push up big weight on the bench or get explosiveness off the line. Increased Creatine stores in your muscles help generate this power. As you get stronger with each workout, your muscles grow very quickly to overcome the progressively increased resistance (weight or speed training).
But isn’t Creatine meant to be taken as a pre-workout? Why would you supplement with Creatine post-workout? Two words, delivery and absorption. Creatine must get into the bloodstream, where it can be delivered to waiting muscle cells, once in the bloodstream, it must be actively absorbed by muscle cells. But when your body has not been through an intense workout, your muscles are not ready to absorb Creatine.
Creatine is very heavily used during high-intensity weightlifting. When Creatine stores (Phospho-Creatine) are depleted, the body goes to work to replenish them as quickly as possible. Since the absorption of Creatine into muscle cells is regulated in part by specialized insulin receptors, Post-Workout is the ideal time to supplement with Creatine. Which makes CVOL the perfect Post-Workout Recovery Drink.
It is in this Post-Workout state that muscles actively take in nutrients, including Creatine. It does this by increasing the activity of the insulin receptors located on muscle cells. Insulin receptors are the gatekeepers of each of the millions and millions of muscle cells in your body. Without muscle cells actively taking in Creatine, you will not absorb, retain and utilize it!
In addition to taking full advantage of post-workout timing, CVOL has also included a best-of-breed blend of 4 forms of Creatine and a highly-effective blend of extracts specifically designed to increase the active absorption of Creatine into muscle cells. Each form of Creatine in CVOL has its own specific profile and each is specifically engineered to have its own form of delivery and absorption.
Creatine-Magnesium Chelate: Patented, ionically-bound and highly-stable. The formation of a chelate of Creatine with magnesium usig patented technology can protect the Creatine from destruction in the digestive tract and make higher quantities of the physiologically active form of Creatine available to the muscle cells.
Creatine is not generated in the muscle and instead relies on active transport systems from the blood stream. Ionically bound Creatine-Magnesium Chelate, Creatine MagnaPower® provides more bioavailable active Creatine to the bloodstream for maximum uptake by muscle. Magnesium (Mg) is one of the most important minerals to muscle-building.
While many people are deficient in Mg, CVOL provides a highly bioavailable form that has been created by a 6-Stage Chelation Process by the world’s most prolific mineral supplier, Albion®. The result – more muscular utilization, more size and more strength with every workout.
BETA-ALANINE
While many companies put Beta-Alanine exclusively into a Pre-Workout formula, the truth is that Beta-Alanine is even more effective when dosed more frequently, such as Post-Workout.
Most people take Beta-Alanine in their Pre-Workout because “they can feel it working”. I’ll let you in on a little secret – that feeling you get, the “pins and needles” effect is called paresthesia and it has nothing to do with improving your workout. It’s a reaction that is similar to an allergic reaction, it’s not dangerous, but it’s also not helping your performance! At least not in that workout. Read on to learn how Beta-Alanine actually works!
There is a common misunderstanding as to how Beta-Alanine works. The body needs Beta-Alanine to make Carnosine. Beta-Alanine is paired with L-Histidine to form Carnosine. With ongoing use of Beta-Alanine, the body increases its levels of Carnosine. Because there is a ton of Histidine in the body, the addition of Beta-Alanine ramps up Carnosine production. Once the levels build up, the performance effects begin to take place. Best of all, even if Beta-Alanine supplementation is stopped, it can take as much as two-weeks for the Carnosine levels to drop.
Muscular contraction during intense exercise leads to the accumulation of several by-products that contribute to muscle acidity. More often then not, lactic acid is to blame; however, every time an ATP molecule is used for energy, a proton (H+ atom) is released and this may also contribute to a drop in muscle pH.
Carnosine is contained in both slow and fast twitch muscles fibers and is responsible for buffering the pH levels (reducing acidity) in your body. One popular theory whereby carnosine contributes to reduced cellular acidity is by acting as a proton carrier to enhance the efficiency of proton efflux from the cell.
Additionally, by promoting high intra-muscular Carnosine concentrations, Beta-Alanine acts as a precursor to Nitric Oxide (NO) production and works to reduce intra-muscular acidification created by intense exercise and heavy training. In simple terms this means that Beta-Alanine helps to buffer the pH levels in your muscles, preventing the acidity that occurs during exercise. A decrease in the pH balance or increase in muscular acidity leads to that muscle burn you’ll experience that often prevents gains. Beta-Alanine provides the stimulus to push through this.
L-CARNITINE L-TARTRATE: Post-Workout Recovery Powerhouse
Intense exercise may induce hypoxia (loss of oxygen) in working muscles and the re-oxygenation process may induce oxidative damage; stated more simply, your body is “burning muscle”. L-Carnitine L-Tartrate (LCLT) acts as a kind of “shield” for your muscles during intense workouts. It protects your muscle tissue from damage that would normally take place as you train.
Studies have shown as much as 40% reduction in Post-Workout muscle tissue damage. Particularly, studies have shown a reduction in post-exercise markers of oxidative damage: serum hypoxanthine, xanthine oxidase, and myoglobin in addition to reductions in muscle soreness. Most impressively, it has shown to protect not only the muscle, but the hormone receptors on the muscle cells.
Accordingly, supplementation with LCLT has been shown to increase androgen receptor levels in muscle biopsies. This increases the ability for the muscles to receive anabolic signals that would normally be obliterated. Simply stated, LCLT lets your muscles recover faster and grow more quickly in response to your workout.
L-Carnitine enhances performance by increasing the body’s reliance on fat for energy; this reduces depletion of muscle glycogen. By reducing muscle tissue lactic acid build-up, performance athletes using L-Carnitine can extend duration of muscular exertion before fatigue.
L-Carnitine is essential for transporting long-chain fats into the cell for energy production. L-Carnitine taps into your fat supply and may provide support to burn it as fuel, resulting in increased energy. Without L-Carnitine, these fats cannot be burned for energy and are instead shunted to stored body fat.
TAURINE (2,500 mg)
Taurine is an abundant intracellular amino acid in skeletal muscle and similar to creatine, Taurine draws water in muscle cells and acts as a cell volumizer. This in turn draws additional nutrients for recovery and growth, increasing cell volume and enhancing muscle fullness. And like Creatine, Taurine is not present in whey protein, whereas all other essential and nonessential amino acids are.
With intense exercise comes changes in electrolyte concentration both inside and outside of the cell, i.e. loss of muscle K+ and gain of Na+, Cl- and Ca2+. Detrimental changes in osmolarity are a consequence of membrane excitability driven by ion imblanace and cells combat this by manipulating organic osmolytes such as Taurine.
Taurine regulates water and mineral salts in the blood. It maintains movement of potassium, magnesium and sodium across the cell membranes and regulates ion balance between cells. Due to its ability to regulate electrolytes, it may play a role in preventing muscle cramping.
Taurine also plays a role in muscle contraction, as it has been shown to increase the rate at which the sarcoplasmic reticulum accumulates Ca2+ in both type I and type II muscle fibers. Thus, it enhances the ability of the muscles to generate force by increasing the uptake and release of calcium ions. Muscle contraction leads to an increase in nitric oxide synthase and/or nitric oxide (NO).
Increases in NO have been shown to enhance glucose uptake in skeletal muscles which may enhance exercise intensity and post-exercise recovery. Taurine plays a role in Nitric Oxide production (NO gas present during muscle contraction and blood vessel dilation) and therefore may enhance the workout session and lead to a more rigorous workout.
A study posted in FASEB found several exercise-related benefits of L-Taurine. Specifically, severe restriction of TAURINE reduced mobility of skeletal muscle, while supplementation improved skeletal functions and provided an energizing effect. Moreover, lab tests have shown that muscle cells treated with taurine show significant enhancements in maturation thereby contributing to the process of muscle recovery.
BETAINE (1,000 mg)
Betaine, usually found in super-foods like wheat bran, spinach and beets, has been included to further enhance strength and power output, and not in a small dosage either – 1,000 mg a day! Betaine has been shown in new research to improve exercise performance.
Participants actually improved their squat muscular endurance and performance. These statistically significant results were shown in just 2 weeks! These massive gains are likely due to the effect of Betaine to increase muscle-promoting growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor with simultaneous decrease in exercise-induced cortisol.
Betaine, in comparison to Taurine, has also been shown to function as an organic osmolyte, maintaining cellular fluid balance. Moreover, Betaine has been shown to elicit a protective effect against heatinduced denaturation of citric synthase. Given that citric synthase is a critical mediator of whole-body energy production, preventing its destruction is sure to promote massive energy gains.
CREATINE ABSORPTION COMPLEX
CinnulinPF – Multi-patented Creatine Transport Activator
The Absorption Complex starts with CinnulinPF, the only patented ingredient standardized for doubly linked Type-A Polymers. Science confirms this product’s ability to affect glucose transport through insulin signaling mechanisms. Combined with Creatine in the body, this patented ingredient can improve the level of absorption specific to muscle tissue.
Prickly Pear Extract (Opuntia phaeacantha), has a well-documented insulinogenic effect. Insulinogenics have the ability to reduce blood sugar and increase the uptake of nutrients such as Creatine without the presence of sugars, (typically required to assist in the absorption of Creatine.)
Bitter Melon Extract (Momordica charantia) affects insulin receptors by helping to maintain a healthy normal level of function. Scientists have recently discovered a functional unit found in bitter melon extract that physically binds to insulin receptors and stimulates their activity, facilitating enhanced glucose uptake.
The result – a complex of potent ingredients designed to make CVOL unmatched in its ability to drive the effectiveness of patented, clinically tested ingredients to a completely new level.
SCIENCE + TRAINING = GAINS
We’ve digested all the scientific literature from dozens of peer-reviewed, published research studies on the best-of-the-best sports nutrition performance ingredients. We’ve compiled them into one easy-to-drink supplement with dosages shown to be effective.
If you’re looking for a research-based supplement to take your muscle gains to the next level, look no further.
