The Complete Essentials™ includes a non-proprietary blend of comprehensive ingredients formulated to specifically address:
- Improved energy during training
- Improved recovery after training
- Support lean body mass
- Enhance muscle protein synthesis
- Support cellular hydration
- Increase blood flow to working muscles intra-workout
- Improve fat metabolism
What makes Complete Essentials™ training formula so unique is the diverse array of ingredients (all-in-one) that have been scientifically proven to support muscular endurance, recovery and repair.
Here is exactly what we have put into our comprehensive formulation and why we consider it to be a superior training formulation:
Essential Amino Acids:
Essential amino acids (EAA’s) are the building blocks of protein and cannot be made by the body. As a result, they must be obtained from food, or in this case, supplementation.
The nine essential amino acids (all included in Complete Essentials™) are: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine.
Photo credit: https://www.fastbleep.com/biology-notes/40/753
You may be familiar with the 3 most popular (of these essential amino acids): leucine, isoleucine and valine otherwise known as the Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAA’s). Most workout products on the market will include the BCAA’s, to some degree, but refrain from including all of the EAA’s.
While the Branched Chain Amino Acids are most popular, research suggests that strength and endurance athletes will benefit from approximately 6g per 70kg (154lbs) mass of EAA ingested immediately prior to and/or during exercise.
Because there is also ample research to support the higher dosing of BCAA’s peri-workout, Complete Essentials™ has been fortified with higher amounts of these amino acids in a 2:1:1 ratio (leucine, isoleucine, valine) to help further support creating an anabolic training and recovery environment.
The benefits of consuming an essential amino acid powder prior to and during training revolve around the ability of free-form amino acids to be immediately digested, absorbed and assimilated into the bloodstream and utilized by the working muscles.
This is contrary to something like a whey protein that needs to be digested in the stomach before being able to be utilized and can therefore, potentially interfere with optimal blood flow, gastrointestinal well-being, as well as performance intra-workout and recovery post-workout.
Complete Essentials™, as mentioned in previous posts, provides a hefty dose EAA’s in concert with BCAA’s: 8g EAA and 5g BCAA’s per serving (2 scoops)
Citrulline:
Citrulline is quickly being recognized as one of the most popular and important pre-workout compounds on the market, and the benefits extend far beyond just strength training.
Pre-workouts have largely been utilized for a strength training/body building population but are gaining steam with endurance athletes, like runners and triathletes, as well as those looking for a competitive edge as they diet down and reverse diet for/from physique competitions. Citrulline plays an integral role in increasing blood flow to the muscles during exercise. For weightlifters, more blood flow to working muscles means bigger pumps by increasing the amount of arginine in the blood, which we know leads to more nitric oxide (NO) production.
For both intense weight lifting as well as endurance based training, citrulline contributes to enhanced ammonia clearance in the urea cycle (our nitrogen disposal system), which means less acid build up during intense muscular exertion leading to longer workouts, less muscle soreness and enhanced recovery.
For the reasons mentioned above, in concert with citrullines ability to reduce and delay the onset of the body’s immuno-suppressive mechanisms that are usually seen after intense exercise. For hard training and high mileage athletes, recovery becomes equally important to training and nutrition, which is where supplementation can have the biggest impact to enhance recovery and help prevent overtraining.
It’s worth mentioning that citrulline supplementation has been shown to be more beneficial for increases in plasma arginine (remember, increased NO production) than supplementational arginine, hence the increase in citrulline’s popularity.
L-Carnitine:
Carnitine is found in almost all of your body’s cells and is particularly concentrated in skeletal tissue. It plays a crucial role in helping your body to burn, or oxidize, fat for fuel. So that your body can use fat as an energy source, carnitine transports long-chain fatty acids into specialized cellular fuel manufacturing centers called mitochondria. Once inside the cell, the mitochondria can burn the fatty acids to produce energy.
Based on the relevant research, Carnitine tartrate (the form found in Complete Essentials™) seems to have the biggest impact on exercise induced hormonal production, including testosterone and insulin-like growth factor binding hormone (IGFBH) in hypoxic exercise, like weight training. These benefits would extend to improved recovery from exercise as well as potentially contributing to increased fat burning when utilized before, during and after strenuous physical activity.
The latest studies indicate better recovery from exercise, decreased exercise-induced muscle damage, decreased muscle soreness, increased antioxidant effects, and improved vascular function. The most effective dose is 1-2g per day (a single serving of Complete Essentials™ comes close to exceeding the recommended dosing).
Electrolytes:
Minerals like potassium, magnesium, and sodium play a crucial role in hydration and muscle function during strenuous exercise. These minerals, which can often be depleted from dehydration, poor food quality, and lost through sweat, are imperative to promote cellular hydration and balance the body’s homeostatic mechanisms. Consuming liquids fortified with these electrolytes before, during and after exercise will help ensure optimal hydration, muscle function and recovery,
Artificial Sweeteners:
Photo credit: http://moderndayms.com/2015/04/artificial-sweeteners-not-a-healthy-alternative/
Most pre- and intra-workout products on the market utilize sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame-potassium. Regardless of whether or not these sweeteners are harmful, Complete Essentials™ uses only plant-based sweetener stevia in addition to a very minimal amount of organic sugar to ensure the taste is delicious without being too sweet to drink.
Performance Based Nutrition:
By utilizing a combination of performance-based ingredients in optimal quantities, Complete Essentials™ represents the cutting edge of athlete engineered nutrition to both optimize performance and body composition in hard training athletes as well as weekend warriors.
