Supplements For The Master Level Lifter

By Xavier Fox

When it comes to our bodies being at their physical prime, for one reason or another, society has determined that once a man hits 40 years of age the best he can hope for is to try to maintain his physique without losing too much muscle. Gain size and strength after 40… “Forget about it”, they say. It is true that once you hit your late 30’s that your natural hormone production will start to slow down and it becomes harder to maintain the same physique you had in your 20’s. However, modern science has developed many supplements that will help counteract the effects of age and help you continue to add slabs of “grade A” beef. Don’t let that big birthday get you down, because if you are a lifter in your 40’s… your glory days may still be ahead of you.

If you think that the body can’t gain muscle as you age, take a trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the third weekend in July. Every year, the NPC Masters Nationals is held there, and the winners of the 40-49 and 50-59 divisions earn IFBB Pro cards. The level of competition is nothing short of amazing, and it will leave no doubt in your mind that the body still has plenty of potential to grow after you reach 40. Do not forget… Ronnie Coleman was in his 40’s when he won his last few Olympias.
One of the better choices for the more “experienced” lifter is a supplement known as phosphatidylserine. This supplement plays a role in maintaining nerve cell integrity and improving nerve cell signal transmission. What this means to the aging lifter is that as the body ages and functions deteriorate, phosphatidylserine will keep the cells strong like they should be. It will also keep up the speed that nerves fire signals to muscles to allow you to continue to have quick and explosive muscle contractions as you age. Being able to maintain the speed and power of muscle contractions will keep you training hard and gaining size and strength.
As we age, our hormone production begins to decrease a little bit more each year. As our growth hormone and testosterone levels decrease, we cannot fight off the effects of the damaging stress hormone cortisol. To make things even worse, cortisol can destroy testosterone. So you have less testosterone in your system already, which allows cortisol to accumulate, and then the abundant supply of cortisol creates a double-whammy by destroying more testosterone. Therefore, as we train and go through our day, the stresses we encounter have a more profound effect on muscle breakdown, soreness, and general fatigue.
As you can see, being able to combat cortisol becomes just as critical to an ageing lifter as being able to maintain testosterone levels. It’s a good thing that phosphatidylserine is out there. This supplement has been shown to reduce by cortisol levels by up to 30%. The studies performed were done with both aerobic (cyclists) and anaerobic (weight lifting) athletes, so it will help you out no matter what type of training you are doing. If cortisol levels are 30% lower, then you will have 30% less muscle tissue wasted away, and your body will also spare more testosterone, which will lead to more muscle growth. That means you benefit from phosphatidylserine with two different mechanisms.
Studies have also shown that the athletes supplementing with phosphatidylserine report much less muscle soreness than their counterparts. In addition, the subjects would also report a better mental state and feeling of well-being. As we get older, the aches and pains we experience become more frequent, and they sometimes deter us from training or make us cut our workouts short. If we can blunt the soreness our body experiences as we train as well as improve the way we feel psychologically and emotionally, then imagine how that would improve our workouts. Mother Nature and her consequences of age would not be able to govern the duration and intensity of the workouts.
In order to do your best to keep cortisol at bay, take between 600-800 milligrams of phosphatidylserine before you workout. Cortisol also spikes during the twilight hours as you sleep and your body is trying to repair itself. Adding another 200-400 milligrams of phosphatidylserine to your pre-bedtime supplement stack will keep that cortisol resting harder than you are.
Another affect of age is that our bodies do not digest and convert the foods we eat as efficiently as they used to during our younger years. What this means is that the proteins, carbohydrates, and other nutrients we consume are not being utilized to rebuild muscle and restore glycogen as well as they should be. One way to enhance the utilization of the nutrients we consume is to increase the amount of blood flow. The more blood that is travelling through our veins, the more oxygen that gets carried to the muscles for increased energy, and the more nutrients that can be brought to the muscles for superior levels of growth.
The question is… what supplement creates an increase in blood flow? If you answered “nitric oxide” then you earned a gold star for the day. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator, so it causes the veins to expand to allow increased blood flow. In addition to the increased nutrient flow to the muscles, lifters who use nitric oxide report mind-blowing muscle pump during their workouts. One more little titbit of information about ageing and “pump”… the drug Viagra’s action is based on nitric oxide production and use. Enough said.
No matter what age you are, when you train hard with weights, your body produces a large amount of hydrogen ions as a result of ATP being broken down. However, this is more dramatic when you get older. Consequently, the pH levels in your muscles drop and acids are formed which usually lead to a lot of discomfort. One thing for sure though, even if no pain is present to stop your set dead in its tracks, the muscle will still quickly succumb to fatigue because of this process. Guess what? If your muscles are really sore and tired, you will not be pushing them very hard and doing much growing. Producing size and strength requires being able to load the muscles to the max while you force them to do a couple of reps more than they want to.
Luckily, beta-alanine can come to the rescue. Beta-alanine is a very powerful antioxidant that is directly related to the amount of carnosine that your body can manufacture. Carnosine is a potent buffering agent that inhibits the effects of hydrogen ions and acids in the muscles. This allows fast-twitch muscle fibres to eliminate the hydrogen ions and stay in an optimal pH range, which leads to their ability to reach levels of growth. The fast-twitch muscle fibres can continue to train heavy instead of crapping out.
What is so important about the fast-twitch muscle fibres? The ability of the muscle to make gains depends on being able to recruit them… and the more, the merrier. You see, the beginning reps of a set will mostly engage the slow-twitch fibres. Once you get into the mid-range reps, you will finally start recruiting more fast-twitch fibres. However, it is only when you get up in the 8-10 rep range using heavy weights, and the muscle is being pushed to its limits, do you get the deep recruitment of fast-twitch fibres that produce the most growth. Beta-alanine’s ability to raise carnosine levels ensures that you make it to that stage of the set. Taking 3g when you get up in the morning should do the trick.
Those hydrogen ions being discussed are better known as free radicals. These free radicals are by-products of many biochemical reactions that occur in the system as a result of weight lifting. Free radicals are chemical compounds that used to be stable, but they have an electron stolen from their outer shell and become unstable to the point where they do not function as they should. They roam your system searching for a compound with a weak chemical bond so they can steal an electron to make themselves complete again. What ends up happening is that if the free radicals are left unchecked, then they will continue to multiply and carry on the free radical producing chain reactions at accelerated rates. Your system becomes saturated with all of these free radicals that not only cannot perform their intended function, but they search and destroy other compounds and cause them to be just as ineffective. You end up with millions of damaged cells, and your body cannot recover from your workouts properly let alone grow. Antioxidants are compounds that are able to stop free radicals, because they have the ability to donate an electron from their outer shell while still remaining stable and being able to fully perform the function that nature intended them to. As you age, your ability to recover is already tapering downward, so by not being able to control free radicals, you only add to the issue.
Beta-alanine is a good acid buffer and antioxidant, but if you are going to be training like a bodybuilder as you get into your 40’s and 50’s, then you will need to give it some help. Astaxanthin is a nutrient that is in the same class as beta-carotene (astaxanthin is a member of the carotenoid family), which is found in fruits and vegetables. Many studies performed on athletes have proven it to be a strong antioxidant. Just how strong is it? It ranks second among its carotenoid family members. When you are in the gym giving it all you have every day, your body’s ability to combat free radicals is going to have a huge impact not only on your ability to grow, but it will also make a tremendous difference on your energy levels and feeling of general health.
Another way that astaxanthin combats free radicals is that it opens up a can of whoop-ass on singlet oxygen, which is formed during the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. This enables it to protect systems in your body such as the ones that have the ability to dilate blood vessels and stop fatty deposits from being left in the arterial walls of the heart (as we all know, the risk of heart disease increases as we age). When it comes to measuring a carotenoid’s ability to combat singlet oxygen, its “k-value” will be an indicator of how effective it is. The larger the k-value, the faster the carotenoid reacts with singlet oxygen (a type of free radical) and is able to absorb it quickly. All carotenoids can react with singlet oxygen without changing their structure. Of all the carotenoids, astaxanthin ranks as the third highest when it comes to k-values (2.4 x 10¹⁰ L mol^-1 s^-1).
It has even shown to be very effective at transporting through the blood/brain barrier, so it acts as a powerful antioxidant in the brain as well. This keeps your mind sharp as you age as well. A strong mind not only keeps your cognitive abilities at a top level where they need to be, but it keeps your ability to focus while you’re out-training all of the youngsters in the gym. In addition, when your mind is functioning well, you have a better sense of well-being overall and your moods tend to better. This also plays an important role in your ability to progress as a bodybuilder, because being mentally stable keeps your stress levels way down.
Almost everyone involved in fitness takes some sort of vitamin supplements. In order to be sure that you are maximizing your ability to destroy free radicals in your body, it is important that you at least make sure that vitamin E and vitamin C are included in your vitamin supplement program. By taking vitamin C, both muscular tissue and blood will be protected so that the damaging effects of free radicals will be nullified. Vitamin C is more than an antioxidant, it is an ingredient in the manufacturing of collagen, which is the body’s adhesive for the joints. Vitamin C also strengthens the connective tissues that fortify the bond between the muscles and bones.
Like phosphatidylserine that was discussed above, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research reported that 1000mg of vitamin C taken each day reduces the discharge of cortisol. Now you have a vitamin that protects you in a few different ways. It spares muscle loss, it keeps testosterone levels higher, and it severely lowers the amount of damage that free radicals do to your body. So, 500-1000 milligrams of vitamin C with your post-workout meal can make a big difference in your muscle gains.
Vitamin E is no slouch either, when it comes to protecting your body from free radicals, and it does not stop there. If you feel that the ability to burn fat, create energy, and build more muscle as you age is important to you, then you need to keep a bottle of vitamin E in your cabinet. Vitamin E is an extremely effective anti-oxidant that defends all cell membranes in the body from oxidative stress. This helps you recuperate better, remain highly energetic, and stay away from illness. Vitamin E also improves insulin sensitivity. Insulin is the most anabolic hormone in your body, which makes it extremely important to building muscle. Studies have shown that taking 1350IU per day of vitamin E improves glucose clearance and insulin sensitivity. You will be able to absorb more carbohydrates, and thus promote the release of the anabolic hormone insulin for increased muscle gains.
Finally, bodybuilders of every age should be supplementing with branched-chain amino acids if they want to continuously make improvements. As you get older though, they become even more important due to the fact that your body does not assimilate nutrients as well as it does at a much younger age. By having an abundant pool of readily available branched-chain amino acids in your system, your body can utilize the proteins you eat much more efficiently as well as recuperate from training and develop new muscle. Do not forget, amino acids are the building blocks of muscle tissue, so if you are spending a lot of your time and efforts in the gym each day it would not make sense to do that unless you also took the time to ensure that you had enough amino acids in your system.
Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) include leucine, isoleucine and valine, which all work synergistically to repair and build muscle tissue. BCAA’s are metabolized in the muscle tissue instead of in the liver so they become a much more potent source of energy than most supplements. When BCAA’s are broken down in the muscle tissue, they will provide more ATP than the same amount of glucose. BCAA’s are also the pre-cursors for the manufacturing of alanine and glutamine in the body and they play a very important role in protein synthesis.
As you workout with weights, your body starts running low on alanine, glutamine, and protein. If the body needs to continue manufacturing these elements, it will break down muscle tissue in order to create more BCAA’s, and this means that your body is now in a catabolic state instead of an anabolic one which means you are losing muscle instead of gaining it. It is tough enough to gain muscle as you get older, you do not need to provide any help to the muscle wasting actions. Be very aware of how much protein you are consuming each day, but also supplement with BCAA’s in order to optimize your muscle building potential. That extra energy you will be able to utilize to train harder won’t hurt your cause either.
Don’t let the notion that you are getting on in years keep you from pursuing your goals in the gym. Your body is still plenty capable of adding quality muscle. Be consistent with your training and be sure you are consuming enough quality food to support recuperation and new growth. However, as the song goes, “The old grey mare ain’t what she used to be”, so make sure that phosphatidylserine, nitric oxide, beta-alanine, astaxanthin, vitamin A, vitamin E, and branched-chain amino acids make their way into your supplement program.
Youth and vitality have their advantages in the weight room, but they are no match for experience and wisdom. Remember, being able to do is not quite as effective as knowing what to do.