The average football player trains roughly 4-6 hours a day for 5 days a week — at a minimum, according to FC Barcelona’s High-Performance Academy. Given the extensive training to coax out stellar performances that stand out, it helps to understand what else is needed or what can help. As it turns out, the use of supplements for sports training carries several benefits for sports players and not just football players. So what benefits are these?
Increased Healing
In football, injuries are fairly common. In fact, sprains and strains amount to around 41.4% of all sports injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average healing time for a sprain or strain can take anywhere from five days to six weeks. That’s a lot of time lost for those aiming to train. Supplements like BPC-157 can help speed up the healing process. BPC-157 is a peptide that helps to repair damaged tissue and collectively makes it stronger so it is less prone to future injury. Increased healing can help an athlete get back to training so that they can attain their desired physical goal. Other effective supplements are those that make use of Vitamin C, Zinc and Vitamin A.
Improving Endurance
Given that sometimes training can exceed the normal 4-6 hours, it is important for athletes to have endurance and stamina. Beyond training, endurance is also needed in games due to the length of a match. This is something that supplements can help with. Supplements that have branched-chain amino acids can help mitochondria metabolise it in an athlete’s skeletal muscle in order to boost energy levels during physical exertion. Other supplements that can help with endurance are creatine and sodium phosphate. The sodium phosphate empowers red blood cells to move faster into the bloodstream and have them carry more oxygen. This, in turn, boosts the aerobic capacity of the athlete, as their muscles and other organs are getting extra energy.
Bulking Up
In football, cultivating certain muscles is a priority. These muscles include triceps, biceps and shoulders, as they are primarily used in defence, and appropriately bulking up these muscles is necessary — using supplements to do so is fairly normal. Around 82.2% of athletes use supplements to help with gaining muscle, according to The Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. Protein shakes and protein supplements are reliable in helping athletes gain the muscle that they need. This works well, since protein is needed to boost the amino acid building blocks that help to form muscle mass.
Sports athletes rely on their bodies to perform. In order to get the best body possible, the use of a combination of both physical training and supplement use is now the norm. What sets true athletes apart from the rest is their capability to stay within the legal norms of supplement use. Not only does this continue to provide a good case for proper supplement use, but it also allows future athletes to reap the benefits of using supplements for sports training.
