Protein Supplements

This blog post is here to tell you what protein actually does to your body and why so many of us supplement with it.

You would be surprised if you search the web for "how muscle tissue grows" how many different theories there are behind it, you would have thought by now scientists would have hit the nail on the head and said this is it we have proven it, but unfortunately not.

The most widely believed theory, don’t get me wrong the others make sense but the principal behind this theory is widely believed because it makes sense. You workout hard, you damage your muscles, they ache and you rest for a day or two and they heal and a bit like scar tissue, they grow back with a little extra tissue than before.

There are many factors that affect your muscle growth vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and all sorts but in this post we are talking about what protein does....

Your muscles are mainly protein and there's a lot of water their too. Protein that we take as supplements and in the foods that we eat are used in what we all know as our body's recovery time; this might be the 2 hours after we train and the time that we spend sleeping where our body can heal at its best because it is doing nothing else.

Watch the attached video about how skeletal muscle is made up and it will explain the breakdown of muscle tissue, once you watch this you will understand where protein comes into play and how your muscle actually grows, The key here that not a lot of people know is that we do not actually build more muscle fibres, the amount of muscle fibres in our bodies are set at birth which is why you will see that there are people with a genetic advantage over others but I won’t go into this as it’s not really important as we are interested in teaching you how to get the best out of yourself not to compare yourself to Usain bolt or Ronnie Coleman.



Now here is the real important bit, the Micro tears theory that is believed to be the reason why we increase muscle size comes in at the level of myofilaments. We are damaging these cells by resistance training, the heavier the weights we try to lift, the more we strain these fibres and the more damage is done to them. Our Body then uses all this extra protein that we force into our bodies to heal these cells and it causes the cells to get a tiny bit longer and wider than before so it can cope better with the strains that we continually keep putting them under. what you have to remember here is the amount of actual size increase is absolutely microscopical, but when you think about how many millions of myofilaments there are to a single muscle if every fibre increased by 1/100th of its original size it would make a massive difference to the overall size of your muscles.

There are other factors to your muscle growth and there are many other things needed to make your muscles grow but the thing to remember about protein is that it is just transported from your stomach into your blood travels to your muscles and is turned directly into muscle cell tissue by the complex system within your body.

Makes it quite simple when you read just that last paragraph, you need to remember that your muscles are protein and if you want to develop your muscles more, you need to have enough protein coming in so it can store more protein as muscle tissue.

Now what's good and what’s not when it comes to protein supplements??

I tend to stick to all in one supplements as a personal rule, the trouble with running a business and maintaining a website of such size and all the other stuff that goes with I don’t really have the time to train as hard as I used to or spend that much time mixing up shakes, pre workout supplements and popping 6-8 creatine capsules in the morning and 2 fat burning caps a multi vitamin and 6 testosterone boosting caps before I go to bed....I realise that for some of you this is your life though because your dedicated to the game and you’re serious about being the best you can be just as much as I'm dedicated to giving you the best quality supplements at the best prices and as much knowledge as I can so you can achieve your goals.

Currently we sell a whole range of Protein Supplements in the London Muscle Store, The most popular of which are:

Nutrisport 90+ Protein - A 5kg tub of this comes in at great value at £44.99, it’s a quality protein and comes in a decent variety of flavours and they do actually taste ok from the samples that I've tried the taste like what they say they are so you can’t really go wrong with that.

Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey - Now this is a difficult one for me, I think Optimum Nutrition have made a fantastic quality protein here it’s one of the best on the market in fact but it seems a little pricey no matter how you look at it. Buying in bulk can make it a lot cheaper a 10lb sack comes in at £72.99, If you’re serious about your bodybuilding and have a good workout and nutrition program then you will definitely get the best out of this product but I recommend if your an amateur that’s starting out you might want to try something a little cheaper because until you really get your workout and your diet dialled you might find you’ve spent a lot of money on protein and you can’t see any results in 4-5 weeks and you give up and don’t even finish the bag. As far as flavours go they are ok, I quite liked the banana flavour it tasted a little sweeter than other protein shakes which made me think hmmm I wouldn’t mind committing to 10lbs of it at a time.

Optimum Nutrition 100% Casein - now this is important, anyone ever told you that you have to be drinking 3 protein shakes a day to keep gaining size and weight, then you try it and just end up with dodgy guts, well the reason for this is that the instantly available protein like whey protein can run right through you if you take too much of it. Casein protein is a slow release protein it actually forms a gel in the stomach and is slowly digested giving you a long lasting source of protein. I’d recommend to anyone looking to training hard and probably more than 3 times a week get a casein protein as well as a whey protein and take a casein protein shake in the evening before you go to bed, this will really make a difference to your recovery because not only will you have had all the protein through the day your body will still be getting protein throughout the night even though you’re sleeping and not eating.

BSN Syntha-6 - comes in a little pricier than others at £29.69 for 1.32kg, very good protein though, comes in a huge range of flavours which cater for all taste buds and has good reviews all over the web, hasn’t used it myself but know many people that won’t use anything else so I can’t argue with that.

Now for some slightly cheaper protein supplements that do the job really well but don’t carry some of the extra premium of other brands, remember there is no such thing as a bad product these days, companies don’t spend millions of pounds making, testing and marketing bad products but what I think you will agree on is that sometimes we pay more for branded products, Think of Optimum Nutrition as your Hugo Boss winter overcoat and think of dymatize as your M&S winter overcoat........They both do the same thing and they both look the same from the outside but because it says Hugo Boss on the inside pocket its £250 more expensive. You can’t disagree the stitching is going to have a few faults on the M&S version and the liner isn’t going to be as flashy and it doesn’t come with one of them nice Hugo Boss Hangers and a zip up Hugo bag to hang it up in but hey they are both just coats.......

PHD Nutrition Pharma Whey - £34.99 for 5lbs, comes in nice flavours all taste good, chocolate mint reminds me of that pepper mint aero you can get, not my favourite but hey someone out there must like it.

Dymatize Elite Whey - £30.49 for 5lbs, now this one was one of my all time favourites not only because it was really good value for money, you get quite a few servings out of it but have you ever wanted a protein shake that was more of a fruit juice rather than a milk shake, sometimes milk shake after milk shake really starts to get boring and you feel sick of it, they are heavy and sit in your stomach making you feel bloated. Well not anymore, Dymatize offer you 2 great flavours, Orange Dreamsicle and green apple which make a real nice change to the usual Vanilla, Chocolate and banana. All in all Dymatize Elite Whey stands out as one of the best value for money and most diverse proteins we sell.

Boditronics Express Whey - £32.49 for 5lbs, again good value for money protein, flavours are good and get good reviews online.

Gaspari Nutrition MyoFusion - £35.99 for 5lbs, good protein supplement borders on being an all in one supplement as it has a few added vitamins in it to help your body develop, can work a little bit better for amateurs that aren’t supping with anything else as it has the extra vitamins/minerals that your body needs.

Reflex Instant Whey - £32.49 for 5lbs, good protein supplement and the nice thing about reflex supplements is they are quite clean, they don’t contain much else than what they say on the label. Makes them quite good to mix up with other supplements to get an all round shake. A couple of the guys that train with us often use Reflex Instant whey mixed with Casein and added L-glutamine to make their own all in one shakes.

Well now I hope that this helps you find the right protein and I hope you now understand the importance of protein in your body and the anatomy of muscle fibres.

Note: Taking in excessive amounts of protein, can lead to upset stomachs and excess protein can be stored by your body as Fat so be careful, avoid taking your 3 protein shakes a day plus meals on your off days, it may be better on your off days to just do 2 shakes 1 in the morning and 1 before bed of a decent casein protein and make sure you eat well.