Title:
The Effects of Beta Alanine Supplementation on Anaerobic Performance
Introduction: Athletes are always looking for a way to gain an advantage over their opponents. They do this by optimizing nutrition, training, and hydration, but several studies show that there is another way for this success. Beta-alanine has been shown to reduce fatigue and increase power among users and therefore allowing them to increase intensity-training level (Stout et al., 2006). β-Alanine is the rate-limiting precursor of carnosine, a naturally occurring peptide found in the muscle tissues. It requires a certain cellular pH to be sustained in order for proper muscle function to continue during exercise. Higher levels of carnosine act as…show more content… The difference between the beta-alanine and the placebo group for peak power was only 10 watts, with the beta-alanine at 659 watts and the placebo at 649 watts. When looking at the big picture, the difference in those values isn't very large; however, the beta-alanine group was still able to produce a higher peak power confirming the expectation that beta-alanine increases anaerobic power (Stout et al., 2006). In the control group, week 2’s peak power was higher than it was in week 1. Although a larger increase was seen this could be due to the same extraneous variable that possibly affected the results of the beta-alanine and placebo groups. Our results show that the improvement of the control group was similar to the experimental group, which gives little credit to beta-alanine’s ability to improve peak anaerobic power.
The results for mean power were similar to those for peak power. Beta-alanine had the highest mean power, followed by the placebo group, then week 2 control group, and finally week 1 control group as seen in Table 2. Just like in the others, extraneous variables could have affected our results. It’s difficult to determine if the improvements in the beta-alanine group’s performance were due to these extraneous variables or if it really does have an effect on mean
