Introduction
Three study materials, and research articles, were used to investigate the effects of leucine metabolic supplementation on athletic performance. Specifically, resistance training was used as a control line. The extent to which the combination of such training with metabolic supplements compared to resistance training alone had positive effects on athletic performance was assessed. The metabolic supplement used was a metabolite of the essential acid leucine, namely b-hydroxy, and b-methyl butyrate (HMB). To be more precise, HMB is naturally produced when the amino acid leucine is broken down.
Analysis of Materials
In the three readings offered, the role of HMB in building muscle mass was evaluated in terms of comparison with leucine. In general, the applied value of such studies has been to understand the nature of HMB compared to its precursor and to try to answer the question of whether the metabolite has more athletic benefits. A study by Jakubowski et al. (2019) found that the use of HMB-based metabolic supplements compared to leucine had no clear benefit for muscle hypertrophy. It is worth saying that hypertrophy is desirable for athletic performance because it allows one to build muscle mass, which is the ultimate goal of athletes. In other words, this study showed that taking HMB did not produce any positive results for increasing athletic strength or building muscle mass in athletes compared to using a leucine-based serum.
A second study evaluated the statistical validity of using HMB as an enhancing agent for improving body composition as an indicator of improved athletic performance. Teixeira et al. (2019) used a blinded randomized design to assess athletes’ body composition after taking HMB-based supplements — X-ray absorptiometry was used as an examination tool. The overall conclusion of this work was that Teixeira et al. could not find a statistically valid effect of metabolic supplementation on improving athletic performance. The authors specified that no more positive effects were found than when compared to the control group (placebo). For this reason, Teixeira et al. do not recommend the use of such supplements.
Finally, the third paper for this assignment was an older paper that evaluated the effects of a metabolic supplement on body fat and fat-free composition. Thomson et al. (2009) evaluated the extent to which HMB use could lead to a decrease in body fat percentage. The results showed that HMB had a decreasing effect on body fat composition but had no conclusive effect on fat-free composition. In other words, the use of HMB helped burn excess fat but had barely any effect on increasing muscle mass and increasing an athlete’s athletic performance. Notably, this study does not refute earlier results but instead focuses attention on the inconclusive effects of metabolic supplementation on athletes’ muscle mass growth.
Conclusion
Taken together, the three materials studied proved that the use of an HMB-based metabolic supplement, a breakdown product of the amino acid leucine, has no meaningful, proven effect on improving an athlete’s lean body mass. These results may be considered conclusive for several reasons at once. First, three independent studies came to the same conclusion. Second, the studies used an instrumental approach to the experiments, so their results can be considered reliable. Third, the design of most of them was based on blind randomization, which also increases confidence in the high reliability and validity of the findings. This evidence is sufficient to assess the low or even no effectiveness of HMB metabolic supplementation in enhancing athletic performance in comparison to the use of leucine-based serum.
References
Jakubowski, J. S., Wong, E. P., Nunes, E. A., Noguchi, K. S., Vandeweerd, J. K., Murphy, K. T.,…& Phillips, S. M. (2019). Equivalent hypertrophy and strength gains in β-hydroxy-β-methylbutyrate-or leucine-supplemented men. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 51(1), 65-74.
Teixeira, F. J., Matias, C. N., Monteiro, C. P., Valamatos, M. J., Reis, J. F., Batista, A.,… & Phillips, S. M. (2019). No effect of HMB or α-HICA supplementation on training-induced changes in body composition. European Journal of Sport Science, 19(6), 802-810.
Thomson, J. S., Watson, P. E., & Rowlands, D. S. (2009). Effects of nine weeks of β-Hydroxy-β-Methylbutyrate supplementation on strength and body composition in resistance trained men. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 23(3), 827-835.