The Anabolic Pump Protocol: Top 6 Blood Flow Supplements
By David Barr

HERE THE DAVID BARR LIVE INTERVIEW ON THE MD RESEARCH SHOW AT:  http://www.musculardevelopment.com/content/blogcategory/115/181/

Let’s be honest: getting a big muscle pump looks and feels damn good. But vanity aside, it also has a spectacular side effect…anabolism! If you want to start maximizing your pump now, keep reading, because you’re about to discover the best supplements for doing just that.

Pump or Pageantry?

We all know that the pump is that amazing, albeit temporary, increase in muscle size we get while training. But what is it and how can we use it to achieve our goals? This muscle-swelling phenomenon is actually a localized increase in muscle blood flow used to deliver more nutrients and clear away waste. To understand why this is a big deal, consider the following:

Greater Nutrient Delivery = Muscle Growth, Recovery, and Strength

Greater Waste Removal = Greater Training Capacity and Strength

Muscle Memory In A Pill?
If you’ve ever taken a layoff from training then you’re probably already familiar with the idea of muscle memory. Upon your return to training, after the requisite muscle shrinkage (atrophy), it becomes far easier to build the muscle back up to its original size –it’s as though the muscle “remembered” the larger volume and wanted to get back there.
According to my colleague and training expert Nick Nilsson, one theory behind this experience is the idea of fascial stretching. Although an entire article could be written on this topic alone –and in fact Nick has developed a brilliant training manual called Muscle Explosion that covers it in depth- we’ll just cover the 3 basics here:

A)    Fascia is tough connective tissue that surrounds our muscle

B)    This tissue may be “tight” and subsequently restrictive to muscle growth

C)    Stretching our fascia could give our muscle room to grow, spurring on anabolism

So not only does the pump look and feel great, we can actually use it to increase our muscle size, strength, recovery, and performance! Because of this, the supplement market has been flooded with products claiming to help you maximize this effect. Now in order to sort through the confusion, let’s cover some of the most effective supplements to achieve the anabolic pump.

Key Point: Given the common and erroneous application of patient population data, the supporting research for these products is based on healthy individuals.

1.    Fish Oil

Although I’m pretty tight-lipped about explicitly recommending supplements, there’s no doubt that if there is one that you should be using, it’s fish oil. There’s been plenty written on the health benefits of this supplement, so for the sake of this article, all you need to know is that this stuff works –and yes that’s intentionally ambiguous.

As far as the muscle pump is concerned, research has shown that the essential fatty acids in fish oil (DHA and EPA) can improve muscle blood flow during exercise (16)! This is great for us because, as we’ve just discussed, that’s the exact time when we need the blood flow to be maximized for anabolism.

2.    Glycine Propionyl-L-Carnitine

If you’re not currently using carnitine, you probably will be by the end of the year. Carnitine is going to be BIG in 2009. I’ve been writing about carnitine, in the form of Carnitine Tartrate, for a while now for its potential to boost performance and muscle androgen receptor content (1).

But there’s a new kid on the block and it has a unique study to support its efficacy. Known as Glycine Propionyl-L-Carnitine (GPLC) (sold under the trade name Glycocarn) this stuff was tested in resistance-trained athletes, which helps make it directly applicable to us! This is a rare find, and any time research is performed using our specific subgroup, we need to pay attention.

During handgrip exercise, similar to high rep resistance training, the GPLC group showed significantly elevated markers of NO production (2). This means that although blood flow wasn’t directly measured, it was almost certainly likely stimulated.

In fact, as one of only two supplements that I publicly recommend (neither of which I am paid to discuss), I think you’d be pleasantly surprised with the blood flow improvement from GPLC use.