What is mass gainer and should I use it?

Most people take protein supplements to build muscle or aid recovery. Under what circumstances would you choose a mass gainer over a pure protein supplement to achieve these goals? Have you heard the term “hard gainer” before? This term is used to describe people who find it difficult to add muscle mass or gain weight. To gain weight you need to be eating more calories than your body burns. Hard gainers often have a very high energy expenditure due to holding physically demanding jobs and putting many hours into training. In addition they find it difficult to eat enough food to provide the energy needed to promote muscle growth. This is where a gainer supplement can help; by providing a high number of drinkable calories and protein that can be added in addition someones usual diet.

It’s not for everyone. If you are trying to lose fat and gain muscle, then you shouldn’t use mass gainer. A better option in this case would be the pure whey powders WPI or WPC as these provide adequate protein without the added carbohydrate calories. This means you will access your fat stores for energy, helping you lose fat mass.

You can take mass gainer before training, after training, or at any other time if you are needing to take in quick additional calories.

Taken before training the simple carbohydrates in mass gainers help fuel training and can help decrease the feeling of fatigue. This effect will be more pronounced if you have not eaten enough in the hours before training.

Taken after training, a mass gainer will rapidly start the muscle rebuilding process, and replenish glycogen energy stores within your muscle. Ingesting carbohydrate along with protein after you train actually accelerates the muscle repair and building process as the insulin spike helps shuttle amino acids into the muscles.

Taken as a snack or meal, mass gainers are a rapidly ingested and absorbed source of muscle building calories that can help you reach the daily calorie surplus required to build muscle mass.