Best CrossFit Supplements - What are they and how do they help?
What are the best CrossFit supplements? To get the answer and choose the products for your needs and goals, let’s look into the CrossFit training process.
CrossFit becomes more and more popular thanks to its inclusiveness and variance. Everyone can find what they need in this sport of fitness - better health, endurance, strength, longevity, or competition. Whether you’d like to perform at a high level or just look great naked, CrossFit will help with both.
CrossFit allows athletes to improve across multiple fitness domains, such as speed, stamina, power, strength, agility, balance, cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, flexibility, etc. The variance of workouts provides balanced development and builds a well-rounded athlete.
*Disclaimer - Please note ICON Nutrition is in not affiliated to or endorsed by CrossFit Inc. Views of this blog are of our own opinion and love of the sport of CrossFit*
Being consistent and training 3-5 times is the right way to your fitness goals. However, another crucial part is nutrition, for sure. And we are not talking about special diets to lose weight or get visible abs. For safe training, overall fitness, and wellness the athletes should pay attention to how they fuel their bodies. In this article we address the nutrition part and present the best CrossFit supplements for the fitness lovers.
The training process, the performance, the experience you get, the results both on the leaderboard and in your everyday life depend directly on what you eat before and after the training, and on the rest days.
If regular gym members can just eat clean to feel and look great, the competitors strive to lower the % of fat in their bodies to the level when it gives them the advantage in some movements, like HSPUs or muscle-ups, but does not hurt the performance. No doubt, getting all the necessary nutrients and elements is 80% of overall fitness and performance in CrossFit. Elite athletes rely on the best CrossFit supplements to ensure top results.
The cool thing is that your nutrition is within your control. This is something you can work on and adjust to get the most out of your training. Today, you can optimize your diet by eating more real food and less processed products, consuming enough veggies and leafy greens, hitting your daily protein norm, and receiving the vitamins and minerals from diverse meals.
In addition to high-quality food, CrossFit athletes can also complement their nutrition with various supplements. This is not a shortcut, the real food will always be in the first place. However, the supplements are super helpful in everyday life, they do move the needle for you.
The best CrossFit supplements ensure hitting the daily calories and nutrients norm, help to be consistent, stick to the nutrition plan and get the desired fitness adaptations. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to replenish vital elements solely with food.
The right products can help achieve a person’s fitness goals much faster and take the training process to a new level. So what do we expect from the best CrossFit supplements?
Enhanced performance. Pre-workouts serve as a boost before the training, allowing an athlete to go harder. Vitamins and nutrients products ensure proper processes inside our body, so we perform the movement safely and with sound mechanics.
Strength development. The best CrossFit supplements contribute to muscle growth, muscular strength, and endurance adaptations. These are either macronutrients or essential amino acids and chemicals that sometimes can’t be obtained from food in full amount.
Efficient recovery. Fast and full recovery between the sessions and in a long run ensures significant results and enjoyment from the training process. Besides taking enough rest days, you can proactively recover with the help of high-quality nutrition and the best CrossFit supplements providing indispensable elements that help your body heal.
It’s easy to get lost and give up the idea of starting taking supplements if you are not sure what exactly you need right now. To stay consistent and take care of your nutrition, you may want to know exactly how the product should contribute to your life.
We gathered 7 best CrossFit supplements that work for various goals, so you can choose wisely and fuel your body properly.
7 Best CrossFit Supplements:
Creatine For CrossFit | Best CrossFit Supplements
Creatine is one of the best CrossFit supplements for athletes working to build muscle size, increase strength, muscular endurance, and develop power. It helps CrossFitters to lift more and to get more heavy lifts in a row. In this way you are able to do more work in less time, keeping a decent pace for longer.
This product is well-researched and its effect is proven by science. It's a safe and effective performance booster, loved by CrossFit competitors and beginners. Creatine is a natural vital substance found in the human body. It transports energy to every cell - heart, brain, skeletal muscles, and other tissues.
Creatine is used to produce ATP, a chemical fueling intense work, like CrossFit workouts. It runs out within 5-8 seconds, so you can work very hard for this short period, e. g. do heavy snatches unbroken or sprint. Once you use the ATP reserve, you are not able to generate the same power anymore and should take a rest. Creatine helps to renew the ATP supply, so you can recover quickly and perform more repetitions in less time.
When starting to take creatine, you are loading your creatine storages. It’s recommended to consume 5 grams per day.
Choose only the best CrossFit supplements. Check out Creatine Performance advanced formula to develop strength, explosiveness and increase lean muscle mass.
Protein For CrossFit | Best CrossFit Supplements
Protein powder is an extremely popular supplement loved by fitness enthusiasts of any level. It improves muscle recovery, growth, and performance by providing the necessary amount of nutrients and essential amino acids. Protein is necessary to build the lean muscle mass and to recover effectively between the sessions.
Protein is proven to be safe and effective by multiple pieces of research based on scientific evidence and practical considerations. No doubt, it’s one of the best CrossFit supplements.
Everyone can choose the right type of protein powder based on their needs to achieve their fitness goals. Whey protein, casein, and recovery protein all contribute to optimized nutrition and enhanced recovery, but also have their own advantages.
Whey protein is a fast and easily digestible source of protein per meal. It’s perfect for building lean muscle mass and hitting the daily norm of macronutrients.
Recovery protein provides optimized muscle healing and growth between the training sessions. The recovery protein formula contains multiple vital nutrients your body needs to get the most out of the training and recovery process.
Casein protein is known as a slow-digesting protein. It enhances your recovery processes. It’s important to have a decent protein supply before going to sleep to avoid catabolism and ensure muscle growth. Casein protein also helps to get better sleep and strengthen the immune system.
Opt for the best CrossFit supplements and choose high-quality protein. Check out these 3 types of protein powder and upgrade your training and recovery process on the way to your fitness goals!
Whey Protein - Grass Fed Whey Protein
Omega 3 For CrossFit | Best CrossFit Supplements
Multiple inflammation processes occur in our bodies all the time. To stay healthy, perform and recover well we need to have the inflammation level under control.
High-intensity training like CrossFit causes damage and inflammation in the body tissues. They heal and adapt after the session, becoming stronger and more durable. If the recovery process is not optimal due to any reason, the body will not perform properly during the next session and an athlete won’t achieve the desired results.
For this reason, CrossFitters are interested in products reducing inflammation and accelerating recovery. And the Omega-3, a fatty acid, is among the best CrossFit supplements providing that. Unfortunately, this type of fat is not produced in our bodies. It’s also difficult to get enough of Omega-3 from the food, even when the diet is balanced. Omega-3 fats are found in salmon and other fatty fish, and to get enough you’ll need to eat them twice per day.
More and more people realize the importance of Omega-3 fats and rely on supplementation to help their bodies heal, reduce soreness and joint crack. Along with preventing wear and tear from high-intensity training, Omega-3 improves metabolism, joints mobility, heart, and brain health, contributes to the immune system, and protects from the general damage done to your body. These are the reasons why Omega 3 appears in the lists of best CrossFit supplements.
Check out Omega 3 supplement for session-to-session recovery and wellbeing!
ZMA For CrossFit | Best CrossFit Supplements
ZMA is a combination of Zinc, Magnesium, and B vitamins - essential elements for every aspect of training. This complex enhances strength, power production, endurance and improves the recovery process.
Zinc and Magnesium are vital for metabolism, energy production, and high-quality sleep. Athletes use ZMA to maintain a decent level of testosterone, which provides a great drive for each training. Zinc is a powerful antioxidant, it reduces inflammation and removes free radicals from the body. It boosts the human immune system, making it produce more T cells to fight back against viruses and infections.
Magnesium is responsible for protein synthesis, so adding it to your nutrition will benefit the lean muscle mass growth and optimal recovery of the damaged muscles. Being among the best CrossFit supplements, it helps to maintain bone density and strength, reducing the chances of injury in the gym and in everyday life.
Another great thing about magnesium is reduced muscle soreness and tension, so you will not suffer between hard sessions. It does not mean that you can neglect stretching and active recovery, it just makes the process a bit easier.
The B6 vitamin benefits the human central nervous system and improves sleep. It helps to spend more time in deep sleep, so your body and brain rest. It may also be useful for people struggling to sleep all night long or spend a lot of time falling asleep because of overloaded CNS.
These three elements are the best CrossFit supplements for athletes of any level. Consider ZMA complex for effective recovery and reducing muscle soreness in between sessions.
BCAA For CrossFit | Best CrossFit Supplements
BCAA & Electrolytes.
Branch chain amino acids and electrolytes contribute to both performance and recovery. BCAA powder fuels working muscles and reduces fatigue, allowing them to work at high intensity for longer. This is a nice bonus for CrossFit training sessions that require high power output.
BCAA promotes muscle protein synthesis, muscle growth and prevents catabolism, so it’s a perfect supplement for athletes working on building lean muscle mass. It helps the damaged muscles repair and adapt.
Electrolytes are essential for proper CNS function, muscle work, and hydration. When training hard and sweating, an athlete loses vital minerals, such as Sodium, Calcium, Phosphate, Potassium, etc. To prevent or fight dehydration, dizziness, headache, muscle weakness, or cramping, an athlete should replenish the electrolytes as fast as possible.
It’s recommended not to wait until the electrolyte balance is already off, but consume electrolytes during the training sessions, especially if these are endurance workouts.
If you are looking for the best CrossFit supplements for maximal performance, try Amino Performance complex with BCAA, Glutamine and Electrolytes to fight fatigue, stay hydrated and boost your performance!
Pre Workout For CrossFit | Best CrossFit Supplements
A high-quality pre-workout would be a great complement to an athlete’s nutrition and an effective booster for the training sessions. Pre-workouts improve athletes’ focus and presence, allowing them to learn complex skills and move with precision. Similar to all the best CrossFit supplements, the key function of this product is increasing an athlete's performance - going faster, lifting heavier, working for longer, etc.
This supplement can blunt muscle pain during the workout, allowing an athlete to keep moving at a fast pace. Pre-workouts improve stamina, promote energy output, endurance and can even help stay motivated throughout a certain period of time.
Usually, the main active substance of most pre-workouts is caffeine, it contributes the most to the performance boost. However, a pre-workout supplement can do even more if other nutrients, minerals or vitamins are added to the formula.
We suggest choosing pre-workout supplements with added creatine, B-vitamins, sodium, magnesium, potassium, and calcium. In this way, you’ll get both short-term and long-term benefits from a single supplement.
Take a look at our Ignite Pre-Workout to get the most out of every workout and upgrade your nutrition with vitamins and minerals!
Vitamin D3 For CrossFit | Best CrossFit Supplements
The last, but definitely not the least product among the best CrossFit supplements we recommend is Vitamin D3. It is a vital element for a strong immune system, effective body healing, and recovery. It’s estimated that nearly 1 billion people are vitamin D deficient. Science shows that adding the D3 vitamin to your nutrition through the supplement reduces fatigue and inflammation processes, improves the mood state, enhances electrolyte metabolism and protein synthesis.
Vitamin D3 stimulates white blood cells and ensures proper calcium absorption, increasing bone density. It’s super important for CrossFitters, weightlifters, and other athletes working with large loads and under the pressure of resistance training.
Vitamin D3 supplementation has a positive effect on the heart and respiratory health by boosting the immune system.
This vitamin is also responsible for stress and anxiety regulation. Many people suffer from ‘winter blues’ due to the lack of sun and, therefore, low levels of vitamin D3. If you live in a region with dark autumn and winter, you will benefit a lot from D3 supplementation.
Vitamin D3 allows us to get better sleep, by helping the brain discharge melatonin and making us fall asleep.
Consider replenishing vitamin D3 supplies with Vitamin K2 & D3 complex for better health, sleep and recovery.
The Best Supplements For CrossFit Final Statement.
We hope that this list of the best CrossFit supplements inspired you to re-evaluate your nutrition. We encourage everyone to take care of their health and fitness by being active, recovering wisely, and choosing high-quality food and supplements to fuel your body with the best products! Join our community and get even more useful tips!