TweetYou've been working hard in the gym, pushing up more weight each week, being sure to get in a proper pre and post workout shake, and giving your body the rest it needs to recover so it can build itself back up stronger than ever before.
But, is there something else you could be doing to take your progress up one more level? After you've gotten the basics down and have a firm understanding of what you need to be doing in the gym then it's time to look at some of the additional things that do help you push that little bit extra in the gym that take your results over the top.
One of these factors that can serve this purpose is nitric oxide. What is nitric oxide and how does it help you? Let's have a closer peek at all this supplement has to offer.

1. Increased Recovery Rates

The first way nitric oxide can help you is if you find you are putting in a great amount of effort in the gym but you are so fatigued for the day following that it's a few more days until you finally recover and are good to go again.
What this supplement does is help to support the amount of blood flow to the tissues by encouraging the smooth muscles in the body to relax, therefore allowing more oxygen delivery to get to the working muscles.
Since one of the primary factors in a speedy recovery is being sure that plenty of nutrients get to the muscle tissues after a hard workout, blood flow is really going to make a difference.
Note that you won't notice as great of results if you are not taking in a proper post-workout shake and meal to follow, but as mentioned above, once you've got that taken care of, that's when you'll clearly see the impact that nitric oxide has on you.
When you recover faster between sessions, this means more frequent weight training workouts, which typically translates to better results. Remember though that more frequent weight lifting workouts without full recovery translates to poor results and over training, indicating just how important recovery is. If you hope to workout often, you better look after this issue.

2. Reduced Fatigue Levels During Higher Rep Protocols

Another thing that nitric oxide is going to assist you with is fatigue. If you're finding that as you're going about your workout session, fatigue is a limiting factor in your workout, this is a supplement that can help.
As you perform your weight lifting exercises, the body rapidly begins to run out of oxygen. When it does, you'll start to get lactic acid build-up forming in the muscle tissue, which then generates quite a high level of fatigue.
Often, this fatigue is felt as a burning sensation and causes you to cease exercise. If you're attempting a higher rep protocol - into the 8-12 rep range - this build up of fatigue can be extremely limiting on your progress. So if you can get more oxygen to the tissues, thereby reducing the amount of lactic acid build-up and correspondingly the amount of fatigue, you will dramatically reduce this issue.

3. Enhanced Endurance Performance

If you're an endurance athlete training for a distance event, nitric oxide can also benefit you. Often this supplement is thought to be more of a strength athlete aid, but believing so would be a mistake. Since endurance performance also heavily depends on the amount of oxygen getting to the muscle tissues, blood flow delivering oxygen will help you work longer without tiring out.
Those who are training for endurance and will be racing at an altitude much higher than they are used to will want to strongly consider supplementing with nitric oxide. At higher altitudes reduced ability to take in oxygen is particularly noticeable. By using the supplement you will help to offset this so it feels more like your usual training conditions.

4. Increased Availability Of Energy

Another important indirect impact of nitric oxide on exercise performance is that blood flow enables you to better maintain your core temperature balance.
When body temperature rises significantly during a hard workout session, the body will try its best to cool the tissues so that overheating doesn't occur. With good blood flow this process is made easier, so less energy will be directed to accomplish this goal leaving more energy to complete your workouts with.


5. Increased Glucose Use

Those who are looking to burn off body fat may want to think carefully about the benefits of nitric oxide. One study conducted by the American Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism looked at the impact of the NO precursor L-arginine on glucose metabolism during exercise. They had nine endurance trained males cycle for 120 minutes total which was then followed by a 15 minute max effort cycling period.
During this time glucose levels were measured in the body and it was noted that those who had taken the L-arginine had a significantly higher glucose rate of appearance, glucose rate of disappearance, and glucose clearance rate. This demonstrates that these athletes were taking up the glucose faster into the muscle cells as the exercise persisted.
In addition to this, the supplement also supported the increase of nonesterified fatty acid concentration as well as glycerol in the body, potentially pointing to the burning up of fat as fuel.
So those who are looking to burn body fat may have a slight advantage when using this process in terms of using up available glucose in the body and then burning off fat tissues.

6. Increased Muscle Pump

The last benefit of using nitric oxide is a great muscle pump after a workout. Who doesn't love the feeling of tight full muscles after you've just dished out an intense biceps and triceps workout? When on nitric oxide, this pump will be more pronounced and will stick around slightly longer.
Since muscle pumps are largely a result of increased blood flow to the muscle tissue, which does come naturally to a degree when exercise is performed, the blood flow to the tissues with nitric oxide makes it particularly evident.
These muscle pumps may just spark some extra motivation in you to keep up with your workout program, therefore getting you better long-term results!

Conclusion

Nitric oxide is one of the more effective performance boosting supplements available and is often found in many stacked products so you can get benefits from more than one supplement at a time. Be on the lookout for this fast-acting aid and make the investment to take your workouts to a higher level.

Tweeti will say, the only NO product i used was no-xplode by bsn, and if it wasn't just a placebo effect i was noticing, the stuff tasted amazing. i may give it another shot sometime soon.