Amino Acid Multi — the three building blocks of muscle, dissolved in a glass of lemon and lime

Maybe it's a new gym membership in January. The handful of muscle soreness that lasts three days instead of one. The honest realisation that the body you trained at twenty-two is not the body you live in now.

You don't need a complicated supplement stack to come back to fitness. You need water, sleep, food, and patience. But there is one specific tool that has earned its place in the pre-, intra-, and post-workout window for the last forty years of sports nutrition: a glass of dissolved amino acids. Not a meal replacement. Not a mass-gainer. Just the three small molecules your muscle uses most heavily, in a form your body can pull straight off the shelf.

This is that glass.

A clean cream tub, the green band of our label running around it, fine pale-yellow powder inside. The flavour is lemon and lime — sweet, sharp, summery. The dose is one flat scoop, eight grams, mixed into 250ml of water or juice during or after training. Forty-two servings per pot. The kind of thing that lives in a gym bag.

BCAA stands for branched-chain amino acid. The branching is a small structural quirk of the molecule — three of the twenty amino acids that make up every protein in your body share it: leucine, isoleucine, valine. These three are the most abundant amino acids in skeletal muscle by a significant margin, and they are essential, meaning your body cannot synthesise them — they must come from food.

In ordinary life, food covers the job. Eggs, chicken, fish, dairy, beans and legumes all carry meaningful BCAA loads. BCAAs are three essential amino acids found in protein foods.

That's the entire logic of a BCAA drink. Not a magic bullet. Not a substitute for protein. A targeted top-up, taken in a window when targeting matters.

Of the three BCAAs, leucine is the headline. It is the single amino acid that most strongly signals the body to build muscle protein, through a pathway called mTOR. Each 8g scoop gives about 2.8g of leucine.

You can hit that threshold with a chicken breast, three eggs, a whey shake, or a serving of this powder. We use 35 grams of leucine per 100g of powder — the highest by weight of the three — which means a single 8g serving carries roughly 2.8 grams of leucine. That's a meaningful dose, in the language modern sports nutrition speaks.

Leucine without its two siblings is a half-formula. The ratio is 2:1:1 (35g, 17.6g, 17.6g per 100g). The traditional ratio in sports drinks has been 2:1:1 — leucine high, isoleucine and valine equal and lower. This bottle uses approximately that ratio: 35g leucine, 17.6g isoleucine, 17.6g valine per 100g.

Keeping the trio together is how the muscle has met them in food for the entire history of the species.

Citrulline is an amino acid your body makes itself, but in modest amounts. The active ingredient was citrulline malate.

Citrulline malate, 11.8g per 100g (about 0.9g per scoop).

The malate part — malic acid — is the same molecule that gives sour green apples their sharpness, and it's the source of much of the lemon-lime brightness in this powder.

Most BCAA powders ignore vitamin C. We didn't. Around heavy training, the connective tissue holding your muscles together — tendons, ligaments, fascia — is doing as much work as the muscle itself. Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of cartilage. Vitamin C also assists in iron absorption, which matters more for endurance athletes than they often realise.

We use 470mg of vitamin C per 100g of powder — meaning each 8g scoop carries roughly 38mg. Not a megadose. A training-window dose, layered alongside the amino acids in the same drink so the body meets them together.

Vitamin B6 — pyridoxine — sits at the centre of amino-acid metabolism. The chemistry textbook is clear: most of the enzymes that handle amino acids in the body need B6 as a cofactor. If you're loading the body with amino acids, you may as well include the small B-vitamin that helps it process them.

We use 12mg of vitamin B6 per 100g of powder — meaning each scoop carries about 1mg, or roughly 70% of the European reference intake. Vitamin B6 contributes to normal protein and glycogen metabolism, and to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue. That's the language the food authority has agreed it earns.

We sweeten this powder with sucralose, a non-caloric sweetener that has been on the European-approved list for over twenty years. The natural colour comes from turmeric extract — the same yellow that brightens curry, here giving the drink its sunny lemon-lime appearance. The acidity is citric acid, the same molecule that makes a fresh lemon a lemon.

We don't use artificial colours. The yellow you see in the glass is real turmeric.

Forty-two servings per pot. Eight grams per serving.

We didn't put creatine in this. We didn't put caffeine in this. We didn't put four warming spices and a stim-blend in this. If you want those, we have them in other bottles. This one stays in its lane: the amino-acid-and-citrulline lane, as classical sports nutrition built it.

Mix one flat scoop — eight grams — into 250ml of water or juice. Drink during or after training. Once a day on training days. Powder settles in the pot over time, so we recommend weighing the serving rather than scooping if you want the most accurate dose.

Don't take it on top of a separate citrulline supplement; you'll get enough here.

If you train fasted in the morning, drink it before you start. If you train in the evening, drink it during the session. Either is fine. The window is generous — an hour either side of training is the active zone.

This is a food supplement — it complements a varied diet, doesn't replace one. It is not a meal-replacement and should not be used as one. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, taking medication, or living with a medical condition, talk to your GP or pharmacist first. Keep it cool, dry, sealed, out of reach of children.

The pot is made for serious training. If you're walking the dog and stretching twice a week, you don't need it. A balanced meal and a glass of water are doing the job. This is for the days you're training hard enough that the body has noticed.

If you've read this far, thank you. We tried to write the kind of page we'd want to read before spending money — no neon promises, no overblown language. Just three amino acids, one classical pump ingredient, two vitamins, and a glass of cold lemon-lime water on a hard training day.

— Vitadefence