Boosting Your Sports Performance With Joint Supplements

Up your game and extend your athletic results with the smart use of joint supplements.

Tailored for athletes, these supplements are not just for injury prevention—they also give your body the fuel to recover quicker and boost physical performance.

From increasing flexibility to reducing inflammation, this SiR article explains how using the right joint supplements can reduce downtime and keep your athletic output at peak levels.

Joint Health and Sports

Every movement counts in sports, and, you’ve guessed it—your joints are at the heart of each movement. Whether sprinting, jumping, or pivoting, you need healthy joints for maximum flexibility and performance.

But repetitive impact on your joints from sports can wear them down over time. This leads to a loss of performance and mobility, as well as more frequent injuries and slow recovery.

Supporting your joints means supporting your physical performance today, but also tomorrow. Some athletes might be sidelined for a whole season or even end their careers prematurely due to neglecting joint care.

By investing into your joint health, you can continue to train and compete at a high level, improve your physical capacities, and extend your longevity in sports without being troubled by preventable joint issues.

Obviously, natural supplements are only a small piece of a joint health optimization puzzle. But they can benefit you significantly in some cases—here’s how.

How Joint Supplements Boost Your Sports Performance

Onto the main question of the article: how can these products actually enhance your performance as an athlete? Four ways in particular.

Shorter Recovery Times

One of the main ways joint supplements boost your sports performance is by reducing the downtime between your training sessions and competitions.

Chronic inflammation is one of the things that can slow down your body from recovering quickly and efficiently. Certain anti-inflammatory joint supplements inhibit excess inflammation at a cellular level, thereby reducing muscle soreness and joint pain after a workout or a competition.

Joint supplements also provide key building blocks for your joints to repair and recover after strenuous physical activity.

Extended Range of Motion

Certain supplements like hyaluronic acid enhance joint lubrication and hydration. In doing so, they promote smooth movement of bones. This not only protects your joints from constant friction (that can wear them down), but it also contributes to increased flexibility and range of motion.

Increased Endurance and Strength

Supplements provide the elements your joints need to rebuild themselves and bolster their resilience against physical stress.

In practical terms, this allows you to train harder and for longer without experiencing pain, which leads to better results over the long-term.

Joint Protection

The anti-inflammatory effect of certain supplements protects your joints from being damaged.

Particularly, cartilage, the cushioning tissue that protects your joints is constantly under “attack” from daily activities and impacts, and it can degrade as you age.

By inhibiting, or at the very least, slowing down this process, glucosamine and other joint supplements aid in protecting your joint function and thus potentially extending your sports career.

Key Joint Supplement Ingredients for Sports Performance

Here I list key ingredients and their optimal dosages for enhancing your athletic function.

• Glucosamine+Chondroitin – Glucosamine is a building block of cartilage that helps to delay and inhibit joint tissue damage. Chondroitin is also a component of cartilage, but where it differs from glucosamine, is that it attracts water to joints, which aids lubrication and pain-free movement.¹ Optimal dosage for glucosamine is between 2000-3000 mg per day taken in divided doses.
• Curcumin – Curcumin is a molecule found in the spice turmeric. It acts as an anti-inflammatory, not just in the joints but the whole body, which can help bring down the post-workout soreness and inflammation.² Optimal dosage is 500-1500 mg per day with 5-15 mg of black pepper extract to enhance curcumin’s absorption.
• Omega-3 Fatty Acids – Omega-3s from fish oil are another inflammation reliever for improving sports recovery.³ Optimal supplement dosage for sports recovery is 1-2 g of omega-3s per day.
• MSM – MSM is a sulfur compound with antioxidant-boosting properties, protecting your joints from wear and tear of hard exercise.⁴ Dosage for athletes is up to 3 g daily.
• Boswellia Serrata – Boswellia is one of the most potent natural analgesics for joint performance. It works by inhibiting molecules such as COX-1 and NF-kB which aggravate inflammation and pain.^{5 6}Dosage is between 2400-3600 mg per day, or 100-250 mg per day if taking a branded Boswellia extract such as 5-Loxin^TM or AprèsFLEX^TM.
• Collagen – Collagen is a protein molecule essential for the building, repair, and maintenance of your connective tissues. Supplementation with collagen can accelerate your post-workout recovery and reduce joint pain.⁷ The dosage for denatured collagen is up to 10 g per day, whereas the dosage for undenatured type-II collagen is 40 mg per day.
• Hyaluronic Acid – Hyaluronic Acid plays a fundamental role in joint tissue hydration, which contributes to protection as well as improved flexibility and athletic performance. It may also help with knee pain.⁸ The optimal dosage is around 120 mg per day for oral supplementation.

Final Notes

Quality of a joint supplement is crucial. You want to make sure it’s been made in a cGMP-approved and FDA-approved facilities. In addition, the product label should be transparent with clear data on each ingredient and its exact amount.

As for whether you should take joint supplements pre-workout or after training, it depends on your preferences. Usually it doesn’t make much of a difference. What is important is being consistent in taking these supplements as some of them take time to build up in the body—gradually increasing in their benefits.

Further Reading

• How Joint Supplements Aid Mobility
• Joint Supplement Benefits for Arthritis
• Can Joint Supplements Benefit Athletes?
• Uncovering the Benefits of Natural Joint Supplements
• Pain Relief Benefits of Joint Supplements
• Boosting Joint Health Improvement Through Supplements
• Unveiling the Benefits of Joint Supplements for Bone Health
• Strengthening Joints With Natural Supplements
• Understanding the Benefits of Supplements for Joint Inflammation

References

1. Zhu X, Sang L, Wu D, Rong J, Jiang L. Effectiveness and safety of glucosamine and chondroitin for the treatment of osteoarthritis: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Orthop Surg Res. 2018 Jul 6;13(1):170. doi: 10.1186/s13018-018-0871-5. PMID: 29980200; PMCID: PMC6035477. ↩︎
2. Paultre K, Cade W, Hernandez D, Reynolds J, Greif D, Best TM. Therapeutic effects of turmeric or curcumin extract on pain and function for individuals with knee osteoarthritis: a systematic review. BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med. 2021 Jan 13;7(1):e000935. doi: 10.1136/bmjsem-2020-000935. PMID: 33500785; PMCID: PMC7812094. ↩︎
3. VanDusseldorp TA, Escobar KA, Johnson KE, Stratton MT, Moriarty T, Kerksick CM, Mangine GT, Holmes AJ, Lee M, Endito MR, Mermier CM. Impact of Varying Dosages of Fish Oil on Recovery and Soreness Following Eccentric Exercise. Nutrients. 2020 Jul 27;12(8):2246. doi: 10.3390/nu12082246. PMID: 32727162; PMCID: PMC7468920. ↩︎
4. Butawan M, Benjamin RL, Bloomer RJ. Methylsulfonylmethane: Applications and Safety of a Novel Dietary Supplement. Nutrients. 2017 Mar 16;9(3):290. doi: 10.3390/nu9030290. PMID: 28300758; PMCID: PMC5372953. ↩︎
5. Rudrappa GH, Murthy M, Saklecha S, Kumar Kare S, Gupta A, Basu I. Fast pain relief in exercise-induced acute musculoskeletal pain by turmeric-boswellia formulation: A randomized placebo-controlled double-blinded multicentre study. Medicine (Baltimore). 2022 Sep 2;101(35):e30144. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000030144. PMID: 36107505; PMCID: PMC9439841. ↩︎
6. Yu G, Xiang W, Zhang T, Zeng L, Yang K, Li J. Effectiveness of Boswellia and Boswellia extract for osteoarthritis patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Complement Med Ther. 2020 Jul 17;20(1):225. doi: 10.1186/s12906-020-02985-6. PMID: 32680575; PMCID: PMC7368679. ↩︎
7. Khatri M, Naughton RJ, Clifford T, Harper LD, Corr L. The effects of collagen peptide supplementation on body composition, collagen synthesis, and recovery from joint injury and exercise: a systematic review. Amino Acids. 2021 Oct;53(10):1493-1506. doi: 10.1007/s00726-021-03072-x. Epub 2021 Sep 7. PMID: 34491424; PMCID: PMC8521576. ↩︎
8. Oe M, Tashiro T, Yoshida H, Nishiyama H, Masuda Y, Maruyama K, Koikeda T, Maruya R, Fukui N. Oral hyaluronan relieves knee pain: a review. Nutr J. 2016 Jan 27;15:11. doi: 10.1186/s12937-016-0128-2. PMID: 26818459; PMCID: PMC4729158. ↩︎