Soreness is the only recovery measure that held up to grading
An umbrella review graded 53 meta-analyses of 24 supplements across ten muscle-damage outcomes. Branched-chain amino acids reach moderate certainty on soreness and none of the other nine.
What the study found
Across ten recovery outcomes graded, BCAAs clear the bar on one
An umbrella review graded 53 meta-analyses of 24 supplements across ten muscle-damage outcomes. Branched-chain amino acids reach moderate certainty on delayed-onset muscle soreness and on none of the other nine. On that outcome they share the grade with a leaf extract.
The caveat · Grades given, but no effect sizes
An umbrella review inherits the primary trials' limitations and cannot fix them, and moderate certainty still means the true effect may differ substantially from the estimate. No pooled effect sizes appear, only the gradings, so nothing here says how big the reduction is. Searches ran only to May 2022.