Here's What We Really Know About This Popular Supplement For Muscle Gains
You finish a hard workout and reach for your usual post-workout drink or supplement, hoping it will help you bounce back faster. Maybe it's matcha, green tea extract, curcumin, or another polyphenol, a plant compound known for antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
These supplements are popular in fitness partly because they may help with soreness and recovery. But if you're training to get stronger or build muscle, there's another question: Do those benefits translate into better results over time? A recent study1 tackled this very question.
About the review
Polyphenols are found in foods and drinks including berries, tea, turmeric, and soy. They've been studied for their positive effects on inflammation and exercise recovery, but researchers wanted to know whether they could also improve training results.
The review pooled 11 randomized controlled trials involving 360 people. Participants followed resistance-training programs lasting six to 39 weeks while taking different polyphenol supplements, including curcumin, quercetin, matcha, green tea, tea catechins, epicatechin, berry polyphenols, and soy isoflavones.
Researchers compared changes in strength and muscle size between people training while taking the supplements and those training without them.
The muscle gains didn't quite follow
For strength, polyphenol supplements showed a small potential benefit, but the evidence wasn't strong enough to rule out chance. Researchers rated the evidence as "low certainty."
Muscle and lean mass showed a similar pattern. There was a small potential effect, but it wasn't statistically reliable. The evidence was again rated as low certainty.
For muscle cross-sectional area, a more direct measure of muscle size, the effect was essentially zero. This analysis included just three groups of studies, so the researchers rated the evidence as very low certainty.
Researchers also examined whether certain types of polyphenols worked better than others, but no clear advantage emerged.
Recovery & growth are different
Polyphenol supplements can make you feel better after training, even if there is no clear benefit in terms of muscle gain.
Some polyphenols may reduce soreness or inflammation after exercise, which can be useful if it helps you return to training comfortably. But feeling less sore isn't the same as making bigger gains. Muscle growth will still depend on consistently challenging your muscles and fueling your body with enough protein to support new tissue production.
Also, exercise-related inflammation and other stress responses aren't necessarily harmful. They're part of the process that helps your body adapt to training.
Researchers have even suggested that heavily dampening some of these signals could theoretically affect those adaptations. However, while this review did not establish that polyphenol supplements positively impacted muscle growth, it also didn't find that the supplements disrupt with growth either.
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What to prioritize if you want more muscle
If building muscle and strength are the goals, focus on the fundamentals:
- Progressive resistance training: Gradually increase the weight, reps, or difficulty of your workouts so your muscles have a reason to adapt.
- Prioritize protein: Your muscles need amino acids to repair and build new tissue, making adequate protein intake directly relevant to muscle growth.
- Dial-in your nutrition: Sufficient calories and a balanced diet provide the energy and nutrients your body needs to recover and respond to training.
Polyphenol-rich foods such as berries, matcha, turmeric, and tea can still be part of a nutritious diet. Just don't confuse their potential health or recovery benefits with a proven muscle-building effect.
The takeaway
This review found no reliable evidence that polyphenol supplements increase muscle or strength gains alongside resistance training. For now, consistent training, eating enough protein, and focusing on general healthy nutrition remain the most dependable ways to support muscle growth.