JJ Virgin explains that collagen is the body's most abundant protein and crucial for connective tissue, skin, hair, and nails. While it doesn't directly build muscle, it strengthens the muscle-tendon connections that support strength training and reduce injury risk. She recommends bone broth or collagen powder once or twice daily in smoothies, oatmeal, or coffee.
Collagen. Should you or shouldn't you? Here's the deal with collagen. It is actually the most abundant protein in our body. Now, what you'll hear out there is it doesn't help you build muscle. True. However, wait for it. And it's not, you know, a complete profile of essential amino acids. Also true. However, I think bone broth and collagen are super important to include in our daily diet. Again, because collagen is such an abundant protein throughout our body. This is how we make our connective tissue, our hair, skin, and nails. And so when you think about it, when you're lifting weights, the first thing that happens as you start to lift weights for the first time is that your muscles and nerves need to learn how to communicate. So it's this whole central nervous system situation where you're learning just how to move things again. Next up, couple weeks of that, your connective tissue has to strengthen up. When people say, oh, I pulled a muscle or I tore a muscle, they're not tearing the muscle in the muscle belly. Very unusual to do that. What they're doing is they're tearing the muscle where the muscle and the tendon connect, or the tendon and the bone connect, or the ligament connects to the bone. But it's usually muscle-tendon connection, and collagen is critical for this. So when I think about getting stronger, I always prioritize making sure that I'm getting collagen in every single day to support that. The other thing that collagen is important for besides hair, skin, and nails is great Skin, super important for great skin. So how do I do this? If I can, I have some bone broth. And, uh, I will say that— nope, I would love to say I make it at home. My son makes it for me at home. But a lot of times I'll be out at a restaurant, and if they have homemade bone broth, I'm having it. So homemade bone broth at a restaurant, it's one of my favorite things to do. But I don't generally do that that often. So what I make sure so that I get collagen and every single day is that I either add it into my morning smoothie. I'll either do my bone broth protein powder, or I'll add in collagen into what I'm doing. So either a morning smoothie, you can load it into oatmeal, you can put it into Greek-style yogurt— that's my favorite way to use it— or you can just dump it in your coffee. So I make sure that I get it in, in some form at least once a day, quite often twice a day, because of all the amazing benefits that it has.
