About Supplements Print E-mail



If we were to guess, we might presume that this is the article many of you have anxiously anticipated. That's right, not even we can totally resist the idea that there might be some supplemental pill, powder, or potion that gives us an extra edge when we're consistently training hard and eating well. Sure, the supplement naysayers will mock this as looking for the "magic pill." But those of us who know better remain unmoved by their cynicism. Little do they know that there are a few supplements that, when taken as an adjunct to an excellent program, do give us a small but measurable boost in the gym while actually improving our health. Wanting this edge isn't lazy or foolhardy. It's completely rational. To us, it's irrational to ignore potentially beneficial compounds designed to make those hours we spend in the gym more effective, dismissing them all with but a snicker (and then going to eat a Snickers bar!).

Now, on the opposite side of the coin, there may be a few of you out there hoping that there actually is a magic pill that can help you build muscle. Uh, for those of you who actually believe this, we're going to expose this fraudulent idea right now. So listen up. There are no legal supplements that can help you build muscle in the absence of a well-planned and consistently adhered-to training and nutritional program. In other words, supplements work toward building muscle only when they're taken in addition to a training program designed to ensure maximal adaptation and a nutritional program designed to provide an abundance of energy. Trying to add a bunch of supplements into a crappy program is the equivalent of adding a nitrous system to a broken-down Pinto. No matter how much you spend on modifications, the car isn't going anywhere.

Even with the "very powerful" supplements (i.e., anabolic steroids), their use in the absence of a good training program will lead to some disappointment. In a famous study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, one group of subjects was given testosterone only (no exercise) for 10 weeks and saw moderate but inconsistent changes in lean mass. While some subjects did gain between 4 and 9 pounds of lean mass, others gained very little. However, take these same guys, put them on the same dose of steroids and on a weight-training program, and they'll consistently gain 13 to 15 pounds of lean mass. See what a difference training makes?

Wait, before you get ahead of yourself, we'd better qualify that last discussion. Don't think for a second that we're recommending the use of steroids here. We're certainly not! Of course, in all fairness, we do believe that steroids are legitimate medications used for legitimate medical conditions. In times of androgen deficiency (as diagnosed by your doctor), they're a godsend. But in the absence of clinical problems, they shouldn't be considered. And we're not going to drop a load of scare tactics on you. Over the short term, 10 to 12 weeks of training, the gains will be similar. But after another 12 weeks, the steroid user will have lost much of his gains, while the guy following a right plan will have gotten bigger. Which would you prefer? Twelve weeks of increased muscle mass followed by a steady decline to your previous size, or constant progress?

So that's our stance on steroid use. Sure, lots of people out there are using them. But many of these users are jeopardizing their health for no good reason. If we're giving you the choice between a drug that'll make you big yet may jeopardize your health versus a program that will make you big and improve your health, which are you going to choose?

So if steroids are out of the question, why did we bring them up in the first place? Well, we wanted to illustrate the fact that even with the use of powerful steroids, there still is no magic pill that'll allow you to get the results you're looking for without putting in the required effort. And this is true even more so with supplements. To get bigger, you need to have your training and nutritional programs optimized first. Then, and only then, should you consider supplements such as creatine, workout stimulants, Cortisol suppressors, testosterone boosters, etc. We're serious; if your nutrition isn't optimized, your money will be much better spent on food versus supplements.


 
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