Supplements don't matter

[TheGiftToLift]

Let me ask you a question... Do you really think supplements matter?

Pre workout, intra workout, Whey protein hyrolysate, do these things really help you? Are they worth the $100's of dollars you fork out? Do you really believe that your muscles need to "drip fed" every second of every day? Are you really 100% consistent with everything else that this is a worthwhile investment?

For me, today the answer has become no. I was just about to order some more BCAA's, and the "bedtime protein" Micelliar Casein. All from bulk suppliers, and then I thought - "will this really help me? Will it be worth the $80 I'm about to spend?"

The truth is nobody really knows. Science can only go so far in explaining the effectiveness of supplements. There are way too many variables involved. Supplements work on a minute scale. Muscles are not machinery, some days you are pumped and ready to lift, some days you cant lift a thing. Is it stress that is responsible? That extra walk you took yesterday? or that $50 supplement? It could be any of those things in varying doses. What I have seen is that there are people who take no supplements and get just as good results as I do. Coincidence?

It seems like supplements might have their place, which would be for quick results...(?) Which is disputable anyway. Who knows if they really work? What I do know is quick results don't last. Years of sweat and effort last. Consistency, effort and food are all you need. Forget the rest. Close your wallet.

This said I think there are a few supplements worth the money. Not because of their super powers but because they are cheap and they are convenient. WPC, powdered oats, maltodextrin (good for mornings), fish oil, multi (only if you really want to). Maybe even supergreens - I like the idea of powdered anti-oxidants

Some may agree, others might not. I think that on balance the novice weightlifters will disagree and the seasoned vets will agree.

From now on its WPC, powdered oats (i lift in the morning and powdered carbs are good on the stomach), a multi, fish oil, and that's it.

I would love to hear your thoughts...

EDIT: oh and celltechs good too.

 

[Rugby88]

Some supplements work, some dont - keep it basic and to the point and you will be sweet.

Protein powder
multi
fish oil
vit c

They are my foundation products - yea I will try other products but there is alot of stuff that simply does not work - as I said keep it simple, get most of your protein from food and away you go.

 

[Goosey]

We are a "want it know society"

If you are exercising now and you carry a reoccurring injury, where do you expect to be in twenty years?

After many years of lifting, and at fifty I need to ask myself where will I be in twenty years?

I know they are going to have to pry that bar out of cold dead fingers.

 

[Goosey]

Accepting that training is a life long endeavor is a good thing.

This has been my mantra, now even more important.

 

[walt]

i use wpc and powder oats, sometimes pre workout (yes does help) and it helps me get my protein requirments and good carbs in.

This debate is beaten to death, of course it doesn't matter but its a hell of a lot easier than eating 200g tuna with rice

 

[MaxBrenner]

The supplements that 'works' are the ones that help you fill in the nutritional gaps in your day to day diet.

Supplements are just that, they 'supplement' your dietary requirements. So if you are lacking something in your diet, the supplements that fill those needs are the ones that are 'worth it'.

When it comes to sports performance supplements, outside of Creatine and Beta Alanine, nothing is really worth it. I still would would look at them as 'luxury' supplements as they are not essential by any means.

Better off spending your money on having a solid diet and making it complete and if that means you needs to supplement certain areas, then so be it. Rather than spending your money on a 'supplement' that you are expecting the world from and will in turn be disappointing with the results.

Just my humble opinion

 

[0ni]

Creatine: Proven to work
Beta Alanine: Proven to work
BCAAs peri-workout: Proven to work
Fish oil: Proven to work although most people don't take enough
Protein: Only if you have a shit diet, most people won't need extra protein supplements unless they are on gear
Tyrosine: Proven to boost strength by 5% on average when taken pre workout
B6: 50mg a day will give great energy level boosts

These are all cheap as fuck as well, I have a rule where I don't buy anything unless it's name is the active ingredients. Charles Poliquin's blogroll is decent for finding out what works and what doesn't. He puts all his athletes on high dose glutamine though but I haven't seen a single study that shows it works

 

[0ni]

Shit I forgot to say the main point of my post

Most supplements will work by increasing recovery time after your training sessions allowing you to fit in more training sessions or train harder in each training session while still allowing full recovery. The key to building the most muscle is to have the most possible growth periods in a year while still having full recovery from each session. Most people unsupplemented can train a body part fully once every 5 days (allowing full recovery) and if you can reduce this to 4 days that is a significant increase in number of growth periods over a year.

Which is also why I don't like body part splits, training each muscle group once a week? You mad?
Also the limiting factor in muscle growth is not protein, it's protein synthesis. So to get accelerated muscle growth you don't need to increase your protein but your protein synthesis needs improving. This can be done with creatine, steroids, BCAAs (increase protein synthesis for about an hour), number of satellite cells etc. Any supplement that is proven to increase protein synthesis should be one you 'go' for. There was a study done in 1995 which involved groups that took test and groups that didn't. Both groups received 120g of protein a day and the group supplemented with testosterone got better gains, which proves that protein synthesis is the limiting factor. However, increased carbs while on the same amount of protein has been shown to increase muscle growth, so I'd recommend increasing your post-workout carbs instead of protein

 

[Bazza20]

Shit I forgot to say the main point of my post

Most supplements will work by increasing recovery time after your training sessions allowing you to fit in more training sessions or train harder in each training session while still allowing full recovery. The key to building the most muscle is to have the most possible growth periods in a year while still having full recovery from each session. Most people unsupplemented can train a body part fully once every 5 days (allowing full recovery) and if you can reduce this to 4 days that is a significant increase in number of growth periods over a year

Which is also why I don't like body part splits, training each muscle group once a week? You mad?

Full recovery in 5 days and 4 if you take supplements??? Someone forgot to tell my body that. I don't take any supplements and my body manages to recover much quicker than 5 days.

 

[Fadi]

You see, the buck does not stop with the supplement, irrespective of what supplement it is. It's not about whether a supplement works or not, it's about whether you believe it works or not that really counts. And each and everyone of us here believes in many different things in life (and not just supplements), and we all have our own reasons/conviction of why we do believe so.

So I respect the fact whether the person wishes to spend hard earned money on supplements or wishes to go without. Whatever works for you (in your mid), would most definitely give you an edge/an improvement.

Sometimes it comes down to what is easier and/or more practical. You see, if I wish to have 2g of the most powerful amino acid leucine in my system every two hours to insure maximum protein synthesis/anabolism and minimum cortisol production/catabolism, then a supplement such as WPI would do very nicely for my intended purpose. But that's just me.


Fadi.

 

[Shrek]

If you snort aminos will you be in an anabolic state and positive nitrogen balance quicker than oral ingestion?

 

[Goosey]

Just be prepared, for your nose will grow at an alarming rate

 

[0ni]

Full recovery in 5 days and 4 if you take supplements??? Someone forgot to tell my body that. I don't take any supplements and my body manages to recover much quicker than 5 days.

Just because you can train a muscle more often than once every 5 days doesn't mean it's fully recovered. Poliquin and Thibaudeau have both stated in many an article that to get optimal gains or hammer it for 3 weeks and have one week off (super compensation). If you train a large muscle group more often than this you're shortchanging yourself (although smaller muscle groups like triceps that get a lot of work from chest and delt work tend to recover faster)

 

[Goosey]

Fuckin 21 years old

 

[0ni]

Couldn't find the original article, but here is a re-post:

Poliquin On Training Frequency - Muscle and Brawn Forums

 

[DKD]

With the supplement can be true of gains much further than spread your dreams to physique build too many remarkable span of greatness.

 

[piecone]

With the supplement can be true of gains much further than spread your dreams to physique build too many remarkable span of greatness.

That's a little too deep for me - but as someone who has never supplemented beyond a banana pre-workout, the myriad of views is bewildering. My theory though is that surely age and genetic pre-disposition must play a part.

I do recall a tip I got from the orthopaedic surgeon who did an arthroscope on my knee to clean up some torn cartilage a few years back. He told me to try glucosamine supplements if there was any pain, saying words to the effect 'if it works for you, it works'.

So the placebo effect might come into play? Anyway, I'm going to give WIP a shot, see how it goes.

 

[dave]

Love your work DKD.

Unless your an athlete xomw

 

[dave]

Stupid phone.

Unless your an athlete then spending that money is not really worth it. I take my supplements for health reasons and steer clear of the expensive stuff. Andy is on the money with his long term outlook.

 

[MaxBrenner]

How Does Muscle Grow? (Lyle McDonald)

Endlessly on the site, I’ve talked about how the primary stimulus for growth is progressive tension overload (with fatigue being a secondary factor) but, believe it or not, that’s not what I’m going to talk about here. Rather, I want to get a bit deeper into the processes of muscle growth. I’m not going to get full-blown molecular on you, just a bit more detail than I usually go into.
Now, the ultimate goal of getting bigger muscles is, well, getting bigger muscles. But what does that actually mean? Skeletal muscle is composed of a variety of different elements including protein (about 100-120 grams of actual protein per pound of muscle and yes I’m mixing grams and pounds), water (making up the majority), connective tissues, glycogen, minerals and a few other things. I’m going to focus on the actual protein component of it since that’s the bit that actually generates force, etc.

Protein in your muscle is no different than the protein found in dietary protein, it’s a long-chain of amino acids that have been attached to one another in the structure that makes up skeletal muscle (the various fibers and such).

But how does this process work?

Simply, there are two competing processes that go into what ultimately happens to muscle mass which are protein synthesis and protein breakdown. Protein synthesis is simply the act of attaching amino acids into one another and making them into muscle. This is an energetically costly process and occurs through the actions of ribosomes (little cellular messengers that you learned about in 7th grade biology) acting under the instructions of mRNA (something else you forgot about from high school). So training turns on genes which get translated into mRNA which tell the ribosomes what to build and how to do it. That’s protein synthesis and you can think of it as ‘good’ when it comes to muscle growth.

The competing process is protein breakdown which is the opposite. Various specialty enzymes work against you, cleaving off amino acids from the already built skeletal muscle. This happens under the influence of hormones and other factors. Most tend to think of protein breakdown as ‘bad’ in the sense of muscle growth but it’s a touch more complicated than that. The ability to break down and rebuild tissues in the body (a process which is ongoing constantly, even when you’re ‘at rest’), provides the human body with a lot of adaptations flexibility. That is, it allows the body to adapt to changing demands and remodel itself based on the signal it gets from whatever is going on in your life. In that sense, protein breakdown is not ‘bad’.

Now, what happens to your muscle mass ultimately depends on the balance between these two competing processes. I’ve tried to illustrate this below with three possible scenarios.

Protein synthesis > Protein breakdown = Muscle mass increases
Protein synthesis = Protein breakdown = No change in muscle mass
Protein synthesis < Protein breakdown = Muscle mass decreases

Assuming your goal is bigger muscles, clearly 1 is the goal. But this also means that there are two primary ways that we can potentially impact on muscle growth. We can either increase protein synthesis, decrease protein breakdown or do both at the same time. And doing both at the same time would be expected to have the biggest impact.

There’s one more factoid you need to know which is this: heavy resistance training increases the rates of both protein synthesis AND breakdown. That is, training doesn’t just turn on one or another, it turns on both. This is probably a mechanism to help with the previously mentioned remodeling process. But both happen following training.
And with that background, now let’s look at how nutrients interact with all of this.

Protein, Carbohydrates or Both, Oh My!
While athletes are rarely that interested in technical details and only want the practical applications, to understand everything I want to talk about I need to look at a bit more detail, specifically how protein and carbohydrates interact with the processes of protein synthesis and breakdown discussed above. And it basically works out like this:
Protein (amino acids) stimulate protein synthesis but have no impact on protein breakdown.
Insulin (secondary to carb consumption) inhibits protein breakdown with no impact on protein synthesis.

Please see attachment.