Posts Tagged supplements

There’s a lot of information out there regarding both legal and illegal supplements for sports-related performance. Today, we’ll focus on legal supplements that can make a solid impact on your performance on the diamond and in the weight room. Supplements that I recommend are almost always going to fit the following categories:

• Are demonstrably better than consuming the source material (typically food)
• Are cost-effective and affordable for the average person
• Have a decent amount of scientific backing to them

Believe it or not, this eliminates about 95% of the products on the market. I’ll now take a quick aside to mention that you should never purchase a “NO Explode” type supplement that claim to increase nitric oxide levels in the body or provide a major “pump.” I won’t even link to various products, because I don’t want you to accidentally purchase them after reading their snake oil-like claims.

Nitric Oxide “boosters” or energy-type drinks that fall into this category are pushed hard by GNC employees who have no idea what proper nutrition or supplementation is for the average person, much less an athlete looking for an edge.

Eric Cressey said it best in Maximum Strength:

“…natural arginine levels far exceed anything you can take in pill form (without GI distress) to stimulate NO production… these supplements are marketed with claims that they increase muscle size and strength… there is absolutely no scientific basis for these claims. In fact, arginine supplementation has been shown to mute the growth hormone response to resistance training, so it can actually limit mass and strength gains than to augment them.”

Don’t buy them. Period. I hope that’s clear enough.

Supplements that are Worth Checking Out

Creatine Monohydrate

Creatine monohydrate is a very cheap and effective supplement to help increase general strength and explosive power. It is a cell volumizer that will make your muscles retain more water and has been shown to increase one-rep max (1RM) performance compared to placebo, in addition to other physical exercise benefits. Taking creatine monohydrate will lead to short-term scale weight gain, but this should be ignored as it represents greater water retention and not fat gain. (Source: Journal of Athletic Training)

There are other creatine-based products on the market, such as creatine ethyl ester (CEE). CEE was once thought to be superior to creatine monohydrate, but as Mike Spillane, M.S. Ed noted in his research paper…

This study examined how a seven week supplementation regimen with CEE affected body composition, muscle mass and performance, whole body creatine retention, as well physiological and molecular adaptations, associated with creatine uptake in nonresistance-trained males following a resistance-training program. Results demonstrated that CEE did not show any additional benefit to increases in muscle strength/performance or a significant increase in total muscle creatine when compared to creatine monohydrate or placebo.

(Source: The Effects of Creatine Ethyl Ester Supplementation Combined with Resistance Training on Body Composition, Muscle Mass and Performance, and Intramuscular Creatine Uptake in Males)

As such, I recommend a cheap source of creatine monohydrate, such as this 1200g tub of Optimum Nutrition creatine monohydrate for $25.99 + shipping. Don’t worry about a “loading phase,” either – take 3-5g/day with water. If you can be bothered to do it, take half in the morning and half at night, though it really doesn’t matter.

For those counting, if you took 5g/day after purchasing this tub, you’d have a 240 day supply. Assuming you paid $30 including shipping for this tub, it would cost you 12.5 cents/day to supplement creatine.

Read on for more!

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