Which “Muscle Building Supplements” Work and Which Don’t?

[00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike. And I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you’re going to like my books. Now I have several books, but the place to start is bigger, leaner, stronger. If you’re a guy.

And thinner leaner stronger. If you’re a girl, I mean, these books, they’re basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live in the gym, grinding through workouts that you hate.

Now, you can find these books everywhere. You can buy them online. You know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you’re into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30 day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www. muscleforlife. com forward slash audiobooks.

And you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer. So as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check [00:01:00] out my books if you haven’t already. Now, also, if you like my work in general, then I think you’re going to really like what I’m doing with my supplement company, Legion.

As you may know, I’m really not a fan of the supplement industry. I’ve wasted who knows how much money over the years on worthless junk supplements and have always had trouble finding products that I actually liked and felt were worth buying. And that’s why I finally decided to just make my own. Now a few of the things that make my supplements unique are One, they’re a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored to all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because we explain why we’ve chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting studies on our website, which means you can dive in and go validate.

Everything that we say. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you’re buying. Our formulations are a hundred percent transparent.

[00:02:00] So if that sounds interesting to you, then head over to legionathletics. com. That’s L E G I O N athletics. com. And you can learn a bit more about the supplements that I have as well as my mission for the company. Cause I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it’s long overdue.

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Welcome. Welcome to another episode of the muscle for life podcast. I’m Mike. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about muscle building supplements. I’ve been doing this little series on supplements. And muscle building supplements need to be in it because fat loss supplements and protein powders [00:03:00] are probably the, the, they probably account for the majority of the money spent in the supplement space, but most building supplements are close third.

And specifically we’re going to talk about three of the more popular. Muscle building supplements kind of air quotes, you know, muscle building supplements that don’t work. And those are testosterone boosters, BCAAs and HMB. You know, a lot of people buy these products. They’re heavily promoted as, as, as helping with building muscle.

And then we’ll talk about three of the muscle building supplements that do work and that I do recommend that you take and use if your budget supports it. And if you want to take supplements and those are whey protein, creatine and beta alanine. And along the way, we’ll talk about a few others like glutamine.

A lot of people think glutamine helps build muscle. It doesn’t and so forth. So let’s just, let’s just dive in many years ago before I was, you know, doing this and had my own supplement line and blah, blah, blah. I was like most people and that I would spend a lot of money on supplements. Probably spend.

I mean, there was a time when I was spending like three or 400 a month on supplements, which is, which [00:04:00] is pretty which is a lot of money and especially a lot of money considering that I wasn’t getting really anything for us. Just most of it was on you know, I tried random different testosterone boosters and it growth hormone boosters and muscle building stuff, not so much on fat loss.

And then I’d buy protein powder and I tried pre workouts, but you know, some of these are. Muscle builders that are in the, you know, back area in the, in the, under lock and key. Pretty expensive. I mean, you, you, you could, you could spend 60, 70, 80 on a single bottle. You know, I, I never really noticed a difference.

There were probably a couple, I can remember a couple products where I actually felt the difference, which now that I know what I know about this, the supplement space makes me wonder what was in it. Like there was a product called Pink Magic it was made by USP Labs, who now I would never ever buy anything from USP Labs just because of the scandals that they’ve run into with Jacked or Jack 3D or obviously it’s Jack is how they want it to be pronounced.

But [00:05:00] a lot of people say Jack 3D, And I mean, which had, you know, the D there was the DMA problem there. And then an oxy elite pro there was the liver failure problem. And then there, there was Prozac in it as well. So do not trust this company who knows what they put in their stuff. But they had a product called pink magic that was supposed to be a testosterone booster.

And I remember, I remember noticing a difference, like feeling a bit more energetic and a bit more sex drive and feeling a bit stronger in the gym for like the first bottle that I had taken. And then I had gotten another one later and then didn’t notice anything. So you know, I don’t know. It’s very possible that what some companies do is they may release a product that has some sort of chemical in it that obviously they’re not, they’re not promoting that’s in it.

As it could be a drug, it could be something. And then they use that initial run. So let’s say they run, you know, I don’t know, 50, 000 bottles or something that is spiked with something that you actually feel that actually works and then they get it out there and that generates word of mouth because, because I mean [00:06:00] the, the similar to, to.

The book space, the supplement space is very much driven by word of mouth, you know, a lot of people, they, people that are into working out, they generally end up working out with other people and they get to know people in the gym and people are talking about, you know, what supplements they’ve tried and, and, and it’s kind of good water cooler conversation.

Oh, Hey, so did you try this new pre workout? You try this new block. So you get 50, 000 bottles out there that are spiked, yeah. With, in this case, something. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know. I never, I, there was never any scandals that came out regarding pink magic, so it could have just been straight placebo, which is also something that something companies count on, is just that your belief that it’s gonna work can very well make it work.

So, you know, I thought at that time that I, I, I was a bit naive and that I. Supplement companies were I mean, I didn’t take all their marketing at face value, but I thought that they were generally like professional companies that, you know, we’re on kind of least some of them would, we’re on the cutting edge of research and they really were trying to make good products.

I mean, I [00:07:00] didn’t really realize it’s just a dog and pony show and they’re. Really primarily just marketing companies that sell trash products. That’s more or less supplement companies. So I didn’t know that at the time. So I, when I, you know, if there’s this new testosterone booster based on this new research and it has this new herb and blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, okay, I mean, sounds interesting. Sure. I’ll try it with the belief that. And maybe it works. I mean, they, they say it works. And maybe I heard from someone in the gym that it works. So you get, you get those bottles out there spiked and then generates a lot of word of mouth where people would say, Hey, did you try that new pink magic or whatever your, your next runs don’t contain the molecule the drug, whatever it is.

And because then you can’t get caught. So, you know, if, if the only way you can get caught is from a bottle from, from a batch that was run, who knows? I mean, it could be by the time you get caught, it could have been, oh, that, that was, that was a year and a half ago or something like that. But so you spike your first batch, get word of mouth going.

And then your batches going forward are, are [00:08:00] clean. And of course they don’t have the same results, but it doesn’t matter because you know, that initial impetus could sell you another, who knows, 200, 000 bottles or something like that. If you have big, you know, when we’re talking about a big company with distribution into.

All all supplement stores and online and everywhere. So that’s, that’s a formula. And I don’t know if that’s what USP labs is doing or has done. I mean, obviously you can look up the, the, the scandals I was talking about previously are just public knowledge now, so you can just look that up online.

But. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what they were doing just because, I mean, I guess it makes sense from a, from a marketing standpoint, it doesn’t make sense from a, being a good human standpoint, but you know, again, I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. But so my point is I would, I would, I would try a lot of these random products that are supposed to increase testosterone or increase this hormone or decrease estrogen or whatever.

And for the most part, never really noticed a difference. And now I know why. And that’s really just because. The vast majority, I mean, this is, this is one of the key takeaways of this [00:09:00] podcast is the vast majority of muscle building supplements are just worthless. There are a few that can help and yes, they can help.

And we know that scientifically they are not anything like steroids. They’re not going to dramatically, you know, change the, change your, your results, but when you are, and I’ve said this, I’ve said this before that when you’re, when you’re a natural weightlifter, you want to build muscle naturally. You can, there are a lot of little things that you can do that by themselves don’t do much, but cumulatively actually do something.

And that applies to fat loss too, where, so if you take, you know, an individual supplement or take an individual molecule, like Caffeine, for instance, it increases the, you know, your basal metabolic rate by a certain amount depending on, depending on your sensitivity to it and depending on how, how often you take it and how much and blah, blah, blah.

But you know, just by itself, caffeine, you can’t say caffeine is, is a great weight loss drug or weight loss supplement or weight loss molecule. [00:10:00] Because it doesn’t burn enough energy just by itself to make it that big of a difference, but when you start combining it, so if you have caffeine and then you have synephrine, and then if you combine those with a couple other molecules that are found in the bitter orange, like naringin and hesperidin, and you, and then you combine that with green tea extract, all of these things, they give, you know, they help you burn a little bit more fat, burn a little bit more fat or burn a little bit more energy and thereby burn more fat, you know, you’ll him beans on a good example.

So you add all those things together, which you can do safely if you just have your dosages, right? And now all of a sudden you’re losing fat, you know, maybe 30 to 50 percent faster. So if you hadn’t taken any supplements you would, let’s say you could lose a pound a week and then, you know, you add all these supplements in and now you’re losing a pound a half.

pound and a half a week and you’re losing it safely. And there are no, you know, negative side effects. No reason not to do it. It just costs a little bit of money if you don’t mind that, then you know, that matters. So that applies to muscle building supplements as well, where, you know, creatine for [00:11:00] instance I’d say creatine by itself is is is it does.

I think it makes a enough of a difference that it really is just worth taking. If that’s all you, if that’s the only supplement that you actually were taking, let’s say a protein powder can be convenient. But let’s say you don’t even need that. You just eat your protein. If you’re into weightlifting, you should be taking creatine.

If you have kidney disease, probably not. You should check with your doctor, but if you’re healthy, you should be taking creatine. But beta alanine is an example of it can, it does seem to increase muscle gain over time. Independently of increasing workout performance, but you know, by itself, those effects are, they’re not, they’re not nothing.

They’re just minor. It’s not, it’s not steroids, but if you’re combining, you know, beta alanine with creatine, then you’re, you’re adding a little bit more to it. And unfortunately there aren’t as many, you don’t have as many options with muscle building supplements as you do with fat loss. So you’re net, there’s no way that you are going to take enough muscle building supplements to build muscle 50 percent [00:12:00] faster.

That’s just not gonna happen. So, you know, if naturally, let’s say you could, you could, you could gain, let’s say 20 pounds of muscle in your first year of weight lifting. There’s no way that supplements are going to get you to, to 30 pounds. I just, I mean, based on all the research and all the study I’ve done, I wouldn’t say that.

I would say you. 25 pounds, maybe you could probably get an extra three to five pounds with the right supplements. If you are doing everything else, right. If you’re eating right and training, right. But, and even that, that might be a little bit high might be closer to, you know, maybe, maybe I would say probably 10 to 20 percent is what you can get with natural supplements.

So if that’s not all that exciting to you, I understand. But that just is, that just is what it is. So at least if you can go into, you know, if you’re taking creatine or you’re considering taking creatine or the most building supplements that we’re going to talk about, you can go into it with realistic expectations and you know, where you’re not hinging.

Your your whole future of your training or, or you’re [00:13:00] not hinge your, your, whether you’re going to continue or not, it doesn’t hinge on, Oh, well, you know, if I can just add in this creatine and finally, you know, I want to, I want to gain an extra five pounds in the next two months or of muscle, you know what I mean?

It’s just not going to happen. But if you have realistic expectations and you’re okay with that. And you’re thinking with over the next, you know, year or two, you could see an increase of, let’s say, 10, 20 percent by doing what I’m going to talk about in this, in this podcast, then that’s the right frame of mind to approach it from.

So let’s talk about bad or worthless muscle builders. And the first are natural testosterone boosters. These are, there’s just, So much wrong with, with these supplements and they’re, they’re very popular right now because, you know, you can, you can find I’ve seen a couple of studies that show that here in the West and in, in the U S in particular, the testosterone levels are declining in men and this has a lot of guys worried and you know TRT testosterone replacement therapy is very popular right now and it’s very promoted.

And the though, you know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re getting on [00:14:00] testosterone, if you’re on TRT, that will make a difference. You are going to feel different. You’re going to have more energy. You are going to have more sex drive depending on how, what your dosages are. You are going to be stronger in the gym.

You know, if you’re, if you’re going very high, like top end of normal. Then you will build muscle noticeably faster and get stronger, noticeably faster. So, you know, it’s, there’s an instant gratification to it. It’s just, Hey, you know, inject just inject yourself every, depending on what you’re doing. It could be, I actually don’t know on standard TRT, what type of testosterone is it?

Is it a once a week injection? Are you doing it more frequently? But regardless, Hey, all you gotta do is inject this stuff and you’re going to feel better immediately. So, you know, testosterone is on a lot of guys minds these days. days. And a lot of people though, they don’t want to turn to drugs because of potential health implications and psychological addiction, you know, risks and blah, blah, blah.

So they’re all, I’ll just turn to natural, you know, what can I do naturally? And [00:15:00] unfortunately the only things that you can do. Naturally to increase your testosterone that actually work are more lifestyle oriented and they are longer term solutions. There are no pills or powders you can take that can make up for bad lifestyle choices that that lower testosterone levels.

Which if you want to learn more about that, go over to legionathletics. com, go to the blog and search for testosterone. And I have a. Pretty long article that I wrote on it that goes over what does and doesn’t work in terms of increasing testosterone naturally. And and also might might ease your mind a bit if you’re really, if all you’re thinking about is muscle building and building a physique, just, just, just a segue from talking about testosterone booster supplements in general is that Even if they did work and it’s not going to make a difference because it for you to really notice a difference in terms of muscle gain and and strength you’re going to need to dramatically increase your testosterone.

You can’t just increase it by [00:16:00] 10, 15%. You might feel that you might feel a little bit better. You might, you know, have a little bit more sex drive, but you’re really not going to notice much in the gym. In terms of strength or muscle endurance, if anything, and you’re really not going to notice anything in terms of muscle gain.

So, you know, what, what a testosterone booster would have to do is it’d have to, let’s say double or triple your testosterone levels, not increase it by 20, 25%, which even that would be a ludicrous, that would be a, you know, over the top marketing claim to say that, Oh, you could take this urban, increase your testosterone by, you know, 25%.

That would, that would be, there’s. They would not be supported by scientific research. I can guarantee you that for, for it to, for such a product to deliver on how, you know, the type of claims that are normally made to sell it, which is build muscle faster, you know, get shredded, blah, blah, blah. I would have to double or triple your testosterone levels.

And I guarantee you there, there is no way to do that naturally in less. I mean, you could do that. through lifestyle changes. If your [00:17:00] lifestyle is really upside down, like if you have chronically high cortisol levels, let’s say, let’s say you don’t, you don’t sleep enough, you know, chronically or chronic, you’re, you’re an insomniac and you’re deficient in, in various vitamins and minerals.

You’re deficient in like vitamin D and zinc, even a vitamin C deficiency can affect testosterone levels. Magnesium as well. And you’re doing a ton of cardio and you’re doing very little or no weight lifting. I mean, there are a lot of things you could do. Your low carb dieting can, can, can cause low, can lower testosterone levels cause it, cause it can raise cortisol levels and there’s an inverse relationship there as cortisol levels go up, it depresses testosterone levels.

So yeah, if you took someone in an extreme situation and you fixed all of that, I could doubt, you know, cause let’s say that they could be at. Really, they could be bottomed out. Let’s say a guy was at 200 ngdl nanograms per deciliter of of testosterone. It’s how it’s one of the ways it can be measured. And whereas like, let’s say normal would be around 600.

So, so because of a just [00:18:00] terrible lifestyle, drink a lot of alcohol, blah, blah, blah. You know, so, so he’s down in the one 5200 range and, and also let’s say overweight to just everything, everything you can do to, to, to lower your testosterone levels and then fix. All of that complete change, transform himself.

Yes. I mean then he can come back up to where his body would normally be if he weren’t doing all that stuff. Let’s say that’s 600. And that person is going to notice a difference in the gym. It may not be as dramatic as you would think, but they will notice a difference in everything. But if you take someone who is, let’s say, you know, has all that stuff in, lives healthy takes care of their body, doesn’t, doesn’t isn’t, isn’t doing anything.

That is really depressing as testosterone. You know, there’s, there’s just no way to double or triple without exogenous, without, without injecting testosterone or pill or, or what is it? Yeah, I think they do like a not pill pellet or creams or whatever. You just, you have to be, you have to introduce it.

Into the body externally, there’s just nothing you can do to take someone that has normal testosterone and double or triple it. And just to touch on a few [00:19:00] ingredients, if you look at testosterone boosters, you’ll, you’ll see that many contain tribulus terrestris, and some of them like call that out as if that’s a, and that’s, that’s, that’s why you should buy this product because it has tribulus and several studies have shown that it does not work.

This isn’t even one of those because some ingredients. We’ll have like a rat study that increased testosterone in rats. And then they’ll say, Oh, see, it increases testosterone. You should take it. Well, we’re not, you know, we’re not big rats. We’re not big mice. There are a big differences in, in terms of how our bodies work, especially with metabolism.

When you, when there are diet studies done with rats and certain types of rats can gain fat a lot faster than humans. And, you know, so, terrestris that shows it does not work. It doesn’t improve testosterone levels. It doesn’t improve body composition. It doesn’t improve exercise performance. It’s just, it’s worthless for, for our, for if, for it is a fitness person and trying to build a physique.

It’s worthless [00:20:00] ZMA zinc, magnesium, and normally. Vitamin B6 as well, I believe is another example of a supplement that if you’re deficient in zinc or magnesium, then that can depress testosterone levels. So fixing that can increase them. Same thing. I think I mentioned this, but if I didn’t vitamin D, it’s very important for many, many reasons that you have enough vitamin D, but testosterone, there’s a, there’s a connection there between vitamin D levels and testosterone levels.

So ZMA, and this is, there’s, there’s human research that shows that. If you are not deficient in zinc or magnesium, taking ZMA is not going to increase your testosterone levels, but that’s not how most supplement companies well, if they sell a ZMA product, it’s probably to promote, it’s either going to be promote increased testosterone or better sleep.

And I believe there’s some research on magnesium helping, helping improve sleep quality. So I have to, I’d have to look on that. I’m not sure. I feel like I’ve seen that. But I can tell you for sure that if you are not deficient in zinc or magnesium, it’s not going to increase your testosterone levels.

And, you know, that’s [00:21:00] also why I kind of have an issue with the even the title of a hormone booster, of a testosterone booster, because I’ve looked at for Legion, for my supplement company, I would, from a, from a financial standpoint I think I would love to have something that it would be a hormone type supplement for men.

And the reason why I don’t is because of what I’m talking about in this podcast, there’s just no way I haven’t found any formulation. I haven’t been able to, and I work with, you know, two very smart people as well, much more, you know, much smarter than I am, much more educated than I am, especially in this field.

You know, with science degrees and blah, blah, blah. And we just haven’t come across anything that. Would that we would be able to sell with any enthusiasm. It would just be like, well, if you’re deficient in these couple of things, it could help. But then again, you could just take my multivitamin, which has all these things as well.

So why would you even want to take this because the multivitamin has much other good stuff as well. So, you know, it’s just, and selling something as a hormone [00:22:00] booster is kind of misleading because it’s the best you could hope for really is a, You could say hormone optimizer or because it would be if you’re deficient, or if you have a situation where your hormone levels, your testosterone levels are being depressed, this, this could help you.

But you know, that’s not even from a marketing standpoint, that’s not, you’re, you’re up against products that say. You know, 33 percent increase in testosterone. And so, you know, what, what’s somebody going to choose when they’re looking at? Well, this one, you know, kind of says that it doesn’t really even increase testosterone.

If, if I’m not deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, then the best I can really hope for is a small increase, maybe temporary. So that would be like the honest sales pitch versus, Oh, well this like, you know, look at all the pictures of these shredded dudes and these girls hanging all over them and yeah, and bigger muscles and better sex and better abs.

Yeah. I want all that. I’ll just buy that one. So [00:23:00] if in the future, if there’s more research and that there are certain Supplements that we’re keeping an eye on that show that are showing some promise, but it’s preliminary research. It’s not research that we would be comfortable building a product around.

So we’ll see, we’ll see where that goes, but that’s also why if you see a product that is really selling itself as a, as a testosterone booster, it’s getting increased your testosterone by so much, just skip it. And you know, I’ll have people that will email me and say, Hey, what do you think about this?

Cause you’ll have. Some of these, the I guess you’d call them advertorials, but they’re on the internet where it looks like it’s some news website or some you know fitness magazine type of article or website. And it’s really just to get you to buy a product. And, you know, usually it’s the, it’s the shady rebill stuff.

It’s like the free bottle, the free trial. If you ever come across those types of things, I don’t care where they’re promoted. I don’t care if it’s men’s health, men’s health promoting. Or you know, GNC’s force factor or whatever, just skip it. So here’s how you know, Zach Efron got so [00:24:00] jacked and shredded for his new movie or Chris Pratt for whatever movie or whatever.

And this is the product and it has all the pictures of just skip those. They’re all trash. They are going to do nothing. I guarantee you. So deaspartic acid is another ingredient that you’ll find in a lot of testosterone boosters. And the, the. Love affair with the aspartic acid in the supplement industry kind of started I want to say about six or seven years ago, there was some research that showed that it could increase testosterone levels in, in both humans and rats.

And then of course some companies jumped onto it and that became the thing. I took the aspartic acid back in the day because I had heard about it and this is before I was. You know, educated and I was like, yeah, sure. I’ll try it. I guess. And I noticed that funny enough, because now we know more about it because there’s more, there’s more research that has been done on it and what basically it boils down to is it looks like in some people it can cause a temporary mild increase in testosterone levels.

It works. It seems to work in some people. It seems to not really work in other people. Its effects are mild and they don’t last very long, maybe three or four [00:25:00] weeks, which is, yeah. Interestingly enough, I noticed when I first started taking the aspartic acid it wasn’t a huge difference, but I noticed I was sleeping a little bit better and I had a little bit more energy, a little bit more sex drive, and it lasted for a few weeks and then it went away.

And then anytime in the future that I tried it again, same product, it just did nothing. And that’s in line with now we know, you know, we know a bit more cause there’s, there have been more studies since that initial, it was like a 2009 study that came out that that kind of kicked off. The, the deaspartic acid market, at least in, in the fitness space.

And now we know more and that’s basically what we know at this point. So when you see, you know, products that are pushing those, those ingredients, tribulus terrestris ZMA and DMA, DAA, you know, just know that you’re, it’s, you’re not going to get anything out of it. And if, if you are deficient in zinc and magnesium or other even vitamin D or other things like that, in my opinion a well formulated, Multivitamin is a better choice because you’ll get more for your money, really.

I mean, you’re going to pay let’s [00:26:00] say 40 for a bottle of a, of a hormone optimizer or testosterone optimizer or booster or whatever. And you’re going to get, you know, a few, let’s say that it’s what actually helps your body is the zinc magnesium and vitamin D that’s in there. And then you have a bunch of these other worthless ingredients that you’re paying money for.

You might as well just get a good multivitamin that has. The, the zinc in the magnesium and vitamin D plus a bunch of other stuff that’s actually good. That’s actually going to benefit you. And the same thing goes for ingredients like saw palmetto. You’ll see a lot in a lot of products and just sold by itself and promoted heavily horny goat weed.

Urecoma longifolia jack is another one. Holy basil, velvet antlers. So you have a lot of these, these Testosterone boosting type of type of ingredients that again are just either. They’ve either been proven to not work or there’s just not sufficient evidence that they do work. And you know, that could be because there’s just preliminary research or it’s rat research or whatever.

If you want to dive into this deeper, I would suggest going to examine. com and searching for [00:27:00] testosterone booster or just Google examine. Testosterone booster and you’ll, you’ll see that pretty, pretty extensive collection of, of the ingredients that you’ll find in testosterone boosting supplements.

And you know, if you’ve, if you’re not familiar with the exam and I don’t even know how many, how many studies, they probably have hundreds of thousands of studies cited. Now it’s, it’s all about the science of supplements and they have a lot of very smart people and very educated people. Producing their content and doing their research, and it’s just a great place to go.

It’s not it’s written for scientists. I’ll warn you It’s not written for layman some of the The product pages or some of the supplement pages have editors notes that kind of explain certain things that break things down and make it simple But it’s it’s very technical. It’s very dense But there is enough, you can sort through it enough where you know that if you want to know what are the testosterone boosting effects of blot, you go to that page and they’ll have a section on testosterone boosting.

There’ll be a lot of words that you don’t know and a lot of things that you’re like, I have no [00:28:00] idea what they’re saying, but you’ll come to a point where you’ll see, Oh, okay. So in this study, did it work or not? Yes or no is you can get answers to that. So I would recommend checking that out. It’s just a good resource.

If you want to also fact check anything I say or anything, anybody says examines a good resource for that. All right. So now let’s talk BCAAs. Very popular supplement a supplement that I get asked fairly frequently why I don’t have one. And the, the reason why is because if you eat enough protein and you don’t train fasted which means that you don’t train when you haven’t, when your insulin levels are at a low baseline level, because you haven’t eaten food in, let’s say, I mean, it really depends how big your previous meal was, but it could be anywhere from three to six hours.

So you eat food, your body processes it. Insulin plays a role in, in processing the food that you eat. Once it’s done processing and some levels come down, you’re now in a fasted state. So if you don’t train in a fasted state and if you eat enough protein, you, there’s just really nothing that BCAs can offer you.

And if they’re, if they’re going to [00:29:00] do anything, it’s going to be so negligible, it’s just not even worth the money. And if you’re not familiar with. BCAAs. It’s branched chain amino acids. It’s three amino acids, leucine, isoleucine and valine. And out of those three, leucine for muscle building purposes is the most important because it stimulates muscle growth is just a simple way to think about it on a cellular level.

So that’s one of the reasons why whey protein is a great source of protein is because it’s very high in leucine which makes it good for muscle building purposes, I guess you could say. And whereas Proteins that would be very low in leucine wouldn’t be, they wouldn’t stimulate as much protein synthesis as so like 20 weight, 20 grams of, of way would stimulate in an immediate sense, more protein synthesis than 20 grams of a protein that would be much lower in leucine, which could be, you know, a protein, there’ll be a.

Plant based protein, for instance nothing immediately comes to mind, but like let’s say protein you’d find in something like broccoli broccoli when compared to whey has a lot less leucine isoleucine has similar effects to leucine. They’re just [00:30:00] not nearly as significant. And valine for muscle building reason purposes really has no role in things.

It doesn’t seem to do much of anything. Now, the reason why BCAs are just very popular is because they’re easy to sell. I mean, you can cite research that shows, Oh, well, these people took BCAs before their workouts or in during their workouts or throughout the day or whatever. And they gained more muscle than these people.

And it’s clean, it’s simple and, you know, it’s convincing. But in some cases I mean, I, I feel the research is just biased, you know, when it’s, when it’s funded by the company that is known for their BCA product, that’s all they really, what they push is their BCA product. That’s their best selling product.

I mean, yeah, that’s an obvious conflict of interest. In some cases. This comes back to the faster training point of where, if you are, let’s say, you know, let’s say you train first thing in the morning. So you, you stop eating at 10 PM at the, you know, at the previous night and then you go to bed at whatever, 11 or 12 and then you’re up at seven, let’s say, so you haven’t [00:31:00] eaten in quite some time.

Obviously you’re in a fasted state and then you go lift weights. And then you eat after in that case, if you were to take BCAAs before you go train over time, there is a good chance that you’re going to gain more muscle. And the reason why is when you are training in a fastest state, muscle breakdown is accelerated.

So when you’re training, you’re obviously causing the breakdown of muscle cells, you’re damaging muscle cells. And some of the, like to, to, to That’s good. That’s what we want. That’s one of the, you could say pathways to muscle growth. It’s one of the stimuli that causes the body to adapt and build muscles bigger and stronger.

But too much muscle breakdown is a problem because at the end of the day, muscle gain is simply the difference between how much. You could say muscle, how many muscle proteins were synthesized, were created versus how many were broken down or lost. So if you can do anything you can do to increase protein synthesis like, you know, that’s, that’s one of the major things that steroids do is they just greatly elevate protein synthesis.

So your body’s able to [00:32:00] synthesize many more muscle proteins every day than normal. So doing that increases, you know, total muscle gain or decreasing muscle breakdown increases. Total muscle gain. That’s one of the reasons why high carb dieting can help you gain muscle faster. There are several reasons, but one of them is if you have a high carb diet, generally your, your insulin levels are just generally higher and insulin isn’t a, isn’t an anabolic hormone, but it’s an anti catabolic hormone, meaning that it lowers muscle breakdown levels.

And this has been proven in, in many studies and I’ve written about it many times. So that high carb diet, what it’s doing is, is at every, if you look at it in terms of Total muscle breakdown rates in, in a 24 hour period, it is lowering them because that’s one of the effects of insulin in the body.

So when you’re training in a fasted state, you are losing more muscle cells. You could think of it, or they’re getting your, you know, they’re getting damaged. They need to be replaced. And by having leucine. In particular, about three grams or [00:33:00] so before training, what leucine does then is because it stimulates protein synthesis, it counterbalances the acceleration and muscle breakdown that occurs while you train fasted.

And leucine does have an insulin response. It does stimulate the production of insulin, but it’s not. Doesn’t produce doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t cause the production of nearly as much as, as a, as food, as a meal. And so in, in terms of an acute spike, and then the L your, your levels don’t remain elevated for nearly as long.

So that’s where BCAs can come in and we’re having, you know, 10 grams of BCAs will generally provide you with. Two or three grams of leucine before fasted training that can help you gain muscle faster over time. And it’ll probably also improve your performance a little bit as well. Now, those effects are minimal.

Those are like going back to the, to the beginning of the podcast. One of the just little things, a little tweak, you can give you a little bit of for a couple more percent and you add it to your routine kind of thing. It’s not a, it’s not a huge make break, but you know, I do a lot of, I do all my training fast these days just because I’ve come to [00:34:00] enjoy it really.

So if I’m not cutting, then I just have a, I just, I don’t do BCAs, I just do straight leucine. I just do three grams of leucine. It doesn’t taste good, but at this point I don’t care. Mix it with water, drink it down. You can mix with pre workout too, but it makes your pre workout taste quite a bit worse.

So if you, I kind of like the taste of my pre workout, so I just kind of get my leucine down and be like, and then wash my mouth out and then actually enjoy my pre workout. If you are training fasted, I would say just by leucine, you’re going to save money because the other two amino acids aren’t going to do anything.

And if you are not training fasted, then you most definitely don’t need to be taking it before you train or during or after. And if you are eating enough protein, then it has no use either. And if you’re not eating enough protein, you can’t replace the protein that you should be eating with BCAAs because protein contains quite a few more amino acids that your body needs to do everything that it does, including building muscle.

It’s not just three amino acids that You know, you get from protein and the last supplement that muscle building supplement that sucks is HMB or beta [00:35:00] hydroxy beta methyl butyrate. And this is a metabolite would be the word. It’s a molecule that when your body, when it metabolizes and it breaks down leucine.

And one of the molecules that is, that comes out of this or that results from, from, from that process is HMB. And this has been sold for several years now as a very potent muscle builder. There’ve been a couple of studies that demonstrate outrageous results. I mean, results that you couldn’t even get with steroids where you have like, you know, experience resistance, trained men lifting weights for, I 10 weeks with HMB and the, you know, the HMB group gained XL, Laura, I don’t remember this.

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but a large amount of muscle and lost a large amount of fat. And you know, that’s, that’s, that’s it. That was the only difference and diets were matched and training was matched and blah, blah, blah. And that’s just nonsense. Again, if you look at who funded that research, it’s the person that owns the patent on HMB.

So. No, no surprise. And if you look at, there are several studies that don’t [00:36:00] have these biases or these conflicts of interest and show that it basically had no effects on strength. I think there was one that showed slight, a slight boost in strength. But there, there are several others that the general consensus is HMB doesn’t make you stronger.

It doesn’t help you build muscle faster. It just, it just doesn’t work like that. That said, one of my supplements. Contains HMB. It’s, it’s called Forge. And the reason why is because Forge is, it’s, it’s a, it’s kind of a unique product in that it is specifically for facet training because it has HMB and it has yohimbine and it has another molecule called CDP choline and or citric choline.

And the reason why is because research shows that while HMB isn’t, isn’t. Anabolic kind of similar to insulin. Like I was talking about earlier, it’s not anabolic, but it’s very anti catabolic, which is what we want from the leucine, you know, that I take before I train fasted H it’s anti catabolic.

That’s why I’m taking it. It helps reduce muscle breakdown rates. And, and research shows the HMB is about 20 times as anti catabolic [00:37:00] and it has no insulin response whatsoever. So for the purpose of mitigating the downsides of, of fasted training. HMB is great. And the reason why that I take leucine before I train faster than HMB is because I don’t need to be taking yohimbine in particular, you know, every day.

If I’m, if I’m, I’m not cutting right now, I’m just maintaining. So there’s no reason to take yohimbine every day. I only take it when I’m cutting. So I could buy HMB as a, as a separate, as a separate supplement, but it’s also, it’s very expensive. It’s cause it’s overhyped and over marketed. So leucine works fine.

HMB is better, but, but you know, leucine works fine and it’s cheap. So I just use that. All right. So those are the. Free most popular types of most building supplements, at least right now that you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t waste your money on. I, I mentioned glutamine earlier glutamine. I feel like the hype on that has finally died down like many years ago when I was wasting much money on supplements, unworthful supplements.

That’s when glutamine is really being pushed as like a, Oh, this is [00:38:00] powerful. It was particularly for, for muscle, for like post workout. Like if you take this post workout, you know, your muscles are going to recover faster and you’re going to build more muscle. And we know now that’s a hundred percent false.

That is not true. There’s now research again, similar attributes, terrestrials, there’s research, human research that shows this. does not work. It’s not just, you know, Hey, there’s no evidence for this. And theoretically it shouldn’t work. We know it does not work. Glutamine is good for your immune system.

It’s good for your gut health. You could take it for that reason. And also if I remember correctly, there was one study I saw with, it was with college football players that were training several hours a day between their workouts and between their, their, their practices and stuff. It was several, several hours of intense exercise per day.

And with those guys glutamine helped with recovery. So if that’s you, if you’re doing four to six hours of intense exercise a day glutamine may help you recover faster. There may have been some performance benefits as well. I don’t remember. That’s just not the majority of us. So I don’t use, I don’t take glutamine, but you know, if I, if [00:39:00] I were getting sick frequently or, you know, if I were having gut issues, then there’s a, depending on what they were, then it might make sense for me, for me to take it, but that’s just not the case for me.

So. I just don’t bother with it. Okay. So now let’s talk about good supplements. Let’s talk about the three ones that I personally use and recommend. And the first is protein powder. I personally use whey isolate because it has great macros. It’s basically just protein. And you know, I, I sell away isolate.

And it’s if I remember correctly, it’s somewhere around, I think it’s like 22 or 24 grams of protein per scoop and either zero or a few anywhere from like one to a few carbs because certain flavor systems actually like, Oh, you need two grams of carbs in the vanilla to make it taste right. But you only need one gram of carb in the in the chocolate or whatever.

And you know, 0. 5 to like one, maybe we have two grams of fat per serving. I don’t think it was up to, I think it’s like basically no fat. So, so the macros are great. The calories are great and it tastes super good. Also, I like that it has no lactose in it. I’m not lactose [00:40:00] intolerant, but there is a point where if I have too much lactose which I have three scoops of protein a day, and also I have some Greek yogurt at night sometimes some cottage cheese as well.

And some also these days, some Parmesan cheese I put on my food, or I just eat a little bit cause it’s super tasty. If I have too much lactose, it’s going to upset my stomach. So if I can just reduce the, the lactose load and then, then I do that. And whey isolate is good for that. Now you don’t, you don’t need a protein supplement.

You can just eat all of your protein. But that can be tricky because you know, balancing your macros can be tricky depending on how much time you have to cook and what your pals like, like how many foods do you like? What are you willing to eat? What are you willing to make? Then there’s time that goes with that.

You know, you have to shop, you have to prep, you have to cook, clean up and so forth. You know, you’re not probably have to bring foods with you if you’re in, if, You have like, okay, you need to eat some protein. It’s generally a good idea to have protein probably every three or five hours. There is some research that shows that you, that will probably help you build muscle [00:41:00] faster over the longterm than if you just a protein once or twice a day with many hours in between those meals.

Also, I mean, I, I, I like to eat every few hours, just have something get a little boost in energy. and taste something good. So you know, if you were going to have a 3 p. m snack of some kind, if it’s going to be protein and you want to just eat food, you’re gonna have to be carrying meals with you and maybe you’re going to need, you know, like a six pack bags type thing or, or, or meal prep meal container type of approach.

That’s fine if you want to do that. But personally, you know, I would rather just throw some protein in a, in a and then there’s also depending on how much food you need to eat. I mean if you’re bulking and you’re increasing your calories over time you get pretty sick of eating. That’s one of the ways you know you’re doing it right when you’re bulking.

If you’re sick of eating after being a month or two into a bulk, you’re doing it right. And same thing with cutting. Like after a month or so of cutting, if you, yeah, I mean maybe you’re not super hungry all the time, but you, you know, you could really use some more food. It’s a, it’s a sign you’re, you’re, you’re probably doing it right.

But so when you’re, when you’re just trying to get all your protein from, [00:42:00] from whole foods, especially when you’re bulking, it just, sometimes a shake is just a nice reprieve from feeling full all the time as opposed to eating a chicken breast, maybe that would be much more filling. So the pros of protein powder are obvious, you know, they make fast and easy snacks.

It’s often preferable to, to have any food. The macros, depending on the product can be very good, which means that you get to spend your calories and your macros on, you know, you’re not drinking carbs and fats, which I never liked to do. I want to eat my carbs and fats and I’ll drink protein. I want to eat my carbs and fats though.

And protein powder also is very affordable. I mean, it can be depending on what you’re buying. But if you knew when you look at it in terms of what you’re paying per gram of protein, especially high quality protein you know, a lot of people think that supplements, they just see a price tag and go, that’s expensive, but then go look at what you’re paying per gram of protein, you know, for that way or whatever, versus what, something else that you would buy, whether it be chicken or a meat of some kind or dairy or eggs or whatever.

And you’ll see that it’s it can be, it can be a good value actually. So in the case of way, I should also mention that there is [00:43:00] a bit of research that shows. that because way is rapidly digested and it’s very high in leucine, that it makes a particularly good post workout protein. Something to have.

I mean, there’s not, it’s not so much about the anabolic window per se, but it’s, it’s probably a good idea to eat protein within 30 minutes, 60 minutes or so have a serving of protein, 30, 20 to 40 grams after you train. over time, it probably doing that, it probably gives you a little boost to muscle gain over time.

And there’s some research that shows that way is particularly good for that. So that’s really, I mean, I, I have two scoops of protein. I train early in the morning. I come here to the office. I have two scoops of protein of whey protein. Then, and I have a scoop in the afternoon just because because it tastes good.

And I like, I do try to eat protein every few hours or so. I mean, I’m not like crazy about it if I miss a meal or something, I’m not worried about it, but that’s generally what I try to do. So is the post workout. Aspect is, is, is a, is a reason I think to, if you, if you don’t have any problem with way or, [00:44:00] or, or way isolate that it makes sense to get away because you can now you, you gain a little bit in a, in your post workout use.

And then if you take one or two scoops, you know, at another time of the day, it’s going to be equally as good as anything else. Now, you know, sometimes I’ll get asked by people, they’ll, they’ll say, Oh, well, isn’t it better to have a slow burning protein throughout, you know, if you’re going to, if you had.

Six servings of protein a day isn’t, isn’t, isn’t the research that shows that slower burning proteins are going to help you gain muscle faster. And there is some research on that. There’s not much. And I, it’s not enough where I’m willing to, let’s say, sell a casein protein and sell it on that and say, Hey, this is a better muscle builder protein.

Like some companies do. But. What sometimes people forget is, yeah, but you’re not taking six servings of protein powder a day, or if you are, you need to rethink your diet. I don’t know of any off the tie, like just simple pat or here, here’s the study that shows that you should be getting you know, that, that says this is how much protein powder you should be having per day.

But I think it’s [00:45:00] a pretty sensible to, to, to say that you shouldn’t be getting the majority of your protein. Your daily protein from from a powder, mainly because there are other nutrients that you should be getting, you know, you have different sources of protein where you can get protein, it can be meat sources, animal sources, which have different nutrients, your body needs.

It can be plant sources, which have a lot of nutrients that your body needs. So. It’s not just about when you eat food. It’s not just a macro. It’s not just I’m getting protein, carbs, and fats. You’re getting macros and micros. So there are a lot of micros, micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, and other things that you’re not going to get from just a protein powder.

So that’s why I personally, you know, again, I have about 70 grams of protein. I eat about 200 grams of protein a day. That’s my, you know, average intakes, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. And I get 70 of those grams from, from protein powder and everything else from food. And I get a variety of, my protein comes from, I eat chicken, I have some dairy, I have Greek yogurt.

I have one egg every day. I have, I get protein a little [00:46:00] bit from vegetables that I eat. It’s not much, maybe 10 or 15 grams. And then I get some from, I eat oatmeal every day. So I get my protein from a variety of sources which then also comes with, with other nutrients that the body needs. So, you know, when people ask me how much, Hey, how much of my daily protein can come from powder?

You know, I say definitely don’t go higher than 50%, but if you can, if you can get a little bit under that and, and get your protein from a variety of foods, of nutritious foods, then that’s probably the best choice. So, that’s why I say, if you’re fine with whey, just go with a whey because you’re not going to be having seven servings of whey, you know, seven servings of a powder every day.

If you were going to do seven servings of a powder, maybe then a slower burning protein would be a better idea, but I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone. So next on the list is creatine and creatine is, you know, there’s, there are hundreds and hundreds of studies that have been done in creatine over the last several decades.

It’s the most researched molecule in all sports nutrition. And it works. We know [00:47:00] that for a fact, you build muscle faster, you get stronger, faster, it improves the anaerobic endurance, improves muscle recovery. There’s just no question. It works. It’s not a steroid. It’s not as it’s not going to be as effective as, as you know, doing a large amount of injecting large amount of testosterone obviously every week.

But if you are, and I said this earlier, if you you, are a healthy individual. You don’t have kidney disease or anything like that. And you are trying to build muscle or build strength, build physique or whatever you should be taking creatine. Its effects are not dramatic, but you will notice within the first week or so that you’re a bit stronger in the gym.

And then of course you can leverage that strength to make. So to progress better. So, you know, the stronger you, when you, when you can get more reps now you’ll, you’ll notice that like you, you have strength, which is pure power. And then you also have muscle endurance. You know, you’ll notice, especially if you’re doing some higher rep, cause then that’s more, we get into the anaerobic range.

But the, the stronger you are, the faster you can add weight to the bar, the faster you can progress, the faster you can build muscle. So there’s that element. And then there also are other mechanisms. [00:48:00] whereby creatine directly augments muscle growth. So you should be taking creatine in terms of forms.

Creatine monohydrate is just the proven winner. That’s what the majority of the studies have been done on. There’s other forms like F Lester that just don’t work. You know, that’s an example of one that just, it’s just not as effective as monohydrate. And then there are some forms that are more water soluble like.

Creatine hydrochloride, which, I mean there’s creating malate, there’s creating citrate. Those are all fine. The only reason to go for one of those type of products is if creating upsets your stomach. Some people, it makes them gassy. Some people, it causes just GI disturbances. So if that’s the case, sometimes It, in some cases, unfortunately, even switching to a more water soluble form doesn’t do anything.

It’s just some people’s bodies just don’t like creatine when supplemented like that. I mean, obviously you’re going to get creatine and you can get it from your diet. If you eat a big steak, you’re gonna get a few grams of creatine. But you know, I, I wouldn’t. I personally, I wouldn’t eat a big steak every day necessarily.

I’m not afraid of [00:49:00] meat and the whole meat cancer thing, which if you want to learn more about that again, go to examine and Google for examine what they they’ve written a few articles on it and they’ve really broken down the research that has been used to kind of sensationalize this whole meat is going to kill you thing.

But. I do limit my red meat intake just to kind of play it safe, you know, and I’ll, I’ll eat red meat maybe once or twice a week, but I eat a lot more chicken and turkey and sometimes fish. I’m not a huge fish fan, but I do like some, some fish. Unfortunately, the fish that I tend to like are, are the high, are high in contaminants and pollutants where you’re just not supposed to eat more than a few servings per week.

So. That’s just the way it is anyway. So with creatine and body composition, it’s basically all pros and no cons. It’s not bad for your kidneys. You don’t have to cycle. It’s not a steroid. Bloating is usually not an issue. Most people don’t run into that. That was kind of a thing now that creatine processing has improved.

Some people still do. Fine. They get bloated with it, but most people don’t have that problem. It doesn’t necessarily cause baldness. You’ve probably [00:50:00] heard that. There is one study, maybe two, that show that it can increase the hydrogen testosterone, DHT levels, which if in men that have male pattern baldness, You hire DHT is a problem and, and can cause, can accelerate hair loss.

So if that’s you then maybe it’s better if you’re really worried about that, that’d be better. I’d say don’t use creatine and we’ll see as more research is done. Was this an anomaly or is this actually a thing? What’s this mechanism? How does this work? Is there something we can do about it? So yeah, it’s, it’s just a very safe, it’s an effective supplement.

It’s not very expensive and it doesn’t shut down production like, like, like drugs do. Your body will naturally produce less creatine when you’re supplementing, but research shows that once you stop supplementing, your body just comes back up and brings its production back to where it needs to be. So yeah, creatine is good.

I do recommend it. And it’s in my, it’s in my post workout supplement called recharge. If you’re interested in what, you know, what I take, that’s what I take five grams of creatine [00:51:00] monohydrate. And actually we’re switching to a blend of creatines that are more water soluble. Simply because. Just to, cause you know, we hear from customers every once in a while that do run into GI issues and then we have to tell them sorry, here, go, go find one of these more water soluble forms that are equally effective to monohydrate, you know, and the mixability of monohydrate is not that great.

So we. Finally, we’re just like, why don’t we just ourselves just use more water soluble from a slightly more expensive, but whatever, it’s just makes it a better product. So that’ll be coming in the next probably three months or so. Most people don’t have an issue. So it’s kind of, we’re, we’re always just looking at tweak things.

How can we make this a little bit better, you know, for each of our products or their you know, okay. So as we’re growing, we have these economies of scale. What can we do? Can we switch to like in the case of our multivitamin, you know, we’re switching to a patented standardized form of, of our garlic extract because we want to make sure that they’re Allison levels are at a certain level.

Or we’ll switch to, we’re switching to a better form of B5 for [00:52:00] instance. So we’re always looking at ways we can improve. And in the case of recharging creatine, that’s how we’re, that’s how we’re doing it. There are a couple other ingredients actually I’m looking at adding, but unfortunately so far they taste so bad.

It’s just we’ve, I know I’ve said this before. We’re trying it with pulse too. Like I would love to get Alcor and pulse because it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a good for, it’s a good cognitive enhancer, but it tastes so bad. It makes, it makes pulse, which in my opinion tastes pretty good right now. I take any flavor.

And you add, you add alcohol, which I think it’s two and a half grams is what you need somewhere between two and three grams. And it goes from tasting like pretty good. If you take pulse, you know how it tastes to tasting like detergent, like straight detergent. So if it’s, if you like, like I really like green apple pulse.

So it goes from like, Ooh, that’s good. Green apple candy drink too. That’s a green apple detergent mix. It’s just gross. So anyways, that’s it on creatine. Pretty simple. And the next supplement that I recommend and that I take is beta alanine, which is amino acid. Now, when you [00:53:00] supplement with beta alanine, it increases the muscular levels of a molecule called carnosine, which your body.

Combines with beta alanine. It makes it from an amino acid called L histidine. And it combines that with beta alanine to form carnosine. And then that carnosine is found in muscle tissue. Now, what carnosine does is it acts as a buffer in the muscle against lactic acid buildup, which that’s one of the reasons why, and you know that when you’re, when you are especially doing higher rep stuff, that burn you’re feeling is this lactic acid buildup.

And. That is one of the ways that muscles fatigue and they finally give out and you can’t do anymore. So karnicine let helps you do more before you hit that point of too much lactic acid buildup, you know, fully fatigued muscle failure. So that’s why studies have shown that beta alanine supplementation.

Is particularly good for, for higher rep, more endurance type stuff. Like you’d say CrossFit type stuff. But there’s also research that shows that it can directly augment muscle [00:54:00] growth, similar to creatine separate from any performance benefits that you would see in the gym. So that’s why many people take both creatine.

And beta alanine because they creatine particularly helps with the lower rep with the power stuff and beta alanine particularly helps with the higher rep stuff. And both of them help you build muscle faster. So there’s a good synergy there. And you’ll, sometimes you’ll find both in pre workout supplements.

And the reason why I didn’t put creatine in my pre workout supplement is because there’s research that shows one that ingesting creatine with caffeine can interfere with creatine’s effects. There’s also research that shows that it doesn’t, we just don’t really know. There’s also, and then there’s research that too shows that creatine is more effective when taken post workout.

And we also know that when taken with carbs it is, it, it gets shuttled into the muscles more effectively. So it, in my opinion, creatine is just an all around better post workout supplement. So you have beta alanine, which again, similar to, to, to creatine, it accumulates in the body or it helps, it accumulates carnosine in the case [00:55:00] of beta alanine.

You’re, you’re, as you, as you, as you take it every day, your carnitine levels are rising, rising, rising. And when you supplement with creatine, your muscle creatine levels rise, rise, rise. That’s why you usually don’t notice effects with either one of them for the first week or so as unless you are loading, which you’ve probably heard that in the, in the context of creatine where you take 20 grams a day instead of five in the big picture, it doesn’t matter.

It matter whether you load or not. It just, if you do load, it’s going to accumulate in your muscles faster and your nose, the effects sooner. The downside is you’re going to burn through that first bottle faster, but once you’ve loaded, then you just go to five grams a day and you’re good to go. Beta alanine also is about five grams that you want four to five grams a day and in carcin levels then rise and then you start noticing difference in your training.

That’s everything. I know this went on a bit long. Hopefully you found it helpful. And again, just kind of key takeaway here is that supplements don’t build great physiques. You have to know what you’re doing with your diet and you have to know what you’re doing in the gym and you have to be persistent and you have to work hard and work for a long period of time.

If you, [00:56:00] really want to dramatically transform your physique. If you have money to spend on supplements, the right supplements can help can make it make these in some cases, make it more enjoyable, like a pre workout from, in my opinion, a good pre workout makes for better workouts, not just in our performance not just in performance, but also in, in, in how you experience them.

I enjoy. My workouts more when I’ve taken pulse cause I just feel better. I have more energy and I’m able to, you know, get a, get a bit more, push a bit more on my weights. And so that makes it worth it to me, but you don’t need supplements to build the body you want. They are supplements. They’re not vital.

So I hope you found this helpful. And again, if you want to check out what supplements I’m taking, obviously I just take my own stuff because that’s even how I develop products. That’s how each of the products I’ve, I’ve developed and it’s not just me. I have a team of people I work with, but it’s been, okay, really?

What do I, I wish there was a multivitamin that I actually want, wanted to take and that actually impressed me. All right, let’s make that. I wish there was a post workout [00:57:00] supplement. They didn’t have a bunch of crap. that does nothing. I don’t want to pay for glutamine or other things that aren’t HMB and stuff that isn’t going to do anything.

I just want to pay for a few things that are actually going to help. You know, et cetera, et cetera. So if you want to learn more about that and learn what I’m, what I’m taking and the kind of stuff that I make and use, then go to legion, L E G I O N athletics. com. There it is. All right. See you next week.

Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www dot muscle for life. com where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day. Actually I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife. com. Alright, thanks again. Bye.