The no-BS truth about workout supplements

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from musclefullife. com. Thanks for stopping by and checking out this video podcast. In this podcast, we’re going to talk about workout supplements. I want to focus just on this, one subject for the podcast because it’s a bit controversial, there are a [00:03:00] lot of opinions on the matter and I want to weigh in And help inform you as a consumer so you better understand what goes on in the industry and which supplements, are worth your money which ones aren’t and you’ll you know Share some of my opinions on what I like and what I don’t like about supplements and supplement industry.

So To start I just want to tell you that you don’t need to take any supplements at all to build a great physique Proper diet proper training. That’s really what it boils down to supplementation can help And we’ll get to in a little bit later in this podcast, we’ll get to which supplements can help, but just know that I would say the majority of the stuff that you see, or maybe not majority, but a large percentage of the stuff that you see, in your local GNC or vitamin shop or whatever, it’s just not worth the money.

It’s not really going to do anything for you in terms of actual results. And by results, I’m really talking about building muscle. Losing fat, getting stronger, things that are quantifiable, not [00:04:00] oh, I think I felt a little bit better on that pre workout or I think I had a good pump or something like that.

That doesn’t really accomplish anything in the long run. I used to spend probably three or 400 a month on supplements. So I know what it’s like to go in there and go back to the secret steroid case in the back and behind the glass and look at all the different things and try this one and try that one.

And you’re trying and you’re like, do I feel anything? I don’t know. Maybe, and yeah, so I used to be that guy and would try all the new stuff and had my different stacks that I liked. And ironically I was, comparatively speaking, if I compare my physique and just my strength and maybe I compare my body now to then I was smaller fatter weaker it didn’t, all those, all that money I was wasting on supplements would have been better off spent on better food or maybe some books to educate myself or something.

So just know that if you don’t want to take supplements, you don’t have to. There are different reasons for that. It can be [00:05:00] financial, which I understand supplements are expensive, or it could be that you just aren’t quite there yet. You don’t really trust what are in these products and I understand that as well.

We’ll be talking about a little bit more about that later. There have been some pretty, pretty shady scandals that have gone down recently that really make you wonder what are you actually putting in your body? And you can’t, trust all companies to, to do what’s right and to not only not cut products with cheap ingredients, but to not include things that would just are straight out harmful.

So yeah that’s like how I want to kind of preface this video. So with that, let’s get into some of the kind of scams and some of the shady things that go down in this industry. And I’m actually speaking from a bit of an Insider type of viewpoint because I am launching my own line of supplements, which we’ll talk about later in this video, which may seem hypocritical, but it’s not, you’ll understand when I get [00:06:00] there.

So I understand from, sourcing manufacturers and things and talking with different people and whatever. And I was even a little bit surprised in some of the things that these companies will do. So let’s go over a few of them. One of the scams is using ingredients that have no science and the reason why people do that is because they want to make ingredients labels that look impressive.

They want you to look at the label and see all these different things and go, wow, I’m getting all that stuff for 40 or whatever. And what you don’t know is that the majority of those ingredients have absolutely no published science no, no published literature that supports their use for whatever that is.

So it could be a fat loss product. It could be a pre workout type product. It could be a whatever test booster and the ingredients, they might sound fancy, they might sound cool, but. they in the end have no proof that they even do anything or to the contrary, they have proof or there’s proof that they just don’t work at all.

Like in the case [00:07:00] of tribulus terrestris, right? Which is in a lot of test boosters. Like I think I’ve seen seven or eight different studies that show that it does nothing for testosterone levels, period. It is not, Going to do anything but you’ll see it in a lot of test booster products out there And it’s not like these companies don’t know that these studies are out there they’ll just cherry pick like a rat study or something that shows that it maybe increased the androgens in a rat and therefore oh now it works and it’s going to boost your test And it’s all in the marketing kind of thing.

So another You know just little scam of the supplement industry is underdosing key ingredients So there are ingredients out there. There are things out there natural substances that do have positive effects in the body they can increase performance or they could just improve different aspects of your health or whatever and the problem that companies run into is to Use these gradients in proper dosages.

It’s just expensive. For instance, let’s talk about [00:08:00] pre workouts. Let’s say something like an amino acid like citrulline malate or beta alanine, right? There’s two different amino acids that increase performance. There’s a bunch of good science that shows that. But, You have to take enough of it, of course.

And in the case of beta alanine, the average effective dosage you’re going to find is about five grams in terms of citrulline malate. It’s going to be like six to eight grams or so. So if you took those dosages of those aminos, then you could expect something positive to happen in terms of performance.

But. If you took a 10th of the, of those doses, if you took 500 milligrams of of beta alanine or 6, 800 milligrams of citrulline malate, you probably won’t get much out of it. Maybe a very small effect, but probably next to nothing. So what companies will do is they don’t want to put five grams of beta alanine and 68 grams of citrulline malate in their product because it’s expensive.

So what they do instead is they’ll put 500 milligrams or less or whatever. And then they’ll hide it. Behind the proprietary blend, which if you see proprietary [00:09:00] blend on a product, don’t buy it. As a consumer, even if you don’t, have any interest in the products that I’m producing in my line, whatever, I totally understand, but just don’t support other companies that are doing that because they’re just basically slapping you in the face as a consumer.

They’re just saying, we don’t care to even tell you what you’re buying because it. We’re underdosing the shit out of our product and, we’re going to hide it behind the super mega max pump matrix proprietary blend to try to fool you. So when you see a company using proprietary blend, just know you’re getting scammed immediately.

There’s, there are no trade secrets in this industry in terms of like secret dosages to use or secret combinations of dosages. All the research is public on these molecules. You can go study it yourself. And that’s really the end of the story. Yes, the underdosing of key ingredients and use of proprietary blend, that’s another scam.

Another kind of deceptive practice is just cutting products with flour, maltodextrin. And if you don’t think that happens, think [00:10:00] again. There, there have been different scandals, I’m not going to name any company names, but there have been different scandals that even come out on the internet where protein powders will test claim so much on on the label and that’ll be independently tested and it’ll come out a lot less.

And they’re, from speaking with people on the inside of this industry. From what they told me is that things like that are a lot more common than you would think. Probably not with the bigger, more established brands that have more money to do it right and have more riding on it.

But with smaller brands that are maybe up and coming that they’re all apparently you’ll have pills with, just sawdust, or you’ll have a pre workouts that are a bunch of caffeine, a couple other stimulants and a bunch of maltodextrin, which is just a carb, right?

Cheap carb. And then of course it’s in the proprietary blend though. So in the proprietary blend there’s all these other fancy sounding things and tiny dosages when really what you’re buying is a tub of malto. So that will happen. I wouldn’t say it’s, prevalent, but it’s definitely out there a bit more than you might think.

There are even the [00:11:00] use of dangerous substances. Like you’ve probably heard about this whole craze scandal where they it turns out that there’s a, it’s called an analog, which means it’s a molecule that is similar to another molecule. Chemically, but it’s not the same. It may have the same effects in the body, but legally speaking, it’s not the same.

In this craze product, there it was discovered there’s a meth analog, methamphetamine, meaning that there’s a molecule, there are, it has meth in it, essentially. But, legally speaking, it’s not meth. The molecule is different enough to where it’s not meth, but it has those meth like effects in the body, which is actually funny.

Ironic and just you know, because I would get email when craze was this was several months ago before the scandal broke I was getting there was a time when I was getting emailed or Messaged probably like every day from someone at least one person sometimes multiple saying asking dude, if you try craze this shit is nuts You gotta try craze and I went and looked at the formulation and standard proprietary blend with creatine in it, which is if you see a pre workout that has creatine [00:12:00] in the proprietary blend, don’t buy it.

There’s it. Once again, that’s a, that’s. Will be included because it’s cheap and creatine does work. We’ll be talking about that in a minute So if you take if you’re not taking creatine and you start taking it every day, you are going to notice the difference in the gym you’re going to get stronger but it has no place in a pre workout It’s not like you need to have it before you work out and also you can buy it very cheaply you shouldn’t spend more than 20 to 30 dollars for a month’s worth of creatine, if it’s not less not a 40, 50 pre workout that last two to three weeks.

So anyways, I looked at this craze product and I looked at the formulation and I thought there’s just, this is a crap product. The people that, they must just be new to pre workouts or the company must be including some different stimulants. I didn’t think of meth. But I thought, this is a common thing that is done with pre workouts where you just load it with some stimulants, cheap stimulants.

You, you load it with like caffeine and you load it with, there was that DMAA that was in Jack that’s now illegal. And there are some [00:13:00] other things you can throw that just give you that kick of energy and you might have a crash after and it’s not particularly good for you, for that 30 minutes or so you have that rush and then you say, Oh, it’s a great pre workout or whatever.

And that’s much cheaper to do than to let’s say Going back to what I was talking about earlier, using clinically effective dosages of different amino acids and things that won’t give you that crash and are just better for you. But that’s more expensive. So yeah, there are dangerous, dangerous days.

You don’t know always what are in these products. There’s one company that it’s seems like their modus operandi is to release. Products that have analogs of similar type, where it can be similar to let’s say a pro hormone type type of molecule. And they put that in their product, they release it, people use it.

And then people go, wow, this really works. This test booster, I feel so much better until finally, cause the FDA is so behind anyway on regulation, they run that for a certain period of time get some word of mouth, you gotta try this stuff, you gotta try this stuff and then [00:14:00] pull that product, that version of it, no longer produce it with that Analog.

So they can’t get caught. And then it’s now on the market in terms of a test booster. I might just have like triplets, terrestrials and a few other worthless ingredients, but the word of mouth is generated enough. Sell until it dies off, retire the product, rinse and repeat.

Easy money. So that stuff happens. Don’t think it doesn’t. There are some pretty, the CEO of that driven company that produced craze. I remember reading about that, he has some felony. In the past of doing something similar, like there are some pretty shady people in this industry that are solely driven by making money.

That’s all they care about is just fleecing people for as much money as possible. And, you’ll find that in any industry, but don’t think it’s not. In the sports nutrition world. So the next thing is false, like lying in advertising. That’s a very common, just deceptive practice.

And that takes different forms. You can have false claims of effectiveness. So you can just literally make stuff up in the advertising. Say it does this, that, whatever. Scientifically [00:15:00] proven, a little low. And you have no, no proof. Proof of it really. There are, I think it’s more sophisticated where you can misconstrue science.

Like you could take rat research and try to extrapolate it to humans and just basically say that this molecule is proven to do this in the body, cite a study. And then the site, the study was done with rats. You can’t do that. You can’t take rat research and just apply it directly to humans.

While rat. Rats might be similar to humans in certain parts of their physiology might be similar or well, certain parts are similar. But it’s not similar enough, especially when we’re talking about metabolism and how different substances are broken down and handled in the body. You just can’t, you can’t make that leap.

Rat research or animal research can lead the way for human trials or can be done for ethical reasons where you couldn’t conduct certain studies with humans. So the. You got to go with the best that you can evidence you can find, which would be animal research. But it’s not this was good or bad for the rat, therefore it is always good or [00:16:00] bad for humans.

So that’s pretty common. Also taking research that was done with like people that are sick or the elderly, for instance, taking studies that like, like glutamine is a common scapegoat for this kind of this tactic where you take companies will take AIDS research with AIDS patients, muscle wasting problems, and the very elderly and, not necessarily with AIDS, but just on, on the, on their last.

legs, I guess you could say. And in those situations, glutamine supplementation has been shown to help preserve or help them maintain their muscle mass. But that doesn’t mean that you as a healthy person are going to gain anything in terms of building muscle by taking glutamine. And that’s actually been proven.

There, there are a couple of studies that have been done with healthy athletes that show supplementing with glutamine is not going to help you build muscle. But you’ll see it all the time in the advertising. Glutamine is so important for muscle and you need, you’re going to build more muscle. It’s not true.

It is true that glutamine plays an important role in protein synthesis [00:17:00] and muscle growth, but supplementing with it is not going to do anything for you. You get it from your diet and your body’s good to go. So there are another, common thing that I think a lot of us don’t I don’t know how many, I don’t know how many of us really fall for it, but is the, in athlete endorsements the big bodybuilders that are pretending like, Oh, it’s taking this little test booster.

That’s why my bicep is 25 inches big. Yeah. Okay, buddy. All natty, that is just, misleading, of course. I guess you could say, Oh you know that they’re wrong more than just this supplement, that’s not how it’s advertised. They’ll have their endorsements on how sick this thing, this pump they get.

And this is so crucial for building muscle mass, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, those are the big the big, major deceptive practices and just the status quo really. If you look around, go look through a magazine and see there are companies out there that are more honest.

Opto Nutrition comes to mind. I’ve always liked their products. They’re, owned by a big [00:18:00] pharmaceutical company, Glanbia, which, for some people, they think that’s bad because, you Pharmaceutical companies, some of them actually are pretty shady, but in this case, I think it actually works in their favor because they’re also the biggest supplement company probably in the world.

They have a lot of money. They are able to put that money into their products to make high quality products, which they generally do. When I say generally, there are a couple of products like they’re pre workout. I’m not, it’s an okay formulation, but it’s not great. And there are certain products of theirs, I think are better than others, but generally speaking I think they’re an honest company.

Like their marketing is it’s not over the top. They don’t make ridiculous claims. It’s an example of company that I’ve always recommended and used myself and trusted. And there are others too, but anyway, just look for those things, and if you see companies doing that kind of stuff, just don’t support it.

You as the consumer, you vote for, you vote with your dollars. You tell companies what is okay and what’s not. And if you keep on buying the stuff from the companies that are doing these shady things, [00:19:00] they’re just going to keep on doing it, because it works. As a consumer, you can feel that.

you have the power. You can force whatever kind of change you want to see just simply by spending your money elsewhere. And in this world of supplements, you have a lot of options. You don’t have to go with that exact, type of product when you can just look at it. It’s another company that isn’t doing those things, makes it.

And who knows, you might actually be getting a better product in the end. So let’s talk quickly about some supplements that are not worth using. Testosterone boosters, not worth using. The main reason is because two reasons. One a lot of them are full of ingredients that just don’t do anything.

They’re not going to do anything. Increase your testosterone, like triblis terrestris and other various amino acids and things that, may do certain things in the body, but it’s not going to increase testosterone. The exception to that would be the aspartic acid. That’s a common ingredient used that actually does have some good science and can increase your test.

But. The more important factor or the more important thing to consider is that even if you do increase your [00:20:00] test naturally, let’s say increase it by 10 percent naturally or 20 percent naturally. That’s pretty good, but you’re not, it’s not going to do anything for you in terms of building muscle or getting stronger.

Maybe you’ll see a little bit of strength increase, but you’re not going to build more muscle over time because of it. You might feel a little bit better. It might help with sex drive. And that is a reason to use something like the aspartic acid. If you just want to if your test is low and you want to do some natural things to raise it because having low tests sucks, you don’t feel good.

Low sex drive. So you want to do it for that reason, then I would recommend. taking it. And there are other things you can do naturally as well. But if you, if your test is in a normal range and you feel fine and you have a good sex drive and you want to build a muscle and get stronger don’t waste your time with a test supplements.

Test boosters because it’s just not going to help. There is some research out of McMaster University that actually showed that and I’ll link an article in the description below where I talk about this subject more in depth so you can check it out. HGH [00:21:00] boosters don’t waste your time. These are even more worthless than test boosters because there’s really no, in terms of any different types of growth hormone in the body and the type that you would want to increase for anabolic.

prop purposes, which also keep in mind that growth hormone is not particularly anabolic like testosterone, but it’s more it’s a muscle preserver. So yes, it’s good but it doesn’t drive protein synthesis like testosterone does. But anyways, that specific type of growth hormone, you can’t, there is nothing you can do naturally to boost that.

And also, they’re just, it’s very hard to prove if anything works because it’s hard to test growth hormone because it’s pulsatile. Your body pulses, releases a bunch, and then it stops. And it does this on a cycle. The, while there are a couple ingredients, one that comes to mind is called GABA, something out, alburic acid, or something like that long word, GABA has been shown to increase a certain type of growth hormone.

But that type of growth hormone is not the type that has anything to do with preserving muscle or making [00:22:00] gains in the gym. GABA is a good sleep supplement if you’re having trouble sleeping. But not, it’s not useful for increasing growth hormone or increasing muscle growth or we’ll find increasing the type of growth hormone that increases muscle growth or, strength in the gym.

So just don’t waste your time with GH boosters. Weight gainers. I’m not a fan of weight gainers because they’re full of junk carbs and usually junk fats and by junk just no nutrition, you know dextrose. It’s just you sure you might as well just you know, it’s a type of sugar Okay, fine.

Just pound sugar then whatever It’s, I guess it’s okay if you want to have it as a pre or post workout carb, but personally I prefer to have food. I prefer that you get micronutrients. It’s not dieting is not all about just hitting macro numbers. It’s also about, I wouldn’t say hitting micro numbers because you don’t really need to micromanage like that, but it’s about getting nutrition from your food as well.

And we put a lot of demands in our bodies. If we’re lifting weights regularly, doing bunch of cardio and whatever. So our bodies have [00:23:00] higher needs for micronutrients. So that’s where if it fits your macros type of philosophy, yes, it’s true in terms of body composition. It boils down to hitting numbers every day macronutrient numbers, protein, carbs and fats.

But remember that healthy foods do more for your body than just give a protein, carbs and fats. It gives us all the vitamins and minerals and other micro nutrients that we need to, that our body needs to do its many different physiological processes. So that’s why I’m not a fan of weight gainers, because, if you’re pounding down a few thousand calories of weight gainer a day you should, you’d be better served getting a lot less.

I’d say it depends how many total calories you’re eating every day. But in my experience working with people that are using weight gainers, it’d be it just becomes a dietary crutch. Like they’re too lazy to make some food or they don’t want to think about it or whatever.

So they just pound a few thousand calories of weight gainer. And in the end of the day, they just didn’t eat that much food. That’s not good. If you were getting, let’s say, I don’t know, 80 percent of your calories from like nutrient dense foods and you’re still having trouble gaining weight, then I understand if you wanted to try [00:24:00] using the weight gainer personally.

I would just. Focus on including some more calorie dense foods in my meals, or maybe I’d even wake up a little bit earlier to get in a bigger meal or get an extra meal or whatever. But that’s me. Another supplement in my opinion not worth using is a nitric oxide boosting supplement.

Simply because, yeah, I guess it’s fine to get a nice pump and stuff in the gym and it can feel good. And, is that worth spending 30, 40 a month? I don’t think so. And no supplement is not going to directly help you build muscle or strength. Depending on what’s in it, it might be able to improve your performance a little bit, your muscle endurance a little bit, which if you’re training properly, it can lead to you doing some more reps with your weight, which is more progressive overload, which if.

Combined with proper nutrition can turn into muscle growth. Yeah, you can work it to where it could lead to some extra muscle growth, but in my opinion, it just as a supplement by itself is just not worth the money. Yeah another [00:25:00] supplement that is not worth it.

Let’s see I guess those are the major, I’m probably forgetting something, but those are the major ones. Fat burners are hit and miss. There’s a fat burner from a company, BPX, called Meltdown, which I actually do has good ingredients, good dosages. And they’ve actually paid for a couple of universities to do, I think they’ve done two studies that I can link it in the description.

I believe it’s two studies done by universities that show it works. Which is not surprising when you look at the ingredients and you can research on the ingredients and you’ll know what’s going to work. You don’t have to pay to get the study done, but I understand for marketing reasons why they did that.

And some, some fat burners, I don’t like just looking at the formulations. You want to try a fat burner, I do recommend BPX good product. All right, so let’s move now to some supplements worth using. Before that, let me just then say that I’m going to go over some supplements that are worth using.

So pretty much anything outside of these are, is not probably not worth it. There are some things that that I’m not going to cover right here that may or may not be worth it. Actually I’m [00:26:00] BCAs before I get into supplements that are worth using, because this is also something that a lot of people spend a lot of money on, BCAs.

And we think that, you’ve got to have them before you work. I got an after workout, take them every two hours, blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is you don’t need to be doing that if you just need enough protein. BCA is the proper use. And really the only like worthwhile use, the only time I ever use them is if I’m going to be training at fasted state, which I will I don’t have to link it.

I’ll just explain. A fasted state is basically when your body is, it’s insulin levels are at a baseline, and it’s fully relying on it’s fat stores, it’s energy stores to to operate. When you eat a meal, let’s say you eat a moderate sized meal, It’ll take anywhere from three to five hours for your body to fully absorb those nutrients.

During that time, your insulin levels are elevated. Insulin’s job is to shovel nutrients out of the blood into the cells. After that process is done, insulin levels come down and you’re now in a fasted state. So the reason why you want to exercise in this state is mainly due to accelerated fat loss.

Research has shown that you can lose fat [00:27:00] faster when you’re training in the state. However, it does come with accelerated muscle breakdown. So to counteract that, you use BCAAs. And in particular, really what you want is leucine. Leucine is the amino acid in the BCAAs. BCAAs are three, three amino acids.

It’s leucine, isoleucine, and valine. So leucine is the one that really does it. It stimulates protein synthesis directly. So you can use BCAAs or you could just use straight leucine. If you’re going to use BCAAs, you’re going to want to do about four. 10 grams, which would give you three to five grams of leucine, or you can just do three to five grams of leucine directly.

Leucine doesn’t taste good. It’s very bitter. So if you have a very sensitive palate, you’re probably just better off going with a BCAA product that tastes decent. So otherwise BCAAs Are not worth it. You just don’t, you don’t need, you’re not doing anything by giving your body leucine every few hours.

You’re much better off taking that money and just putting it into better food. Higher, high quality meats and high quality dairy products and, eggs and good sources are all good sources of protein, fish grains. Of course, you can get some protein [00:28:00] from vegetables, not very much, but put that money into getting good.

micronutrient dense foods and good sources of proteins and good sources of fats instead. Okay, so let’s move on now to supplements that are worth using. Let’s talk about protein powders, protein powder worth using. Yes, it’s convenient and that’s why it’s worth using. It’s not that, you need protein powder to build muscle.

Not at all. In fact, I don’t use that much protein powder. I have a shake before I work out. I have and I have a shake after I work out, which I also have way again with some carbs both before and after. And I have one other shake in the afternoon, which is egg. And that’s simply because it’s convenient.

I’m here at the office. I’m working. I don’t want to take the time to prepare anything. I just, drink down some protein, have a banana, some almond butter, and I’m done and I can get back to work. But you don’t have to use protein powder if you don’t want to. It is actually a cost effective source of protein and a high quality source of protein.

So it’s not bad. But if you don’t want to use it, if your stomach doesn’t do well with whey if you don’t like the taste of egg protein, or you just don’t like that as an [00:29:00] option or, if maybe you’re vegan and you don’t like your vegan options, then it’s fine. You don’t have to use any protein powders.

Although in the case of vegans to get enough protein, usually we have to get them using some sort of protein powder, because it’s just hard to get to even the 0. 8 grams per pound type of protein range, 0. 8 grams protein per pound range that, Is. Recommended if you’re going to be engaging in regular weightlifting if we don’t use a protein powder.

But anyway, the bottom line is protein powders are not necessary by any means, they’re just convenient. And there is a little bit of research that shows that whey is particularly good for post workout. Protein because it does quickly spike the it’s rich in leucine, which is good and it quickly spikes amino acids in the blood.

If you want to use a protein powder, I do the, what I’d recommend is getting away and use it have like a scoop before you work out with some carbs and have one to two scoops after with some carbs and, you can get the rest of your protein from food throughout the day. So the next supplement worth using is creatine.[00:30:00] 

Creatine is probably one of the most studied molecules in all of sports nutrition. At least 200 studies on it, maybe even closer to 300 actually. And the bottom line is it works. Period. It works. It’s not an amino acid. It’s called a peptide. It’s a combination of amino acids. But it’s natural. Like you eat a big steak, you’re going to get a few grams of creatine in it.

And it improves strength. It improves muscle growth, accelerates, or it can help you build more muscle. If I remember correctly, it also has been shown to decrease markers of muscle damage that improves recovery. It’s good. You don’t have to cycle it. You don’t have to load it if you don’t want to loading is where you take it really, what it boils down to is 20 grams a day for a week.

And then you bring that down and that’s just so you can quickly saturate your muscles with it. And then you bring it down to five grams a day for maintenance. You don’t have to do that. I found that I noticed its effects a little bit faster, which makes sense. If you’re just having more and it gets in your system faster, but some people do retain a bit of water when they load it and they don’t like that.

I don’t care because the water just goes out anyway when you [00:31:00] drop to a maintenance dosage, you don’t have to load it. You don’t have to cycle it. It’s not a, it’s not any kind of steroid or anything like that. Your body will, its production, its own production will just scale down when you’re on it.

And if you come off it, it scales up. It’s a very safe. Okay. Effective, inexpensive, relatively inexpensive supplement that, I do recommend you use. And don’t worry about the water retention thing either. That’s not really an issue these days. It was an issue in the past when processing methods weren’t as good, but rarely do people have any water retention issues.

I take creatine always. Really, whether I’m bulking, cutting, maintaining, whatever. And I’ve just recently, a couple months ago, finished a cut where I ended somewhere between five and six percent body fat, hard to test with calipers at that point. I would have went to, had to would have went to, would have had to have gone to get DEXA scanned if I really wanted to know for sure.

But I was pretty shredded. I really had nothing left I could grab and I was taking creatine the entire time. So I don’t think it makes you retain a bunch of water. Another supplement that I recommend you take is a good multivitamin. Simply because well, [00:32:00] it’s true that you can get all your micronutrients from your foods.

It’s just getting harder to do these days unless you eat a bunch of vegetables and good variety of vegetables and fruits and things like that. I eat a couple servings of vegetables and fruit a day. But I take a multi just to make sure that I’m not deficient in anything because micronutrient deficiencies can affect your performance and they affect your overall health.

A multi, I think is worth the investment, especially if you’re going to, put your body under the extra stress that comes along with exercise and whatnot. Fish oil omega 3 fatty acids, very important. The American diet is very high in omega 6 fatty acids. And when your omega 6s and 3s get out of whack, you can have a wide variety of negative health effects.

And by supplementing with omega 3s, fish oil, I’m going to, I’ll just link down in the description so you can go see the product. the pretty impressive roster of health benefits that come with it. It’s not cheap but it’s extremely good for you. And it has quite a few benefits that are particularly helpful for us fitness people, like [00:33:00] improving protein synthesis and potentially improving even fat loss and increasing insulin sensitivity and other things.

So I do recommend fish oil. Pre workout supplements are worth it depending on what they are. If the formulation is good, then it’s worth it. Meaning that if it doesn’t just contain a bunch of caffeine and a couple other stimulants that you could just buy way cheaper. Like in the case of a lot of pre workouts that are on the market, you could just buy caffeine pills and you would feel exactly the same.

You would notice no difference in terms of your, not only how you feel, but what it does for you in the gym, take 400 milligrams of the caffeine pill. One, for one week and then take the pre workout. for the next week. And you really wouldn’t know as much of a difference. And there may be a couple other stimulants in the pre workout that you would notice, but you could buy those cheaply and just throw them in or whatever.

However, if a pre workout has more than that, and it has good a good formulation, good dosages I think it’s worth it simply because it helps you perform better in the gym. The more weight you can push in the gym and the more reps you can get the more games you make [00:34:00] over time. Of course, it’s not an immediate gratification thing, but it does add up over time.

And also, there is the fact that the, how much you enjoy your workouts does matter. We don’t, nobody likes to go do something, slog through something every day. It’s much more enjoyable when you are pumped up and you’re really there focused and you’re into it and a good pre workout can help with that.

I use a pre workout and I recommend, if you want to spend the money that’s somewhere that’s worth. spending. Glutamine, I actually do think it’s worth it. It’s not worth it because it helps you build muscle. As I said earlier, that’s been completely disproven. However, where there is good science conducted with athletes and I think one study was football players in their state.

The different type of athlete. It shows that intense prolonged exercise depletes glutamine levels in the body. By supplementing with glutamine, you can counterbalance that, which can help basically just help your body deal with the systemic stresses of exercise. Because remember when you’re doing like intense weightlifting, you’re not only just [00:35:00] damaging the muscle fibers that you’re training, but you’re also putting quite a bit of a load on your central nervous system.

Hormonally there’s a, there’s your cortisol levels are spiking. The body’s under stress. Now this is a good process of course, when you provide your body with everything it needs to recover and rebuild itself. But there is a, there is that stress factor. So research has shown that a supplementation with glutamine, if you take enough of it, if you take it over time can just help your body better deal with that and help prevent.

the front overtraining. That’s anecdotally speaking, I’ve been using glutamine now for regularly for probably close to a year in the last year. I’ve noticed a couple of things. One is it takes longer for me. I’m able to train for longer periods before I have to take a deload or rest.

We take a week off and may or may not be due to the glutamine, but it’s something that I noticed that overtraining does. It just takes longer for me to feel those symptoms are training coming on. And I’ve also noticed that I just don’t get sick. I haven’t gotten sick. Maybe I got semi sick when I went away in a [00:36:00] day or something like that in the last year.

Whereas in the past, I wouldn’t get sick regularly, but it would be, every six months or so if my wife got sick. Then that usually started with that. Cause I would just be like not paying attention or whatever, and then I’d end up getting sick. And so I noticed and the reason why that is relevant to glutamine is because research has shown that it is actually very good for the immune system.

And it also is good for gut health, too. So I do recommend glutamine. Another supplement that I personally use and recommend is spirulina. Like fish oil, it has a pretty impressive list of health benefits, similar to fish oil’s health benefits, actually, which I’ll link to it in, the description below, and you can check it out.

And Again, don’t think you have to buy all these, but I’m just running down a list of things that I personally use That have good science behind them And if you’re going to spend the money these are things that you know At least you’re gonna get something for your money. The last one I’ll talk about here is vitamin D the reason why I supplement with vitamin D is because it’s More recent research, conducting the last decade or so has just shown that vitamin D is actually a very important molecule in the body for just [00:37:00] overall health and fighting off disease.

And we did, and a lot of people are vitamin D deficient. I would be if I didn’t supplement with it because I sit inside all day. I go out in the sun maybe a little bit on the weekends, but if I wanted to get enough vitamin D from just sun exposure alone, I’d have to go in the sun for probably I’m in Florida.

It’s the winter now, but let’s say it’s a summer, right? So Florida, hot sun, close ish to the equator probably 15 to 20 minutes a day with most of my body exposed would be what it would require for me to get, my natural, cause our body can’t synthesize vitamin D. It gets from sun and there’s a chemical reaction body, or we can get it from our food or, supplements.

Yeah, vitamin D is it’s just important to take for overall health, like fish oil, like spirulina, these are things that, even if, you may not feel it, and sometimes I’ll get that from people I don’t want to take something that I don’t feel. Yeah, okay, I understand that, but just because you’re not feeling a difference doesn’t mean it’s not doing anything for your body.

Remember that. There are a lot of physiological processes in the body that you only feel when it [00:38:00] gets really bad. Then you would know whoa, something is wrong, and you don’t want it to ever get to that point. So in my opinion, there are certain types of things like fish oil, spirulina, vitamin D, where you look at the research, you look at the amount of research that show benefits to where it’s like conclusive, this does this in the body and you understand that is something that is healthy and you just go, that’s why you take it and you go, yeah, I might not feel the difference but I know that it’s helping, helping my body and in, in the case of vitamin D spirulina, yeah.

Fish oil. You actually can definitely feel a difference. It’s not that you definitely won’t, depends how your body is, but somebody I can’t, I guess it’s been a while. So I’ve been supplementing them for quite some time now. So I actually don’t even really remember how I felt before, but I do remember when I started taking fish oil, I did notice a difference.

I felt more energetic. That was the main thing I noticed actually, was that I felt more energetic and my, just my energy levels were stably higher throughout the day. So those are, [00:39:00] that’s a list of supplements that are, I think are worth using. And through my work writing books and, running muscleforlife.

com, I’ve been recommending different supplements and such, and I’ve recommended the supplements that I personally use myself and, were the best things that I could find from companies that I felt I could trust. And that I, think we’re like worth spreading the word for and but that said, I didn’t really, I couldn’t ever find the exact products that I wanted and the exact products that I would want.

Would be like no proprietary blends, all ingredients backed by science, clinically effective dosages no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, honest advertising, that’s not my product, it just goes with the whole package. And I couldn’t find that. So basically what I did is I started started it myself.

Through the success of my writing and, my work at Muscle for Life, I’ve been able to do that and I’m really excited for it because these are the products that I basically always wanted myself and always wished I could find [00:40:00] to, to use and recommend to others. And my idea was to create a supplement company that’s we’re dedicated to creating healthy, high quality sports supplements, that are based on sound science and we want to sell them honestly. So what I’m doing with that is I am starting with a few different supplements. I weigh isolate. a pre workout a recovery product, which is glutamine and an amino acid called carnitine, which has been proven to help with muscle damage and a creatine product that has fenugreek extract in it, which helps with creatine absorption and also has some other proven benefits like improving insulin sensitivity.

And it can even improve hormone, particularly for male anabolic hormone levels. It can improve libido. And Once again, that’s not going to help you necessarily build more muscle in the gym, but it can help you feel better. My, my kind of opinion is that. You as a consumer are just smarter than the industry is giving you credit for at this point.

I think the industry almost [00:41:00] speaks down to us like we’re idiots that we, with their ridiculous claims and their advertising with their ridiculous product names and just there’s so much, it’s so cheesy over the top. I think that when you see those ridiculous advertising claims that that’s bs I don’t think you actually fall for a lot of those magazine ads and a lot of the stuff that they say And the big drugged up bodybuilders that are pretending like, this little pill is all a tote kind of thing I think that like when you look at a product and you see it has 67 different ingredients in a food Five stage proprietary blend that you might wonder like, how effective is this really?

You’re gonna fit that many ingredients, in a pill this big come on, what is it? One microgram per . I don’t think that the big a-list endorsements are as convincing as companies might, seem. There might think that they are at least with a certain subset of the workout crowd, maybe the majority are still totally buying into this stuff and think it’s awesome.

But I think that’s more of the newbies. And I understand I was a newbie. I was in that position where, where do you start? You pick up a [00:42:00] workout magazine and you don’t know anything about this world. You just see these big, massive dudes and you’re like I guess I’ll try some of the hyper max extreme muscle.

Then, you just. Go one after another, one after another until you finally get jaded and you’re like I guess it’s just a waste of money. And then if you get more educated, then you realize it definitely is a waste of money. So anyways, I don’t think that you as a more, if you’re a relatively experienced weightlifter.

I don’t think you fall for that shit so easily and I think that you actually care about what you’re putting in your body and want to know exactly what is in your products and you also don’t want to see a bunch of artificial crap in there. You don’t want to see a bunch of chemicals that you can’t even pronounce.

Who knows what some of this stuff is and it’s not necessary. Just to have something taste like a little bit better. You want to have, strange chemicals, 32 syllable chemicals and and also in terms of like artificial sweeteners and artificial food dyes. Yeah. They may not be as bad as some people claim.

It’s not like you’re going to drink a diet Coke and get [00:43:00] cancer. But there is enough research out there to indicate that regular consumption of chemicals like these it is probably not good for your health, or at least I can say that there is a definite chance it’s not good for your health, and in my opinion, better safe than sorry with that kind of stuff.

It’s not necessary. To to have artificial sweeteners, you can just use products that, don’t have any in them. And in terms of the average gym goer, it actually can be eating quite a bit of this stuff. Let’s say he has like a pre workout drink, he has several scoops of protein powder a day.

He has some kind of pro post workout recovery type drink. He might even have a BCAA intra workout kind of thing. Every day that’s actually quite a bit of, quite a bit of artificial sweeteners or and, if a lot of those products have dyes as well, and over time it can cause different health issues.

So that’s basically, those were my thoughts going into creating my workout line, which is called Legion, by the way, L E G I O N. [00:44:00] Legion supplements. dot com is the url and with legion what I’m doing is no proprietary blends. So all ingredients are all of our formulas are transparent.

We tell you exactly what’s in the product so you know what you’re getting for your money and it allows you to compare like you actually now see what am I actually getting for my money. Like that serving is 18 grams of stuff. What is that stuff? When you go look at a proprietary blend, you don’t know.

You just see the proprietary blends, 18 grams. And what you do know is the ingredients there, they are sorted, in an ascending order by weight. So the first ingredient there’s the most. of that out of all of them. And then the second is the second most and so forth, which is also ties into a little trick companies will play.

Let’s say I have a pre workout where the first ingredient is creatine on the proprietary blend. Let’s say it’s a 10 gram proprietary blend. First ingredient creatine. It might be 9. 5 grams creatine. It might basically be all creatine and all the rest is just some tiny little percentage. Companies will do that because it’s cheap and it makes it, you think you’re getting all this stuff, but really what you’re just getting is [00:45:00] creating.

No proprietary blends. All ingredients are backed by science, which if you’re familiar with my work on multiple life, you’re used to me linking to a million different studies. I do the same thing with Legion. I back up every ingredient that I use with published literature that you can go verify yourself.

Good science to not rat studies, not AIDS studies or elderly studies with healthy adults in a lot of case athletes, things that apply to us. No label filler ingredients. As you’ll see, my products are very simple. They don’t have 19 different ingredients in them. The active ingredients lists are short and the other ingredient lists are short, contain the bare minimum that you need for sometimes masking taste.

Like some amino acids are bitter, so you have to actually use a little bit of maltodextrin. Like in my pre workout, I think The serving size is about 18, 20 grams, about 18 grams of that is like amino acids, good stuff. And then there’s about a gram or a gram and a half of maltodextrin, which is necessary for masking the bitter taste of the amino acids.

If the malto wasn’t in there, it would taste really bad. [00:46:00] But we don’t use a bunch of label fillers and we don’t use a bunch of additives or fill it with malto in this proprietary blend or anything like that. We use clinically effective dosages which goes back to that underdosing point I talked about earlier.

What that means is that the ingredients that I use the actual dosages that are used in studies to prove those benefits. So in terms of beta alanine in my pre workout, for instance there’s a one study was made an analysis of, I believe, 23 different studies done with beta alanine in athletes.

And it showed that the average effective dosage was about 4. 8 grams. That’s what you’ll find in my product. So each serving, you’re getting a full clinically effective dosage of, in that case, beta alanine. My pre workout also has citrulline malate, same story, ornithine, same story, beta ene, same story, theanine, same story.

And you can verify all this yourself by just reviewing the studies. My products are naturally sweetened and naturally flavored and that in the case, they’re all naturally sweetened, and in the [00:47:00] case of the protein is naturally flavored, the pre workout is artificially flavored, and I think there’s a combination of artificial and natural, actually, because to, to mask the taste of amino acids, some artificial flavoring is needed.

But the thing about artificial flavoring is, and I did a fair amount of research on this, and also I was working with a consultant who is a he’s one of the lead researchers of a large scientific website and, if you look at the literature out there, there’s just nothing out there to indicate that artificial flavoring is even has a potential to harm you.

We chose to use some artificial flavoring in the Pura Gap, but the The creatine and the recovery product are naturally flavored as well because they taste good. Why not just keep it natural? And so so to sweeten we use stevia and we also we use it. It’s a stevia extract It’s not raw stevia leaf and this particular stevia extract, which is called REB A.

It’s the short name for it. It’s like ribotium A. I think it’s a longer but it’s three to 400 [00:48:00] times sweeter than sugar, if I remember correctly. And it doesn’t have the bitter kind of aftertaste that there’s another molecule that’s sometimes used to sweeten, but has a kind of a bitter aftertaste.

Taste to it. So Rebe doesn’t. So the products, you don’t have any kind of weird aftertaste. They taste totally fine. And no artificial food dyes, because why do you really care if your drink is white or blood red? I don’t think so. There’s no reason to be drinking that stuff every day. And finally, Honest advertising.

If you go over to the website at legionsupplements. com, go look at how I advertise my products. I open up by saying a lot of the same things in this video. You don’t need supplements to build a good body. They can help. And I’m dedicated to only selling the ones that I know can help. Even if you don’t buy any of my products, I hope that you come away just as a more educated consumer and at least don’t support the companies that are scamming people and just being shady.

And just don’t waste your money. Once again, if you don’t want to spend money on supplements, spend it on food instead, spend it on a good [00:49:00] gym membership a good pair of lifting shoes, things that actually matter. So yeah, that’s what I’m doing with Legion. I have some plans for more products, of course.

My line of products is probably not going to be as extensive. ever really is some of these other companies because there’s just not that many things that you know, are worth even creating that I would be interested in taking myself. But there are a few other things I’m excited we’re going to be coming out with a multivitamin that’s going to kick ass.

It’ll obviously have the vitamins and minerals that you need. That you’d find in the standard multi, but the extra things we’re going to be putting in are going to be great for helping the body just deal with physiological stress, lowing cortisol levels and, good science behind these ingredients, just good stuff that I actually have been wanting to supplement with myself.

I just want to buy seven different supplements and four of these things and already take enough pills as it is. So I’ll be excited to just have a multi that has that in it. Also we’re going to create Probably not going to be a BCAA, but we’re going to create a, particularly for when you’re going to be doing fasted training, it’s going to be a veto acid drink [00:50:00] for that.

Meaning it’s going to have the leucine that you want, but instead of isoleucine and valine, which don’t really serve any purpose in this, In these circumstances, isoleucine, I believe stimulates protein synthesis mildly, but not anywhere near leucine’s ability. So you can drop the isoleucine and the valine and replace them instead with amino acids that actually can benefit your workout.

So that’ll actually pretty cool. Because there are a couple of things that we wanted to put in the pre workout, but we had to cut the manufacturing price off somewhere. So they might be able to find a way into this. Replacement for a BCAA where, you know, if you’re gonna be doing fasted training, a pre workout doesn’t, that’s not, no pre workouts have leucine in them or very, I’ve never seen one that does or have enough.

So if you wanted to train fasted, you would have the the, I don’t even have, we don’t have a name for it. I don’t know the leucine supplement that we’re going to be creating and they’ll have some other stuff in it that will also improve your workout. Plus the pre workout would be pretty cool. And then, we’re going to do our own fish oil because fish oil is awesome.

I would like to do a spirulina product, [00:51:00] probably with chlorella. I just need to do some more research on it. And so yeah, we have some plans, but once again, we’re going to be sticking to our formula, which is really just going to be like. Be honest. Don’t be shady. Don’t have some integrity.

You don’t have to rip people off to make money, create good products be open to customer feedback. And I think customers will support it. And I know that me as a consumer, that’s what I always wanted. So yeah, that’s what I’m doing with Legion now. I’d love to hear anything you have to say about it.

Once again, the website is legionsupplements. com. You can leave a comment below in this video or you can, write me on Facebook, you can email me, whatever. I respond to everything personally. And I like staying in touch with everyone. I think it’s an important point. And I’m a fast reader, fast typer, so it works.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I know I keep on saying that I’ll be better on the schedule. I try to fit it in here and there. But once again, you’ll probably see another one in the next couple of weeks. So until then if you like the video, if you like the podcast, please subscribe to the channel, to the [00:52:00] podcast, and you can find me at muscleforlife.

com. Thanks again.