|
So before opening your wallet to spend mega bucks on any pills made from the liver of an endangered species run through the following checklist.
- Is your basic diet good? Are you eating 5-6 small meals a day with a balance of protein, good fats and low GI carbs?
- Are you exercising consistently and working hard enough to force your body to adapt?
- Are you getting enough rest and recovery time? Stretching? Sleeping at least 7 hours a night?
If you can answer yes to all of these questions then chances are you are already seeing some progress from your training and now want to take it to the next level.
Building the supplement pyramid
Talk to your local bodybuilder and he’ll probably own enough bottles of different supplements that you can actually build a life size replica of one of the great pyramids but before you get carried away and buy a bunch of stuff you’ll want to prioritise.
Just like sorting out your training before you add supplements there is a progression for adding the different supplements to your program. Imagine your supplement program as a pyramid with different levels. You can’t effectively build the higher levels (and won’t get much out of your expensive pills) until you’ve taken care of the lower levels.
The base level is training, diet and rest.
The second level of the pyramid is a good multivitamin, a basic protein supplement and possibly fish oil if you are not getting much from your diet. These three supplements are relatively cheap and are like an insurance policy to make sure you have all the basic nutrients to get the most out of your training. Some experts also recommend additional minerals such as zinc and magnesium here.
The third level is composed of well tested supplements that can enhance your results in specific areas. For example creatine monohydrate is accepted as a way to boost strength and power in heavy weight training and in explosive sports. Many popular fat burners containing caffeine have been shown to be effective. Choose this level of supplements carefully and specifically.
The final level of supplements only applies to seriously competitive athletes and people with money to burn. The supplements in this category are either unproven, experimental or very expensive. These are the supplements that MAY give you that last 1% needed to break a world record or they may be a complete waste of time. Things like herbal testosterone boosters, fat blockers and growth hormone stimulators are just a few of the products that people will try for that last bit of performance. Over the years many supplements have been touted as the next magic bullet only to fade into obscurity and this is where they live.
Above supplementation comes illegal doping which we won’t discuss here.
Selecting specific supplements
A quick flick through bodybuilding or fitness magazines will uncover a huge array of supplements and their variations each competing for your business. You can’t afford to buy them all and even if you could you’d have an impossible task taking them all!
Therefore you will need some help sorting out the good from the bad and the bad from the plain stupid. Here are some guidelines for choosing supplements.
- If it sounds too good to be true it is either false advertising or the stuff is illegal. Nothing will cut 20kg of fat from your body in 6 weeks except a surgeon and any supplement claiming to do so is lying. Frequently the manufacturers will wheel out research studies to support their claims however many of the studies are poorly controlled, biased or done in house on small populations.
- Longevity. This years hot supplement is next years bargain bin filler. Look for supplements that have a long history. For example creatine, protein, caffeine and a few others have been around for over 15 years because they actually work. Ribose died a fairly quick death because while it looked like a good idea it didn’t really work.
- Combo supplements. In an effort to suck you in the manufacturers will often combine a few things that are hot at the time, creatine plus amino acids, guarana plus green tea extract etc etc. Quite often what you end up with is a dose of each ingredient that is far below the accepted effective dose.
- Dodgy ad copy. While checking out a few websites recently I came across a product called HGH formula. The bottle had HGH in big letters on it and the website raved on and on for ages about the benefits of human growth hormone. The problem is that real growth hormone is expensive and illegal unless prescribed and that the supplement didn’t contain any. Instead it was an unproven herbal pill that claimed to boost growth hormone secretion. Beware! This is a very common trick in the industry.
- New versions of old supplements. In order to sell more stuff the supplement companies will try to convince you that the stuff you are buying already isn’t effective (even though they said it was when you bought it last month) and that you need to upgrade to a more advanced formula with breakthrough new versions of tested supplements. I’ll use creatine as the example again because it’s a good benchmark. Since the original creatine monohydrate was released 15 years ago manufacturers have come up with creatine citrate, creatine phosphate and most recently creatine ethyl ester. Each time they’ve claimed that these advances improve absorption (which may or may not be true) but what they fail to tell you is that perhaps the body can’t process the esterified version. Another scam was liquid creatine, great marketing idea but the problem is creatine isn’t stable in water so by the time it got to the consumer all the creatine was gone!
So basically what I’m saying is that when picking supplements you are better off sticking with basic versions of time tested supplements. You’ll save a lot of cash and save a lot of frustration when the latest tribal herb fails to give you rock hard abs in 21 days with no effort.
Now there are quite a few supplements that do work for different applications however if I tried to cover them all here this article would quickly become a book! If you would like specific advice on your diet, training and supplementation plan please contact me and we can put together a plan designed around your goals.
Don Stevenson is a Level 1 Strength and Conditioning Coach and Level 1 Weightlifting Coach. He has worked with a range of clients including the Wests Tigers NRL team and the Australian Defence force. Don can be contacted for fitness programs at fitness@octogen.com.au | 
