Supplements - Sports Success - Personal Training - Strength Training
1) A good quality multivitamin/mineral. Try as we might to eat a varied diet, it’s unlikely that we’re all getting what we should have on a given day. Given that hard training strength athletes tend to utilize (slightly) more of many vitamins and minerals plus are just plain bigger, a multi is a good insurance policy. I try to stick with a good, healthy, natural vitamin over the cheapo synthetic ones. I like VGF 25+ by Prograde Nutrition (affiliate link).
2. A quality whey protein supplement mixed with powdered milk or a good blended protein. Strength training athletes need more protein than the normal person. Period. Sure, you can eat more meat, beans, chicken, or fish. However, that food tends to fill you up quickly plus it can be a pain in the butt with many people’s schedules. A good protein supplement can go a long way when it comes to getting extra protein down, adding some flavor to your diet, and adding an element of portability to your schedule.
The reason that I don’t just recommend pure whey protein is that it’s just so fast. Most research is indicating that your body oxidizes it so quickly that you don’t see the benefits from it that you do from a blended protein that has whey and other, more slowly absorbed proteins like casein in it. Whole milk proteins are about 80% casein and 20% whey. By adding some basic dried milk or casein protein directly to your whey shake you’ll have the best of both worlds.
3. Fish oil. I can’t say enough about fish oils. Omega-3 fatty acids used to be an important part of our diet when we consumed a lot of wild or grass-fed game. Over the past 100 years or so we’ve moved towards more of a grain-fed animal diet and eat a lot less cold-water fish than we used to. This has greatly reduced the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in our diet, so by supplementing with fish oil you’re basically adding back into your diet what already should be there.
Fish oil supplementation can:
-Improve your brain and neurological function
-Improve your skin and hair health
-Improve your eye health
-Improve your insulin sensitivity which will stabilize your blood sugar and reduce fat gain
-Reduce chronic inflammation in your joints and reduce pain
-Improve your HDL/LDL cholesterol numbers
4. Creatine Monohydrate. The supplement world is full of all kinds of overblown hype and there’s only a few supplements that have stood the test of time. Creatine is one of the most studied of supplements and when it comes to increasing burst energy and peak power performance it plain and simple works. Creatine also improves cellular hydration which allows a positive environment for growth.
There are about 1000 creatine supplements and variations on the market. This is pretty much just to pull more money out of your wallet. Creatine monohydrate powder is one of the most widely available and cost effective supplements out there. It works just the way it is. Some sugar and protein helps boost uptake of it, so eat it with a meal or mixed in one of your workout shakes. Don’t pay $75 for a bottle of plain old sugar and a few bucks worth of creatine.
5. Microlactin. Ok, this is one that a bunch of you probably won’t have heard of and for the life of me I can’t understand why it’s not more popular. This stuff WORKS, which as I said above about creatine is rare in the supplement world. I’ll let you read about it here. You’ll find that your sleep and recovery are better plus your joint inflammation will be greatly reduced. When it comes to hard training and joint recovery I consider it to be a must-have, even more so when you consider that it’s pretty cost-effective, too.
I know that my supplementation regimen isn’t all that “cutting-edge” and sexy, but that’s because I focus on the things that work. Supplements are simply adjuncts to my diet and training and I take them in only to promote optimal performance and health. If I start dumping all sorts of crap into my body then I eventually won’t know what’s working and what isn’t.
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I just had a consultation with a young man who was, as many young men in the gym are, trying to gain weight and “get big”. When the topic got on to nutrition he happily told me about his daily diet intake and supplementation. It basically consisted of a handful of protein shakes per day (various protein blends for different times of the day), a bunch of Gatorade, and an evening meal consisting of a chicken breast and brown rice. His list of pills and powders (most of them with very fierce names) was about half a page long.
Now, I’m certainly not a supplement hater. In fact, I’m a bit of a nutrition and supplementation geek and as such I really enjoy debating the effects of various substances. However, I think that many people are missing the forest for the trees when it comes to supplementation.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of supplements:
Pros:
-Convenient to carry around, generally no special care such as cooking or refridgeration is necessary.
-Very easy to mix and match for precise nutrition.
-Meal replacements and protein supplements can be used to keep overall calorie intake down as many people tend to overeat with food in front of them.
Cons:
-Missing a lot of “micronutrients” that are present in food.
-Some non-natural vitamins and minerals aren’t taken up by the body as well.
-Large, isolated amounts of some nutrients aren’t taken up by the body as well as smaller, mixed doses.
-Often meal replacements and other supplements aren’t particularly satisfying.
-Nobody wants to go out to dinner with the dude who sits there with a protein shaker.
As for the pros and cons of real food, they tend to be the opposite.
In my mind supplements are exactly that: Supplements. They are not substitutes when you look at the diet as a whole. I’m a firm believer in packing my athletes with as much real food as possible. Look, we’re omnivores, and pretty good ones at that. Our body is pretty well equipped to deal with most anything that rolls across its path and make some use of it. As a matter of fact, our nutritional needs are such that it prefers a varied diet. That’s hard to manage if you’re taking the majority of your nutrition in from the same few powders.
To sum it up, I do support judicious use of supplements for most athletes and fitness seekers, but only the basics. Until your diet is in line, supplements should take the back seat to real food. As far as the young man I spoke to the first thing I told him is to stop taking most of the crap he was loading up on and switch to the basics of good, quality food. From there he could add back in some basic supplements until he had exhausted the benefits of good training and good eating, which will be a very long time.
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