Sports supplements - The truth behind them

Sports supplements are big business. The gym I use is plastered with adverts for them with photos of rippling physiques demanding you buy their product to look like the photo.

The main two supplements I get asked about are protein supplements and creatine. Protein is recommended by the manufacturers to give the body the essential amino acids to allow you to build muscle. Creatine is designed to increase the levels of creatine phosphate within the muscles, this is the immediate energy source used in the first few seconds of exercise. The additional creatine is said to increase muscle strength, size, power and endurance.

Do they work?

Protein supplements have a very limited value in comparison to the alternative measures you could take. Protein supplements will not work if you are not eating for your metabolic type and even less so if you are not training properly! To build muscles you do not just need protein, but instead all the building blocks for the body to create true health. This is hardly found in a tub of powder with random synthetic vitamins and some protein.

Indeed, Creatine has been shown to indeed provide an ergogenic effect to the body in a number of studies. The research seems to indicate that it does indeed have a benefit to sports performance. However, the majority of users take it to increase muscle size. One must question the value of creatine on two counts. The benefits it provides seems to be while taking the supplement but not for the long term afterwards. Put simply, it does not increase the ability to store more creatine in the muscle naturally, but just when forced to.

Any extra weight gain would invariably disappear when supplementation ceases. The second reason to be wary of this is that the effect of taking sugars into the body when taking the supplements is disastrous on some metabolic types. Never has a study been done to compare the effects of creatine to a metabolic typing programme and on athletic performance.

What is the alternative

The alternative is two fold, eat right for your metabolic type and learn how to train properly.

Metabolic typing will give you the right nutrients in the right amounts thus giving you every building block you need and creating the internal environment to build muscle and optimize sports performance. When eating for your body chemistry type and doing the other metabolic typing recommendations you will soon see the that you can easily build muscles supplement free.

Train right, I don't know how many athletes and body builders I meet who don't train their legs. This is the biggest mistake you can make. Muscle is built through consuming enough protein as part of a metabolic typing diet and placing it in the correct hormonal environment to allow muscle growth.

In simplistic terms it is related to the amount of testosterone you posses. This is greatly increased by whole body exercises, e.g. squats, lunges dead lifts etc. To build a big biceps, it would be better to do 3 sets of squats and 2 on the arms than 5 sets on the arms. It is not about how much damage you do but how well you can build back the damaged muscle. To those who don't know the gym causes lots of micro tears in the muscle which is built back up and made bigger by the body if the above two methods are followed.

What next?

Stop wasting your money on supplements, a few tubs of protein could be used for my course which will revolutionize your physique, athletic performance and outlook on exercise and training.