Occasionally Sayonara

Bodybuilding is becoming a progressively more precise art on a monthly basis. In recent years, there has been an explosion in the range and quality of supplements which can maximise the effects of weight-training while minimising the body’s counter-productive responses.

In this article, I am going to show both beginners and bodybuilding veterans alike how to save around 60-80%, in cold hard cash, on the ingredients that are vital to a successful training regime. Bodybuilders may disagree on trivia such as which stack is the most effective, when and how often to train, and so on, but most will likely agree that their devotion sucks both time and money away from them. Regaining just one of those is sure to be a hit with everyone, no matter what habits they have integrated into their timetable.

Read on for a brief disclaimer on what this article is NOT, followed by the big bad-ass breakdown of the commercial rip-offs.

Firstly, although I call this article “How to Cheat Twice”, I want to make it clear that I don’t think supplements are themselves a form of ‘cheating’; they are a means of guaranteeing that your muscles have the materials and environment they need for maximum growth and minimum degradation. In this sense, supplements help you to cheat for dietary reasons. I will tell you here how to cheat twice in that I will show you how to bypass the enormous cost of key supplements as marketed by the big industry names.

Secondly, in no way is this going to be an article about anabolic steroids, so if you have followed a link here in anticipation of an article which describes how to mortgage your physical health and well-being for the sake of avoiding all the hard work that the sport embodies, then you might as well scoot off now to smallangrytestes.com. There is cheating, and then there is cheating.

Finally — a point which should be clear already to most weight-lifters — supplementation does not mean an easy ride. There is no magic pill that will make bodybuilding easier (well, assuming you wish to remain healthy at any rate), and you will still need to put in consistent and determined hard work. What the proper combination of supplements will do is ensure that you get the best possible return on that work.

So, let’s get down to it. The key idea here is simple:
Know what you are trying to buy.

Companies such as LA Muscle, BSN, and Muscletech are world-renowned leaders in providing safe, high-quality supplements. But not everything they sell is as “advanced”, “extreme”, or “highly developed” as they claim.

Let’s take LA Muscle’s Nemesis, as an example. Now, this IS an excellent product, but anyone would wince at paying £50 (USD$100) for a month’s supply.
But then you read the list of effects again. It’s anti-estrogenic, anti-catabolic, improves recovery and protein utilisation, and helps fat loss. That sounds ideal! You chuck it in your shopping basket with a cry of “damn the cost, I want to be RIPPED!”, and smile at the thought of free postage.

Stop. Back up a little.

What exactly is Nemesis? It says right there on the page: it’s composed entirely of 5-methyl-7-isoflavone (Methoxyisoflavone), which you can buy from Amazon of all places, for £5 (USD$10) a tub. There’s a 90% saving right there. I am pretty sure you could buy it cheaper from an online pharmacy, but I think that given the amount of spam you undoubtedly receive from such companies you will probably share my indiscriminate distrust of them.

If you use or are contemplating using Nemesis, my suggestion is don’t. Buy Methoxyisoflavone capsules instead: the only difference is the label.

Let’s look at another LA Muscle product: ZAC. Again, this is a great product, which contains L-Carnitine for fat loss and L-Arginine for muscle building and blood volumisation. But is it worth the £35 (USD$70)?

Each ZAC tablet contains 300mg each of L-Carnitine and L-Arginine, and 10mg zinc. You can get the zinc from a multivitamin pill or just your normal balanced diet. L-Carnitine and L-Arginine are, as with Methoxyisoflavone, available on Amazon.

You get 90 ZAC tablets for your £35, which is 27g each of L-Carnitine and L-Arginine. This is £1.30 per gram.
Picking a random seller from Amazon, a tub of 90x 500mg L-Carnitine capsules (total 45g) costs £3.99. This is £0.09 per gram.
The same seller also provides tubs of 30x 500mg L-Arginine capsules (total 15g), at £1.99 a pop. These are one-a-day tablets, but we will double the dosage and actual cost to bring it more into line with the amount of product you would get from ZAC. 60x capsules then costs £3.98, and provides 30g of L-Arginine at £0.13 per gram.

So by buying the two key ingredients of ZAC separately (one tub of L-Carnitine and two tubs of L-Arginine) you get more product than ZAC provides at a saving of £27 (USD$54), which is about 77%. I think the postage from this seller on Amazon would come to about £8 for that, but hey - you’re well ahead in the savings anyway, and there will be other places you can source these supplements from which might have lower shipping costs.

I don’t mean to rag on LA Muscle. They have many fantastic products which you would be hard-pressed to duplicate at the ingredients level, such as the aptly-named Komplete (although to be honest this is more to do with the vague list of ingredients than the comparative costs). Personally I am a fan of their service, but let’s just say I won’t be buying all of my supplements from them.

There are actually some good examples of total snake-oil salesmanship in the supplements world, and I have no qualms at all about providing this example as one which makes me feel a bit ill: Muscletech’s Anabolic Halo. If anyone can tell me what those four pages of “cryogenically enhanced formula” and “Anabolic Crystallographic Technology” are supposed to mean, please fill me in.

So go forth and Google. Find out what is in that supplement product you are considering purchasing, and then seek out the ingredients elsewhere. It’s very simple.

Or don’t even do that, if you are not bothered about becoming massive. For basic weight-training you simply need the following, in the right proportions, at the right times:

• Protein,
• Carbs,
• Glutamine,
• Creatine,
• Anabolic booster (but only if over 30, I would suggest).

There are other things which will help, such as the dietary supplements I looked at on this page, but those are your key ingredients for muscle growth. Note how none of them are described as “awesomely xtreeme” or “forged with the muscle-nuking power of cryogenics”. Personally I find such claims to be far too ill-supported to add so much money to the bill which comes with this past-time.

I hope this article has been useful, and I’ll do my best to address any errors or support anyone with supplement queries.