Muscle Geek News

2010: Year of the Geek

We’re not dead… I swear. And we haven’t been lazy either.

We’ve just been extremely busy, especially with the holidays.

We’ve decided we’re not going to update the old site until our new, and much better site is up and running. And thanks to Item-9 Consulting out of Chicago, that should be by the end of January. So get ready for our weekly blogs, new youtube videos, and guest appearances from some major players in the industry…

So in 2010, you can expect:

- A brand new website with product descriptions, feedback, and youtube videos

- No membership fees and no markups. $6.99 handling fee for every order no matter how big or how small

- Muscle Geek Facebook app so you’ll have product feedback at your fingertips from friends you trust

- Even cheaper prices.. When we first started our gym in February of this year, our price for NO-Xplode was $38.. Now it’s already down to $28, and I’d guess that maybe only 2000 people have actually heard of Muscle Geeks. And we’ve probably sent out around 1000 orders. With Item-9 Consulting taking over our marketing and some strategic partnerships with some major strength/bodybuilding coaches, we should have a big year.

-We’ve also signed contracts with 3 other supplement distributors. That means more crazy specials, almost on a weekly basis.

-Cheaper shipping prices.. We’re in a constant battle with Fedex and UPS abour discounts.. Right now, because our volume, we’re not in a place to negotiate. But soon that will change.

-A new 6000-8000 square foot Muscle Geek gym and lab, as well as our warehouse, which all will be completed by the end of the summer.

We’ve have a lot of things in store for 2010, and we’re spending a lot of money to make Muscle Geeks a major player in the dietary supplement industry.. If you think our prices are cheap now, just wait. We will have the cheapest prices on the planet. Guaranteed.

For now, you can still order from our old store, even if you aren’t a member. There’s no $6.99 handling fee either.. It’s completely secure. We’ll have your order at your door within 7 days.  This is our gift to our initial fan base of roughly 2000.  So enjoy.

Thanks for a great 2009.

The Demise of Prohormones Part IV

4) Misuse or abuse?

I have zero evidence to back the following statistic up, but I’m willing to bet the house that I’m within 5% points of the actual figure. 98% of prohormone users have no business using prohormones. I know that maybe hard to swallow for you, but it’s true. And that includes me.

I had no business using 1-AD. My diet was pathetic. I had not a clue as to how many calories I was consuming a day. My training, if you could call it training, consisted of unlimited sets of the bench press and barbell curls. I was clueless.. But I wanted results NOW. Gyno be damned, I wanted to bench 275 pounds, and 1-AD was my ticket. Idiot!

And every day, I see myself 10 years ago over, and over, and over again.

I’m by no means an expert in fitness. I’m not certified by any personal training or strength training association. Everything I know, I’ve learned from Siff, Zatsiorsky, Thibadeau, Poliquin, Boyle, and Defranco. And of course, 10 years of experimentation on my own body. But I’d be willing to say 99.9% of the trainers and coaches in the fitness industry would agree with the following two statements regarding fitness:

1) Progressive overload is the key to mass and strength gains.

2) There are no shortcuts when it comes to the iron.

I have a simple 3 question survey to determine if you’re ready for prohormones. If you can answer the following 3 questions with certainty, you’re ready to dive into the dark side

1) Can you tell me exactly how many calories you’ve consumed every day during the last 2 months, including the macronutrient breakdown? By the way, you’ll also need to know your RMR.

2) Can you show me every workout you’ve done in the last year?

3) Are you already taking protein, creatine, beta alanine, and fish oil?

If you know the answers to those questions, you’re definitely on the right track. In fact, you know more than 98% of the rest of the weightliftng community.

Remember, prohormones are a band-aid, and a poor one at that. They never definitively answer the true problem. They’re a short-term fix for a long-term problem. And in the end, they’ll do more harm than good….

The Demise of Prohormones Part III

What does two guys, $2000, a phone number, and a website equal? A supplement company

Before the FDA’s ban bonanza, what companies were leading the way in prohormones? Not the big ones like BSN, Cytosport, or Dymatize. Too much risk for them. It was the “garage chemists”, small, unheard of companies that seemed to be springing up everywhere. Why? Because anyone can create a supplement company. In fact, it’s probably one of the cheapest businesses to start. I should know. I along with another pharmacist created one two years ago for $5000.

 

All you’ll need is a couple thousand dollars, a website, and a phone number. It’d probably be smart to pay $500 for a LLC for liability purposes, and get a cheap insurance plan. You won’t need any equipment. You won’t need a warehouse. In fact , you don’t even need a degree in chemistry. A high school diploma would do just fine. The contract manufacturer will do the large majority of the work. All you need to to is sell (in fact marketing is far more important than an educational background in chemistry, biology, etc.). Who cares about safety and effectiveness. That’s the FDA’s responsibility. As long as it’s new, people will buy it. And when the FDA pulls it off the market, or heaven forbid it kills someone, we pull our money out and file chapter 8 on our LLC.

 

Now that’s a small exaggeration. But essentially, that’s all that’s needed to start a supplement company. Some of these companies just can’t be trusted. All they see is dollar signs. I cringe every time I see a new company spring up, and all they make are prohormones. I cringe even more when these guys on the message board, who by the way have no business using prohormones, volunteer to provide feedback for the company on the latest, greatest prohormone. Unbeknownst to them, they actually are human guinea pigs. Why risk your health for a 15 pound increase on the bench press?

 

General rule of thumb: If you don’t know what the president of the supplement company looks like, and the ads use a clinical study you cannot find on pubmed.org, avoid the company at all costs because they’re probably operating our of their basement.

The Demise of Prohormones Part II

The price factor

$80… Really? or 2 vial of Test

Prohormones are expensive. On top of that, they change so often and have so many chemical variations, who really knows what works and what doesn’t. For me, Androsol was a complete bust, while 1-AD gave me almost zero mass gain but a decent strength gain (15 lbs on the bench). So to get a 15 lb increase on your bench, you’ll probably have to go through 3 or 4 different prohormones, which comes out to around $150.

 

When it comes to prohormones, there just doesn’t seem to be a reliable measuring stick. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. It’s a crap shoot. A single change on a chemical structure can completely change a chemical’s functionality.

You and I have both seen it before. A new prohormone is released, and the first question on every supplement message board on the internet “How does it compare to prohormone x in terms of size and strength?” And then the argument of “my prohormone is better than your prohormone” ensues. All the while, no one, not the user, not the manufacturer, and not even the FDA, knows exactly how this prohormone is going to impact the body. The only thing that’s for sure is your wallet will be a little lighter.

Weekly Supplement BS Report - The Demise of Prohormones

1st of a 4 Part Series

I’m against prohormones. There, I said it. In fact, I think they are the single worst thing that has happened to the dietary supplement industry. They are the epitome of what the the industry has become: dangerous, greedy, and uneducated.

But before you shut me out.. Let me explain because just like you, I’ve used my fair share of prohormones over the years. And it took me awhile to come to the above conclusion.

I was there when Mark McGwire first made 4-AD a household name. I saw the -diols take over the diones. I was a guinea pig when Biotest created Androsol, then a year or so later Mag-10. I also witnessed Patrick Arnold revive prohormones with 1-AD. And as ashamed as I am to admit it, I’ve used more than a handful over the years. So to argue I’ve never been down that road could not be farther from the truth.

So here’s my reasoning…

1) The 25/75 rule

Unfortunately, prohormones reluctantly give you 25% of the benefits of steroids, while graciously giving you 100% of the side effects.
Gyno, hairloss, acne, elevated liver enzymes, postcycle crash, etc. I’ve seen them all with prohormones. And yet, I never see the big strength gains or mass gains that you get with 500mg of test. And for those that would argue, I highly doubt you’ve ever seen someone or personally been on 500mg of test. Just last year, I had a member of my gym, who hadn’t lifted a weight in almost 4 years, do a cycle of 500mg of test cyp to “jumpstart” his return to the iron. The first day he could barely get up 175 lbs on the bench. By the end of the 8 weeks, he was well over 300 lbs. And this is a guy with a PR of 230 lbs on the bench previously. Not one side effect. And post cycle went relatively smoothly. I think he ended up keeping almost 90% of his gains. And this is a pretty typical response to a low-moderate dose of test.

In the prohormone world, you’ll never seen those type of gains. But I guarantee you’ll see some gyno, some hairloss, an acne flair up, and with the newer ones, a pretty depressive postcycle crash. So why risk it? Personally, I’d rather take the risk of getting my vial of test confiscated and a slap on the wrist from the police than risk a 15 lb increase in my bench press and a case of gyno from superdrol.

I like to make the following comparison to help illustrate my point. If you were looking for an exercise to add the most mass and strength to your upper body, would you pick the bench press or a dumbbell flye? I think 99.9% of you would choose the bench press. In fact, you could probably do 4 sets of 10 reps of dumbbell flyes every day for 5 years, and still not achieve the mass and strength you’d get from the bench press in only 3 months time. However, you’d probably still get the soreness, the fatigue, and even the overtraining.

I know most would disagree with me, but if you take an unbiased look at the clinical evidence, a cycle of just test would actually be safer than the large majority of the prohormones on the market. If the FDA would consider a restricted steroid access protocol (like I’ll describe in my next article), the prohormone market would be extinct in a day. Why? Because if you give a gymrat a choice between test or superdrol, they’d be an idiot to even consider superdrol. Test beats it in every category: results, safety, and price.

And tomorrow…. The Price Factor

Weekly Supplement BS Report

 

Just last week I ran into an old buddy at my gym. He’d just finished his workout, and was guzzling down a protein drink in a can I’d never seen before. I asked him the usual questions: where he got it, how much did it cost, and how much protein was in it. Even though it was a cheap knock-off brand, it had 35 grams of protein per can. And to my surprise, that was the second can he had drank in the last 20 minutes. For those that lack math skills, that’s 70g of protein in 20 minutes. And even more surprising, he was grinning ear to ear because he thought it was all going straight to his muscles. Apparently, he also lived by the mantra “more is better.”

 

Now if you read my article a couple weeks ago about protein pulsing, you probably have an idea where I’m going with this. Anything in excess is unhealthy for you, even water. So guess where almost 50g of that 70g of protein went? Fat and oxidation. No one needs 70g of protein at one sitting. In fact, according to the majority of clinical studies out there, no one really needs more than 20-25g of protein at one sitting. 70g of protein at one sitting is no more anabolic than 25g of protein at one sitting. The only benefit the extra protein provides is extra calories. And for many of us, that’s not really a benefit.

 

20-30g of protein is more than enough protein to switch your body from a catabolic state to an anabolic state. Rarely will a clinical study use more than 25g of protein. Why? Because that’s all that’s needed to turn on muscle protein synthesis. Anything more than that, and it’s not being used for its intended purpose: muscle protein synthesis. A study I had in the protein pulsing article looked at the correlation between the amount of protein consumed and muscle protein synthesis. The result: 40g was no more effective than 20g. And anything excess was oxidized.

 

Why do people consume more than 30g in one sitting? Why do manufacturers put 40g of protein in one serving? I have no idea. Stupidity maybe? Ignorance?

 

It makes entirely more sense to split up the 40g shake. Take 20g now, and then 20g 2 hours later. You’ll get a much longer anabolic response. And I’d be willing to bet, you’ll also lose a little fat.

 

Stop wasting your money. Train smart. Eat smart. Supplement smart.

 

 

 

Weekly Supplement BS Report #5

Glutamine: Keep it or Crap It

“Glutamine is a key factor in muscle growth, and controlling the skeletal muscle/whole body glutamine gradient is critical in maintaining and building muscle tissue.* The higher the muscle glutamine levels you can maintain, the less chance you have of falling into catabolism and the faster muscle will grow.*”
- AST GL3 description

“Following an intense workout your body needs to replenish glutamine stores to aid in recovery.* L-Glutamine can help increase muscle cell hydration and aid in protein synthesis.”
- EAS L-Glutamine description

“70% of it never reaches muscle tissue and 90% of it is gone in 1 hour, leaving you with a low dosed short supply of Glutamine. The end result is very little anabolic activity and can actually lead to catabolic muscle wasting because you’re relying on your glutamine supplement to supply and replenish the glutamine needed and it just isn’t delivering.”
-MHP Glutamine-SR description

Why so many people have fallen in love with this amino acid, I’ll never know. Maybe because it’s the most abundant amino acid within the muscle? Or maybe it’s because the supplement manufacturers have led us to believe that it not only helps prevent muscle breakdown, but it also improve muscle synthesis, aka the double whammy of muscle hypertrophy? Or just maybe it’s because one study found oral glutamine to increase growth hormone 4 fold? Who knows. And honestly, how could you not want this supplement in your arsenal after reading the above claims. Even yours truly went through 4000g before finally retiring it to the BS files.

Anabolic Potential

Over the last few years, it’s become blatantly obvious its anabolic benefits were grossly exaggerated. (some may even call the claims a bold-faced lie) The current research just doesn’t support any anabolic/anti-catabolic benefits. So now the question becomes, does it have any potential benefits for athletes/weightlifters?
And the quick answer for those that suffer from ADHD: absolutely not. Unless of course, you’re an 80lb marathon runner with less muscle mass than a 5 year-old girl.

Glutamine and the Immune system

Let me explain.
Glutamine’s proposed immune-enhancing ability is probably its most sought after benefit (after the anabolic/anti-catabolic claim of course). And coincidentally, that claim also has the most research supporting it. That’s until you actually look closer at the studies. It seems as though the supplement manufacturers extrapolated data from a few positive studies that were done on rats, critically-ill patients, and patients with various muscle-wasting diseases, and marketed those results toward healthy, muscular trainees, all while ignoring the studies that actually related to this group that showed little if any benefit. Apples and oranges my friends. Apples and oranges!
Yes, it’s true that leukocytes (a key component of the immune system) need glutamine to function properly. It’s also true that leukocytes can’t synthesize glutamine like the muscle can. And it’s also very likely true that a severely low plasma glutamine level probably results in a depressed immune system (you’re more likely to get sick).
However, that doesn’t mean glutamine will benefit us. Why? Because it’s false that an intense weightlifting session lasting less than an hour will decrease plasma glutamine levels low enough to depress the immune system. In fact, the large majority of research suggests that it’s long, intense aerobic exercise lasting over 2 hours that leads to low levels of plasma glutamine. It’s also false that an overtrained athlete with low plasma glutamine levels will be more susceptible to infection. And on the very same note, it’s false that an intake of oral glutamine will prevent exercise-induced immune depression even though it will raise plasma glutamine levels.

The Result

So would you or I benefit from a $30 container of glutamine powder? Not a chance. The only athlete that could possibly benefit from oral glutamine supplementation would be a marathon/cyclist/ironman-type athlete. Then, just maybe, it may improve an overworked immune system.
By the way, if you’re interested in its ability to improve glycogen synthesis, just consume more carbs. It was one study, and they only used 61g of carbs. You’ll save a lot more money and get identical results.

And the congregation said…… B_LLSH_T

Weekly Supplement BS report #4

Weekly Supplement BS Report #4

October 6th, 2009 Volume I Issue 5

This last week has been kind of crazy at Muscle Geeks so I’m a little behind schedule. Our facebook app has moved from the planning stage to the development stage, we’ve decided to give our website a complete makeover, and we’re adding product descriptions to every product in our store. Plus, we’re also preparing for an advertising launch at 10 major colleges over the next 3 months. On top of all of that, my deadline for an article in Fitness and Physique Magazine was due this past weekend.

Now that all is back to normal, I can get back to the real BS.
This week’s article is going to be a little shorter than the rest. It’s not because of time constraints though. It’s actually because I’m not really for sure what I believe just yet… I don’t know if I really can call it BS. But if I can, my diet will be forever changed.

I first came across this topic around 6-8 months ago on a bodybuilding message board. The members were debating the topic of “protein pulsing.” Apparently over the last couple of years, there’s been a growing amount of research supporting its benefits for bodybuilders. According to its supporters, muscle protein synthesis slows almost to a halt if the muscle is constantly supplied with amino acids, similar to how Type II Diabetes develops. They theorize that’s it’s better to let your body reach a catabolic state (almost zero amino acids in the bloodstream), and then quickly flood your bloodstream with amino acids via a fast-digesting protein. This way, your muscles do not become “desensitized” to amino acids and muscle protein synthesis is improved above and beyond that of a normal protein intake. If this theory holds true, the old way of thinking about protein intake (1-2g per pound of body weight) may vary well be sent to the the BS box along with creatine ethyl ester, serum creatine, etc.

 

After I had read the entire discussion and reviewed some of the studies, I thought I’d try it out. So I developed my own protein pulsing protocol, and have been using it for the last 3 months. I’ve been consuming between 150-180g daily instead of my usual 250g daily. Thus far, I must say I have been impressed. It appears as though I’ve lost a little flab, while subsequently adding a little size (via the mirror, no objective tests). I’m also hovering around 205 lbs, 5-7 lbs over my average weight. I’m most happy with my weights though. On almost every major lift, I’ve either hit my all-time max even though I’m 15-20 pounds lighter than when I hit them prior to, or I’ve surpassed my all-time maxes. That’s pretty impressive, especially when you consider my diet really hasn’t changed (other than the decrease in calories from less protein) and I haven’t added any other supplements than what I normally take. And even my weight routine is relatively the same.

 

However, even with my own personal results, I still wasn’t convinced protein pulsing was superior. There’s just too many factors involved in strength training and bodybuilding. I could easily be overlooking something that I’m doing now that I wasn’t doing before. Sometimes the most trivial things can make the biggest difference. Then two things crossed my desk. I was perusing Function Ingredients magazine, and there was a small article about a doctor out of Texas who wholeheartedly believes that the body cannot digest more than 20g of protein per sitting. According to him, anything more the 20 grams, and you’re wasting it. However, there was no supportive material with it, just the doctor’s opinion. Then a fellow Geek brought the following study to my attention:

Ingested protein dose response of muscle and albumin protein synthesis after resistance exercise in young men.

Moore DR, Robinson MJ, Fry JL, Tang JE, Glover EI, Wilkinson SB, Prior T, Tarnopolsky MA, Phillips SM.

Exercise Metabolism Research Group, Department of Kinesiology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.

Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Jan;89(1):161-8. Epub 2008 Dec 3

BACKGROUND: The anabolic effect of resistance exercise is enhanced by the provision of dietary protein. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to determine the ingested protein dose response of muscle (MPS) and albumin protein synthesis (APS) after resistance exercise. In addition, we measured the phosphorylation of candidate signaling proteins thought to regulate acute changes in MPS. DESIGN: Six healthy young men reported to the laboratory on 5 separate occasions to perform an intense bout of leg-based resistance exercise. After exercise, participants consumed, in a randomized order, drinks containing 0, 5, 10, 20, or 40 g whole egg protein. Protein synthesis and whole-body leucine oxidation were measured over 4 h after exercise by a primed constant infusion of [1-(13)C]leucine. RESULTS: MPS displayed a dose response to dietary protein ingestion and was maximally stimulated at 20 g. The phosphorylation of ribosomal protein S6 kinase (Thr(389)), ribosomal protein S6 (Ser(240/244)), and the epsilon-subunit of eukaryotic initiation factor 2B (Ser(539)) were unaffected by protein ingestion. APS increased in a dose-dependent manner and also reached a plateau at 20 g ingested protein. Leucine oxidation was significantly increased after 20 and 40 g protein were ingested. CONCLUSIONS: Ingestion of 20 g intact protein is sufficient to maximally stimulate MPS and APS after resistance exercise. Phosphorylation of candidate signaling proteins was not enhanced with any dose of protein ingested, which suggested that the stimulation of MPS after resistance exercise may be related to amino acid availability. Finally, dietary protein consumed after exercise in excess of the rate at which it can be incorporated into tissue protein stimulates irreversible oxidation.

Hmmm… Do we really need all that protein? Is timing more important than quantity? Has the bodybuilding community been wrong all these years? Does the average (non-enhanced) gym rat really need to be consuming 1-2 grams per body weight?

Honestly, I don’t know. I think this is a no-win argument. I can probably argue both sides relatively easily from a scientific standpoint and from a real-world standpoint. In fact, both methods have been successful for me. I’ve ballooned up to 225-230 lbs while consuming 300-350g of protein daily, and I’ve quietly grown to 205 lbs with just 0.73g per pound of body weight. During both of those stages, I’ve achieved my all-time maxes in all three of my major lifts.

I’ll take the easy way out though. I won’t call BS on it just yet. I think they both have their places in a transformation. It’s just something to think about, and possibly experiment with especially if you’re in a rut.

Just be warned, you’ve probably already been beat down with the various carb cycling diets out there. Protein cycling is next…

Weekly Supplement BS Report #4

Weekly BS Report

September 27^th, 2009 Volume I Issue 4

 

 

 

 

“2 Independent Clinical Trials Later -There’s No Doubt Question Which Pre-Workout Product is the Best. When we first revealed the groundbreaking single dose clinical trial, SuperPump 250™ was shown to correlate with an astronomical increase in lean mass after only a single workout and a single dose of SP250 while body fat percentage simultaneously dropped.* This unbiased evidence shook the bodybuilding world and began the meteoric rise of this remarkable product. As incredible as the data was, we knew it was only the tip of the iceberg and that the results from 1 dose were no mere coincidence. You see, unlike other pre-workout products, everyone who tries it knows that SuperPump’s effects become noticeably MORE potent over time with regular use, and so it became necessary to test SuperPump’s more long term effects (30 days) at an accredited, independent research facility. Let’s just say, the results are nothing short of earth shattering. We are proud to present what our users and colleagues have been saying all along, only now it’s forever a part of TRUE scientific history; if you want gains in lean mass, strength, and performance, SuperPump 250™ is the real deal and an intelligent choice in the pre-workout category.*

In the second SuperPump 250™ study, performed recently at the prestigious Center for Applied Health Science Research, the goal was to determine the effects of supplementation with SuperPump 250™ on muscular strength, muscular endurance, muscle size, and body composition during one month of intense resistance training3. Thirty healthy men were randomized to receive SuperPump 250™ or a flavor-matched placebo and then resistance train for 4-weeks. Measurements of muscular performance, body composition via DEXA, and general markers of health were taken before and after 28 days of supplementation and training. This time, gains in muscle size were even more impressive, and were coupled with improvements in muscle performance (bench press reps to failure) and whole-body skeletal muscle mass:

·         947% times greater increase in whole-body lean mass.*

·         234% times greater increase in muscle performance.*

·         25.5 times greater increase in the lean mass of the arms.* “

-Superpump 250 product description

 

After reading the above, who couldn’t resist a bottle of Superpump 250? 947% times greater increase in whole-body lean mass. 234% times greater increase in muscle performance.  Are you kidding me? Forget the juice. Give me the Superpump!  My only question is: Screw buying it. How do I invest?

I couldn’t resist. I had to read this groundbreaking study. Finally there’s a supplement company backing their products with real-world scientific research. No marketing hype, just plain old science.  Interesting…

 

You can find the study at: http://www.jissn.com/content/5/S1/P17 .

Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much. I’ve read thousands of studies over the years, 95% of them relating to prescription medications (which usually have 100 times greater budget than dietary supplements).  So I knew four things before even reading the study:

1)      The study group would be small.

2)      The details would be lacking.

3)      There’d be so many confounding variables it’d be hard to interpret any results with certainty.

4)      The supplement would be compared to a placebo, not creatine.

Booyah! All four assumptions were right on the money.

Small study

The study was small. It consisted of only 30 subjects (15 in the placebo and 15 in the Superpump group). Thus, chance alone could play a potentially big role in the results.  Lady luck could easily sway the conclusion, not science.  Plus with such a small group number, there’s a much bigger chance that a confounding variable could easily influence the result.  Knowing those two things right from the beginning, I don’t think I could definitively conclude anything from this study.

What details?

What resistance training program did the participants do?  Are the results based on average or median? With such a small study, it would have probably been best to describe the results in terms of medians. Why? If they were averages (which I’m assuming), one abnormal result (say a 25 lb increase in muscle mass by 1 participant in the Superpump 250 group) would completely skew the results in favor of the Superpump 250 group. If the results were medians, it wouldn’t make that big of a difference. Any outliers (abnormal results) wouldn’t affect the end result as much because you take the result that’s directly in the middle from the entire group, not the average.  So a 25 pound increase in muscle mass would have the same effect as a 12 pound increase in muscle mass if the median was 8 pounds.  The beauty of marketing with math!

Weekly meat consumption

The authors matched the participants for age, resistance training history, daily caffeine intake, weekly meat consumption, bench press strength, bench press endurance, and % body fat. How about daily protein intake? Supplements?  Prior creatine history?  Previous training regimen they just completed?  I can’t say they did a bad job matching the two groups. However, I also can’t say they did a good job either. There are too many unknowns that could easily influence the results (aka confounding variables).

Placebo

I understand that first a supplement has to be shown superior to placebo prior to comparing it to another supplement that already has sufficient evidence supporting it. However, this supplement already contains an ingredient that’s been shown to be effective in numerous clinical trials: creatine monohydrate.  Thus, if Gaspari really had some balls, they would have taken on regular creatine monohydrate instead so that they can “prove” their product is superior to the industry standard which costs 80% less than Superpump 250. But they didn’t. They chose to compare it to……. nothing!

So were the results really from Gaspari’s proprietary blend or was it from the creatine monohydrate within the proprietary blend? Tough to tell. We already know creatine works. There are numerous studies supporting its benefits.  Do the other ingredients work?  That’s still yet to be answered.  

I’m not even going to discuss the outrageous claims of 900% this, 200% that, etc. Let me just say that with the right mathematical model, a 1 pound increase can be 1000% increase.

So would I say this study (with supposedly the top scientists in the world) definitively showed Suerpump 250’s superiority?  Ha.

All together now: b_llsh_t!

Bodybuilding.com raided today by the FDA…

Bodybuilding.com maybe in a little trouble after today.  More negative press for an industry that’s already on the radar. Nice!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/sports/baseball/25doping.html?_r=1