Sports Nutrition Supplements

What is a supplement?
By definition it is “Something that completes or enhances something else when added to it”. Now more than ever sports nutrition supplements are being used and promoted in gym’s health clubs and leisure facilities, it’s a multi billion dollar industry. I use dollars because majority of sport supplement companies are from the US. Before I continue just to be clear I’m gonna be using the term ‘supps’ because if your reading this, chances are you won’t want to say ‘sport supplements’ over and over.

Two most Common Supplements: Most supps come as either a powder to be mixed with liquid to create a drink or as capsules to be taken with water. Here are some you may have heard of:
 

Whey protein: This is a powder that can be mixed usually with water or milk as a ‘protein shake’ giving you x amount of protein.
 
Creatine: This is also a powder to be mixed or often taken as a capsule, Creatine is used to help boost energy during intense activity, useful for sprinters or heavy weightlifters.
 
Other Popular products:
There are also a lot of other popular supplements that ‘claim’ to boost performance in other areas:
Fat Burners
Better Sleep
Increased Energy
Natural Hormone boosters etc.
The list goes on and you can get a wide variety of these types of supplements from about 100+ different brands. So choosing the right one for you can be tricky without getting stung on price or quality of the product.

 
Some I've tried..
Here is a full list of products I’ve tried to show you that before I did my homework I tried everything under the sun:
Maximuscle: Promax, Promax Extreme, Progain, Progain Extreme, Cyclone, Creatmax Extreme, Maximilk
Weider Nutrition: Maximum Protein bar
PHD: Pharmawhey
LA Muscle: Norateen Heavyweight II, Six Pack Pill, Fat Stripper
Muscletech: Nitrotech, Celltech, Leukic Hardcore, Nano Vapour, Anabolic Halo, Hydroxycut
Optimum Nutrition: 100% Whey, Micronized Creatine, Serious Mass, 100% Casein, Thermo-Cuts, Hydrowhey
CNP: Pro-Mr
Pro Power: BCAA’s
..So its fair to say I’ve tried a few :P

What should you get?
Having tried all these companies its hard to say which ones had the best effect because my diet may have not been perfect or I may not have pushed myself hard enough in the gym so results have always varied.
Choosing a supplement should come after you have researched how much food your body needs to achieve your goal whether it be Muscle gain, fat loss etc.
So how many grams of carbohydrates, protein, fats, ensuring you still get your RDA of all the essential vitamins and minerals, and getting the right amount of calories. When you have done this and realised that maybe it’s unrealistic with your lifestyle to get all of those nutrients from basic foods, Then your ready for supplements!

Take a look at your figures and if you need more protein get a pot of protein powder, I found I needed more carbohydrates when I was bulking so Serious Mass from Optimum Nutrition provided that little extra I needed. Just read the back of the pack.

It all seems very expensive?

It doesn't have to be provided you get what you need & not what you heard your mate used 6 times a day :P. you can read online or in store the labels of all the products you might like to buy and then weigh them up pound for pound to see which one gives you the most of whatever you need per 100g or per serving. Then when you have a few top picks just shop around for the best price. Often supplement wholesalers do loyalty point schemes or multi buy discounts so as you become more tuned in to which supplements you like you can save many dollars, pounds etc.

This was a quick blog post but I will be doing some indepth articles on Individual types of supplements! So stay tuned!

Hypertrophy Specific Training (HST)

Looking to gain muscle? Tried copying everyone else but finding progress slow?
Read on..

Popular training styles

In the past and in fact present majority of people looking to gain muscle use the same training pattern. This will be a split by where you train each muscle group intensely with a range of exercises around once a week. Some top athletes will occasionally train a muscle group twice a week for stubborn or lagging body parts. An example would be to train chest & triceps on a monday performing 3,4 or 5 exercises including multiple sets.

Why is it so popular?

Because it works, people wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. Admittedly newcomers to the local gym may follow the workouts of their favourite pro athlete or a friend in much better shape than themselves. This is a good point for me to mention that yes for 2 years I myself did this, I followed workouts from pro bodybuilders like Jay Cutler, Ronnie Coleman, all the workouts from various magazines. I made gains but only very steady gains no matter how much I exhausted myself.

Now onto the good stuff, if you purely wish to gain muscle then this is definitely a training style worth mentioning.

Hypertrophy Specific Training (HST)

When looking to gain muscle the main aim of your workouts is achieve ‘Hypertrophy’ which is the enlargement of cells, in this particular instance, muscle cells!  HST incorporates basic principles to enable more efficient workouts. The basic theory of how your muscles adapt is that, when you progressively overload the muscle, week by week the tissue adjusts and becomes resistant to the damaging effect of that particular load. Now this said in theory you could keep increasing the weight forever? But not in practice, there is a maximum limit to your strength at any given time. So with HST you begin with higher repetitions to help prep and condition the muscles and tendons for heavier loads. Then, when your max limit is achieved, you decrease the repetitions which will allow you to continue increasing the load, this can be broken down into very specific and small increments of change. Finally when you have reached a very low rep range and a very high load you now need to de-condition. By taking a week or maybe two off from this particular style of training, you allow the muscles to rest and fully recover so that when you start HST again you can stimulate muscle growth more effectively! As we discussed before, muscles tissue adapts. This will all sound pretty obvious to some people, but the difference comes when choosing volume, research suggests that any sets following the first set simply burns calories and does not contribute to hypertrophy. Something anyone trying to gain muscle will want to avoid. There’s nothing wrong with burning calories but it won’t help you gain muscle!

My current workout plan: based on HST principles.
Notes:
I will do 2 working sets for each exercise (always ensure you warm up each muscle group first to avoid injury)
and follow these rep ranges:
-2 weeks of 15 reps
-2 weeks of 10 reps
-2 weeks of 5 reps
-1 week deconditioning

When i restart at 15 reps again, i look back at the weights i pushed on my last day of 15 reps and aim to beat that on my first workout this way i continually overload!

You’ll notice that I alternate between two exercises each workout, this is just to help work the muscle from a different angle. However I do not get on well with stiff leg deadlifts so I perform leg curls at every workout. Also I do calf press (on the leg press machine) every workout because I’m really trying to target the gastrocnemius rather than the soleus muscle in the calves. Ideally I should do a further 2 weeks of 2 reps, but I prefer to return to the higher reps sooner as towards the end of the 5 rep stage my form starts to go off.
This article is not the be all end all of muscle gaining theory, we discover new information everyday, but I’ve tried it and have made good gains, so it may be worth giving it a try yourself!
Thanks for reading guys!
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