This topic is here to help outline the vital importance of supplemention for athletes. I'd really love to hear Ido, Gregor, and any other high level athletes weigh in on this topic, and share their personal experiences. Ido mentioned the results of his clients, and if he'd be willing to share some stories(sans names for anonymity) I think we could all learn from them.
This thread is the home for the off-topic discussion I started in another thread, "Gymnasts benching 350 pounds and inserting static pauses" which started thusly:
Slizzardman said:Some of his stuff is shady only in the sense that he seems to gloss over the heavy supplementation that is needed to get results from some of his protocols, like his super accumulation program. You're not going to be able to do that without one hell of a supplement budget and possibly designer steroids that are legal on the market. Poliquin himself says in his article on super accumulation that:Crucial Points
• Use your normal recovery methods: pre-workout drinks, during workout drinks, post-workout Surge, beta alanine, whatever. You'll need it. Take at least 40 grams of BCAA during each workout. Yes, I said 40.
• To combat deep muscle soreness, take 4-5 grams daily of the amino acid lysine. Lysine stores go down when you overtrain.
• During the two weeks of overreaching, if you don't bother to eat two grams of protein per pound of body weight, stay home.
• Don't take Testosterone boosting supplements during the loading weeks. You want to train to the point of depressed Testosterone! Save the T-boosters for the five day off period.
• Consume 30 to 45 grams of fish oil per day during the loading phase. (No need to do this during your five off days because you'll want more calories from carbs and you don't want to slow down the insulin response with the fish oil during this off/rebuilding period.)
5 Day Recovery Period Guidelines
• During this five days off, you'll want to eat something every hour and a half. Alternate solids meals with liquid meals. Always start with solid.
Wake up and have a high protein breakfast — buffalo steak and berries, for example. Ninety minutes later, have the equivalent of 250 grams of Surge or a bunch of whey protein and carbohydrate powder. Add about 20 grams of glutamine into these shakes. That's 80 grams of glutamine per day during your five recovery days.
• Massage and frequency-specific microcurrent acupuncture will accelerate recovery. Ice massage is for dorks, only raises your cortisol, and doesn't do shit.
• Double-dose Alpha Male during this off period. By your third off day, you'll be hornier than a three-balled billy goat because your Testosterone levels will be shooting through the ceiling.
That is straight off of his interview with TMUSCLE.com. You can see that he relies HEAVILY on supplements. This would NOT BE POSSIBLE without them, as well as a massive dietary intake of both supplements and solid food.
I don't have any problem with any of that, I mean that's how the top athletes in nearly every sport are built. I just don't like how, whether it is him or just people in general (I don't know), the massive amount of supplements (some dangerous without proper use) is just glossed over. In a nutshell, most of his training methods won't work if you aren't taking testosterone supplements.
Read very carefully: the only ones worth your money are designer steroids. They all convert to steroids in the body. They are "designer" because even though they turn INTO steroids when you take them, chemically speaking they are not steroids at the moment you purchase them. This is by design, hence "designer steroids." What Poliquin recommends is touted as one of the most powerful on the market at the time of the article's writing, and he recommends a DOUBLE DOSE. He also doesn't tell you that to be safe you need to be taking an aromatase inhibitor or a SERM.
My problem is the lack of full disclosure with certain protocols, not the method itself. As Ido says, Poliquin is unparalleled as a strength coach.
My purpose there was to point out that nearly all training methods that develop a professional level of athletic ability RELY on heavy supplementation to work. Without supplements, from high protein intake to vitamins, minerals, hormonal support, and other chemicals, these training methods will not produce results.
I have found that this disclaimer, which should be in big bold letters every time the training methods are described, is often relegated to secondary status, which to me is unacceptable since the program WILL NOT WORK without the supplements!
Ido Portal then made a very true, and very relevant point:
Ido Portal said:Slizzerman,first, how is this related to the original post? I am sorry, but the forum is full of unrelated posts everywhere. Users trying to find some information are required to browse through huge piles of unrelated data. Lets try to keep it closer to the original post subject.
Second, and I will not say anything more about the subject, most of Charles Poliquin recommendations are just way over the heads of all kind of amateur and internet experts. Or real college degree experts, for that matter... I would not be quick to judge. Let us not forget that this is a man who was recommending paleo diets, fish oil supplementation, creatine, German Volume Training, rotator cuff work, time under tension and tempo principles, etc... before the rest of the industry even heard about it. (I myself started using fish oil back in the mid 1990's, according to his recommendation and when I went to buy them the pharmacists would laugh at me. They dont laugh anymore nowdays, ha?)
Poliquin does not advocate the use of pro-hormones and you can check his own supplement line and see that it is clearly free of such products. You can also check his article archive. The afordmentioned article is part of a commercial website and they have clearly edited his recommendations and plugged their product. (Although I am unfamiliar with this 'Alpha Male' and am not sure if it is pro-hormone or not)
Also, yes, most people nowdays are in great need of heavy supplementation. I do not only believe in that, I am 100% sure of it, after seeing blood work of countless clients over the years and witnessed the success some supplements bring in body composition, health, a sense of well being and of course performance.
People are starting to realize it. More and more experts are recommending essential supplementation protocols such as: essential fatty acids, vit-d, magnesium, zinc, HCL, and more and more. If you want to use your full potential, I recommend you investigate into such matters and get some tests done.
The option of using less intense training methods and 'taking it easy' is not an option for me or my clients. I think you will agree with me on that point.
If further discussion about this interest you, please open a new thread and I would be happy to continue there.
Ido.
First off, Ido pointed out that any discussion we had in the old thread would be wasted, since the valuable information would be hard to find.
Next, Ido makes a very important point. I'm going to paraphrase and go beyond what he said, so if I am saying anything that Ido doesn't agree with he'll correct me. Ido's point, and he's right, is that advanced training methods are largely experiential. They are outside of the direct understanding of scientists in the sense that a) research labs have not had the time, money, or a combination of the resources required to figure out exactly what is happening in the body. Exercise science is a very new field, academically speaking, and there is very little FACTUAL knowledge, meaning knowledge that has come from a lab. That doesn't mean the methods are fake, it means science has no idea why these methods work yet.
Because there is no hard data on exactly what is happening in the body, amateurs who have insufficient experience and internet gurus who just read a whole bunch of stuff are unable to truly understand and apply these methods because there is no laboratory evidence to read up on.
A lack of laboratory evidence means that the only way to learn is to DO. You have to train yourself in these methods to learn their effects, and then you can take this knowledge and understanding and apply it to clients. As you build a client base and see the wide range of results, you get an even better understanding, and after years of working with people and constantly seeking other successful athletes and coaches and implementing their methods, you can honestly claim to understand these methods and be able to properly apply them.
You can take one look at just about any of Ido's videos and realize that he understands more about these things than I do, because he has taken them further and been exposed to them longer. He works with clients, sees the range of results, and adjusts accordingly as well as having used many of the training methods in his own training. We can see from his videos that Ido is at a very, very high level of athletic and physical development.
This ties into his third and final point, which is that the benefits of heavy supplementation are becoming more widely recognized all the time. Furthermore, he and his clients have lofty goals, and less intense programs that do not require the supplementation are simply not going to give him or them the results they are looking for.
Since this discussion already contains good information and the continuation will become even more important, as well as it being completely off topic in the other post, I've taken it here so that Ido, myself, and anyone else who wants to know more about supplementation can really have a good resource from which to add to their knowledge and to which they can impart knowledge of their own, as well as experiences and questions.
exactly what a supplementation newbie such as myself needs to know to get started. Would it be an idea to make a sticky post with such a list of recommended basic supplements + some guidelines and perhaps trustworthy brand names?
Is there any information on how long time I can store unopened fish oil in my living room? So far it seems like putting it in a glass container in the fridge is the only I advice I can find but nothing about how long time it will last without that treatment.