We often get asked what supplements we use and when. This article will therefore detail what we use, and why.
For breakfast, Matt usually uses a basic whey protein concentrate or blend. He will eat this with some oats and coconut oil. Yo uses egg whites with her steak, which can be purchased from Musclefood.
For our meals we generally eat real food, and so we prefer wholesome foods such as chicken / beef / eggs / turkey from the likes of Musclefood – easy, convenient, shipped to our door.
We are not advocates of having lots of shakes for meals, although if you have the same macros going in, in theory, the results should be similar.
We ALWAYS advise whole foods, if anything for the macro / micro / phyto nutrients that real food possesses and supplements do not.
Before we train we look to use cutting edge supplements that may offer advantages over the none supplemented diet. The main thing to remember about using supplements for your training, as with all food is recovery. They are not essential, and simply a tool to perhaps give an edge. Remember supplements never replace a diet, only assist it. Hence their name, supplements.
Taking a supplement that makes you bounce around the gym may make you feel good, but generally means one is using something works on ones adrenal receptors and generally this means vasoconstriction, which is a narrowing of the blood vessels, which limits blood flow and so the carrying vital nutrients for repair.
Where possible we therefore use supplements that have a limited amount of stimulants in them, if any. For a good pump we look to use something like 5% Nutrition Full as F*ck + 51-50.
However we like to have a full amount of essential amino acids and branch chain amino acids, so will add around 10g EAA and 5g BCAA to our preworkout drink, alongside 5g creatine. Along side this, we use highly branched cyclic dextrin. This is the fastest absorbing carb that is available. We also drink the same again, as we train in the same amounts.
It’s a good idea to include some type of carbohydrate supplement in your intra-workout nutrition. This serves two purposes: to deliver a rapid and steady supply of blood glucose to hard working muscles, and to harness the power of insulin, the most anabolic hormone. This keeps performance up, protein synthesis on, and minimizes the inherently catabolic effects of intense training.
To that end, it is a common practice to use a combination of quickly digesting proteins such as casein or whey hydrolysates along with a carb source in the intra-workout nutrition shake. While protein is obviously important, the choice of the carb source is also key.
The current state of the art in carb supplementation involves taking natural starches like the amylopectin in waxy maize and modifying their molecular structure to increase molecular weight as well as the extent of branching / crosslinking. Increased molecular weight reduces osmolality in solution, speeding up gastric emptying.
As a result, we currently use Gaspari Glycofuse, which is in our opinion the best highly branched cyclic dextrin on the market.
After training, we drink 30g of whey hydro isolate post workout. This Protein, is in a pre-digested form, meaning that the protein is absorbed much more quickly and again, aids protein synthesis and and recovery post workout.
Finally, around 25 minutes after consuming our whey hydro, we then have one final scoop of Gaspari Glycofuse.
And that is all we use. Nothing else. No fat burners, no weight gainers in the off season, no other fancy supplements. Everything we use is geared around recovery and repair to damaged muscle fibres as quickly as possible.
As we always say however, supplements are far from essential. One should ALWAYS look to have ones diet in check first and foremost and be able to afford a continuous supply of quality whole foods before buying supplements. Otherwise, as the saying goes, one is putting the cart before the horse… on their own, without a diet in place, supplements will achieve very very little.
