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From my latest blog post at
http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2013/05/the-truth-about-supplements/
PART 1
When it comes to supplements for BJJ, or any other sport for that matter, almost everybody giving you advice is either lying to you. Or at the very least, deluded by wishful thinking…
And just to alienate even more people, by the term ‘supplements’ I’m including most vitamins, minerals, ergogenic aids, pre-workout drinks, post-workout shakes, homeopathic medicine, herbal concoctions, chinese medicine, and all the other products offered by the supplement-industrial complex.
Many of the supplements used by grapplers and MMA fighters originate in the bodybuilding world. But bodybuilding books, magazines, and websites are a HORRIBLE place to get information about supplements because there’s a TON of money to be made pandering to the dreams of skinny adolescent boys.
I can sympathise, because like many adolescents boys I went through a phase of wanting to get huge myself. My personal goal was to make it to 240 lbs drug-free and still be lean enough to have visible abs. I rationalised this by saying it would help me with my jiu-jitsu, which didn’t actually work at all, but anyway, kudos to young Stephan for having highly specific goals.
My quest for drug-free hugeness led me to the world of bodybuilding supplements. I read a ton of the *ahem* literature and spent quite a bit of money on the latest pills, powders and potions.
And the main effect of all these supplements was that my urine became quite expensive!
Now if you’ve been an observer of the bodybuilding world for as long as I then you’ve seen many supplements come and go.
Remember inosine? There was a time when the magazines were full of 300 lb steroid gobbling monsters with 5% bodyfat swearing high and low that inosine was the key to their immense bulk and shreddedness.
Nobody takes inosine now.
The list of where-are-they-now supplenents grows longer every year: Inosine, Dimethylglycine, Trimethylglycine, Selenium, Hornet Juice, Turtle Blood Soup…
The main strategy of the supplement industry is to stay one step ahead of the science. It’s easy to make wild claims about the miraculous properties of fermented Siberian horsetail.
For anyone else to test or debunk those claims requires multiple double blind randomised trials. But doing multiple, double blind, randomised, peer-reviewed trials requires a boatload of time, money and academic brainpower. Setting up proper experiments IS A HUGE AND VERY COMPLICATED UNDERTAKING.
Is it actually in best interest of the supplement companies to spend the time and money to do this research? Do they really want to take the risk that their product doesn’t work, or isn’t safe? I think not!
The built-in delay that occurs between the release of a new supplement and its debunking gives the promoter/manufacturer/distributor/retailer of fermented Siberian horsetail a couple of years to profit from their foul-tasting capsules. A couple of years to fleece unwitting customers. And a couple of years to line up their next wunderproduct that they can promote once people become disillusioned with their last supplement.
Basically supplement manufacturers spout false claims based on bad science faster than anyone can possibly debunk them.
Whenever someone tells you about a hot new supplement, follow the money! Ask yourself who’s benefiting from sharing information about a given supplement with you? The ancient Roman orator Lucius Cassius said it best, “cui bono?” – who benefits?”
For example, take those big, shiny bodybuilding magazines. Did you know that subscription and newstand revenues don’t even come close to covering the production costs of those magazines? The profit in those magazines comes from selling advertising space, and those advertisements are mostly to sell supplements.
And then there are the fake blogs which rant and rave about the magical effects of a given supplement. Fake, fake, fake! Google has cracked down on this a little bit, but we’re still dealing with a multi-billion dollar industry so I’m sure that the same rats who were doing this originally have now found different tricks.
The sad truth is that elite bodybuilders get that way because they combine good genetics, heavy lifting, and enormous amounts of chicken breasts with anabolic steroids, insulin and growth hormone injections.
And it’s no different when it comes to other sports.
Cyclists winning the Tour de France doped to the gills. Once upon a time they thought that smoking cigarettes before a race ‘opened up the lungs’, but things have come a long way since then. Now they’re using EPO and stimulants for endurance, steroids for recovery, and a dog’s breakfast of other illegal drugs. A top cyclist may credit their admittedly incredible achievements to hornet juice or kale shakes, but it’s all a smokescreen. The reality is that legal supplements have very little to do with it.
Most UFC fighters are currently on steroids. Or, at the very least, have done steroids at some point in their training cycle.
Consider that there have been quite a few fighters have been busted for steroids. Most shocking to me is that many of them actually had quite average physiques. I’m not saying that they weren’t tough fighters – anyone who fights is tough – but they look like they’ve spent quite a bit of time lying on a couch surrounded by Doritos bags. So if these guys are on the sauce then what does that tell you about the guys who could respectably compete in a bodybuilding competition?
And it’s not just MMA: I believe that more and more BJJ and submission grappling competitors are doing the same thing.
In the defence of these athletes it’s not all about getting huge and cut – often the steroids are mostly to help them recover from the beating they take during training.
In the context of this discussion, it doesn’t actually matter why elite athletes use illegal doping agents. But when your favourite UFC fighter says that Xyience Xenergy allows him to train for 8 hours a day and then pretends to sip from a closed can at his post-fight interview he’s misleading you. You could start his training camp in fantastic shape and drink Xenergy by the caseload, but unless you were also using all his other illegal supplements your body would fall apart within a couple of days.
But what if your training partner is getting great results from some supplement? Is he lying too? Not necessarily, but that doesn’t mean that that he’s not lying to himself.
One of my toughest training partners once took me aside and told me in a hushed tone how he had SO much more endurance since he started taking dimethylglycine (DMG). Then he told me that he’d gotten his entire rugby team on DMG and they all had great results too.
Well of course I started the dimethylglycine hunt right away! This was pre-internet, so I had to phone just about every supplement store in town, but finally – FINALLY – I managed to find a store that carried this supplement. I drove down and bought three packs.
I diligently took DMG for weeks and weeks, but did my run times improve? Could I go longer and harder on the stairmaster? Did I feel different on the mats? Nope, nope, and nope respectively.
The reason DMG was hard to find is because it had gone out of vogue years ago, mostly because its alleged effects could never be demonstrated in any followup studies.
Wishful thinking is rampant among the newly converted. Everyone is looking for an edge, and thus is vulnerable to being sold expensive snake oil.
Let’s say that you had cancer. And let’s say that you decided to ‘treat’ it with super-expensive extract of earwig that your naturopath just happened to have handy. And now let’s say that that cancer went into remission. I could never, ever, pry you loose from the conviction that extract of earwig saved your life. You’d be an evangelist to anyone who would listen.
Trouble is, maybe it was something else you did that made that cancer go away. And sometimes cancer does go into remission spontaneously.
And then it turns out that some people who’ve been miraculously cured never actually had a formal diagnosis of cancer by a proper doctor – they just ‘knew’ they had cancer, or they’d been told they had cancer by their Reiki practitioner, or whatever…
Finally, let’s consider the placebo effect that occurs when someone is given fake or ineffective medicine but nevertheless has an improvement in their condition.
It turns out that the mind has a very powerful ability to affect the body. If on our way to the gym I give you a sugar pill and tell you that it’s a secret supplement used by the Bulgarian weightlifting team then you’ll probably set a new personal best on the bench press. That’s the placebo effect.
Another example: back when I was in high-school some girls in my class gave a boy a Midol tablet for menstrual cramping and told him that it was a quaalude. A few minutes later he started telling everyone that he was seeing strange colors and streaks in the air. That’s the placebo effect, and no, this isn’t a story about me! Honest!!
Every study that has ever looked for a placebo effect has found one. So even if your most-trusted training partner vouches for a certain supplement, it DOESN’T mean that it actually works.
http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2013/05/the-truth-about-supplements/
PART 1
When it comes to supplements for BJJ, or any other sport for that matter, almost everybody giving you advice is either lying to you. Or at the very least, deluded by wishful thinking…
And just to alienate even more people, by the term ‘supplements’ I’m including most vitamins, minerals, ergogenic aids, pre-workout drinks, post-workout shakes, homeopathic medicine, herbal concoctions, chinese medicine, and all the other products offered by the supplement-industrial complex.
Many of the supplements used by grapplers and MMA fighters originate in the bodybuilding world. But bodybuilding books, magazines, and websites are a HORRIBLE place to get information about supplements because there’s a TON of money to be made pandering to the dreams of skinny adolescent boys.
I can sympathise, because like many adolescents boys I went through a phase of wanting to get huge myself. My personal goal was to make it to 240 lbs drug-free and still be lean enough to have visible abs. I rationalised this by saying it would help me with my jiu-jitsu, which didn’t actually work at all, but anyway, kudos to young Stephan for having highly specific goals.
My quest for drug-free hugeness led me to the world of bodybuilding supplements. I read a ton of the *ahem* literature and spent quite a bit of money on the latest pills, powders and potions.
And the main effect of all these supplements was that my urine became quite expensive!
Now if you’ve been an observer of the bodybuilding world for as long as I then you’ve seen many supplements come and go.
Remember inosine? There was a time when the magazines were full of 300 lb steroid gobbling monsters with 5% bodyfat swearing high and low that inosine was the key to their immense bulk and shreddedness.
Nobody takes inosine now.
The list of where-are-they-now supplenents grows longer every year: Inosine, Dimethylglycine, Trimethylglycine, Selenium, Hornet Juice, Turtle Blood Soup…
The main strategy of the supplement industry is to stay one step ahead of the science. It’s easy to make wild claims about the miraculous properties of fermented Siberian horsetail.
For anyone else to test or debunk those claims requires multiple double blind randomised trials. But doing multiple, double blind, randomised, peer-reviewed trials requires a boatload of time, money and academic brainpower. Setting up proper experiments IS A HUGE AND VERY COMPLICATED UNDERTAKING.
Is it actually in best interest of the supplement companies to spend the time and money to do this research? Do they really want to take the risk that their product doesn’t work, or isn’t safe? I think not!
The built-in delay that occurs between the release of a new supplement and its debunking gives the promoter/manufacturer/distributor/retailer of fermented Siberian horsetail a couple of years to profit from their foul-tasting capsules. A couple of years to fleece unwitting customers. And a couple of years to line up their next wunderproduct that they can promote once people become disillusioned with their last supplement.
Basically supplement manufacturers spout false claims based on bad science faster than anyone can possibly debunk them.
Whenever someone tells you about a hot new supplement, follow the money! Ask yourself who’s benefiting from sharing information about a given supplement with you? The ancient Roman orator Lucius Cassius said it best, “cui bono?” – who benefits?”
For example, take those big, shiny bodybuilding magazines. Did you know that subscription and newstand revenues don’t even come close to covering the production costs of those magazines? The profit in those magazines comes from selling advertising space, and those advertisements are mostly to sell supplements.
And then there are the fake blogs which rant and rave about the magical effects of a given supplement. Fake, fake, fake! Google has cracked down on this a little bit, but we’re still dealing with a multi-billion dollar industry so I’m sure that the same rats who were doing this originally have now found different tricks.
The sad truth is that elite bodybuilders get that way because they combine good genetics, heavy lifting, and enormous amounts of chicken breasts with anabolic steroids, insulin and growth hormone injections.
And it’s no different when it comes to other sports.
Cyclists winning the Tour de France doped to the gills. Once upon a time they thought that smoking cigarettes before a race ‘opened up the lungs’, but things have come a long way since then. Now they’re using EPO and stimulants for endurance, steroids for recovery, and a dog’s breakfast of other illegal drugs. A top cyclist may credit their admittedly incredible achievements to hornet juice or kale shakes, but it’s all a smokescreen. The reality is that legal supplements have very little to do with it.
Most UFC fighters are currently on steroids. Or, at the very least, have done steroids at some point in their training cycle.
Consider that there have been quite a few fighters have been busted for steroids. Most shocking to me is that many of them actually had quite average physiques. I’m not saying that they weren’t tough fighters – anyone who fights is tough – but they look like they’ve spent quite a bit of time lying on a couch surrounded by Doritos bags. So if these guys are on the sauce then what does that tell you about the guys who could respectably compete in a bodybuilding competition?
And it’s not just MMA: I believe that more and more BJJ and submission grappling competitors are doing the same thing.
In the defence of these athletes it’s not all about getting huge and cut – often the steroids are mostly to help them recover from the beating they take during training.
In the context of this discussion, it doesn’t actually matter why elite athletes use illegal doping agents. But when your favourite UFC fighter says that Xyience Xenergy allows him to train for 8 hours a day and then pretends to sip from a closed can at his post-fight interview he’s misleading you. You could start his training camp in fantastic shape and drink Xenergy by the caseload, but unless you were also using all his other illegal supplements your body would fall apart within a couple of days.
But what if your training partner is getting great results from some supplement? Is he lying too? Not necessarily, but that doesn’t mean that that he’s not lying to himself.
One of my toughest training partners once took me aside and told me in a hushed tone how he had SO much more endurance since he started taking dimethylglycine (DMG). Then he told me that he’d gotten his entire rugby team on DMG and they all had great results too.
Well of course I started the dimethylglycine hunt right away! This was pre-internet, so I had to phone just about every supplement store in town, but finally – FINALLY – I managed to find a store that carried this supplement. I drove down and bought three packs.
I diligently took DMG for weeks and weeks, but did my run times improve? Could I go longer and harder on the stairmaster? Did I feel different on the mats? Nope, nope, and nope respectively.
The reason DMG was hard to find is because it had gone out of vogue years ago, mostly because its alleged effects could never be demonstrated in any followup studies.
Wishful thinking is rampant among the newly converted. Everyone is looking for an edge, and thus is vulnerable to being sold expensive snake oil.
Let’s say that you had cancer. And let’s say that you decided to ‘treat’ it with super-expensive extract of earwig that your naturopath just happened to have handy. And now let’s say that that cancer went into remission. I could never, ever, pry you loose from the conviction that extract of earwig saved your life. You’d be an evangelist to anyone who would listen.
Trouble is, maybe it was something else you did that made that cancer go away. And sometimes cancer does go into remission spontaneously.
And then it turns out that some people who’ve been miraculously cured never actually had a formal diagnosis of cancer by a proper doctor – they just ‘knew’ they had cancer, or they’d been told they had cancer by their Reiki practitioner, or whatever…
Finally, let’s consider the placebo effect that occurs when someone is given fake or ineffective medicine but nevertheless has an improvement in their condition.
It turns out that the mind has a very powerful ability to affect the body. If on our way to the gym I give you a sugar pill and tell you that it’s a secret supplement used by the Bulgarian weightlifting team then you’ll probably set a new personal best on the bench press. That’s the placebo effect.
Another example: back when I was in high-school some girls in my class gave a boy a Midol tablet for menstrual cramping and told him that it was a quaalude. A few minutes later he started telling everyone that he was seeing strange colors and streaks in the air. That’s the placebo effect, and no, this isn’t a story about me! Honest!!
Every study that has ever looked for a placebo effect has found one. So even if your most-trusted training partner vouches for a certain supplement, it DOESN’T mean that it actually works.
but the reality is that most of them are absolutely loaded with caffeine and sugar. Weird, huh?
