Shopping for protien supplements

Starting to work out and I am looking for a good protien shake. Freinds recomended cell-tech which has creatine and whey, although some look down on creatine because they claim it does nothing. I do not really know what creatine does besides retain more water in muscles so if someone could explain creatine and/or suggest a good protien supplement it would be much appreciated. Specs, I work out 5-6 times a week with cardio, i weigh about 150 lbs.

Don't quote me on this, but supposedly creatine increases your heart rate/palpitations which can be bad. It can supposedly cause a heart attack, stroke or siesure I believe, but again I'm not 100% sure on this because I usually don't do protein stuff. My style is organic foods and whole food pills and such, so if you want advice on that I can give you some.

Geek alert, turn your radars on

I've actually been in the same boat as you Jebus, a few years ago, when I began working out. To use creatine or not? It's a good question.

Well, let's start off first by briefly identifying its physiological role. If I remember from my earlier years of my undergrad, creatine is a molecule used by the body to replenish the energy pool. Energy is generated from the breakdown of a molecule called ATP (you may or may not have heard of it). During anaerobic exercise (which means there's a lack of oxygen, so weightlifting would be an example, it starts off aerobic cause there's still oxygen in the blood going to the muscles, but then as lactic acid begins to accumulate in the muscle due to continued exertion, that's the burning sensation, the exercise becomes anaerobic), ATP produced by the mitochondria (that's the part of the muscle cell responsible for generating ATP) starts to fall back due to the lack of oxygen reaching the muscle. The most efficient way to generate ATP involves the use of oxygen, aerobic. However, your body isn't designed to shut down when the muscles no longer receive well-oxygenated blood.

So what do the muscles do? Like I said, they start producing lactic acid. This cycle of lactic acid production actually produces ATP which the muscle can then break down for energy. But it's not as efficient as aerobic ATP production. Ok so now you understand how the muscle uses energy. (Which is why you should ALWAYS ignore the burn in the muscle for as long as you can, cause it occurs earlier than actual complete muscle fatigue. You should stop only when the muscle fails, and can no longer produce work, i.e. stops moving. Of course, pain signals due to the acid may also cause muscles to be inhibited.)

Where does creatine come in? Well, like I said, creatine occurs naturally in the body, and in a mechanism of its own, it replenishes ATP stores. So, if an athlete takes creatine supplement, in theory, some ATP is being replenished, so the muscle has some more energy to work with (less lactic acid build up?). I'm guessing that's what they mean by performance enhancement.

Does it work? There's some studies out there that show some favorable results, but I think in general, it's not completely convincing. There's also some (though very little) evidence that shows it MIGHT aid in protein synthesis, which is primarily what muscle growth is. So it's really up to you. Remember, it occurs naturally in the body, so I don't think there's a great need to be concerned if you do take it, as it would probably end up as waste if the body isn't using it (provided there's no toxic effect, but I don't know enough). What are you looking for exactly? Are you bound by some type of time frame to be the next Mr. Buffo on the beach? Keep in mind that we all have different body types. You say you're 150 lb, so you're likely like my body type (I'm 160, 5'10). We're ectomorphs, which means our genetics are aligned so that we accumulate very little fat on our bodies as our metabolisms have a tendency to be more efficient. But at the same time, our muscles don't respond well to strain. They have to be severely damaged and allowed AMPLE time to recover in order to improve. And most frustratingly, they take TIME to grow. That's just the fact of the matter, we have to be patient.

So here's my advice on the issue, if you care to hear it. First and foremost, please work out to be healthy and not to attract babes (maybe you're already doing so, but I'm just making sure). Do it for the right reasons, cause if you look at it from the right perspective, you'll treat your body right and you won't take "short cuts" that might hurt you in the long run. Ok, so MAYBE creatine will give you more energy, but do you need it? If you're eating healthy (if you need help with that, feel free to ask), you should have loads of energy to workout, provided your job/daytime toil isn't heavy manual labor. I say avoid the creatine, since it's still an iffy topic, and just stick to the protein supplements. There's lots of whey and soy protein supplements out there. Honestly, I don't think it matters what brand you get. I usually go by the nutritional specs on the side. I try to get a product that gives me bang for my buck, which for our purposes (building muscle), the most protein per gram of dry weight of supplement. Also, I like to get supplements that have calcium thrown in with them too, as it's important for the muscles to have a strong framework upon which to grow (your precious bones). I try to minimize the amount of carbs in the product, unless your diet lacks carbs in the first place.

Oh btw, MAKE SURE your body is getting enough rest. And make sure you work your muscles HARD. Slow slow slow. You have to lift slow if you want to build mass quickly. I know Jesse says in his book that you should lift slow, then go back down quicker. This is actually not very efficient. The muscle does LESS work as it's going down (gravity helping it). So you have to resist gravity if you want the muscle to grow. So generally when I'm lifting, I lift for 2 seconds, then go back down over 4 seconds, double the time of the lift. Also, if you're doing weightlifting 5 or 6 times a week, I'd say that's too much, unless you're alternating completely separate muscle groups everyday. Normally, muscles require at least 24 hours of rest, though I'd suggest 48 as a bare minimum for an ectomorph (we suck at growth). But to cheer you up, ectomorphs have fucking beautiful bodies when they're built, cause we're slim. Want an example? Brad Pitt is a pure ectomorph, watch the scene in Troy where he first starts talking to the chick prisoner in his tent after the battle in the temple (takes off his armor). His body is TIGHT man, one day I plan to look like that

Long reply, but hopefully it helps you out. Oh and I feel like grossing you out. When I make a protein shake, I throw in a raw egg into the mix, for an added protein jolt (egg protein is virtually the best naturally occuring protein source for weightlifting, cause of protein per volume ratio sort of thing, not to mention the shitload of nutrients). But I'm a freak, so whatever, hehe...

Good luck man! Alas, you'll never look as good as me!

Adam

adam, nice response, I have the form down cuz i have a freind that lifts, def dont go down fast cuz your only doing half the work you could be doing....

I think im gonna go with the straight whey protien, thanks for the lowdown on the creatine.

btw i do shoulder and bicep one day, then tris and pecs, then back and abs, then legs, and you do 4 diff exercises for each muscle group, so i get one big workout for each group each week.

If I could just make a small suggestion. It's just a biomechanics thing. Generally it's preferred that when you work out certain muscle groups that you also work out their opposing set. So an example would be biceps and triceps. These two muscle groups work together in any movement involving either of the two, to balance each other out, support, etc. Another example is pecs and lats, or abs and lower back, you get the idea. If you work out only one of these groups and the other one's always fresh, there may be a chance that the fresh muscle compensates during some of your exercises, thereby tricking you into thinking your other muscle isn't tired. Also, if your fresh muscle is compensating, you won't be able to tell if your balance muscles (non-major muscles) are weak or not. So if I was following a program similar to yours, I'd do something like biceps, triceps, shoulders, upper lats/traps on one day, pecs, mid lats, abs, lower back on another day, and quads, hams, calves, gluts on a third day. So if you worked out 6 days and took a day rest, you'd be repeating this 3-day cycle twice, working each group twice in one week. Just a thought from my experiences.

But if whatever you're doing works for you and you're seeing results, stick with it dude.

Edit: 4 exercises per muscle group in one session? Wow, are you sure you're working the muscle to exertion in every set? If you do 2 or 3 sets with 1 exercise, where each set fails the muscle on the 10th rep (or if you prefer, 15th rep), that's actually quite a bit of damage done to the muscle. You have to play around a little with weights to get the right amount to accomplish this. I think "warm-up" sets or any set that doesn't fail the muscle is bullshit honestly. If you were in a danger situation and you needed to use your muscles, you ain't gonna sit there and practice a couple of times to get them ready. You're gonna want to use every damned fiber you got. And that's generally what I try to accomplish when I'm working out. I make my body believe that it's life or death, so you damn well better save me muscles. I don't see what non-failure sets accomplish other than needlessly prolonging a workout. If you can use every single muscle fiber right then and there, why not? I wouldn't expect the muscle to be able to perform very well after 2-3 failure sets. I've tried doing 3 exercises of 3 sets each for the same muscle group. It tends to waste my time and leave me quite drained, without helping my muscle much. If you're a fan of different exercises, a great way to apply that is to use 1 or 2 exercises for each muscle group for 2 or 3 weeks, then switch to different ones to take the muscle out of habituation.

Jebus906,

First, how old are you? Couldn’t tell from your profile. However if you are younger than 30, then you may not need Creatine at all. Rather, you need to eat a diet with multiple protein sources, beef, chicken, and fish. Once you have been working out awhile and you hit a plateau and don’t seem to be going anywhere then add Creatine. Creatine is well studied with respect to its safety profile and is a safe supplement if taken as recommended, and assuming you do not have any kidney issues. I am 36 and gained 12lbs when I started using Creatine. Although it is true most is water weight, the weight is in your muscles. And besides most of your body is water anyway. You do need to increase your water intake while using Creatine. Even when you discontinue Creatine you will not lose all this effect. In addition Creatine like stated above does increase the muscles ability to provide additional work whereas before your muscle would have failed. This allows you to lift heavier weight and more reps and thus pushing your ability further which results in muscle growth. If you do decide to use Creatine, purchase the Monohydrate form as it has better bioavailability than the Ester form.



As far as protein supplements, you should use these as supplements. The basis of your nutrition should come from small meals throughout the day rich in protein. Use the supplements on top of that but not to replace meals. One of the problems you will likely find is that most supplements on the market taste awful or are immiscible in water or milk. However, there are some good supplements still that are well tolerated I might even say delicious and mix quite well. I have tried American Whey and it was pretty good. However, after trying several products a couple of years ago, I and many others who have bodybuilding as our hobbies have found that MuscleMilk is the best tasting and easily mixes with a hand shaker. I use Lactaid (fortified with calcium, and has soy protein) 8-10 oz + 2 scoops of Chocolate MuscleMilk once a day. If I am working out really hard then twice daily. If I do not work out I don’t use it. It is somewhat expensive but I really don’t see much of a comparable product on the market. Check out its ingredients, but you will see that it is well balanced and a well designed product.



I really don’t use any other products but as you get older you just do not have the natural muscle building state that a younger body innately has. You can also learn alot by going to the MuscleandFitness Supplement forum online as I have. There are alot of meat-heads on there but like any group you will find some posts quite useful.

Wannabe Creating with Creatine!

Ha Ha! Well done!
I'm glad we got people who take care of their 'Temples'!

If ya have trouble with Creatine Absorbtion(The stuff looks like it ain't workin')
then try ingesting the Powder with Carbs like Orange Juice, or any sweet juice.
The Carbs get sent straight to ur muscles after a workout to replace muscle glycogen stores(Insulin/glucose/energy). The Creatine will follow the Carbs.

The benefits of Creatine are great if used properly.
Some benefits are Strength, Endurance, Stimina, Size...

Great for pre-contest bulking.
Enjoy all!

wb

I am glad some people have used suplements so i can get this much imput.

Adam, i have heard about the balancing thing, i am going to ask some people about that for more detail.

I do that many exercises for 2 reasons.

1. Warm-up. Warming up your muscles is needed, esp the older you get and the bigger you get, although it is still good for a small young person like me. There is no reason to hurt yourself and not be able to lift for a couple weeks.

2. Each exercise works a different area of the muscle group. Example: for pecs you do bench, incline bench, decline bench, and DB flies. Each works a different area of your pectoral muscle.

Arfing dog, I am 18. Ill look at muscle milk, thanks.

I have always liked MuscleMilk as a protein shake and then serious mass as high cal and creatine shake. I also use No xplode off and on.