Supplements

Many people swear by taking sports supplements, drinking protein shakes and eating protein bars at every opportunity. But are they really necessary?

When I first started working out at the gym in London, before I qualified as a Personal Trainer, I didn’t know much at all about supplements and through this lack of knowledge, I didn’t use them.

During the first couple of months at the gym, I still started to see decent improvements to my body shape, and felt that I was progressing well. But, like many people, I stuck to the same old routine that was handed to me at my induction on day one and several months later I stopped seeing any changes no matter how many times I went.

The gym was fairly small and run down and I discovered another gym nearby which was much larger and full of free weights and various other machines. I joined up and following an excellent program written for me at my induction, this time with some tips on nutrition, I saw big changes again with my progress. Then a few months later, the same thing happened. I hit a plateau and it all seemed to stop. I made an appointment for another induction to get a new program done, but due to changes in staff, I saw someone else who more or less told me that I didn’t ever need to change my program again – I could just stick to the one I already had. It's amazing that this 'advice' came from a so called fitness professional, which couldn't be more wrong.

That prompted me to do my own reading and I started buying various training and fitness magazines. One of which had an excellent training program for a 3 month period. The magazine was also full of supplement ads and I decided to try my luck, a victim of all the hype and marketing. I trained really hard at the gym about 5 times a week and started taking an ‘all-in-one’ product containing protein and creatine. My body completely changed over the space of the 3 month program and people were starting to make positive comments about my new physique. I was putting on so much muscle I was finding it difficult to find clothes to fit – especially as my waist was small but my legs were bulking out. I have to emphasise again that I was training really hard and eating right.

Due to a several changes in circumstances which all came along at once, I couldn’t continue following the program and I discovered that I can’t tolerate artificial sweeteners. So I couldn’t continue with the supplements either.

The next time I really worked hard at the gym for muscle gain I didn’t use supplements at all, but I saw similar if not more results than when I took the protein and creatine mix. I made sure I was eating adequate protein in my diet.

For me, the fact that I saw huge results when training hard both while using supplements and not using them leads me to think that they really aren’t necessary. If you are getting the right nutrients and adequate amounts of protein (about 1 g per pound of body weight) in your normal diet, you too should be able to train without them.