I began supplementing seventeen years ago as a fourteen-year-old kid. I remember the first two products I bought were 1850-calorie weight gainer and what seemed to be an amazing pre-workout supplement to be taken sublingually named Smilax. I bet many of you remember both of these products. The weight gainer was a product of what is still a large supplement store chain and smilax was the smilax root slammed with lots of
ephedrine, and it’s obvious why that worked.
Through the years, I’ve used just about everything out there. I’ve found lots of products that worked, lots that didn’t, and sometimes put so much shit together that I couldn’t figure out what was working and what wasn’t. A time came in the past few years where I got hip to what was worth my money.
Lots of people are into performance enhancing supplements, but that’s not necessarily the case with me. I’m not all about taking an arginine product that’s going to break my wallet, give me a great pump in the gym but nothing to show for it when it comes to results. After realizing how much money I’ve spent on things that didn’t form solid results for me, I began to really look deep at what would really benefit me and what wouldn’t.
First I’ll attack the whole debate on shakes and solid meals. I’ve had years where I made it through six to seven solid meals a day without fail, and I’ve had times where I just got really sick of slamming food down and began to incorporate shakes. We all know that whole food is better, but is there an in-between? I was talking to a fellow meathead friend of mine who said he tried to put tuna in a shake of his once and about threw it up. Sounds nuts, but it got me thinking… what if I could drink some of my meals?
I’m a big fan of blended proteins, bud they’re just so much more expensive than just buying whey. I was spending about forty bucks for two pounds of blended protein, and it was killing my finances to be honest. I went through at least one tub a week, if not a little bit more. I came across some whey isolate, which we all know is more expensive (typically), but this brand (American Whey) was only about sixty bucks for ten pounds, and it was isolate! I picked up a tub right away. It was great for post workout, but it just didn’t keep me full, and I knew that a blended protein would be better.. actually real food would be better.. so this is what I did and though I vary the recipe a little bit at times, I still stick to the same format all the time.
My low-carb WHOLE FOOD shake 4 egg whites
1/2c. lowfat cottage cheese
2sc. American Whey Isolate
2tbsp
Species Nutrition Fiberlyze3 frozen strawberries
My high calorie WHOLE FOOD shake4 egg whites
1/2c. cottage cheese
2sc.
American Whey1/2c. dry oats
2tbsp natural peanut butter
Now sometimes I’ll add a tablespoon of
flax oil to the low carb shake, it all just depends.
Now one question you may be asking yourself right now is this – won’t those raw eggs make me sick? Absolutely not, at least not in my opinion. 1 in 3500 raw egg has salmonella, so you’d have to consume 10 per day to get 1 per year. I consume at least 12 per day. I haven’t had any problems and I don’t anticipate any.
So what I’ve made here is a shake that doesn’t just have great whey isolate in it, but it also has whole food in it. I count it as a meal. I’ve got three different kinds of protein by having whey isolate, egg white protein, and casein from the low fat cottage cheese. Each of these proteins digest and absorb at different rates, and it works out great! I drink two to three of these shakes a day, along with eating about three solid meals (though sometimes I eat four.)
Adding this shake into my daily plan has saved me loads of time and money, and not only do I think it tastes fantastic but all of my clients I have using it feel the same.
Now that I’ve got that key part of my diet out of the way, I’ll move onto my supplement scheme for pre and post workout.
Protein powder,
glutamine, and bcaa’s I’m not going to get TOO far in depth with as they’re already staples in most peoples plan (if not they should be), but I’m going to tell you the new way I’ve found to organize these supplements pre and post workout to get a much better effect.
To begin this discussion, I’m going to talk about a product called
waxy maize. This shit is fucking unbelievable. This is a staple now for me, just as much as protein powder is, actually a little more important. We can get protein from food, waxy maize is a carbohydrate supplement that no food will mimic, so if I had to keep one or the other I’d have to scrap the protein powder and go with solid proteins to keep the waxy maize.
This will sound like one of those boring (and bullshit might I add) research articles but just hang tight with me.. I’m telling you this from experience, and as I understand it. Waxy maize is a carbohydrate powder made from cornstarch. When I first read about it, I read that waxy maize “has a high molecular weight and a low osmisity.” I immediately shut down when I read that. More bullshit I thought. Just some company trying to spew out some shit that I couldn’t understand and hoped I would assume is the latest and greatest. Well, a year later a friend of mine who helped me get ready for the Ohio State Bodybuilding Championships insisted I use waxy maize post workout. He apparently knew some people in the Marcus Ruhl camp who helped with his contest diet and got some inside tips from them. Here’s how Rion explained it –
When they say waxy maize has a high molecular weight and a low osmosity, this is what it means – The high molecular weight causes it to go through the stomach fast, and therefore get absorbed FAST. If you take some maltodextrin, dextrose or whatever carbohydrate and mix it with water really good it will stay suspended in the water pretty well. Waxy maize sinks to the bottom pretty fast. It will work the same way in your stomach. When they say it has a low osmosity, it means that the size of the molecule is small and it will absorb through the intestinal wall much faster than the other carbs I mentioned as well.
Does that make sense so far? Ok good.
We all know (or hopefully we do!) that what’s most important after a workout is replenishing the glycogen stores in the muscles. Along with that important action, it is also important to feed the muscles with protein, which the raised insulin levels from the post workout shake (which typically contains carbs and protein) the protein is absorbed faster. This is kind of a catch 22 though. The fact is, with replenishing glycogen in the muscle being the most important thing after a workout, when you add a complete protein to a carbohydrate, the protein actually slows down the carbohydrate absorbtion.
So here’s the deal with waxy maize. First of all we know this stuff absorbs fast. At first I thought of mixing it with whey protein until I realized that the whey would slow down absorption of the waxy maize, and therefore kill the effect. So here’s what my prep guy and best friend Rion had me do – He had me mix 60g of waxy maize with 15g branch chain amino acid powder. We all know bcaa’s are the building blocks of muscle. You see,
branch chain amino acids, though they are the most available and important part of a protein that the muscle is made up of, still aren’t a complete protein. Therefore, they won’t slow down absorption of the waxy maize. And when taking bcaa’s alone, you’re getting such a higher concentration of bcaa’s than you would out of strictly whey protein, that 15g of bcaa’s is equal to what you’d get in 45g of whey protein powder. So that being said, I’m slamming glycogen into my muscles post workout and the waxy maize is PULLING the bcaa powder along with it.
Let’s compare adding maldodextrin and whey protein after a workout to combining waxy maize and bcaa powder (and whatever else you add to it, like glutamine and creatine). The maltodextrin, dextrose or whatever carb you add to protein would look like this – imagine if you were swimming in the ocean and a wave runner went by you about ten yards away.. the waves would pull you towards the wake, but not a whole lot, it is only a wave runner. That’s how much the maltodextrin helps pull whey protein into the muscle.. not a whole lot. Now let’s look at how waxy maize and bcaa combo would work. Imagine you were in the ocean and a huge cruise ship flew by you about ten yards from where you were at. You wouldn’t just move a little, you’d get sucked underwater, hard. That’s how bcaa’s, creatine, and glutamine get sucked into your body when they are mixed with waxy maize. Be careful though, when you’re talking about grams, don’t forget that you want no more than a 2:1 ration of waxy maize weight to the supps you combine with it, otherwise it will slow it down some.
I hope all that makes sense; it’s really not as complicated as it sounds. So here’s exactly what I do pre and post workout –
30min before my workout, I take 60g waxy maize with 5g glutamine and 5g bcaa powder. 15 min before the end of my workout, I mix up 60g waxy maize with 15g bcaa powder and 10g creatine. I keep shaking it up before each drink, and sip it from 15 min before the end to fifteen minutes after. Then I wait about 30 min after the waxy maize/bcaa combo to drink 40g of whey protein isolate. Then I follow it up with a solid meal about an hour after that.
I hope this helps some of you guys! I’ve been doing it for a couple years now and the results are just fantastic. It doesn’t just make all the sense in the world on paper; it’s working and continues to work for me, and all of my clients.
Jason Michael - C.P.T. - The Supplement Guru of Team i-Supplements
