You’re probably thinking about alcohol, but I want to talk about supplements instead. The article won’t be about talking to girls/guys at the bar but instead about how supplements help me make gains while training at the gym.
Some people say that protein shakes really make a difference, and some other say that it’s just expensive urine.
I’ll start with the “expensive urine” thing first. Pretty much everything you drink that isn’t water directly taken from the river IS expensive urine. You pay for everything you drink whether it’s juice you buy at the grocery store, your protein shake, or even tap water (your taxes). I’ll admit that some are cheaper than others, but nothing is really free in this world. So I choose to pee cookie and cream flavored protein powder instead of juice and soda.
I tried a few protein types, whey, isolate, rice and gainer (whey + maltodextrin + creatine + glutamine), and I recently tried electrolytes which is a blend of fast absorbing sugars and BCAAs. Beside flavor and texture, I can’t say with certitude that it made me gain more muscle mass than I would have without them (I’m not really big anyway), but there’s one thing I know, they make me train harder. “How is that?” you may say. It’s simple, sometimes when I workout, at some point I feel tired, or empty (energy wise), so I take my protein shake at that moment instead of waiting until the end of the workout. If I didn’t have it, I would probably strip off a few sets and get back home sooner. It gives me the confidence that I’ll make it to the end because I have something in my stomach other than just plain water from the fountain. So even if the powder itself would be a placebo, it would have the effect of making me do my whole workout instead of giving up in the middle of it.
The same thing goes for the electrolytes blend except that it is meant to be drank before and during the workout, so having already drank some of it before the workout, I already have the confidence that I have the energy I need to complete all my workout.
So when I talk about “liquid confidence”, I mean that the drink makes me believe that I’ll be good enough to do the whole workout without collapsing under a heavy pile of steel plates. Which itself is a benefit, more training = more gains.
I personally think that supplements can help us getting better results, but for me, even if they were just plain white powder, they would still have a positive effect on my gains.