Are Your Gym Supplements Worth the Money?

Three or four gym supplements work, and they are the cheapest things on the shelf. A few do something small. Several do nothing and are best-sellers.

The ones that work

Creatine

It is the cheapest item here and the least arguable. Your muscles store a chemical that recycles fuel between hard efforts, and creatine tops up that store.

It does not build muscle directly. It lets you train slightly harder, and that builds muscle. It also pulls water into the muscle, so the first two kilos are not muscle.

Caffeine

It blocks the chemical your brain uses to tell you that you are tired. You get more reps, more endurance and a higher pain threshold.

The catch is that you adapt. It works best for people who do not use it every day.

Protein powder

Whey is food in a plastic tub. What matters is how much protein you eat in a day, not when or from where. If you reach that with food, the powder adds nothing. If you do not, it is convenient.

Vitamin D, if you are low

Many people are low for half the year. Fixing it is not a performance boost. It is a deficiency ending.

Small but real

• Beta-alanine helps muscle buffer acid in efforts of about one to four minutes. The benefit is a few percent. The tingle is a harmless side effect.
• Citrulline widens blood vessels. It gives you the pump and slightly more work before fatigue.
• Beetroot juice improves endurance by a couple of percent. That means little to most of us and a lot to somebody racing.
• Fish oil gives slightly less soreness and slightly better recovery.

Promising or mixed

• Collagen, taken with vitamin C about an hour before loading a joint, may raise tendon collagen production. It is early and not settled.
• Ashwagandha fairly consistently lowers markers of stress. The strength studies are small.

Mostly a waste of money

• BCAAs. Your body needs nine amino acids it cannot make. BCAAs give you three. If you eat enough protein, you already have them.
• Essential amino acids. These are all nine, so they work in the way protein works. It is an expensive way to eat protein.
• Glutamine. It helps people with severe burns and gut disease. It does nothing measurable for a healthy person who lifts.
• Testosterone boosters. In healthy men with normal levels the measured change is close to nothing. Sleeping well and not being very overweight do more.
• HMB. The striking early studies were in people who had never trained. In people who already lift, the effect collapses.
• Fat burners. They are mostly caffeine. Nothing in the tub burns fat. Your calorie deficit does.
• Greens powders. The vegetable content is often a gram or two. Real vegetables are cheaper.
• Mass gainers. They are protein with a lot of sugar. Oats, milk and a banana do the same for less.

Often misunderstood

• Multivitamins are insurance, not performance. If you are not short of anything, they do little.
• Melatonin is a timing signal, not a sleeping pill. It helps with jet lag and shift work and does little for ordinary insomnia.
• Electrolytes matter when you have sweated a lot. An hour in an air-conditioned gym is not a lot.
• Pre-workout is a blend. It is mostly caffeine, beta-alanine and citrulline, plus many ingredients in amounts too small to matter.

The 30-minute window

The idea that you must have protein within 30 minutes of training came from studies of people who had trained after not eating all night.

If you ate a normal meal a few hours earlier, the window is most of the day. The rush from the changing room was never needed.

The short answer

The industry is not really selling muscle. It is selling the feeling of having done something, on the days when training, eating and sleeping properly did not feel like enough.

If you have a health condition, take regular medicine, or are pregnant, check with a doctor or pharmacist before starting any supplement.