What Bodybuilding or Nutritional Supplements are Right for You?

What supplements are going to help you reach your fitness goals? Whether it's to add pounds of muscle, strip away ugly body fat or help you become a better athlete or just a more energetic and healthy person, there are supplements that can make it much easier to reach your goals. But you have to know what works and which supplements are just a waste of money.

You want that extra edge that proper body building, sports and fitness supplementation can add to your training and nutrition program.

There's just one problem. You are completely overwhelmed by the insane number of products on the market with more and more being released every day.

The magazines are filled with ads for supplements that are better than drugs (so they say) with unbelievable before and after pictures and outrageous claims.

You could spend all your waking hours trying to figure out which supplements actually work and which one's will never come close to their claims.

Who has the time and money to figure out which bodybuilding supplements will actually help them achieve their goals?

I've wasted thousands and thousands of dollars on bogus supplements. I keep detailed records of how they affect my body and my results.

In fact, the August 2003 issue of Ironman Magazine contains an article of mine on my experience with Muscle Link's GH Stak.

I don't want to see you make the same mistakes I have made and waste years and thousands of dollars on supplements that don't work.

There are a few quality supplements in every category from muscle building to fat burning to energy boosters and overall health. I'll help you tailor your supplement regime to your specific goals.

There is no doubt in my mind that the right bodybuilding supplements will give you that extra edge and help you reach your goals faster.

However, it's important to know that probably 99% of the supplements on the market don't do what they promise. A lot of them don't even carry the ingredients stated on the label.

This is also why you should stick to quality companies like Optimum Nutrition, Labrada, Gaspari Nutrition, EAS, Muscle Link, Twinlab, Ergopharm, AST and a few others.

Keep in mind that you need to get your training and nutrition programs in line first, berfore you can truly see the benefit of this supplement guide.

Eating french fries all day won't help you build muscle, even if you are taking supplements that actually work.

Before getting any benefits from supplements you need to get your training and nutrition program in place. After that, you can focus on what I call "core" supplements.

What are "core" supplements?

Core supplements are fitness supplements that I consider to be more an intergrated part of a proper and healthy overall nutrition plan.

They make it easy for you to meet your nutritional requirements and become part of your overall sports supplement and nutrition strategy.

They are so much a part of your nutrition plan that you could call them nutritional supplements instead. I even refer to these supplements more as part of my nutritional plan as opposed to my supplement plan.

What are some of these indispensable core supplements?

1 - Multivitamins

2 - Multiminerals

3 - Essential Fatty Acids

4 - Antioxidants

You should never go without core supplements in order to purchase other supplements. If you have the finances to do so, you can add to the core but never sacrifice them for any other supplements.

But ignoring them to purchase the latest, greatest testosterone boosting, growth hormone shooting, fat melting, Z-100 gizmo subdural "injection" like supplement would be like buying all the latest workout fashions and never actually going to the gym.

Don't make that mistake. Please. You'll just be wasting your money and missing out on what effective supplements have to offer.

The next step up in your supplementation program would include such things as the following:

1 - Meal Replacement and Protein Powders

2 - Creatine

3 - Glutamine

4 - A quality ZMA (specifically forumlates Zinc/Magnesium) product

Meal Replacement Powders and Protein Powders are really important enough to be considered core sports supplements.

They allow you to get proper the necesssary nutrients you body needs, as well as meet your protein requirements in an easy and convenient (and nowadays, tasty) fashion.

In today's fast paced world, I feel these supplements are essential to helping you stick to a proper nutrition plan.

It's difficult enough trying to prepare and eat 6 meals a day, let alone plan out the proper food combinations to make sure you are feeding your body everything it needs to function at its best. Not to mention making sure that your meals contain high protein foods.

Get your nutrition and training program in place. Then, stock up on core supplements. You'll that this combination will go a long way toward taking you to your fitness goals, whether it's building twenty pounds of muscle or losing fifty pounds of fat.

Gregg Gillies is the founder of http://www.buildleanmuscle.com His articles have appeared in Ironman Magazine. He has written two books and writes for Body Talk Magazine. He publishes a free newsletter available at http://www.buildleanmuscle.com/ezine.html and see how you can get a customized muscle building nutrition plan at http://www.mynutritionjournal.com

Know your bodybuilding supplement - BCAA's

 BCAA stands for branched chain amino acids and is increasingly being recognized as an important supplement in the field of sports nutrition. In short the term refers to three essential amino acids - leucine, isoleucine and valine.

Amino acids are widely known as the building blocks of protein. When protein food is eaten it gets digested into individual amino acids and short chains of amino acids that are sufficiently small to be absorbed into the bloodstream. They are then used by the body to build and repair tissues amongst other things.

Amino acids are split between those classed as essential and those labelled non-essential. This simply means that essential amino acids cannot be made by the body, whereas non-essential amino acids can. There are nine essential amino acids and each must be obtained from the diet. The nine essential amino acids are histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine.

Non-essential amino acids are just as important as the essential variety and the term simply means they can be made by the body from vitamins and other amino acids. The non-essential amino acids are alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, cystine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, proline, serine and tyrosine.

The BCAA's are especially important to athletes because they are metabolized in the muscle rather than the liver. This means that they can be used either to build new proteins or be burned as fuel to create energy. Supplementing with BCAA's has been shown to result in measurable gains in both muscle strength and size. Taken before a workout BCAA's can improve performance and delay the onset of fatigue. They also operate as anabolic agents allowing the body to burn fat and not muscle.

As a supplement that has no reported side effects, branched chain amino acids offer many benefits to the serious bodybuilder.

Richard Mitchell is the creator of the bodybuildingadvisor.com website that provides guidance and information to athletes at all levels of bodybuilding experience. Go to Bodybuilding Advice to learn more about the issues covered in this article.

Gym Equipment For Total Body Fitness

Exercise can literally make you feel better mentally and emotionally and you can often train even if you have some health problems or injuries. For example if you have arthritis or stress fractures you can still use elliptical equipment to exercise and maintain muscle mass. And you can exercise at home in relative ease if you have the equipment for it.

It can be tuff to get started and you simply need to find your inner motivation for using the exercise equipment. Well, don?t feel too guilty, people often make resolutions to begin a proper exercise routine and find that they slack off in a few weeks. If you set specific days for the training it often work better and after some time you get kind of addicted to training.

Even if your gym might have some of the newest and greatest exercise equipment available there are great alternatives to gym training. In fact, aerobic exercise is far more effective at helping you lose weight then strength training, although a home gym can help you build up your muscle mass which can accelerate your weight loss in addition to the aerobic exercises that you do.

Whether this comes in the form of housecleaning for an hour or strength training at the gym, it is a fact that exercise keeps your muscles strong, your heart strong, and your body in shape. If you haven?t been involved in weight strength training in the past, it is really easy to get confused by all the different kind of home gym equipment that is on the market today.

Try to get some good guidance and training before you undertake using free weights to make sure you are doing it properly. If you decide to go this route, it's a good idea to invest in a training program that will show you how to use your equipment properly and avoid injury.

Most home gyms are usually strength training machines that provide a structured way of performing each exercise. The benefits of strength training are many and well-documented, and they can be very useful for overall body conditioning

When you look at gym equipment, you can pick out some of the most useful and flexible machines and tools, and separate them from the gimmicks. Many users of home gym equipment have or use multistation pieces that allow them to workout on several types of machines in one, for example the Bowflex. There are also multiple weight machines to use each one focusing on a different muscle.

The home gym equipments generally falls into two major categories, the first being home gyms that use rods or bars to create resistance, and the second being strength training machines that use a weight stack or plates. Both categories have advantages and do not hesitate to use a machine with weight stack or plates. It is good training to do that job as well.

Keith George always writes about valuable news & reviews. A related resource is Home Gym Equipment. Further information can be found at Mortage Rates & Mortgage Cycling.