You must log in or # to comment.
Gym myths are my favorite. The best past is the extreme prevalence of survivorship bias, with most of the bad advice coming from people who have succeeded but are themselves mistaken about why.
i.e. Massive bro is adamant that everyone should be taking BCAAs, beginners are inclined to believe it because it looks like he knows what he’s talking about.
I think the fitness industry makes most of its money this way tbh
My wife is one of these consumers. She shes all these influencers pushing working out products and she uses everything she can get her hands on. Then she wonders why when she trains for, and runs a full marathon, she doesnt lose any weight. Well you take thousands of calories of supplements… just run
Yeah but supplements are fun and sometimes delicious. Running is neither.
I like Lyle McDonalds advice on running: Don’t, unless you’re being chased.
the “sad” reality of fitness is that it just boils down to “do exercise, eat 2 hours before an intense workout, creatine helps give a little strength boost”.
There’s no magical thing you can do to make things easier/faster other than just going harder or, you know, steroids (which has obvious downsides). And everything else that people tend to worry about, like the precise amount of protein to eat, is just… like yeah it has an effect but if you just do shitloads of workouts and eat when you’re hungry it’s basically impossible to not get stronger.
Fundamentally you’re right. If you get absolutely everything 100% scientifically perfect for you, your circumstances, your genetics, etc you will always see better results than the person eyeballing it. But its like 200% more effort for an extra 25% gains, the minutiae of this shit goes as deep as you care to look and thats what drowns a lot of new enthusiasts.
I personally take it a step further and question whether the extra 25% is worth it at all.
Even creatine has its downsides, in that it’s a powder you have to pay for and remember to choke down every day. And in the end, all you get is the same progress you would have gotten anyway, just a bit faster.
For me, who cares if what took you 5 years could have been done in 4 if everything was “optimal”? Why are we so obsessed with “optimizing” everything, when in reality this mindset just results in 90% of people giving up?
*I should add I have no critique of someone who wants for themselves every possible advantage, or educates others about it. But presenting these things as being synonymous with the gym is a huge public disservice. It would be like aggressively trying to funnel every single person who wants to buy a car into becoming an F1 driver
unless you’re struggling to buy food i would say creatine is 100% worth it, it’s not that expensive really and you can just mix a teaspoon into your morning drink.
And for that little effort and expense you get a free ~10% increase in strength so long as you keep consuming it, which lets you train more faster, resulting in permanent gains.
like it’s not obligatory or anything, but it’s a great way to help yourself get into fitness, just makes it slightly easier. Really the big benefit of it can be said to simply be that it makes you more likely to keep going.
train more faster
We can discuss the merits of specific supplements all day, but I find this mindset paradoxically results in worse progress for most people
Creatine is LITERALLY the only supplement that almost everyone and every study agrees.
- Has a measurable physiological effect.
- Has next to zero side effects.
- Is incredibly cheap.
- Is universally beneficial for anyone training in almost every sport/activity.
Anything else the answer to “Should I take…” is at best “It depends” and in most cases “No”. Its the only one if people arent taking it I’d ask “Why not?”
Sure, if you want to know earnestly some reasons why not.
For starters, it is literally completely unnecessary.
Beyond that, it perpetuates the broader harmful falsehood that lifters need a cabinet of supplements, thereby turning many people away from the gym who are repulsed by the idea.
The above falsehood has personally annoyed me many times. I am visibly very muscular, and have had friends, family, and even strangers warn me, unprompted, about the dangers of supplements lol. I gather there was a news story about lead in protein powder that went viral, and everyone assumes I must be taking all the powders, probably because of how cavalier gym folk are about insisting everyone hop on all the powders
It has a gross sandy texture, upsets people’s stomaches (especially if they try the “creatine loading” phase which is so popularly suggested), and interferes with their sleep (if the countless anecdotes are to be believed).
It does have potential serious side effects in some populations that don’t get talked about often. People with bipolar disorder shouldn’t risk taking it, neither should people with kidney disease.
If you are healthy and ever get bloodwork done, you need to remember to explain to your doctor that you supplement creatine beforehand, otherwise they may think you have kidney disease.
Five grams per day of creatine monohydrate dissolved in a glass of water is cheap. Creatine pills are not. Creatine gummy bears are not. Creatine in preworkout (yet another constantly shilled powder) is not. The massive list of non-monohydrate creatine products are neither cheap nor effective lol. When we say “definitely everyone should hop on creatine!”, a good percentage of people will end up going down one of those paths.
And to top it all off, the beneficial effects for muscle building are dramatically overstated. People talk about it like it creates some cascading compound interest effect you can’t afford to miss out on, when in actual reality, everyone who has been around the block knows you reach the point of diminishing returns very quickly when you are consistent in the gym lol. If you put 5 hard years in without it, there isn’t a soul on earth who could pick you apart in a lineup of creatine users.
Now your response to all this may be “none of this is really that big deal!” and you know what? I agree. I frequently cite creatine as being one of the big three non-scam supplements (protein, caffeine, creatine). They have a real effect, unlike virtually all other gym products. My issue, to put it most broadly, is with the attitude we perpetuate regarding supplementation in general. That it’s so thoroughly and totally taken for granted that every single person should want to pay for and incorporate every single advantage.
That we frame it as being “an advantage” at all, as if the simple love of training is not in and of itself a great joy which transforms the lives of everyone it reaches. No no, instead, as is typical of all “worthy” pursuits, it is an investment to be capitalized upon. Faster is always better, bigger is always better. Do not allow yourself to be captivated by the scenery flying by, if for a moment it distracts you from shoveling ever more coal into the furnace of this godforsaken train everyone insists our life must become.
ahem. Well, apologies for going off the rails a bit there. That’s been stewing in me for a long time. I also don’t take protein powder lmao
Funny thing is I can say I’m on steroids when I go to the gym (hormone medication). Though for some reason, the steroids I’m on are never the ones gym bros talk about.
They just don’t understand how sick of chest gains you’re getting
I’d argue the “eat before the workout” advise isn’t right: While you shouldn’t work out directly after eating as your body will direct energy towards digestion, working out on a fasting metabolism is beneficial as fasting comes with high levels of growth hormones. Evolutionary speaking: You’re not hunting when you have food, you’re hunting when you’re hungry. How can you have breakfast before you caught it.
You might not be able to hit peak performance at the tail end of even just an interval fast, but it is going to do all kinds of signalling to your body to put more energy into growing muscle. The growing happens not while you’re lifting, but after you inhaled the chicken you caught.
you’re absolutely hunting when you have food, why would you wait to hunt until you’re hungry? do you only buy more food when you’ve emptied out the fridge?
also not everyone hunts, foraging has historically been arguably a more significant part of how people fed themselves, and even then not everyone is going to be doing that, some people are just going to be staying at camp to take care of the kids and stuff.
what you’re suggesting is something that sounds good in your head, what i’m suggesting is pretty widely accepted practice.
When talking evolution it’s not just humans, and human behaviour. The fasting metabolism, hunger hormone system etc. is shared through pretty much all of the animal kingdom. We had it before we left the seas. Fish don’t stockpile food, they store it in adipose tissue with about exactly the same mechanism as we do, there might not be much food around, that means increased competition, that means you need to be active, not lethargic, when hungry, and the level of exertion experienced during that fasting time will be taken by the body as the signal how much to bulk up, that’s why growth hormones are highly active at that time. We’re dealing with a truly ancient mechanism.
You can trust that I read up on the stuff or you can do it yourself or you can trust an army of gymbros to have done it.
They like BCAAs because they think it causes gains.
I like BCAAs because they taste good.
We are not the same.
I like BCAAs because they taste good.
They might be somewhat right, but you’re objectively wrong
All the more for me then!
It’s like the cosmetics industry. Keep shifting what products will give you the look you want, whether it be beautiful hair or massive pecs. Tell you all the lies about what the product might do for you, then tell you to accessorize the product with whatever fringe benefit you’re looking for, and constantly keep changing the “science” so you jump from product to product for the latest and greatest thing that will make you look good.
Don’f forget to add fucked up exercises, grips, and positions to your workout, too, that place you at a greater risk of injury. Broscience.
I’ve once overheard a conversation in the train where someone said “but cholesterol is good, right? Or are those proteins?” completely unironically. It got a good chuckle from me and several other people in the train.
I eventually learned he was becoming a PE teacher who made diet plans for schools. That was less funny.
Perhaps surprisingly, dietary cholesterol has less an effect on blood cholesterol than a handful of other things. Saturated fat intake/balance in diet correlates more strongly, and vitamin D levels negatively correlates (vitamin D deficiency positively correlates).
Dietary cholesterol is used for a lot of key things such as hormone production, so some people might actually want to increase their cholesterol intake (super active lifestyle people like endurance athletes - can help combat RED-S aka Female Athlete Triad), but the elephant in the room for bad lipid profiles is saturated fats, refined sugars, and sedentary lifestyle
Also, cholesterol is one of the main ingredients our cell membranes are made of.
Dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on blood cholesterol, so indeed cholesterol is good or at least not bad
afaik from youtube, HDL is good, LDL is bad.
Yes.
You also need cholesterol in cell membrane structures, hormone synthesis (steroids like testosterone & estradiol), vitamin D, bile acids for digesting fat, and insulating neuron sheaths.
a PE teacher
The old gag:
Those who can, do
Those who can’t, teach
Those who can’t teach, teach Phys EdThose who can’t teach phys Ed, administrate.
High cholesterol is “bad” with too much of other fats in your diet, but you need cholesterol to live so your body makes most of it.
E: Correcting the science there, whoops.
Based on the other responses, better to be asking the question than assume he was stupid for asking it.
Everyone starts somewhere.
Sometimes followed by the most cursed unit…grams per pound…
Is that actually a unit that I have just never heard of or am I being dumb and not getting sarcasm? I really hope thats a fake unit
i could see it in a dosage situation. like grams of steroids per pound of user. sure, it’s goofy to mix metric and imperial, but that’s just what those two things are commonly measured with in America. time spent doing unit conversations is time spent not lifting.
Yeah exactly it’s often used as grams of protein per pound of bodyweight for recommending protein intake.
Time spent doing unit conversions is time spent not lifting
I’m not sure how to feel about that part. But I can’t say you’re wrong. I try to stay away from anh US customary units. As most would agree, they kinda suck in comparison to SI
that’s fair, but all the equipment and scales in their gym will be labeled in pounds.
Its a pretty common unit when it comes to discussing dietary protein around bodybuilding and fitness because 1g per lb is a super easy conversion for people to remember. Its kind of the golden number because even for people not getting the best sources of protein 1g per lb almost guarantees anyone other than edge cases and steroid users are getting more than enough to support optimum growth and recovery.
My favorite stupid unit of measurement is “A gram of protein per cm of height” for protein intake for very overweight people who have no idea what their lean body mass is or should be.
It sounds ridiculous but for 90% of people it puts you within 10% of correct and usually errs on the high side.
Yeah dipshits, gravity is pounds per gram
This pic reminds me of a ten-year-old post:
Used to take prework out as a teenager. About a year ago I’d be taking 2 scoops of the strongest shit I could get my hands on. I’d have to spend almost 10 minutes between sets sometimes to keep from puking. Then one day I just thought, what the fuck am I doing. I started lifting to get healthier. And here I am taking in God knows what from a container with a psycho clown that’s chewed half his own face off. What the fuck happened. I started with a half a scoop of c4 and now here I am. Who the fuck is this for, am I supposed to be that methhead clown, is that supposed to be appealing? Since then completely gave up prework outs and never looked back
The best way to learn something new but maybe not useful or true is to say an obviously wrong fact on an internet forum with a total confidence.
People will step over themselves to explain it like it is a supermarket opening on a Black Friday morning
It’s a never patched CVE-1980-1 in an internet nerd mind that causes a dump of the victim’s volatile memory
The most infuriating discussion I had online about proteins was with a vegan, their claim was “there is no such thing as essential amino acids”. Couldn’t get it into their head that a) there are essential amino acids but b) yes, unless you eat so horribly lopsided it’s unknown of anywhere but in horribly deprived populations or among some indigenous folks (pretty much only eating manioc or such) there’s nothing to worry about, you’ll get your essentials. Kinda like Vitamin C deficiency being unheard of in the developed world because even the most gutter-rat of diets still contains enough as an antioxidant. Still not a bad idea to pair beans with rice and lentils with noodles or bread, though, IMNSHO they just taste better that way around.
Especially infuriating as it was a vegan. If you choose to have a diet that requires nutritional knowledge to get right then don’t suck at it, and call your fellow travellers out when they’re spewing BS. I really doubt vegans are keen on yet another “I stopped being vegan and it fixed my anaemia” story. Take an apple or two. Either eat them, there’s your iron, or make a sauce that works with a sour/sweet accent (i.e. chunks of apple) and prepare it in an iron skillet, there, even more iron. It’s not hard but you gotta stop pretending that vegans can get by without understanding nutrition.
Rizz alert: This comment has high intellectual rizz—specifically, nerd rizz and wit rizz. Here’s why:
- Sharp Observation – It cleverly points out an internet phenomenon: confidently stating a wrong fact triggers a flood of corrections.
- Humor & Metaphor – The “Black Friday supermarket rush” analogy is vivid and funny.
- Tech-Savvy Appeal – The CVE-1980-1 reference (a fake cybersecurity vulnerability) makes it sound like an insider joke for tech enthusiasts.
- Confident Delivery – The smooth, confident phrasing enhances its persuasive and entertaining effect.
Final verdict: 9/10 rizz for internet nerds and tech circles.
I know the feeling. I’ve also been given the stern “don’t say anything” look. But joke’s on them, because I neither know enough to debunk the most random claims on the spot, nor know how to synthesize a semester worth of college in five sentences and be understood perfectly every time.
How about I synthesize them aminos in my biceps, amigos
I’ll see myself out
As I biologist I understand:
-*random bio subject in conversations.
-oh but you’re biologist right? Is that true?
-well, I know just enough to be able to tell you the level of my ignorance on the subject. Unless it’s linked to my master thesis (which is probably obsolete by now) no need to ask me.
That’s not a biochemist, memorizing the amino acids is literally biochem 1 on college. Most people with a biology undergrad take that.
Being a biochemist is more about understanding the whole system of how proteins interact, and not really about memorization of any specific protein.
I had to take a 300 level biochem class and 2 semesters of O Chem and we didn’t have to memorize the structures of all the amino acids. Like we had to know glycine and we had to know about the different amino acids like how proline has a rigid structure but we were never expected to be able to draw an amino acid from memory
This may be a university to university and course to course difference too. My intro 3000 level biochem class didn’t have us memorize structures but my 5000 structural biochem class did and certain nucleic acid structures and stuff. Can’t remember shit now but I definitely had to memorize them at some point in undergrad.
Maybe our universities handled numbers differently but 300 level classes we’re never considered intro level classes but were instead classes usually taken in your 3rd year of school with a heavy amount of pre requisites and a 500 level would be a graduate class
Sorry, just meant that for biochemistry it was the “lowest level” you could take. It was usually a 3rd or 4th year class. Anything 4000+ level for us was a graduate school level class. I was just saying I had the same experience as you to some degree but it’s possible different schools/professors have different expectations.
That makes more sense I think that 300 level was our lowest biochemistry class as well
Well, biochemists do know the structure of amino acids, so it’s technically correct. The fact they know more makes this situation even more probable.
Imma have to hit you with a UAA, UGA and a UAG just to make sure.
U GO AWAY, U ARE AWAY, U ARE GONE
Just stop.
My health teacher wayyy back had an amino acid drink he’d bring in each day.
Haha, I take an amino acid to make me stop biting my nails. Works though, pretty wild.
Wait what? You take a pill, and it stops nail biting???
It works for about half the people that try it from what I have read. I got lucky. I never had luck with anything else. Mine likely stems from mild hereditary ocd FWIW. It’s one of those problems I never thought a pill would fix, let alone a supplement lol.
https://www.bfrb.org/post/n-acetylcysteine-for-hair-pulling-skin-picking-and-nail-biting
You’ll want to look at the studies for dosages.
I love that this works, but this is basically black magic to me.
The link doesn’t work.
Amazing find though! For me it makes my nose super runny, it’s prescribed for stuffed nose stuff if I’m not mixing things up here.
Yep, looks like it is used for that too. It is used to treat a lot of different things but most of it is currently under trials. Fingers crossed they pass
Sometimes I buy a jar of those not because I want to supplement my aminos, just because plain water gets fucking boring.
Gym bro is just trying to distract the giant standing off camera to the right
