CREATE YOUR OWN SUPPLEMENT

Gym-created products are the best at fitting the gym's needs. Any time you have a dedicated staff that is in your facility working out as much as they are there to work, you have the opportunity to develop a giant think tank.

Of course a huge topic in all meathead circles is supplements... when to take it, what to take, how much to take, etc. Obviously you should not be soley dependent on supplement powders and pills, food comes first. Supplements are supposed to be just that, a "supplement" to your diet of nutritious whole foods.

However, liquid protein shakes for peri- or post-workout nutrition are a nice additive if you are not able to get to solid food within a two hour window after training. Other supplements are easier taken in powder/pill form, like creatine, because in order to get enough creatine daily you would have to eat a lot of fish and/or red meat. For some people, that just isn't in the budget. Others supplements are great energy boosters prior to a training session, like caffeine. Some staples for me are glutamine, creatine, protein, and caffeine. Of course BCAAs are a plus that's why I choose a protein that has them mixed in with it.

Luke Beggs is a PhD student in applied physiology at the University of Florida and I had the pleasure of having him as a graduate assistant for the last year and a half at the University of Kentucky. He threw out the idea of just making our own pre-workout supplement... and then the rest of us started salivating on the possibility.

Luke started looking into buying the no frills version on the staples we wanted to include in our first Underground Labs Inc. concoction. There was five of us that jumped on board to fund this product. Here is what we came up with for the ingredient list:

We ended up having to add some more sugar free flavoring to it since the flavor wasn't the best... BUT it has given all of us a ridiculous pump when working out. Luke was also able to modify how many milligrams of caffeine each of us wanted, due to tolerance levels. I wanted 200 mgs of caffeine in mine.

I ended up naming it INCREDIBLE HULK for obvious visual reasons, but also named for how disturbedly hyped I was during my workouts on it.

Have you ever thought of creating your own supplement? If so, what would you need in yours?