The Best Supplements for Packing On a TON of Muscle

<< Read Part Three

Building muscle is no easy task, and supplements can help you pack on slabs of meat, but not all muscle building supplements are created equal. And since I'm no expert, even though I've used all of the following supplements and know they work for me, I'm going to call upon my friend Jeff Anderson, who is a bodybuilding consultant and a former Master Fitness Trainer for the U.S. Military.

Now, if you haven't looked into the other parts of this interview, I recommend you do when you have time, but let's dive right into some muscle building goodness. Here's how Jeff responded when I asked him about the top 3 supplements he would recommend for muscle gain, and why they're the best...

Man, there's a bunch of different ones you could use for muscle gain! But there's 3 that I really tend to gravitate towards...

#1 is L-Arginine Alpha-Ketoglutarate.

L-arginine is an amino acid, it's naturally occurring in your body and in foods, and the better version of it is L-arginine alpha-ketoglutarate. It's basically a combination of L-arginine and it's attached to a ketoglutarate molecule to make it more easily absorbed, which means you can use less of it.

This is a very popular supplement, which you can find in a lot of nitric oxide supplements. Nitric oxide supplements are really meant to kind of give you a "pump" in your muscles; it gives you that pumped up feeling. And it helps you maintain it more because L-arginine is a vasodilator; what it does is increase blood flow in your body, by expanding blood pathways, and it allows you to push more blood through. And that's why you're able to feel that pump that you normally get from the gym, further out into the day, after your training.

And it kind of gives you this really great feeling, all day long, like your muscles are all swelled up... because they are!

L-arginine does that, but the other thing that people don't realize is that L-arginine is also a powerful growth hormone releaser as well. So, it's not just about the feeling of being all swole, it's also about actually naturally increasing your anabolic hormones in your body, to help build more muscle mass.

So, that's a really great one to take...

Another one, which has been around for a while, is Creatine Monohydrate.

Creatine monohydrate is a very powerful supplement, and the reason why it's been around for a while is because it works!

You'll see a lot of ads in magazines about supplements that come and go; they claim it's the next miracle supplement and four months later, after people realize it doesn't really work, people stop marketing it. The supplement companies have already made their money off of it and they're done with it, they kind of cast it aside, but creatine monohydrate is a supplement that stands the test of time because it really does work.

Now, in order to make it sexier, in order to make more money off of creatine, the supplement companies have found all these different ways to deliver it to your body faster. So, you've got creatine alpha-ketoglutarate, creatine gluconate, creatine ethyl ester, and all these different ways they actually deliver it now, which lets them take a relatively inexpensive supplement and charge you more for it, because of the delivery system... DON'T BUY INTO IT!

All you need is creatine monohydrate. Some of those other versions actually don't even work at all! People look at creatine as a muscle builder, but it doesn't actually build muscle directly. What it does is allow you to have more energy in the gym, by increasing your body's natural energy production cycles, so that you can train harder and longer in the gym, before getting fatigued.

Another way that it does help you increase size is by really expanding the volume of the cells, by drawing in more fluid into your muscle cells. You have to drink a lot of water if you're taking creatine, but it helps fill up your muscle cells, so you have an appearance of being bigger.

The last one I would say is Branched Chain Amino Acids.

I recommend that you get it in powdered form, buying it in bulk, and this is kind of an "old school" supplement. A lot of the guys, back in the days of Arnold, used to take branched chain amino acids, because those are the foundation elements when you're building new muscle. That's the amino acid foundation that your body's going to use to put that new muscle onto your body.

Branched chain amino acids are really inexpensive when you buy them in bulk, and they're the most broken down, so that you don't have to consume protein and then have your body break it down to use it. It's already broken down as branched chain amino acids, so once you get it in your body it just gets soaked up by your muscles.

It allows you to start that recovery and rebuilding process much faster than if you're taking in something like a protein drink or meat. I take branched chain amino acids during my workout; I'll put about 5 to 15 grams of them into the drink I take to the gym, which allows me to rapidly get into recovery mode, after my training. That's when my body's really looking for these building blocks of protein, these amino acids. That's exactly what branched chain amino acids will do for you.

These may not be the "sexiest" supplements out there for building muscle, but they actually work and are inexpensive! What more can you ask for? You don't need flashy ads lying to you about the results to expect... all you need are real results.

But we're not quite done yet though, so check out the 5th part of the interview, where Jeff will reveal The Biggest Scam in the Supplement Industry!