This is a guest post from the editors at Examine.com.
At the end of fight camp, you have taken a beaten from all angles. Your physical body has endured countless punches, kicks, and knees. Your mind is exhausted from the stresses behind competition. Your hormones have been derailed from the caloric restriction with excessive energy expenditure from the increased volume of training. This is the aftermath of what a combat athlete must endure to step into the ring or octagon.
It is worth all the sacrifice and dedication when a fighter comes out of those rounds with his hands held high – victorious.
By the time Ryan finished up his last fight camp, he struggled to weathered the storm he brought upon his health. Even at a young age, he knew that he was playing with fire and needed to bring his adrenals back to life.
We see this a lot with Hollywood actors and actresses after insane physical transformations that cause the individual to walk the tight rope between unhealthy and dangerous.
When you drop 35 pounds in less than 5 weeks and then regain 20 pounds in a 24 hour window, something has to give. These are the prime years for a twenty-something year old and Ryan didn’t want to destroy his endocrine system for years to come.
After a post-fight lay away absent from training and replaced with Ryan knew he would have to get his nutrition, strength and conditioning, and lifestyle habits in order. That is the key to building muscle, losing fat, and optimizing your health and performance. But we wanted to add in some extra fire power – in the name of supplementation.
So we put our heads together and called in for some much needed back up. A little SOS to our friends over at Examine.com (pun intended).
In an industry full of scams, con-artists, and bullshit marketing to get your dollar, let’s just say the Examine fellas are studs. Not only do they provide unbiased, research driven facts on supplements, but have made our lives even easier when it comes to deciding what works and our wallets fatter by the amount of money we save from ineffective products.
ENTER THE EXAMINE STACK GUIDES:
Examine.com is not even a supplement company nor are they invested in any. They just provide the knowledge and have quickly become the go-to resource for anything regarding supplement research. With that said, these Stack Guides are a complete game changer.
From our personal experience to our personal reviews of all the Stacks, they are simple to use guides that have step-by-step directions and solve any confusion you may have. This is a necessary addition to your arsenal of building muscle, losing fat, and optimizing hormones along with the following:
- Testosterone Enhancement
- Fat Loss
- Muscle Gain & Exercise Performance
- Bone Health
- Joint Health
- Sleep Quality
- Libido and Sexual Enhancement
- Mood and Depression
- Vegetarianism/Veganism
- Insulin Sensitivity
- Heart Health
- Memory and Focus
- Skin and Hair Quality
- Liver Health
- Allergies and Immunity
- Seniors
When we contacted Examine.com for Ryan’s post-fight camp worries, they gave us the nitty gritty on how to get his testosterone back and boosting again. We wanted to share with you the same.
Here are some of their Stack’s guidelines for Testosterone Enhancement right from the editors at Examine.com:
Walk into any nutrition store, and you will be bombarded with marketing from dozens of different companies. Every powder and pill claims to be the best. Even though most of the supplements on today’s market don’t work, product flies off the shelves and new brands show up every year.
One reason for this supplement market paradox is that some supplements do work, and people continue to purchase other supplements, hoping to find another useful brand.
But even more supplements are sold in the form of proprietary supplement stacks. A supplement stack is a combination of supplements that have similar effects, or work together toward a goal like building muscle, alleviating joint pain, or even improving skin quality. Unfortunately, most supplement companies add up to 20 different supplements to their blends, in order to claim that their proprietary mix is superior to the others on the shelf.
Supplements, when taken together, can interact and change each other’s effects. Adding twenty compounds to a stack makes it very difficult to research all the interactions between the supplements. It also makes it difficult to figure out which supplements are providing the benefits, and which are filler and a waste of your money.
Instead of buying the latest testosterone-boosting supplement blend, make your own. You’ll save money and end up with a supplement stack customized personally for you. Plus, you’ll know it works.
Laying the Foundation
The first step to creating your own supplement stack is choosing the base supplements. These are the supplements you can take every day for as long as you want. Make sure your base has been proven to be safe and reliable. Most importantly, base supplements must be effective at helping you reach your goal.
A good example of a base supplement for improving testosterone levels is zinc.
Zinc is an essential mineral that is lost through sweat. Low levels of zinc can cause low testosterone, so supplementing enough zinc to restore it to a normal level will also raise testosterone. Just keep in mind, supplementing bigger doses of zinc will not raise testosterone levels above normal.
Customized Additions
The next step is figuring out how to make your base supplements more effective. Unlike base supplements, which are based on your goal, additional supplements are based on your demographic.
For example, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is a great testosterone booster for elderly men and women, since older people tend to have lower hormone levels. DHEA is not very reliable when supplemented by young people. DHEA is a good supplement to add to your testosterone stack if you’re concerned about age-related testosterone decline.
A younger person would be more interested in D-aspartic acid (D-AA). D-AA will raise testosterone levels when supplemented for a short period of time. D-AA is not a daily supplement, and should not be taken for longer than a month.
Personalizing Your Stack
After supplementing your stack for several weeks, you may want to add another compound. Make sure to add one supplement at a time. Adding multiple supplements will make it difficult to determine which supplement is effective.
Before adding a supplement to your stack, do your research. Find out how it interacts with the other supplements in your stack. Make sure to continue supplement your previous stack as before, just with the addition of a new compound.
Keep notes over several weeks to track the effects of the new compound. If, after a few weeks, you’re not experiencing the effects you wanted, drop the supplement from your stack. Testosterone boosting supplements often take up to a month of supplementation before the effects are felt.
Creating a personalized stack can be a time-consuming process, but having an effective personalized stack in a world of useless proprietary blends is worth its weight in gold.
If you want to learn more about how you can supplement your diet and training to get serious results, then grab a copy of the Examine Stack Guides oriented towards your goals or grab them all! You won’t be disappointed. Without a single doubt, these are Sons of Strength tried, tested, and approved.
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