How do you search for the best supplements?

Do you go to GNC and ask for recommendations?  Do you blindly search in Google for “the best supplement”?  Or do you go to Walmart or Costco and grab whatever is most affordable?

There are simply way too many options out there, and the sports supplement industry is notoriously known for unsavory practices with ingredients labeling and dishonest marketing.  So, what products can we really trust?  How can we make the best buying decision?

The best answer is, your own knowledge!  And you can start building on that knowledge by knowing some bare essentials. 

If you are just getting started with sports supplements, here are some simple tips for you to help you shop for supplements better:

No 1. Don’t buy proprietary blend

When you read a supplement label.  You ideally want to see every ingredient with dosage clearly listed.  However, in supplement labeling, that’s not always required.  Companies are allowed to use a “proprietary blend” listing the total mass of all ingredients combined without having to give the detail dosage of individual components.

Proprietary blend was originally introduced to prevent secret formulas from being copied by other brands.  But in today’s market, proprietary blends are mostly used to hide the truth from consumers.

Proprietary blend is the main vehicle for supplement companies to include fillers in a product to cut down cost.  When companies use a proprietary blend, it is practically impossible (very costly) for consumers to actually verify how much of each ingredient is actually included.

Pro Tip: Never buy a product that lists its main active ingredients as proprietary blend!  Because you might be paying for substantially less than what you think you’re getting.

No 2. Look for simple formula

There have been instances in the past years that popular off the shelf sports supplements were found to include dangerous ingredients.  In serious cases, people actually died due to misguided consumption.

These days, there are list after lists of substances to avoid in your supplement available online for anyone who wishes to find out.  But who can actually keep up with all the exotic chemical names?

To be safe, always try to shop for supplements that have the simplest ingredient listing.  This has two benefits:

1. You can be sure that the formula will deliver very focused benefits instead of a shot gun formula giving you a bit of everything
2. It will be easier for you to verify the integrity of ingredients yourself.

Pro Tip: Go with formulas that contains as little active ingredients as possible.  Sometimes less is more!

No 3. Examine ingredient dosing

After you confirmed that a product contains a simple list of quality ingredients you can verify.  You finally can determine its effectiveness and safety aspects by examining ingredient dosages.

Most of the ingredients that have been qualified by studies for decades have only been found to be effective in certain dosage range.  So having certain quality ingredients does not automatically make a product effective, the dosage matters!  Don’t let under dosed products hurt your gains.

There is a even more dangerous side of improper dosing when certain ingredients are over dosed.  Most commonly, this happens with products containing caffeine (or other similar stimulants).   Many popular preworkout these days contain anywhere between 300 to 500 mg of caffeine per serving (equivalent of 3-5 cups of coffee).

It may not hurt if you do high level of caffeine every once in awhile, but doing it regularly can really overload your central nervous system and cause you harm.

Pro Tip:  If there’s only one dosage you check, make it the caffeine content!  Try to stay below the 500 mg recommended daily limit by the Mayo Clinic is the most basic rule of thumb.

---

Putting it all together:

It may seem complicated to put it all together, but we promise it’s not that bad.

To show you how it’s done, Underground Lifting will begin to put our methodology into practice.  We will examine the top products in the market and put them up against a list of criteria to bring you only the products that passed our grading standard.

You can find our top recommendations in our navigation bar at the upper right hand corner.

To kick things off, we have our top rated preworkout in 2017.  We grade all products on three areas and ask the following questions:

Ingredients – Does the formula include the most proven ingredients in sports?

Efficacy – Does the formula include enough of the right ingredients per serving to be truly effective?

Safety – Does the formula include anything that shouldn’t be included such as banned substances or abnormally high dosage on certain ingredients?

Whenever we find a quality product, we will go through the steps to analyze its quality and integrity, and bring our findings to you.  We will be continuously expanding these lists, so be sure to check back before your next bottle of supplement!

You may just find something you like better than the last.