WHAT SUPPLEMENTS SHOULD I CYCLE?
As better and more powerful dietary supplements were brought to market years later, many unscrupulous brands would make claims about their own products working as well as those old PEDs – and to build believability for those wild claims they’d advocate “cycles” of their products even if they were completely ineffective.
“4 weeks on, 2 weeks off” soon became a practice stuck around with supplements leading many people to believe that cycling creatine, aminos, and even protein would make them work even better once regular use was started back up.
The good news is, that creatine, BCAAs, EAAs, nitric oxide/pump products, omega-3s, HMB, and nearly any other supplement doesn’t need to be cycled. Yes, you can take your Clear Muscle and your Cell-Tech every day without any disruption in how well it works for you.
And while many of the best supplements won’t need to be cycled but there are a few that legitimately do. To determine what needs to be cycled ask yourself this:
- Am I using something that I’ll develop a tolerance to?
- Am I using something that has an effect on my hormones?
If the answer is to either of these questions is yes, then cycling could be necessary depending on the product. Here are a few that you should consider using for a period of time and then stopping for a short time.
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Pre-Workouts/Thermogenics –
try switching periodically to a non-stim pre-workout or one without caffeine – especially if you’re taking caffeine from multiple sources like coffee and energy drinks outside of your pre-workout. From an athletic perspective, there is a relative reduction in the ergogenic performance benefits of caffeine when a moderate dose is taken daily. And while caffeine was still better than the placebo in that study, the progressive decline in performance suggested a gradual but partial tolerance to it
