Supplementing to Increase Intensity
This is a subject that’s exciting to me because it’s where things all started for AST Sports Science. Way back in 1987, I dove deep into an area of research that literally changed the scope of sports supplementation.
I had been training for about 6 years and making some good progress, but I knew something was missing. I would read the magazines and try to educate myself as much as I could about how to increase the effectiveness of my workouts. This was a mistake, as the intelligence of the ones writing the articles left a lot to be desired. Bottom line, they knew nothing and rehashed only the things they had read in other magazines to make it look like a new article. It was and still is the “blind leading the blind”.
I was looking for an edge from every possible angle. I started looking into the psychological area for enhancement through a crude form of self-hypnosis. I devoured research studies on every aspect of nutrition and bio-chemical pathway manipulation to enhance muscle growth. I learned a lot. Tons. I learned that most of the supplements were absolutely antiquated with zero science involved in the formulations. I knew things in this area could only get better.
Then an interesting phenomenon kept surfacing when I was studying the scientific research on muscle strength and muscle hypertrophy – “nerve-muscle contraction force”. Then one day an event happened that steered me in this new direction of performance enhancement – a direction that created an area of supplementation that has had the most profound impact on performance enhancement than anything else over the past 20 years.
I was reading a story in the newspaper about a small woman that lifted a car and pulled her child from underneath it after an accident. It was one of those odd believe it or not stories, but it really started me digging into the research.
