If you’re like us, you’re always on the hunt for that edge. Maybe mother nature didn’t bless you with a 6’4” frame. Or maybe you lose muscle faster than you can gain it, and it only takes a week to lose your progress. Whatever the reason, you’re here and you’re looking for ways that you can supplement your diet and improve your muscle gains. Here at Muscle Gainer, we’re hell-bent on getting the results we want, whatever means necessary.
Well, not whatever. We don’t mess with steroids, and we don’t mess with dangerous concoctions that can get you results, but with substantial risk to your health. What we do f%$# with is the following;
- Natural
- Affordable
- Tasty
- Safe
- Effective
So when you hear us say things like, this supplement is NASTE, we mean that it’s going to rock your world. Let’s take a closer look at the Muscle Gainer Criteria.
Muscle Gainer NASTE Criteria
We want our supplements to be like, hey supplement you nasty. That’s why we’ve assembled the following criteria to help judge the supplements we look at. While they don’t cover all the bases, they cover most of the ways in which a person should review a supplement. Let’s jump in to our NASTE list.
Is it NATURAL?
There are plenty of muscle gainer supplements out there that are packed chock full of stimulants, hormones, or other unnatural ingredients that can wreak serious havoc on your body if used incorrectly.
That’s why when we’re looking for a supplement, we want it to have a focus on natural, effective ingredients. While there can be a trade-off occasionally, we do need to have ingredients that can help us achieve our Muscle Gainer goals while not making us sick.
Is it AFFORDABLE?
There’s no way around it. If we’re going to use a muscle gainer product, it needs to be affordable. That’s why we always favor affordable supplements in our reviews. After all, we don’t think that there will be many millionaires reading our site. If you happen to be a millionaire reading our site, we’re looking for sponsors! Hit us up!
Is it TASTY?
Our favorite supplements are ones that either don’t have a taste (pill) or don’t have a ton of sugars that make it taste good, but are loaded with calories. We also don’t want it to taste like we’re eating a dog turd off the lawn. There’s a balance to be found, and we’re going to find it. A good muscle gainer needs to either have no taste, or taste decent without having a bunch of sugar or artificial sweeteners.
Is it SAFE?
Safety is paramount when it comes to picking the right muscle gainer. So it makes sense that site called MUSCLE GAINER would focus on safety, right? We understand that there are those of us out there that will resort to steroids, or other PEDs to get their gains up. But that’s not for us. We want to earn our gains the old-fashioned way while giving our bodies the tools they need to expediate the process.
For those of us who are a little more grey in the hair, this same thing can be said, but for different reasons. You might not want to put on a ton of muscle, but you want to keep the muscle you’ve worked so hard for over the years. And for those of us that have these needs, safety can be even more important. After all, you need that body for the rest of your life, and we can realize our mistakes from being young and brash.
Is it EFFECTIVE?
All this stuff we’ve written up until this point doesn’t mean squat if the product doesn’t work. That’s why we here at MuscleGainer put extreme importance on this category. Obviously we’re balancing it with the above criteria, but we don’t want there to be severe tradeoffs.
Muscle Gainer: How we settle on a rating
After we’ve looked at all of the above criteria and decided on if the supplement is Natural, Affordable, Safe, Tasty and Effective, we’ll pass our final verdict on the matter. That comes in form of a star rating that you’ll find at the top of every review. But here’s the beautiful thing about these star reviews; once they’re started, your ratings impact that score.
That means if we give a supplement 5/5 stars, and we get a hundred readers who rate it at a 3/5 it will reflect that in the actual ranking on page. That’s how important your voice is to us here at Muscle Gainer. We want our best supplements to be ones that have the support of the people behind them.
Spotting a Muscle Gainer Review
On our site, we’ll have a variety of pages ready for you to sink your teeth into. That will range from tips on how to get your pecs pumped, to reasons why you should NEVER skip leg day. But our real bread and butter here is reviews. We review a lot of products and companies here, and you can always tell it’s a review because it will say REVIEW in the title or the image for the product/company review.
Muscle Gainer How-To Articles
Ever wanted to get a rocking six pack? How about a sculpted chin-line? Or maybe you just want tips on how to maximize your gains? Whatever the issue you’re having, Muscle Gainer has a plethora of how-to articles for you to check out. We like to keep our site load balanced at around one how-to article for every three product reviews. That keeps you knowledge-seeking muscle heads happy, and the casual reader filled full of product reviews. As to how we do our how-to articles, that’s another story.
How We Do Our How-To Articles
Ever wondered how Muscle Gainer decides on which articles to write, and how we write them? It’s no big secret as to why we write them. We want to provide high quality information to our readers, and, in consequence, increase traffic to our site. As much as we want to just focus on providing high quality content to our readers and leave it at that, this is a business. We need to make money to keep our staff paid and our lights on at home. But that doesn’t mean that quality is taking a back seat. Quite the contrary, in fact. At Muscle Gainer, we focus on keeping our content safely in must-read territory. If it’s not good, we’re not publishing it. Simple as that.
Muscle Gainer: Other Articles
Not everything we have on Muscle Gainer is a review or how-to. We also have guides. They may be about a popular ingredient, supplement type, or even a popular workout. For example, we have a lot of articles on pre-workout and post-workout supplements.We approach these guides with the same gusto that we lend to our reviews and how-to guides. They’re typically well-researched, and give valuable insights into the status of topic at hand, at the time it’s published. We try not to focus on older studies. We want cutting edge info on the best muscle gaining methods and we want our readers to know it. That’s because we put a premium focus on keeping an informed and knowledgeable reader base.
Muscle Gainer Facebook
Are you a busy person who doesn’t have time to check out our website daily? Are you on Facebook constantly and find that as an easier method to take in your news about products, people’s babies and other weird things they post? If so, you’ll love our Muscle Gainer Facebook page. We’ll keep that puppy loaded with the latest reviews and articles to keep you in the know. Better yet, it’s a good place to discuss the products that we review and get advice on what you’re doing in your current regimen .
Muscle Gainer Twitter
As of right now, we don’t have a Muscle Gainer Twitter set up. But if you think we need one, let us know on Facebook and we’ll consider it. After all, we want to keep our readers happy.
Muscle Gainer Instagram
Do you like looking at pictures on Instagram? Probably not, but again, if that’s your media aggregate of choice, we’re happy to oblige you with some content there. Let us know on our Facebook wall if you want an Instagram page and we’ll get one set up for you hounds.
Muscle Gainer for Women
Alright ladies, we know how hard it can be to find good muscle building content for women by women, but we’re here to at least help a bit. A lot of our expert writers are women and can give you the run down on how a given product can work for you, not the average man. In our articles, pay attention for the tags that indicate that they’re written for a feminine audience. Of course, we try to keep our normal content accessible to both sexes too, so don’t feel like we’re not already doing things for you specifically. We just want there to be something made especially for you that can focus on your specific needs.
How do we pick which products we review?
There’s an interesting process to how we here at Muscle Gainer pick which products to review. While we largely focus on muscle building and performance enhancement, we also talk a lot about other products like male enhancement products and the occasional cutting/weight loss supplement.
As to how we specifically select a product, that has more to do with what we think is going to be popular, or what our readers want. If you want a review of an already established product, we’re guessing you’ll probably go to another site for that. But if you want information on new and emerging supplements that don’t get coverage elsewhere, we’ll be there to give you info. But with that comes a big chunk of coverage on supplements that, frankly, won’t be that good.
We certainly don’t mind being the bearers of bad news in this regard, even if it makes us the scapegoat for ire from supplement manufacturers. We have the right to an opinion, as long as it’s well-founded and not an attack on the company.
So we’re going to pick the trendiest, undiscovered products and write about them. That’s our niche, and we’re going to stick with it.
That said, if you want to request a specific review for a muscle building product, we’re happy to give it a look most of the time. If it’s something as big as, say, Muscle Milk, or something like that, chances are we’ll just point you in the direction of a very good article that already exists on the product. But if it hasn’t been reviewed much, and it fits our needs as a content provider, then we’ll be happy to write about it.
Why did we start Muscle Gainer?
There are a lot of questions we get asked that we don’t have answers to, but this is one that we not only have an answer for, but a very long-winded answer for.
The story of Muscle Gainer starts at a gym. A few of us were sitting around after a set, talking about a product and we thought, hey, there has to be a way that we can write about this kind of stuff and provide our knowledge to other people who have the same questions. As we developed the idea further, we found that there wasn’t a substantial amount of information out there about these emerging muscle supplements. Or, at least there wasn’t much good information out there about them.
That’s when we decided that we wanted to really go for it. With the idea fresh in our heads, we hit the graphic design studio (aka a laptop with photoshop) and started plugging away. 4 short weeks later, we had a design in mind and a layout picked for our fledgling website.
Luckily, a few of us had web design experience and were able to put wind beneath the wings of the Muscle Gainer idea.
Since then, it has been a whirlwind of activity around the office. But our best talks still happen around a weight bench.
How Does Muscle Gainer Make Money?
This is a big part of our business, and honestly it’s something that we don’t have the most concrete answer for yet. We want to make it diverse, and link to products you can buy where we’ll get a commission on the product. But sometimes it doesn’t make sense to do that. There are other times where we’ll review a product we don’t like, and then link to one we do like (that gives us commission on sales). But eventually we’d like to get away from that altogether and go with an ad-based model.
But we’re not going to do a few things that other Muscle Gainer review sites do, and that starts with keeping things transparent.
As of now, our plan is to not engage in any of the following, common, practices;
Email Lists – We know that some people really like their news delivered in a neat and tidy package so they can read it at their leisure. But we also know that there are a lot of people with 20,000 unread emails, and most of them are from mailing lists that they have no idea where or when they signed up for them. We don’t want to add to that clutter, plus there are all kinds of rules and regulations regarding email lists that we don’t really want to bother with. SO, we’re not going to start an email list here at Muscle Gainer, but if we do, we’ll be very clear about how you can cancel, and in updating this section.
Pop-ups – (especially the ones you can’t click out of) They’re seriously the worst. You know you’re on an absolutely terrible site when you get a pop-up saying “Congratulations! You’ve just won a FREE XYZ Gift Card” and then you can’t see anything else on the screen. And, if you try clicking out of it, it doesn’t actually go away. Then there’s the “WARNING: YOUR COMPUTER HAS BEEN XXYXZ’d” ones. Those ones are bad too. We’re getting a little off-track here, but know that we won’t be engaging in those practices, or even in more mundane forms of pop-ups here at Muscle Gainer.
Selling Your Info – A lot of sites we visit these days are collecting a lot of information about you and your activities, then selling it to third parties as ways to market their data. For us, that’s a big no-no. There are even laws against doing it without a disclaimer, which a lot of sites don’t follow. While we do collect usage data here for statistics purposes, we don’t sell that data, or condone sites that do. If you want full information on our data retention and cookie policy, you can click here to get started COOOOOOOKIE POLICY
What We DO Use
Affiliate Links – What are affiliate links? Affiliate links are a type of link on websites that, when you click them, go to a product or service page and include a tracking number from the site you were just on. This tells the marketing company that x site referred y customer, who bought z, for which the referring company earns a percentage of the sale. There are plenty of companies that use this tactic, including major sites like Amazon, or even deal sites like Ebates. Our affiliate links typically go to places that offer trial programs.
What are trial programs?
Trial programs are typically ones that offer a bottle of their supplement to try for a reduced amount of money. One tactic they use is offering a “free” bottle, but you pay for shipping.
But the tricky thing about trial programs is that they’re not very good about displaying prices once the trial is done. Sometimes, those same trials can charge you a lot of money for a product that isn’t as good as the marketing done for it.
While we try to send our links to reputable products, we don’t guarantee satisfaction or good experiences with them. Once you click on a link on our site, and you’re somewhere else, we’re not responsible for any decisions you make.
That said, if you had a bad experience that resulted from clicking on one of our affiliate links, contact us. Sometimes we can point you in the right direction on who you should be contacting.
Advertisements – We aren’t currently using advertisements on Muscle Gainer, but we do foresee a day in which we rely solely on ad revenue. When that day comes, the ads we have on site will be autogenerated by a third party marketing company, and if you buy things through them, we’ll get more money to pay our writers. While we obviously sign off on ads to the point that they’re appearing on our site, we’re not going over each ad individually, because they’re often interest generated. If you see an ad you don’t like, or it goes somewhere you don’t like, let us know and we’ll see if we can resolve the issue.
Muscle Gainer Official Muscle Building Guide
One of the most-asked questions we get here at Muscle Gainer is; what are the best workouts for putting on muscle?
But the answer is something a little more long-winded than we can fit in a traditional FAQ, or email. So we’ve decided to devote section of our mega-guide to answering that question. Let’s start with the basics.
The Keys to Muscle Gain
Muscles are amazing. They’re able to propel you to great heights on the field, and at their finest, are able to express emotions that rely on millimeters of differences. Some are voluntary muscles, some are involuntary (and we’re glad they are). But what joins them together is that they all have one purpose, to move something.
Even your heart is moving something (blood). We rely on our muscles every day to do their job, and they typically do it. But they require use to listen to them and nurture them if we want them to be healthy and strong.
So what are the keys to making sure your muscles are happy?
Muscle Gainer Keys: Nutrition
Muscles need a lot of different nutrients to perform their best. In order for your muscles to function at their peak, your nutrition needs to cover all the nutrients that muscles use in exerting themselves, in stasis, and in their recovery.
- Carbs – Carbohydrates are crucial for providing energy to your muscles in order to work. They’re converted to the energy that muscles use as fuel for their contractions.
- Potassium – This electrolyte is necessary to signal cues to your muscles to either contract or relax. If you’re sweating a lot, then you’ll want to be sure that you’re supplementing with potassium.
- Sodium – Sodium is the other electrolyte in the pair that’s necessary for muscle function. It’s used as a signal for your muscles to contract or relax. As you sweat, you sweat out electrolytes so it’s very important to make sure you have enough via supplementation.
- Water – Dehydration leads to all kinds of problems. And, for muscles, dehydration can be catastrophic. Whether it’s fatigue, cramps, or a drop in response time, dehydration can take the bottom out of your workouts in a hurry. That’s not to mention the potential health risks like heat stroke.
- Protein – Protein, is usually considered in terms of meat/whey etc. But protein itself is a unique nutrient that is crucial to muscle development and recovery. But when we eat sources of protein like meat, we’re also getting a set of nutrients that can help muscle development in other ways. A lot of protein supplements and protein-rich foods can have high levels of things called amino acids, which we’ll cover next.
- Amino Acids – Amino Acids, and Branched Chain Amino Acids also play a part in your muscle function. But since most people get adequate amounts of amino acids and BCAAs through their dietary intake, we don’t typically recommend using an amino acid supplement. But if you have dietary restrictions, and you want to maintain your muscle, then certain supplements can be helpful for people.
Muscle Gainer Keys: Strength Training
There’s no secret to how you increase the size of your muscles—you need to use them. Strength training is critical to increasing muscle size, and in maintaining current muscle size and strength.
The most popular routine we see for putting on mass in a hurry is the Five by Five Program
The program relies on a simple premise, you do five sets of five reps while targeting three workouts that engage all your main muscle groups.
The workout relies on you being able to jump right into high intensity training, so if you’re older or have health issues, this might not be the workout for you. That’s especially true since you’re ideally doing this workout routine 3-5 days a week.
FST-7 Workout
We like this alternative to the 5×5 for people who want to balance gains, and overall health. Because the workout is focused on “stretching” the fascia, aka the tissue that envelopes your muscles, it helps to promote more than just gross muscle strength.
The big drawback for the FST-7 workout is that because it’s working on your tissue in ways that your body might not be used to, you might have longer recovery times, and be less able to get the gains you’re aiming for.
Arms/Legs
Also referred to as upper and lower split training, this workout program is the most common amateur workout routine in existence. I mean, how many times have you heard leg day or arm day at the gym before?
But it’s also popular for a reason other than practicality. It balances recovery for your body, and allows you to but manageable stress on your body, while achieving gains.
The drawback, for us, is that it doesn’t lend itself to full body strength. That’s why we always recommend something to tie it all together, like a sport, or intense running.
That said, there are a million ways to fulfill the needs of this workout, so you can definitely make it your own depending on your needs.
Full Body
This is a preferred program for people who want to maintain their body form, or improve their entire body gradually. We view it as the most healthy and robust workout type, because it’s not creating muscle imbalances in your body if you’re doing it correctly.
That fact alone makes it desirable because it’s able to prevent a lot of issues we see in athletes who are prone to injury. They develop a certain muscle group to the point that it overpowers another, creating muscle strains, spasms and other issues from overwork.
Muscle Gainer Keys – Cardio/Endurance/Performance
All the lifting in the world won’t help you perform as an athlete if you can’t teach your body how to use that muscle in meaningful ways. In fact, if you forego cardio and endurance training while lifting, there’s a good chance you’ll injure yourself if you decide to play some impromptu pick-up games at the gym.
That’s why we put equal importance on Cardio/Endurance/Performance training, at least if you want to be more than just a mean-looking set of muscles.
But for a lot of us, we don’t have access to rec leagues, or reliable pick-up games. That means that you’ll have to rely on yourself, and your creativity to find the right ways to get yourself working. Let’s go over some of our favorites.
Running – For a lot of us, running is a chore. But it is fantastic for your body, if you take the right precautions. It can help increase lung capacity, energy levels, and increase your overall endurance.
For beginners, start on the treadmill and ease yourself into it. Once you’re comfortable jogging decent distances (think 3 miles minimum) start challenging yourself with faster pace.
Once you’ve conquered your pace, it’s time for interval training.
What is Interval Training?
Interval training is basically sets, applied to cardio activity. It’s meant to replicate the ways in which we actually run in sport—relatively sustatined moments of lower exertion, followed by rapid shifts to high intensity exertion, then back down to baseline. Once you’re comfortable with your basic cardio training, we highly recommend interval training to help you reach your peak performance.
Of course, with all of these cardio exercises, it’s important to remember that if you overdo it, you’ll be turning your muscle more into lean, high-endurance muscle. For overall fitness, and flexibility in establishing muscle gains, you need to find a balance between strength training and cardio training like the ones we’ve detailed above.
Muscle Gainer Keys – Recovery
What good is eating right and working out if the result is you laid up on the couch groaning for an entire week because you pulled a muscle pushing yourself too hard. Recovery is key, and it starts before you even hit the gym.
While we’ve already covered nutrition, nutrition is the most crucial part of recovery. You need to make sure that your body has the nutrients it needs to help repair, restore, and replenish before you head out on your next workout. If you don’t, those repairs don’t happen as efficiently, and can lead to muscle breakdown and injury.
But nutrition is just part of it, there’s a whole other side to recovery, and it should be included in all of your workouts.
Warm-ups, Cool-Downs and Why They’re Crucial to Recovery
When you head to the gym, do you jump right into your set? If you do, you could be exposing your muscles to unnecessary risk. There’s a lot of research out there that shows that warming up your muscles and body before you workout can help prevent injury. But warming up doesn’t necessarily just mean jogging around the track a few times. The ideal warm-up/cool-down (for us) goes like this
- Walk/Jog
- Stretch
- Jog
- Light Interval
- Actual Workout
- Jog
- Stretch
- Walk
While obviously this isn’t practical for every single time you work out, on days when you’re able to commit a lot of time to your workouts, and you want to push yourself to your max, this is the way to do it.
If you’re on a shorter routine, you can skip the light interval training, and go with shorter warm-up routines to start and finish your workout.
According to industry sources, the more closely you align your warmups with the activity you plan on doing, the better it helps to prevent injuries.
Muscle Gainer Keys – Planning
All of the things we’ve covered up until this point have been great tips. But they can also be hard to incorporate into your routine if you don’t go in with a plan.
That’s why we think planning is the most important part of achieving gains. Our strategy is to do the following every single week. No excuses, no pushing back to a later date. You set out a day every week where you set your plan, and you do it then, there, and make sure you’re ready for the week.
If you do this and really put work into your plan, then you’ll be committed to the plan.
Here’s how we do it (for the purpose of this plan, we’re doing the 5×5 plan)
- Sunday Night – this is planning night. We pop on a game, hunker down and make a plan for the week. If we’re on a nutrition plan, we put our meal plan on paper and make a shopping list. We then map out our workout and recovery days to make sure that we’re going to hit our goals.
- Monday – Squat, Bench, Barbell Row
- Tuesday – Recovery
- Wednesday – Squat, Overhead Press, Deadlift
- Thursday – Recovery
- Friday – Squat, Bench Press, Barbell Row
- Saturday – Cardio
- Sunday – interval Training or competitive sport
Our daily meal plan typically looks like this:
- Egg sandwich/Fruit (Breakfast)
- Protein Shake, Meat, Vegetables, Carbs (lunch)
- Protein Shake, Meat, Vegetables (Dinner)
There’ a lot of variability in there, so it’s not that hard to fit this routine into your life. Of course, if you’re not a meat eater, you can eat a bunch of beans, or go heavier on alternative sources of protein for workouts.
Muscle Gainer Keys – Supplements
Here’s where we separate the men from the boys, boys. Using the right protein supplement, or performance enhancer can take you to great heights. But it can be tough to nail down the perfect supplement for your situation.
That’s because every situation is different, and a supplement that’s right for one person might not be right for the next person. If you want something tailored to you, personally, do your research. But first, establish your needs.
Do you have a gap in your nutrition? Get it analyzed by a nutrition expert. Maybe a supplement can help get you back on course. Maybe you’re getting injured a lot, or feeling longer recovery times than you should. Talk to a physical therapist, they might be able to give you some tips on getting better.
Whatever you decide to do, supplements can be a powerful tool in any weight lifters arsenal, if used correctly and at the right time.
So which supplement should you use? Let’s lay out a few of the more popular supplement types.
Testosterone Boosting Supplements
Testosterone boosting supplements are a HUGE market, pun not intended. That’s mostly because there’s so much with testosterone that lends itself to building muscle.
Even when you’re working out, you’re telling your body that it should produce more testosterone. That’s because testosterone production is crucial to muscle production. The more testosterone your body puts out the more it engages in building that muscle.
But testosterone is crucial in other roles, too. That’s especially true for libido and sex drive, where testosterone plays a crucial role. In fact, even talking to a woman can spike your testosterone levels. It’s necessary for sperm development, and activates the pituitary gland, and in androgen, enhances muscle growth.
But do testosterone boosting supplements actually work?
There’s a lot of evidence out there that most natural testosterone boosting supplements don’t work at the level they advertise. Or, they’re unnecessary to the needs of the person taking the supplement. That’s especially true if the company is telling you that you’re suffering from lower than normal testosterone production. That’s something a doctor needs to decide for your, not an advertiser.
Our advice is to try one, see if it works for you, and if it doesn’t, stop taking it. Some companies even offer trial programs in which you can cancel and only be out shipping (if you follow their crazy rules to a T). There are also companies out there that offer money-back guarantees that might be an attractive option for people who are curious about a testosterone boosting supplement.
Of course, there is the medical alternative, in which they supplement the body with actual testosterone hormone. But direct hormone therapy, if you don’t need it, can be dangerous for the user.
If you plan on using either of the above methods, we highly advise talking with your doctor first. They can give you a run-down on the potential risks and benefits associated with using a supplement or hormone therapy program.
Nitric Oxide Supplements
Have you ever wondered what makes your muscles all big and veiny during your hardest workouts? Or after a lung-busting run? It’s a chemical trigger called nitric oxide, or NO2. NO2 is what’s known as a “vertebrate biological messenger” which basically means that it relays messages across your body for specific organs to do things.
For our purposes, NO2 supplementation is thought to increase one of those roles. The role, which involves how your veins communicate with the overlying tissue, is known as vasodilation. Vasodilation is when your veins expand, allowing more blood to flow through the area. In moments of high exertion, that expanding allows your muscles to operate at their peaks.
But getting to that point in your workout naturally, and on command for things can be brutal on your body, and that’s why we see a lot of men reaching for Nitric Oxide Supplements and Pills. They typically use Nitric Oxide precursors to achieve the goal of heightened NO2 production.
The most common ingredients we see in these NO2 supplements are amino acids, which do serve as precursors to NO2 production in some cases. The two most popular amino acids in these supplements are;
L-Arginine Alpha-Keto-Glutarate – This supplement ingredient is generally regarded as safe, but may interfere with some medications, and has the potential (as all things do) for allergic reactions.
L-Citrulline – This non-essential amino acid is converted to L-Arginine by your body. Which helps to relax your veins and arteries for enhanced blood flow.
Do Nitric Oxide Supplements Work?
Whenever we see a definitive question like this, we cringe. Nitric Oxide supplements, like all supplements, aren’t designed to “work” for everyone. If they were, they probably wouldn’t be safe. In the case of Nitric Oxide Supplements, there’s a good chance that you’re getting enough amino acids in your normal diet, and the supplement won’t really do anything to help you spike your NO2 levels. But if you don’t have a good diet, and you think they might help, they’re worth a shot.
Male Enhancement Supplements
Getting an edge in the bedroom is a tale as old as time. As long as we’ve been eating things from the wilderness, we’ve been enjoying (and dying from) the quirks of the things we eat. The roots of Male Enhancement (we’ve got jokes) stem from these happy accidents.
Take Horny Goat Weed, for example. There’s probably a reason it’s called that, right? The story we’ve heard is that there was a goatherd out tending to his flock, and every day, like clockwork (or sundial, not sure on the era here) his goats would just start going crazy. They would start humping everything; each other, inanimate objects, event the goatherd—noone was safe.
Finally, the goatherd put it together. It wasn’t some spirit, or the time of the day, it was the plants they were eating! He took some home and nibbled on it at dinner. The rest, they say, is history. Or bad history, depending on who you ask.
But why do people choose natural male enhancement supplements over more well-known pharma names?
The answer for us is that people don’t;
- Like to be seen using Viagra, or the like. They don’t think they need They just need a little something, and even then they can claim that it was placebo, not a pill making them beastly.
- Want the side effects. This one might be ill-informed, but it’s the case for a lot of men
- Want lab-created chemicals – again, this is probably ill-informed. But people still use this as reasoning for their decision
Do male enhancement supplements work?
Again, this is a tough question to answer definitively. Yes, some male enhancement supplements work for some people. But for others, they might not. It depends on the person, the supplement and other circumstances that might effect it. Our advice, if you’re considering a male enhancement supplement or pill is to talk with your doctor. For better results, take your supplement ingredient label in with you to talk it over.
Muscle Gainer Mega Guide – Final Thoughts
There are a lot of unknowns in the world, and for a lot of people, they choose to be ignorant about the things that matter to them. If muscle matters to you, educate yourself. Find answers, and not just from your local gym rats. Find the science and the truth behind all the media trying to manipulate you, and find things that can actually help you.
Never forget, building muscle takes work, and you’ll never be able to (nor should you want to) avoid that. Earn your muscles, take pride in the sweat, and at the end of the day, we know you’ll be happier for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
In anticipation of a lot of questions we know we’re going to receive (this isn’t our first rodeo) we’ve decided to put together this list of frequently asked questions for our Muscle Gainer web site. We’ve made sure to answer the questions we think you’ll have, and do it thoroughly. But if you think we missed a critical question feel free to ask us.
I bought a product at Muscle Gainer, how do I return it?
We don’t sell anything directly here at Muscle Gainer. If you clicked a link on our site and bought something on another site, then that’s their problem. We know it sounds cold, but we’re not about to handle customer service for a company just because we reviewed their product, or linked to one of their products.
That said, if you ever experience an issue with a product that we have a review for, or you’ve ordered something on a site that we’re linking to and had a bad experience, contact us. We’ll be happy to either point you in the right direction, or remove the link from our site.
I’m looking for an article you had on your site awhile back, how can I find it?
We have a search bar at the top of the page that works really well for tracking down older articles. If you don’t want to go that route, you can browse by category as well by clicking the category links in the drop down menu up top.
Can I request a review of my new product?
How much are you going to pay us? Just kidding, we don’t do pay for play reviews here. If you have a product that you want us to review, feel free to reach out with a link. If we think it looks cool, and there’s not another company already doing a good job reviewing it, we’ll give it a look and maybe write about it.
Can I write for Muscle Gainer?
Yes. But we’re not going to pay you. We have an existing team of writers that are pumping out great work for us, and we know they have the chops in the gym, too. If you have an article you want to donate, or you just want some exposure, you can drop us a line at our contact us page.
How did Muscle Gainer get its name?
There they were, three bros crowded around a pool. First bro goes off the diving board. It’s a perfect pike. Second one goes off the diving board, perfect 1 ½ front flip. Third goes off the diving board, and it’s a gainer. The other two bros see it and say, “muscle gainer!” That’s how we got our name. But we’re obviously not a diving board site, we’re more in the muscle gaining game.
I’ve been taking this supplement and nothing is happening, why?
First off, we’re not your doctor, we’re just people that write reviews about products. We’re very careful in making claims here because we don’t want people to think that eating a muscle pill is going to turn them into a muscle-beast overnight. Muscle takes work, and while there are things that speed up the process, there are no shortcuts.
If your current supplement isn’t working, talk with your doctor about it. Maybe there’s something else you can try that will give you better results.
Should I use a testo booster, nitric oxide booster, or male enhancement supplement?
This is a question that we can’t answer in a blanket format. If you want a custom-tailored answer, you’ll need to talk with your doctor directly. They know you better than we do, and can give you guidance on if you actually need one of these supplements or not.
Do you write about protein powders?
We’ve been known to whey heavily on protein powders. See what we did there? We know, terrible pun. The answer is yes, we write about protein powders. After all, they’re the most used muscle gainer supplement in the world. That said, we don’t cover many big names, unless they’re hot off the press. There are too many good sites out there that already cover protein powders, and while we think we can write better reviews than them, they’re established and there’s no way we’re getting above them in rank for the next few years.
I have a weird rash on my…
We’re going to stop you right there, Chad. We’re not doctors. We don’t want to hear about your rash. We don’t want to think about your rash. We’re just hear to write reviews and articles, not answer personal questions.
Are there any ingredients I should steer clear of completely?
At muscle gainer, we’re biased. Not toward individual companies (unless they’re really good) but more toward supplements that offer natural ingredients on a regular basis. Most of the supplements we review are on the natural side, as well.
That’s not to say that these supplements are all going to be effective. A large percentage of them probably won’t be that great. But there are a lot of things we like about using natural supplements that other supplements can’t offer.
But just because it’s natural, doesn’t mean it’s good. There are plenty of natural ingredients out there that can do serious harm to your body. One common, natural ingredient we see is caffeine. When used correctly, caffeine is great as a muscle gainer ingredient. After all, caffeine can improve recovery time when used correctly.
But when it’s used incorrectly, or in too high of concentrations, caffeine can make you sick, or even cause health issues. So, if you’re already getting caffeine from another source, it’s usually a good idea to stay clear of caffeinated supplements if you want to avoid issues.
If we had to say there was one type of muscle gainer that you should stay away from completely, we would think that it would be steroids.
Sure, doctors subscribe them to you, but that’s only when they know that you need them. When you’re giving them to yourself, and going through back-channels to do it, it’s dangerous. There’s always the threat of contaminated needles, infection, and all the myriad issues with come with steroid use itself.
On top of that, we tend to avoid direct hormone use, as it can throw your body out of balance in a hurry. If you’re considering using either of these two approaches, please talk with your doctor. And, if you choose to do it anyway, please do so safely and with full knowledge that what you’re doing might hurt your body permanently.
What’s the best way to take a muscle supplement?
In our experience, there’s really a negligible difference between taking a supplement as a pill, powder, or liquid. We tend to prefer pills because they’re easy, convenient and effective. But in certain situations, like for supplementing your diet with protein, you’ll want to use a powder or drink.
From a different angle, the best way to take a muscle supplement is by pairing with an achievable, but aggressive workout routine that incorporates both cardio and strength training.
I want to get big gains in X amount of time, what should I do?
That really depends on what your body can handle. Sure, you can push yourself at the gym, but if you’re an older gentleman like myself, than you’ll know that you can only push so hard. If you want to make gains, set a realistic, achievable goal. If you exceed them, great. If not, then you can adjust those goals as necessary.
It may be tempting to use steroids or growth hormones, but remember that those kinds of gains are ill-gained, and carry with them a ton of side effects.
Who makes the pills that you review?
The muscle supplements that we review here at Muscle Gainer are made by a variety of manufacturers from all around the world.
Which supplement should I use?
That depends on your needs. In order to establish what you truly need to supplement, talk with a nutritionist or doctor. If you don’t want to go that route, be sure you’re the most educated person in the gym before you make that decisions.
If you’re thinking male enhancement supplements then you should do the same, and weigh your options carefully before you decide on one. Again, talk with your doctor when you’re trying to decide on a supplement, especially for male enhancement.
I found a supplement online for way cheaper than it should be, is it authentic?
If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is. We’ve heard of a lot of people signing up for trials, keeping the bottle, cancelling, then selling the bottle online. We highly advise avoiding resellers like that as you have no idea whether those pills or supplements will be authentic or not. On top of that, you won’t have the same user protections if you go through those services.