The Supplement Timeline | When Should You Start Taking Certain Supplements?

A couple weeks ago I did a video where I opened up my vitamin cabinet. I showed you all the vitamins and the supplements that I take on a daily basis. Well that video sparked a lot of follow-up questions, and mostly in relation to not just supplementation, but training, and where it fits in on a timeline from an age factor.

When should you start taking certain supplements?

 When is it appropriate to do each?

So I thought, why don't I put together another followup video that discusses, I'll call it the Supplement Timeline, that discusses the major categories of supplements. when I feel across one's age it becomes most appropriate to take something and we'll address the workouts too.

We might as well address the workouts right off the bat. People ask me, Jeff, when is it appropriate for my son to start lifting weights?

I don't recommend in this first age bracket, 10 to 13 years old or obviously less than
that, than anybody starts training with weights. I do think that exercise and training is great
at any age.

Even kids under 10 years old, training is actually accomplished in a form of play. You watch a kid outside and they'll play, they're basically doing lunges.

They're doing Box Jumps when they jump up on rocks. They're doing a lot of different movements that we're doing in the gym that we're calling something else and they just call it playing.

That's great. That actually builds body awareness. It builds coordination. It builds baseline strength. Well, in this 10 to 13 age bracket, don't get them into weights.

They don't need to do that. Most often I find that kids are still pretty uncoordinated at that age. And they need to learn how to control their own body, so bodyweight training programs, resistance bands, all good.

Weights, not really necessary until you start hitting your teenage years, and then from there it becomes really easy. Weights all the way through the rest of your life, all the way up until your 80s.

You can continue to lift weights and build muscle long long into your older years if you keep pushing yourself in your workouts. You might have to dial back a little bit on the intensity that you had when you were in your 20s, but relative to how you feel in our 70s and 80s, you should still continue to give it your best and still continue to try to build muscle and build strength
because results and research has proven that you can still do it.You can still do it.

Maybe not as easy as you did back here in these formative years, but you can do it.
So, supplementation now, where does that fit in?

Well, we broke it down into these 4 major age brackets, 10-13 year-olds, again it goes without saying there's no need for supplementation prior to that. And you'll see what my answer is here, too. 14-19 year olds, so, your teenage years. 20-39 so just basically your middle years,
20s and 30s.

Then we just go 40 and up, ok. and we could probably break it down another age bracket a little bit higher, especially for specialty vitamins.

But what are the categories here? A Multivitamin. Specialty Vitamins. Pre-workouts. Protein Powders and Meal Replacement Powders, Branch Chain Amino Acids. Creatine.

Joint Recovery Formulas, and High Grade Omega-3s. Now, all of these are ones that basically made up that vitamin cabinet video of mine.

Now, If you haven't already seen it, you've got to watch the video. It's right here. It's worth a watch. Guys have asked me for a long time, 'Jeff, what it is that you exactly take every single day?' I break it down, literally bottle by bottle what it is.

So, this will look familiar to those of you that watched that video. as far as the age brackets and the appropriateness of it, I believe that a multivitamin is appropriate for all age brackets. Now, there's some debate about whether or not they're useful or not.

I look at it as an insurance policy. I think that in this age bracket for sure and everything else really, but right here, your nutrition better be in place. And I blame it on the parents a lot of times that by the age of 10 to 13, if your kids are still eating a bunch of crap because you thought it was cute when they were 4,5, 6,.7,.8 years old.

You've got to start teaching them habits here because this is when childhood obesity really starts to rise because they haven't learned the habits, and they're starting to really start changing their bodies pretty soon because of puberty.

If you don't teach them here, you're going to have some problems going forward. So, baseline nutrition. Nutrition should take up 98 percent of everything here. A Multivitamin, yeah. Maybe for some insurance.

Specialty Vitamins. There are some conditions that could be benefitted by taking some specialty vitamins like a vitamin D or like some vitamin B6 or B12. That might be appropriate for somebody in this category Some specialty vitamins might work. Again, same thing here.

I think the reason in the 14 to 19 year old a few more specialty vitamins to again not only teaching the responsibility of addressing some of your nutritional needs through supplementation. Making there being an awareness that maybe.

I'm not getting everything through my diet because I still don't have it down perfect. But I might need to address some of my insufficiencies through supplementations. A Specialty Vitamins a good thing I think here. And of course through the rest of life as well. As you saw, I had a bunch of them in my video.

Now we get to this big group of stuff that I talk about as sort of performance-enhancing supplements. I don't think that if you are not committed to eating well, and this is a very important point for this video.

If you are committed to a diet that consists of Ding Dongs, Twinkies, fried foods, cakes, candy, all that shit, you don't deserve to even continue the discussion because thinking that taking supplements is going to get you to where you want to be when you're not going to get the rest of your diet in check is the biggest pipe dream out there.

The people that want to make you think that that's possible are the biggest scumbags out there and we know we've seen them Don't take them. Don't take my supplements if you're not committed to following a proper nutrition plan. I mean a healthy nutrition plan. It doesn't have to be perfect.

We've talked about that too. But start having a commitment to eating better because you truly are what you eat. And if you think you're going to fix it all through supplementation you're dead wrong, but if the guys who are watching my videos like most of them are out there, they're close. A lot of guys maybe they're in the 20 percent body fat range. Maybe they look good in the right light but when the lights are on them they don't look so good.

You can start really fine tuning and helping yourself through supplementation because it makes the job of getting nutrition right that much easier. It allows for the consistency that's needed to see results over time from your nutrition and I think that's the biggest part about supplementation.

So, Preworkouts. My feeling on Preworkout, certainly not here. These guys are out for the rest of the way. There's nothing else I would recommend for them.

Here in the teenage years, yes, we know, athletes especially, they're going to take Pre-workouts
just be careful about the Pre*workouts that you're taking. I showed you mine.

ATHLEAN RX1.

We went to great lengths to make sure that we did not include any of the banned substances. We went for NSF Approval for Sport because we don't want to subject ourselves to any of the scrutiny that comes from putting banned substances in our products. Just like the videos that I did on end about 1-3 dimethylamylamine. We were out of it from the very beginning.
We knew that was a bad ingredient from the very beginning. We stayed away from it. some manufacturers have not.

Some have replaced it with new dangerous ingredients. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to get you to take them and feel like your heart's going to pound out of your chest.

We on the other hand go for a lot more of a consistent, safe energy. One that's not going to allow you to crash. One that's going to provide you with energy. We know that athletes are taking them. Again, I think it's appropriate to your goals.

If you're an athlete and you feel like you need them to get up for your workouts, or you need them to get up for your games, then we know they're going to take them. Of course it's the same thing here as well.

Guys will take them based on preference. Protein and Meal Replacement Powders. Again, I think protein powders are a staple of a good supplementation plan if it's a high-grade protein. We've talked about it in plenty of other videos, the differences in proteins, and what makes a high grade protein a good protein.

If you are taking high grade proteins I think they're a staple for making sure that you're getting proper nutrition. I can tell you that in my teenage years I was taking Meal Replacement Powders as one of my after school meals to make sure that I wasn't snacking on garbage. And it was far too easy for me to go grab the Entenmann's' chocolate chip cookies instead of having a protein shake.

But when I started to become more committed to what I was doing the protein shake became very easy for me to do. I said goodbye to the cookies, and I said hello to my abs for the first time in my life.

So, protein powders.

Now, Branch Chain Amino Acids. We've talked, I'm going to kind of group these together, Branch Chain Amino Acids and Creatine. I think, I am a big believer in the benefits of Creatine.

I think that Creatine is one of the most well-researched supplements, performance-enhancing supplements that are out that you cannot get in adequate amounts no matter what anybody says through diet alone. Because what happens when you're trying to get it in the amounts you need to get it to have it's ergogenic benefits, you'd be eating far too much meat that could cause other problems by having the amounts that you'd have to eat to get just the creatine alone.

So, why not go, if you're trying to get the ergogenic aids of the creatine, why not just supplement with creatine?

Well, we like creocolline more than we like creatine because of it's less-acidic state because of its ability to be taken without cycling on and off creatine, and because of it's lack of conversion to creatinine, we can actually do this more effectively with the Branch Chain Amino Acids with our protein powder. We do that with RX2. Again, that was why I showcased my RX2 as
what i take. Again, you can take your own supplements guys.

This is not a take my supplements and that's it video. do your own research. I'm saying, we've done our research and we combined the benefits of all 3. And I think it's appropriate again for all 3 age groups, especially those that are looking for the convenience of making sure they have enough muscle-building protein, high-grade, in their diets supported by Branch Chain Amino Acids and also supported by creatine which we feel in the form of creocoline in
one formula.

It just makes it a lot easier than having to have 6 different bottles or 4 different bottles. Here. Joint Recovery and High Grade Omega-3's the last 2 that we had talked about, again, in the video.

Dr. Cs Omega-3s was the one that my father developed back 30 years ago. This I've had the benefits of now for a very long time, again, growing up with my Dad who was making it. And Joint Mechan-X, ATHLEAN RX Mechan-X, this is our new joint recovery formula.

This I wish I had a lot longer ago because you guys probably know my history if you've watched the video. Bad knees, a bad shoulder, the shoulder didn't happen until recently. the knees have been a problem for a long time.

I feel like, if you're an athlete, or if you're going to be training hard, by training hard I mean you're a regular gym goer, you're serious about your training.

You're trying to push more weight. You're trying to get stronger all the time. those guys are serious, then those guys should certainly be taking joint recovery and muscle recovery the anti inflammatory properties of high-grade

Omega-3s in your teens and in your 20s. Specifically in your 20s. Here, again, me personally, and this is my opinion, I would have been taking both. I was taking the Omega-3s. I would have been taking the joint recovery formula as a proactive step to help me not be in the situation that I am in now because a lot of the damage I did was from high school sports.

Had I been taking the joint recovery when I felt no pain back then it would have been a better situation i think for me now had I taken it.

So, there again, it's an individual decision whether or not you take them in those years. But if you're competing or if you're competing athletically or if you're pushing yourself in the weight room I would definitely take it.

Here, 20-39 years old. Definitely. I think that these are totally appropriate here even if you're not feeling joint discomfort at the moment because if you continue to work out for long enough, you guys probably know, there's something that hurts on your right now.

Matter of fact, i know there's probably one joint somewhere that aches you or causes you
some discomfort. A lot of times it's from the results of your training.

You can't always get it perfect, ok. and then again, 40 and up, for sure.I Think guys here, it's pretty much a no-brainer. they already have issues.

They're already feeling the discomforts from their daily life that makes them look for Joint Recovery Formulas and high gradeOomega 3s.

But again, I think here it's a better chance for you to get in on this proactively especially if you're an athlete. So, here's that sort of cabinet of mine once again broken down into major categories.

This is sort of the timeline I wanted to put together to answer that question for you a little bit more specifically about what is appropriate and what isn't appropriate.

One thing you did not see on here. you did not see any prohormones. You did not see any testosterone replacement bullshit supplements. You did not see any of that garbage, guys.

That i steer away from for a long time and going back to when Mark McGuire would have his andrestine dial sitting up in his locker which essentially became a smokescreen for what was really going on, those supplements just aren't good. And anybody that will sell those to you also, I just, we're not on the same page. that's all i can say, ethically and morally we're not on the same page.

I would steer you guys away from that. You don't need any of that garbage. All you need are the basics here and the commitment to proper nutrition. Ok. If you're looking for a commitment and you're looking to make a commitment to proper nutrition, you can do that, guys.

I lay out the ATHLEAN-X FACTOR Meal Plan for you. It's a commitment to proper nutrition. there's no gimmicks. There's no diets. There's no, I let you eat. i let you eat real food. I give you real easy ways to do it. I don't make you have to become a chef to learn all new recipes. It's doable. and if it's doable it's followable. And if you can follow it, you can become consistent
with it, and that is the key. And far as supplementation, guys, as I showed you in the last video,

Everything that I take is what I recommend to you. I would never recommend something to you that I don't personally take myself, or that I can't personally vouch for myself. And of course, that's why we made the ATHLEAN RX Supplements. RX1 is the Preworkout. RX3 is our night time protein recover which falls into our protein powders. And of course our RX2 is our Postworkout that has Branch Chain Amino Acids and creocoline in it as well.

You can all those guys at ATHLEAN-RX, if you're looking to take exactly what I'm taking but the bottom line is, commit to good nutrition. Become consistent.

Stay away from the garbage, right, And stick to a plan and you will definitely see results from your supplementation. I hope this video was helpful. I hope it broke down and gave you guys some ideas.

Yes, it's long, but I feel like we need to cover everything. Alright guys, we'll be back here in the next couple days. Make sure you leave your comments below, your thumb's up. and let me know whatever else it is, you want me to cover,

I'll cover it. If they're something about supplementation specifically, let me know below. Maybe we'll make a video about it here in the upcoming weeks. Alright guys, we'll be back again soon.