If you have taken creatine, ephedra, or any other supplement non-stop for the past year or so, raise your hand? If you're a serious lifter and you're not raising your hand, then you shame on you. Most serious lifters believe that when they are "off" of supplements that their physiques will literally go down the drain. I firmly believe this because I have encountered many serious lifters who believed that supplements could make or break their physiques.
At one point in time, I was one of these believers. However, I have realized the error of my ways and turned to cycling my supplements. Before I give you examples of supplement cycling, I would like to address a very important biological point. Without getting scientific, the human body is a fascinating piece of biological machinery. It is smart. Smarter than we choose to believe. When our bodies are exposed to exogenous substances such as supplements, alcohol, drugs, etc, it builds a tolerance. This tolerance requires us to consume more and more of the product in order to get the desired effect.
This characteristic stems from receptor attenuation. You see, our body is full of receptors which have the ability to bind to specific receptor agonists and antagonists. Receptor agonists activate the receptors while antagonists do the exact opposite. So the more receptors you flood over the time, the more they become desensitized. This can lead to receptor burnout which can cause a myriad problems. So basically, abuse of a substance is a no-no.
Cycling Creatine
Creatine is one of the most popular sports supplements in the industry today. Why? Because it works. I've read countless articles which suggests creatine's effectiveness and not one which suggests that creatine is detrimental to the human body. However, all of the articles I have read involve the use of 20 grams of creatine utilizing a one month on, X amount of time off system. So the subjects all took 20 grams of creatine in divided doses throughout the day for an entire month and then took some time off. The time varied from study to study but for the sake of receptor attenuation, I would take at least 2 weeks off. If you've ever tried creatine, then you will know how quickly you can make gains when you first introduce it to your system.
However, these gains began to diminish over time because your body simply got accustomed to the creatine. Now if you would "cycle" creatine, so to speak, then theoretically, you could make gains similar to the ones you made when you initially began creatine intake. There are numerous ways to cycle creatine and I will suggest a few ways which were successful for me in the past.
1. 20 grams for one month straight divided into four 5 gram doses while taking 2 weeks off in between cycles.
2. 10 grams after working out every day for 6 weeks and then taking 2 weeks off.
3. 5 grams after working out every day for 8 weeks and then taking 2 weeks off.
Now you may cycle your creatine differently and if this different method works for you, then stick with it until it stops working. Remember that I am merely sharing with you some of my successful cycles with creatine.
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