@raleigh36girl COST
- Gives a big chunk of the population uncomfortable stomach problems.
- Money (for those who haven't bought it in a while, the price jumped up—still not crazy expensive or anything).
- Small small risk of having heavy metals in it which may not be excessive on its own, but vitamins and other supplements can also have heavy metals.
BENEFIT
- It allows men half a decade older than you to lift a few more reps per set... but anecdotally, women tend to have a recovery advantage between sets anyways, and thus can lift more relative weight per session than men. In fact, they tend to have better recovery, as well, so can handle greater frequencies
- Cognitive benefits of up to 5-10% increase in brain creatine—which is not to say brain function... but at 3-4x the typical dosage (citing https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33578876/). Note: I looked into this before and couldn't find anything past short-term studies i.e. nothing to indicate that this increase is sustained--that's not to say this evidence doesn't exist, I just wasn't able to find it.
In my opinion, the costs aren't huge, but the benefits are still not really worth it.
At your age and with your goals (presumably primarily bodybuilding given where you're asking this), I would spend your efforts on squaring away other aspects of your diet and training. The keys right now are consistency and sustainability. Find a way to build flexibility into your plans and keep yourself from getting hurt.
Some general advice spurred by you asking this question to begin with: take it easy. Shoot for a balance between growth and [time investment + injury risk] i.e. focus on sustainability and consistency
A lot of advice you'll see is for bodybuilders who are willing to spend hours extra per week for a 1-10% increase in results. But...
- For every set you add, you get 50% the gains you did the set that preceded it (not the actual number, but in the right ballpark and makes it easier to conceptualize)
- For every weekly set you add above a minimum (~1-3 for novices, ~6 for intermediate-advanced), you get lower gains on a per-set basis.
- For every lb of muscle you gain, it gets harder to add more muscle over and above it. For a male (numbers will be lower with female, but the trend will be similar) with perfectly dialed in training and good genetics, a typical figure people throw around is 20lb muscle gain first year, 10lb the second, 5lb the third, then 1.5-3lb every year after that.
All this together means that if you spend 2-4 hours* a week vs someone else's 10-12, you're only going to be weeks to months behind them, not years. And that's if they don't get injured (which, if they're at 10-12 because they're trying to squeeze out every ounce of muscle growth they can, they probably will). When injured they can't lift or have to work around the injury, which can mean really slow gains
forever, or having to drop out of the sport altogether.
[sup]*Note:[/sup] [sup]the[/sup] [sup]2[/sup] [sup]hours[/sup] [sup]would[/sup] [sup]have[/sup] [sup]to[/sup] [sup]be[/sup] [sup]designed[/sup] [sup]around[/sup] [sup]the[/sup] [sup]time[/sup] [sup]constraints.[/sup] [sup]This[/sup] [sup]means[/sup] [sup]trying[/sup] [sup]to[/sup] [sup]lift[/sup] [sup]in[/sup] [sup]a[/sup] [sup]way[/sup] [sup]that[/sup] [sup]minimizes[/sup] [sup]warm-ups[/sup] [sup](e.g.[/sup] [sup]a[/sup] [sup]moderate[/sup] [sup]weight[/sup] [sup]compound[/sup] [sup]followed[/sup] [sup]by[/sup] [sup]machine[/sup] [sup]and[/sup] [sup]dumbbell[/sup] [sup]work[/sup] [sup]in[/sup] [sup]the[/sup] [sup]15-30[/sup] [sup]rep[/sup] [sup]range),[/sup] [sup]antagonist[/sup] [sup]paired[/sup] [sup]super[/sup] [sup]sets,[/sup] [sup]higher[/sup] [sup]frequency[/sup] [sup]training,[/sup] [sup]maybe[/sup] [sup]even[/sup] [sup]doing[/sup] [sup]some[/sup] [sup]dumbbell[/sup] [sup]work[/sup] [sup]at[/sup] [sup]home[/sup] [sup]to[/sup] [sup]save[/sup] [sup]waiting[/sup] [sup]for[/sup] [sup]equipment[/sup]
