General Supplement/Diet Questions

[Arch]

First off: I have been really impressed with controlled labs presentation of their products and responses in both these and the BB.com forums. It's really nice to see a company that reacts to the customer and isn't all about marketing hype.

Second: I am relatively new to this whole "supplement" lifting. I did the whole high school sports thing, we did 3 lifts, squat, bench, hang clean...and I never really stuck with it. I roughly lost 40 lbs through college from sports and eating better. Recently (Jan 2009) I learned about eating clean through Alex Aragon's Muscle Chow book and I also learned of supplements through a buddy of mine in the military. I did my first 8 week cycle with no-Xplode. then 4 weeks off, now I am doing a cycle of White Flood and creatine monohydrate with grape juice.

Anyways I was thinking of starting a new cycle in June. i would roughly cycle off the creatine and white flood for probably 2 weeks and I was wondering if this is a long enough time for a cycle off of these two supplements. I am thinking of starting back up with GM, WF, and PW. I would like to try a "real stack" for the first time and controlled labs really lays it out for you and i am impressed with everything so far.

Other stats: 6'4" 185, 23 years old, looking to do what everyone else is trying to do build muscle and lose fat
workouts: MWF are through a personal trainer and lately we have been doing a lot of endurance type lifts, mostly 15-30secs or 15 reps. Typically will never do the same lift in the same week. Maybe a variation, push ups with twists, etc also start and end with 10 min of cardio
T/TR Taekwondo or some basketball shoot arounds
Daily Food goals: 2800 cals 60 fat 350 carbs 220 prot

any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

[conda]

First off: I have been really impressed with controlled labs presentation of their products and responses in both these and the BB.com forums. It's really nice to see a company that reacts to the customer and isn't all about marketing hype.

Second: I am relatively new to this whole "supplement" lifting. I did the whole high school sports thing, we did 3 lifts, squat, bench, hang clean...and I never really stuck with it. I roughly lost 40 lbs through college from sports and eating better. Recently (Jan 2009) I learned about eating clean through Alex Aragon's Muscle Chow book and I also learned of supplements through a buddy of mine in the military. I did my first 8 week cycle with no-Xplode. then 4 weeks off, now I am doing a cycle of White Flood and creatine monohydrate with grape juice.

Anyways I was thinking of starting a new cycle in June. i would roughly cycle off the creatine and white flood for probably 2 weeks and I was wondering if this is a long enough time for a cycle off of these two supplements. I am thinking of starting back up with GM, WF, and PW. I would like to try a "real stack" for the first time and controlled labs really lays it out for you and i am impressed with everything so far.

Other stats: 6'4" 185, 23 years old, looking to do what everyone else is trying to do build muscle and lose fat
workouts: MWF are through a personal trainer and lately we have been doing a lot of endurance type lifts, mostly 15-30secs or 15 reps. Typically will never do the same lift in the same week. Maybe a variation, push ups with twists, etc also start and end with 10 min of cardio
T/TR Taekwondo or some basketball shoot arounds
Daily Food goals: 2800 cals 60 fat 350 carbs 220 prot

any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

That's enough time to cycle off the WF. IMO you don't need to cycle Creatine. So you can start GM right away. And a week to 10 days is enough time to break from stims (wf). Welcome to the CL boards!

[Dracoy]

Stim cycling time depends on how you react to it. For me I do about a month between stims. Some people do two weeks.

[Arch]

thanks for the quick responses guys

on a side note is it better to cycle in a lot of things? and change upa whole routine or just do one, and on the next go around put in something else? Basically I am looking at the golden line as well...just kind of mass stack... I am little hesitant to do things like blue up and REDuction.

As far as stim goes...I cycled off no xplode for about 3-4 weeks and when i got back on i had like super crashes and that's what made me make the move to WF. THe biggest reason i am cycling off of WF is to conserve some for the next cycle

[5six]

on a side note is it better to cycle in a lot of things? and change upa whole routine or just do one, and on the next go around put in something else? Basically I am looking at the golden line as well...just kind of mass stack... I am little hesitant to do things like blue up and REDuction.

It depends on what you're taking as a supp. If it's something like Purple Wraath, a multi vitamin or creatine, there is no real need to cycle it. But if it's a stim, it's always a good choice.

[jiritt0]

what kind of training program does your PT have you doing?! that (and your diet) is much more important than the supplements you use.

[Arch]

well I am slowly learning the lingo for things, but I want to say it's like a circuit/superset combination. It's hard to explain kind of what we do b/c i don't know the names of many of the lifts, like yesterday we started with two handed rows where the bar goes between your legs and the weights are on one end, then to squats, then moved to doing push ups on a bench and doing a press clap at the top, then on to body weight push ups with hanging straps, inclined flys, lat pull downs, lunges with a chop up, tricep pull downs, shoulder pulls, lateral raises?(lower back) squats with a shoulder pull with hanging straps, picking daisies(basically on one knee alternating rows with each arm), all of that was one set, each set per lift was 20-30 sec, after the circuit did 3 min of intense cardio, then back for another set.

That's more or less a standard day but had more emphasis on chest, tomorrow will probably be legs or back, and then friday will be whatever we didn't emphasize on Wednesday. The cardio in between sets is normally only every couple of workouts..wish i could better describe what we do

As far as nutrtion a normal work out day would be something like:
5:00 1.5-2cups of oats, with a scoop of whey
7:00 turkey sandwich
9:00 green drink, kale/spinich/2 bananas
10:30 Muscle Milk
11:30 White flood
12:00 workout
1:30 grape juice/creatine, and lunch which is normaly 2 eggs, and then 2-4 egg whites and 2 pieces of bread
3:30-4 plain yogurt with fruit, normally strawberries or bananas
5-6 chicken/tuna with a spinich salad and cottage cheese, or like a tuna quesadilla
8-9 casein protein shake
normally throw in an apple here a handful of nuts there, shoot for 1-2 gallons of water a day, all bread products i shoot for low sodium, multil grain/wheat