Supplements drive about 3%, maybe 5% of your results. Your workouts, your diet and your genetics do the rest. So never pick a supplement because someone in incredible shape takes it: that proves almost nothing about whether it works.
The 90s supplement mistake
Back in the 80s and 90s, guys were taking all kinds of nonsense supplements. Later research pretty definitively showed a lot of them didn’t work at all. But back then, everybody believed in them.
Why? Because the biggest names in bodybuilding were taking them. Ronnie Coleman’s taking it, Jay Cutler’s taking it, those guys are huge and jacked, so it must work. That is very, very bad logic.
Why a pro’s physique doesn’t prove the supplement works
Look at everything else going on with anyone at the top of pro bodybuilding:
- Freak genetics. That kind of physique wasn’t built by a pill.
- An incredible workout program, trained obsessively.
- A locked-in diet.
- The best coaching there is.
- And at that level, performance-enhancing drugs are part of the picture.
Those are what drive the results. The supplements are maybe 3 to 5%. Someone could be taking a pile of nonsense supplements and still look incredible. Someone else could be on a supplement plan that’s backed by the science and still be out of shape, and you’d never know the supplements were working, because they’re such a small part of the picture.
How to pick supplements that actually work
Follow the science, not the physique. The problem is that neither of us is a scientist. Reading the abstract of one study gives you a superficial understanding of one study, and you’d need to read thousands. That’s where AI helps: it can pull together far more of the research than any one person can.
- Give AI deep context. Don’t just ask “what supplements should I take to get abs?” Tell it what you take now, what’s given you problems, whether you prefer pills or powders, and what you’re trying to achieve and avoid.
- Ask it to interview you for anything else it needs to know.
- Adjust as you go. A few times a supplement has given me a stomach ache. I told AI, and it recommended an alternative that was easier on my stomach.
Get the big 95% right first: training, diet and sleep. Then let the science pick the last few percent. The full walkthrough is strategy five in how I use AI to get real six pack abs.
Want to see what you’d look like with six pack abs? Generate your free AI transformation.
This is general fitness information, not medical advice.
