The vast majority of nutritional supplements are garbage. They can kinda get away with it... There is no regulation of supplements by any governing body, so as long as the manufacturer pops a little asterisk * and says 'these claims have not been evaluated by the FDA' - they can claim whatever they want. They'll sometimes cite research to attempt to trick people into paying for the supplement, but most of the time the research is highly flawed AND/OR the dosage in the proprietary blend is laughably small compared to what was found useful in the research. I'm not saying that every supplement is ineffective, but I am saying most supplements are PROBABLY ineffective. Here are a few of the supplements that I KNOW work very well. Protein/Carb/Creatine/Vitamin/EFA supplements - I lumped all of these together because they're just food. These things are nutrients you are meant to consume in-complex when eating a full, balanced diet, and honestly, if you sorted your diet out, you wouldn't need to take these anyway. Caffeine - A drug, admittedly, but a well-tested one, with risks most adults are comfortable taking. Caffeine brings a measurable performance-enhancing effect, speeds up metabolism, and can manage hunger. I don't use it, but a lot of people do, and they love it. Every pre-workout that works has caffeine. And.. That's about it. Most every other supplement that was found effective was eventually made difficult to purchase without a prescription or simple made illegal. If you got all your calories every day from red meat, eggs and veggies, you'd never need any supplement.

If you take my courses or listen to me lecture about the technique of the barbell lifts, you will hear hours of discussion about leverage, moment arms, compression, and muscular extension. It may be very confusing for a lot of you without a basic mechanical understanding. However, if you are standing when articulating the bar, then every weird little technical adjustment exists only for a single purpose... To keep the weight (of your body PLUS the barbell) balanced perfectly over the middle of your feet. For a bunch of you, it will simply be enough to imagine a perfectly vertical line passing from the middle of your foot, through the barbell, into the sky. As you move the bar, keep it in the that line, and your form will be incredible. This works for squat, press, deadlift, clean and snatch. Don't get me wrong, all of the other stuff is important, but putting in this context may help it stick better.

It may not sound true to most people, but it's my belief that most cases of obesity and weakness revolve around some kind of nutritional deficiency. Quite frankly, I believe that there are some foods that people don't eat enough of, and are displaced by processed, junk foods that don't do much more for you other than stimulate your hunger and encourage you to eat more. If you were to only make one small step toward a better overall dietary lifestyle to start making dramatic changes in the long term, it would be this: Get 200 grams of animal-based protein a day. That may be more than a lot of you need, but if you're a healthy person there is no unhealthy upper limit of protein, and the extra benefit is that you won't have room in your stomach for a bunch of other crap you don't need.