142 – Go Juice

I’m normally very skeptical of supplements. I’ve tried a whole lot of stuff, and continue to try new things to see what works and what doesn’t. One of my general rules is to ignore things with stupid names, flashy labels, and sensationalized flavors. So when a good friend of ours sent us a tub of this stuff to try, swearing it was amazing, I had serious doubts.

Still, I gave it an honest go. Katie and I cycled through the entire tub, using it during our workouts and runs, and it seemed like it was helping, a little. I’ve tried other intra-workout products in the past (like N.O. Shotgun), and while they worked, they had some fairly serious side effects that I wasn’t happy with, and a level of caffeine that borders on dangerous. Xtend has no caffeine, no sugar, no vasodialators, no carbs and no calories. It’s basically just BCAAs and electrolytes, and the taste isn’t bad, either.

So we went through the whole tub, and I didn’t order more, so we could get the “with/without” contrast necessary for an honest evaluation. And what a contrast! I was more sore after lifting, and for longer. My workout intensity faded in the gym much more quickly, and I wasn’t able to train multiple times in a day without serious difficulty, as I had been doing when I was taking it.

We let that go on for a few weeks before we buckled and ordered more. And as soon as I started drinking it during my workouts again, all those problems went away. I’ve had 10 workouts in the last 8 days and I still feel like hammering it tomorrow. It’s always satisfying to find something that works, and this stuff really, really works.