“Nutritional supplements are not a substitute for a nutritionally balanced diet.”

— Deepak Chopra

Key Takeaways

Understanding the supporting evidence will help you “draft wisely” with your supplements and:
- Prevent you from wasting time and money on flashy supplements that won’t help you reach your goals
- Ensure that you don’t miss out on ones that are effective and evidence based
- Help you take full advantage of the benefits of quality supplementation
Creatine has been shown to increase strength and power more effectively than any other supplement and it is the BEST (legal) muscle building supplement.
Consumption of caffeine has been shown to:
- Decrease RPE (15)
- Improve endurance (16, 17)
- Increase acute strength and power, especially at high doses (5-6mg/kg bodyweight) (18, 19, 20).
- Increase energy expenditure (21)
- Improve overall exercise performance (22)
- Increase enjoyment of exercise (23)
Vitamin D supplementation has generally been shown to be effective for:
- Increasing immune strength (25)
- Improving bone strength (26)
- Reducing inflammation (27)
- Reducing risk of certain cancers (28, 29).
Whey, casein, and vegan powders are high quality sources of protein and will help you improve recovery between workouts, especially if you struggle to consume enough protein each day.

Full Story

Here are some unpopular opinions:

Fitness supplements are modern day snake oil.
The NFL draft is the best sports day of the entire year.

The NFL draft is the best sports day of the entire year. Not the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, or even March Madness, but the draft - a day that doesn’t even involve the actual playing of a sport!

It’s the unpredictability and implications of this day - the futures of billion dollar franchises and the best athletes in the world are on the line - that intrigue me more than any other sporting event. One especially interesting aspect of the draft is the scouting process, a system of grading athletes based on their athletic prowess, intangibles, etc. that makes or breaks draft day success.

Scouting Supplements

As the pre-draft hype got my wheels spinning, I realized we can take lessons from the scouting process and apply them to evaluating supplements. Is it a stretch to combine my fascination with the NFL draft and my knowledge of supplements? You bet! But it’s all going to be worth it.

You see, this valuable information will help you “draft wisely” with your supplements and:

Prevent you from wasting time and money on flashy supplements that won’t help you reach your goals
Ensure that you don’t miss out on ones that are effective and evidence based
Help you take full advantage of the benefits of quality supplementation

Although billions of dollars aren’t, the success of our health and fitness dreams are at stake.

Just as the skillsets of many highly touted prospects will not end up translating to the professional level, many supplements fail to live up to the hype (1). And just as drafting the right player can elevate a team to Super Bowl heights, taking the best supplements will make it easier to reach your goals quickly and efficiently (2).

Find out which supplements are worthy of a top ten pick and which ones that you should let fall to the ranks of the undrafted.

First Round Guarantee Or Undrafted?

The supplement draft is more complicated than the NFL draft because in football every team shares the same goal of winning more games. But choosing supplements to improve a health or fitness outcome is highly dependent on your personal goal.

Because I don’t know your goal (at least not yet, anyway), I’m going to evaluate our prospects on two traits:

Its ability to help you achieve the outcome it’s known for (i.e. creatine is known for increasing muscle and strength, so it will be evaluated based on that claim.)
The strength of evidence supporting its effects (amount and quality of research)

Side Note - Supplements Are Not A Magic Bullet

Before we start, I must stress that any supplement (unless they’re of pharmaceutical grade, if you catch my drift) will only help you improve your health or athletic goals by a small margin (3). Genetics, lifestyle, and a proper diet, workout routine, and recovery habits are all significantly more important. They will be responsible for 95% of your results.

Always prioritize the big rocks before considering supplementation. Supplements are the tip of the iceberg and might provide a boost, giving you that final 5%.

With that caveat out of the way, here are your fitness supplement draft grades!

First Round Prospects

To earn a first round grade, the supplement must have:

Ample research supporting it
Significant positive effect
Little to no potential side effects

In other words, you can take these supplements every day for the rest of your life.

1. Creatine

What is it supposed to do?

Improve strength, power, and athletic performance
Indirectly, increase lean muscle mass and improve body composition

Does the research support it?

Creatine is the most extensively researched performance enhancing supplement. Most importantly to you, my dear fitness enthusiast, creatine has been shown to increase strength and power more effectively than any other supplement (4).

How, you ask? It improves your ability to produce power by increasing the production of ATP, a form of energy that we use for the first 8-10 seconds of high intensity exercise (5). Researchers have also found that creatine supplementation has a number of other beneficial muscle building effects, such as:

Increasing cellular hydration, i.e. the water content of your muscle cells (increasing the PUMP but not bloating, as many will have you believe) (6).

Increasing IGF-1, a hormone associated with muscle building (7).
Downstream, leading to the formation of proteins that play an integral role in muscle building (8, 9).
Reducing rates of muscle breakdown (10).

These cellular effects translate to the real world, and countless studies have found creatine supplementation to increase strength, performance, and muscle mass (11-14).

The benefits of creatine and the supporting evidence could fill a book, so I’ll keep it short and sweet. Based on the available evidence, creatine is the BEST (legal) muscle building supplement you can take.

Final Grade - Projected number one overall pick.

2. Caffeine

What is it supposed to do?

Decrease pain/reduce perceived exertion
Improve endurance
Improve strength and power

Does the research support it?

Caffeine stands toe to toe with creatine at the mountain top of effective supplements. Did you know that it’s the most widely used drug in the entire world? And for great reason - everyone that’s ever tasted the sweet nectar of the Gods knows that it boosts focus, cognitive performance, and mood.

Specific to athletic performance, caffeine consumption has been shown to:

Decrease RPE (15)
Improve endurance (16, 17)
Increase acute strength and power, especially at high doses (5-6mg/kg bodyweight) (18, 19, 20).
Increase energy expenditure (21)
Improve overall exercise performance (22)
Increase enjoyment of exercise (23)

If taking a pre-workout has ever caused you to morph into a machine in the gym, the feeling and performance boost can likely be attributed to notable amounts of caffeine. Whether you’re piling on the plates or just going for a recovery jog, there’s no doubt that adding caffeine to the mix will improve the experience.

Final Grade - Top ten lock.

3. Vitamin D

What is it supposed to do?

Improve immune function
Improve bone strength
Reduce inflammation
Reduce risk of certain cancers

Does the research support it?

Vitamin D is the most underrated supplement on the market. It’s cheap, poses very little side effects, and the majority of the population would benefit from taking it (24).

The strength of the evidence varies, and the effect of supplementation is dependent on variables including:

Current Vitamin D status
Demographics of the population being studied
Genetics
Other Lifestyle Factors

For the vast majority, taking Vitamin D regularly, even in high amounts, offers significant benefit with little to no safety risk.

Vitamin D supplementation has generally been shown to be effective for:

Increasing immune strength (25)
Improving bone strength (26)
Reducing inflammation (27)
Reducing risk of certain cancers (28, 29).

For more information on the benefits Vitamin D and to see if you’re one of the people that would really benefit from taking it, check out this article. Similar to creatine, Vitamin D supplementation has a laundry list of positive effects that are backed up in the research.

If you find yourself questioning the utility of Vitamin D, just remember this - we were naked all the time, for millions of years. Not you or I specifically, but our ancestors. They evolved for most of human existence without a roof, clothes, or Banana Boat SPF 50.

Every organism in biology, including humans, is powered by sunlight and Vitamin D (also known as the sunshine vitamin, in case you were unaware). It’s more important now than in any other time in history to go out of our way to ensure that we’re getting adequate amounts of this powerful nutrient.

Final Grade - Early to middle first round pick. Won’t fall outside the top 20.

4. Protein Powder

What is it supposed to do?

Increase the ease and convenience of consuming a high protein diet
Build, maintain, and repair muscle tissue, improving the training response to exercise

Does the research support it?

You know what you’re getting with a quality protein powder - it’s not exciting, and it won’t make the headlines, but it’s one of the best supplements out there. Protein powders increase the convenience and palatability of consistently consuming a high protein diet.

Whey, casein, and vegan (when they contain the proper combination of protein sources) powders are high quality sources of protein (i.e. contain adequate amounts of all essential amino acids) that are especially beneficial for improving recovery between workouts (30, 31, 32).

One major knock on protein powder is that if you’re able to consume enough protein on a daily basis, most of the benefits are rendered irrelevant. However, if you find it difficult to get in enough protein without choking down pounds of dry chicken breast, protein powder can be a valuable asset that makes it significantly easier to reach your strength and muscle building goals (33, 34).

Personally, I integrate flavored protein powder to spice up (actually, sweeten up) at least 2 of my protein packed meals each day.

Protein powders are not magic and they will not directly improve your strength or performance like creatine or caffeine. They are a safe, reliable choice that makes living a healthy lifestyle a lot more fun and convenient, especially for busy people (35).

Final Grade - Mid to late first round pick.

Wrap Up

That’s it - these four are the only supplements that deserve to be drafted in the first round. Your top tier, go-to staples that will improve your health and performance day in and day out for the rest of your life.

Do you think any supplement got snubbed? That your favorite fish oil, BCAA, or probiotic was mistakenly left off the list? Let me know below!

I’ll hear you out - I swear! In response to your qualms, I’ll tell you specifically why I left that supplement(s) off the list and give you the evidence to back up my claim.

I intended to give you the full breakdown of each tier of supplements, but I didn’t want this article to turn into an Encyclopedia. In the coming days and weeks, get ready for 3 MORE PARTS:

Supplement Rankings - 2nd Round Steals
Supplement Rankings - Late Round Fliers
Supplement Rankings - Undrafted, Unsupported, and Useless

If you’re anything like I was for over 10 years, constantly googling and raking your brain to find supplements that are actually worth taking, you can relax. I’m going to set the record straight and finally give you the unbiased answers you’ve been searching for.

Together, we will defeat the money-grubbing supplement marketers and get the best bang for our buck with our supplements.

Sources:

GIF Sources: Kevin Kamala Seth Meyers Stewie Dwight Marge Sandy

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Fitness Supplement Rankings - 1st Round Picks

Key Takeaways