TN50#156_Pills or Powders?_10 March_2024

Hi Team,

How’s your consistency with different form factors of supplements?  Specifically, powders you have to mix with water or pills you just pop.  I suck at taking my supplements that are in powder form.  I’m probably hitting about 80-90% on my morning and evening supplements that are in capsule form (and I always find capsules over hard tablets); but give me some powder that I need to mix, and my averages drop to less than 20% for sure.

Happy Monday and welcome to The Next 50 #156. I like to think of personal performance in 3 components: physical, mental and emotional.  My frameworks focus on 4 Buckets: Eat, Sleep, Move and Think.  This blog is my sandbox for sharing information that you might find useful for your personal performance.

Creatine is described, by some, as the most useful legal supplement for getting stronger that exists; up until last week the only form of creatine I had in the house was a big jug of powder that I regularly did NOT take.  Now those of you who know me are probably thinking, “I can’t imagine you being stronger Alex, so no big deal” and I would agree with you but there’s a lot more to the magic in Creatine, even more important than strength gains, in certain populations.  More on that next week.  Oh, and the “…can’t imagine you being stronger…” thing, that was a joke.

Magnesium is another one of those baseline supplements that I don’t want to be short on.  Me, you, and most Americans, don’t get enough magnesium in their diet.  Are you taking a magnesium supplement?  Have you had your levels tested?

Back to powders vs. capsules, I had a tub of creatine and a tub of magnesium that I wasn’t using.  I was thinking through this issue and decided it was time to fix it, so I committed to find capsule versions of both supplements once I finished the tubs I already had.  Fast forward 2 months, this created a solution I’d never get to.  I don’t like to waste stuff but with at least half a container of both, creatine and magnesium, I finally broke down and bought the capsules form-factor of both.  I’m telling you this to save you the extra months of not taking the supplements you should be taking.  If you weren’t good with mixing and taking the powders before you won’t be good with the powders to “finish” what you have.  Donate or trash the powders and get on with the capsules if those work for you – trust me on this one.

I’m happy to say that I’m now getting my magnesium and creatine in 80-90% of the time and I’d be happy to hand off both of the old tubs of those two supplements to who ever wants them in the Denver, CO area – just let me know(-:

Who do you know that could use this information?  I bet you can think of a couple of folks before you click the next email, so please share the post with your team and anyone who might find it useful and let me know what you think!

Have a good one, Alex

PS. Do you have a Performance question I can answer? Let me know: alex@fpp.llc

PPS.  If you’re new to First Principles Performance Coaching, here’s a one stop shop for my stuff.