Can I Just Use Phormula-1 and Not Ignition Post-Workout and Get Proper Recovery?
Sure, you can. You can do whatever you want, this is America! You can brush your teeth with motor oil. You can fix a hole in your roof with duct tape. You could even mow your yard with your finger nail clippers. However, these activities wouldn’t make much sense and neither would using Phormula-1 without Igniton post-workout (resistance training). Here’s why: Without a source for glycogen, your body will scavenge much of the protein you just spent good money on and break it down into glycogen anyway, very inefficiently mind you. Glycogen is your body’s own internal energy stores—kind of like a battery. When the battery is low, the human body is genetically programmed to focus on replenishing glycogen levels to charge it back up. When you walk out of the gym, your body does not care about building muscle, getting big, burning fat, or any of those other things that YOU are concerned about, it is too busy searching for glycogen. Your body is programmed for survival first and everything else second. You need glycogen to survive…you don’t need big muscles. When you deplete your energy stores when you train, your body’s main focus is to charge those batteries back up and almost anything you give it, can be turned into glycogen…efficiency is the key idea here.
Think of it this way: Let’s say there are two construction sites. At job site A, we drop off a load of lumber; at job site B we drop off a tree. We tell both sites to build a house with their materials…Who’s getting done first?! Of course the site with the lumber, because the materials they were given are already ready to be put together. The other site has to take their tree and make lumber first, then it can build. That site will spend twice as long building their house as the first group. Your post-workout is the same way: Your body will get what it needs, no matter what you give it, but if you cooperate with your body and give it the materials it needs, your recovery will occur much quicker. While the whey isolate you mentioned is indeed a key part of this, and does induce a small insulin spike which will stop muscle protein breakdown, the Ignition is what truly seals the deal with it’s glycogen replenishment! (1,2) Like I said, you can do anything your want, but why waste the time and money not doing it the RIGHT way.
Roy BD, MA Tarnopolsky, JD Macdougall, J Fowles, and K E Yarasheski. Effect of glucose supplement timing on protein metabolism after resistance training. J Appl Physiol 82: 1882-1888, 1997. 8
Cribb PJ, AD Williams, A. Hayes, MF Carey. The effect of Whey isolates and resistance training on strengthening, body composition, and plasma glutamine levels. 34 (5) A1688, 2002
