I Bodybuilder

[ATZ]

In case anybody missed it recently, T-Nation launched a programme called I Bodybuilder.

Now you may be wondering the reason for this post, and it is this:

The claims being made on T-Nation regarding this training and supplement programme are pure marketing BS. They're claiming the most outlandish gains from a "Black Ops training programme" and some new supplement based on Hydrolysed Caesin. They claim the minimum one should gain in 6 weeks on this programme is 20lb.

Now any experience trainer on here will know that is in the land of myths and fairytales to gain that sort of weight without steroid intervention, and for once the rest of the training world has stood up to be counted in totally trashing these claims. See:

Supplemental Marketing on Steroids by Alan Aragon

And a nice little series by Matt Perryman

This sort of marketing leaves a sour taste, and to the newbie the chance to get burnt by wasting their hard cash on this sort of supplementation regime is high. So I'm glad for once people haven't stood by and let this ride.

So as ever, don't buy into the hype, train hard, eat well and grow. And be realistic.

[SpiderDan]

well its not out just yet but...

You got to hand it to them, the amount of hype they've built up surrounding this program is phenomenal

[coma]

I was tempted to post something previously but the fact that the whole thing seems to be one huge sales pitch for a new product put me off. Christian Thibadeau is still claiming to be natural and yet this program is so powerful he managed to put on 35lbs in 6 weeks (might be off, I forget the exact figures he gave) at what would already be a very extreme end of natural development. It also seems to have bloated him a little too...

T-Nation used to be pretty respectable, yet it's been getting more and more commercial and this felt like the last nail in the coffin IMO. A lot of the better writers have disappeared and their new products have been getting pricier and pricier. There's an article about a comparison between anavar and their forskolin product on the internet which shows how much they cherry pick their lab results.

[ATZ]

See below from researcher Casey Butt, who famously researched the amount of muscle a natural BB can genetically hold

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Actually, not only am I impressed by Thibaudeau’s pre-snake oil claim of being 5′9″ tall and 215 lbs @ 7% bf, which is about the same height, weight and condition that Mike Mentzer competed at in the late 1970s (but with drugs), but now, since he’s added 27 pounds more muscle on top of that, his pressing deserves some kudos too.

According to <competitor>, Thibaudeau can do 5 reps of seated overhead presses of 375 pounds with a few seconds rest between reps. Not bad when you consider that Paul Anderson, weighing 304 lbs, won the Olympic Gold medal in 1956 with just a 369-pound overhead press. Of course, there will be slight differences between the seated and standing version, but Thibaudeau could have repped Anderson’s weight. Also Doug Hepburn, weighing 299 lbs, set the world record in 1954 when he pressed 380 pounds. Thibaudeau probably could have gotten a few reps with that too.

Eventually Anderson brought the press record up to 409 pounds and steroids took over from there. Given Thibaudeau can do 375 x 5 with rest-pauses, he might be good for a 409 single as well – not bad considering he’s well over 100 pounds lighter than Anderson when he set that record.

Of course, smaller pre-drug era lifters, like 2-time Olympic Gold medalist and 27-time World Record holder Tommy Kono, only handled baby weights like Kono’s career-best 349.4 pounds when he broke the middle heavyweight world record, weighing 198 pounds. Thibaudeau would probably use that on a medium day, or for high-rep sets, or maybe if he didn’t get much sleep the night before or something.

Come to think of it, Thibaudeau’s Canadian, and the winning Clean & Jerk in the 207-231 lb weight class at the 2009 Canadian Senior Weightlifting Championships was only 355 pounds. Thibaudeau can press more than that on a light day. Now that he’s one of the strongest drug-free men in history at his bodyweight, he should certainly consider reviving his Olympic Weightlifting career and winning all those Canadian titles that he didn’t win back when he was actually competing.

Hmm, something fishy smell I...

[coma]

To be fair he has admitted to using pro-hormones in his teenage years, plus those guys didn't have access to the supplements he does..

[CosmicFish]

I'm pretty much with coma on this one. I-Bodybuilder was the nail in the coffin that stopped me taking them seriously any longer.

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There's an article about a comparison between anavar and their forskolin product on the internet which shows how much they cherry pick their lab results.

I won't post a link to that, as it's on a rival site, but here's an except:

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Beyond helping with fat loss, it's also claimed that forskolin can help increase lean body mass.

This is what some bodybuilders take Anavar for. So Biotest assembled some data to prove Carbolin-19 works even better.


One of the members of our research group conducted a university study on an earlier, less-potent version of Carbolin 19. The findings show that pure colforsin literally equals the anabolic effects of Anavar.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here's a chart that compares pharmaceutical-grade colforsin to Anavar. The data for Anavar came from a compilation of two peer-reviewed studies found in the scientific literature. The colforsin data is from the university study that's pending publication.

As you can see, colforsin blew away Anavar, both in lean mass gained and fat mass lost! And remember, the version of colforsin used in the study is much weaker than Carbolin 19! In addition to being more potent, Carbolin 19 has a longer active life and a substantially greater bioavailability.


Looks like Biotest has done its homework—it's hard to argue with peer-reviewed studies. Nonetheless, it pays to read the fine print. Let's take a closer look at Anavar, forskolin and those published studies.

For starters, Anavar (oxandrolone) is considered to be a fairly weak steroid. In Anabolics 2006, author Bill Llewellyn notes that it was designed to be "...an extremely mild anabolic, one that could even be safely used as a growth stimulant in children."

In other words, Anavar isn't the sort of drug that yields very impressive results in the first place. Steroid expert Bill Roberts describes it as "...somewhat effective, but not dramatically so, and not a preferred regimen."

The Biotest ad does not tell us which "two peer reviewed studies found in the scientific literature" were used for the Anavar comparison, but it provides some details we can use to make a pretty good guess. The studies were 12 weeks long; used 20 mg doses and 100% male subjects. After searching though PubMed and excluding papers using subjects with various disorders/injuries, we're left with only a few papers on Anavar's effects on older (> 60 year old) men. In one study, the average age of the subjects was nearly 73!

Needless to state, studies on older men at risk for metabolic syndrome and sarcopenia are less than ideal for drawing conclusions relevant to bodybuilders.

And the colforsin study...?

As it turns out, the study conducted by "our research group," was actually performed by Michael P. Godard, Brad A. Johnson and Scott R. Richmond of the University of Kansas. Their study, "Body Composition and Hormonal Adaptations Associated with Forskolin Consumption in Overweight and Obese Men" was funded by Sabinsa—not Biotest—to test ForsLean. The ForsLean extract used in the study was standardized to 10% forskolin—so it was not "pure colforsin," as claimed in the Biotest ad.

Additional study details appear in a second Biotest article, titled "Dramatic Carbolin-19 Study!" Most of the study numbers are reported accurately, although interestingly enough, the testosterone numbers are not. The article proclaims:

"The Testosterone of the colforsin group rose 33.7 percent, while it decreased 18.35 percent in the placebo group."

But this is incorrect. The study authors actually wrote:

"The percentage difference among groups that occurred between the initial and final measurements for total testosterone was 16.77 ± 33.77% for forskolin vs. –1.08 ± 18.35% for placebo."

The Biotest article substitutes the standard deviations for the actual averages, and portrays each value going in only one—preferred—direction. This makes the results look better than they really were, for a parameter most bodybuilders want to increase.

[Was_once_fat_dave]

Thanks for the info ATZ, Coma, Spiderdan and Cosmic fish, I would love to join in the debate about this but speaking with a moderators hat on I'm going to have to close this thread as it is possibly going to bring out some derogatory opinions on a competitor company. The supplement industry is a very fierce one and a subject such as this, being discussed on a commercial message board could get the parent company into allsorts of bother. So in the interest of MyProtein the thread is closed.