LIVE Magazine is dedicated to bringing you the freshest, most informative supplement reviews on the internet. We look at pre-workouts, fat burners, testosterone boosters, protein powders, and more! Our thorough analysis makes choosing the right supplement really easy. We aren’t owned by a manufacturer or a sports brand; our reviews are completely independent, impartial, and backed by hard science.
No tricks, no lies, no sales speak.
Just cold hard science and an appreciation for the value of money!
Of course, we don’t just do supplement reviews. We also publish comprehensive training guides; training templates, “how to” lift guides, diet advice, recipes – we cover it all.
Take some time to browse our site. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, then get in touch! We’ll be happy to give you all the advice we can.
What We Do
We are interested in total human performance optimization. We believe that focusing on one aspect of performance (strength, cognition, sleep) will always yield mediocre results. And we’re not interested in mediocre. By optimizing every aspect of our lives, we can become the high performance human beings we were always meant to be!
Our site can be divided into two main focus areas: Mind & Body.
Mind
Focus
Memory
Energy
Mood
Sleep
Body
Strength
Stamina
Muscle growth
Vitality
Vision
There is obviously a lot of overlap between these areas. But this is the best way to think of our site; one half is dedicated to cognitive performance, mood, and sleep enhancement, and the other is dedicated to physical performance and muscle growth.
Obviously, this means we cover an extremely diverse array of topics. Our supplement reviews alone have us doing more varied research than the average fitness website!
While we cover a lot of seemingly different topics, our site is unified by a central, core belief: human potential is limitless. Through targeted, science-driven interventions, that potential can be unlocked.
We believe that advances in sports science, nutraceuticals, and nutrition can make us stronger, faster, more focused, and ultimately more efficient than we ever thought possible.
Of course, we’re not naive. We’re not saying that some supplements and a good diet can turn you into a superhuman.
We simply believe that proper training, diet, and supplementation can have a profound effect on your cognitive and physical capabilities.
Here is a quick overview of the products we review and the topics we cover:
- Nootropics
- Sleep aids
- Testosterone boosters
- Pre-workouts
- Protein shakes
- Fat burners
- Energy stacks
- Vision enhancers
- Goal specific training advice
- Diet and nutrition advice
- Recipes
- Lifestyle advice
Below is a little more detail on some of the topics we cover on this site. In each section you’ll find a link to a more in-depth guide on the subject.
Pre-Workouts
Of all the supplements at the bodybuilder’s disposal, the pre-workout might be the most useful. We think the main reason fail to get the results they’re looking for is because they don’t train hard enough. This is often out of ignorance or even laziness – as Ronnie said, “everybody wants to be a bodybuilder but nobody wants to lift heavy ass weights”.
But it is also often due to life; your work, family, and friends take up a lot of your time. When you get to the gym at the end of a long day, you might be just too tired to get through your last 2 sets of front squats.
Pre-workouts help you smash through intense workouts no matter how tired or hungry you are. Not all pre-workouts are made equal though. Some are ineffective, and some are dangerous.
- See Our Pre-Workout Guide
Testosterone Boosters
Testosterone boosters are natural supplements designed to increase your free serum testosterone levels. They work in numerous different ways. Some of them try to stimulate your own endogenous testosterone production. Others reduce aromatase activity, meaning that less of your free testosterone gets turned into estrogen. These are just two examples of how testosterone boosters can boost sex hormone levels, leading to more muscle growth, faster recovery, and more vitality.
Different testosterone boosters are built for slightly different purposes. Some are specifically designed to enhance muscle growth and accelerate recovery. Others are designed to support healthy testosterone levels in older men; these are marketed more like vitality and libido boosters than bodybuilding supplements. However, if these supplements actually raise testosterone, then they will work just as well for young bodybuilders and older men alike.
Fat Burners
Fat burners are one of the most exciting supplement categories on the market. A decade ago, fat burners were either totally ineffective or they were incredibly dangerous. They were full of stimulants, nasty chemicals, and sometimes even anabolic compounds. Today, things are different.
Today you can find a wide range of high quality, effective, safe supplements designed to accelerate fat loss while minimizing muscle loss. These supplements are primarily designed for bodybuilders undergoing a cutting phase. They are invariably meant to be used in conjunction with a disciplined diet and exercise. When they are, they yield far better results than diet and exercise alone.
Nootropics
Nootropics are a relatively new phenomenon. They’ve been around in a rudimentary form for a while now, but it’s only in the last couple of years that they’ve really started to mature. Nootropics today are among the fastest growing supplements on the market; they are becoming extremely popular, with certain substances or brands attracting a die-hard fan base.
Nootropics are supplements which enhance various aspects of mental performance. They are meant to improve things like focus, mental energy, and memory function. Some even improve mood and stress levels.
Of course, not all nootropics work. In fact, we’d go as far as to say that the majority of so-called nootropics on the market today don’t do anything for your cognition. But some definitely have the ability to enhance focus, improve short-term memory, and bolster your brain going forward.
- See Our Nootropics Guide
Protein Powders
It’s easy to assume that all protein powders are the same. It’s just powdered whey, soy, or rice, right? Can there really be that much difference between different products?
Yes! Of course there can!
The exact composition of the protein varies wildly from brand to brand. Some products contain far less protein than their labels suggest; the manufacturers “spike” it with some cheap amino acids to trick the third-party testers! Others actually have improved amino acid profiles, achieved by protein combining.
Another consideration is the source of the protein. The go-to for most people is whey. However, we think this is because the supplement industry likes things that way, not because whey is the best source of protein for young athletes. Whey is a by-product of cheese manufacturing. It is extremely cheap to buy in large quantities. However, it comes with problems. Things like pea, rice, soy, and egg protein all represent superior choices in our opinion.
- See Our Protein Powder Guide
Diet Advice
We think most people get dieting completely wrong. Usually, the main problem is that they overcomplicate things. Eating right is really straightforward. We’re not relying on broscience here. Far from it. The most advanced nutritional science today points us to a really intuitive diet as being the most conducive to health and fitness; a diet high in fibre, complex carbohydrates, micronutrients, and plant-based protein.
Yet people ignore the obvious, instead choosing to make their diets ridiculously extreme: the carnivore diet, the Paleo diet, the Atkins diet, the Keto diet – all of them gimmicks that don’t hold up under scientific scrutiny.
If you want to get a strong, muscular, lean physique, and you want to do so in a healthy manner, then you need to stop getting your nutrition advice from bodybuilding blogs and start listening to real experts (not to mention your own body).
On this site you’ll find plenty of articles on dieting for muscle gain, fat loss, and overall athletic performance. We’ll also share some of our recipes to help you on your way, no matter what your goals are or where you’re headed!
Training Advice
Just like with dieting, training has been dramatically overcomplicated by the major fitness brands. It’s in the interests of supplement manufacturers, gym owners, and sportswear brands to keep you believing that training is a complex thing. If you found out just how simple and straightforward getting big and strong can be, you’d have no reason to read the magazines and blogs, so you wouldn’t see any ads, so the whole system would collapse. To keep the whole thing going, they have to convince you that, to get a big, wide chest, you need to be doing neutral grip cable flies super-setted with underhand incline dumbbell presses.
In reality, getting big and strong is really simple.
It’s hard, make no mistake about it. It requires discipline, patience, and grit.
But it is simple. All you need to do is lift weights on a regular basis and increase the weight at regular intervals. There’s no need for weird, gimmicky exercises or extreme workouts. If you want a big chest, then bench press three times per week and try to put another 2.5kg on the bar each week. Want a big back? Do deadlifts and pullups until you can’t do anymore, eat, and sleep. Repeat twice per week.
It really is that simple.
On this site, we’re going to try to give you the only training advice you’ll ever need. We’ll bring everything back to first principles and explain why progressive overload is the best option for everybody. We’ll talk about some gimmicky workout fads and explain why they’re never going to give you the long-term results you’re looking for. We will also share some of the workout routines we think do work well for most trainees.