Had an IM chat this morning w/Simon, the admin for the forums I mod, about Rick Gray. I hadn’t finished my coffee yet, and wasn’t quite awake…so when Si asked me if I’d ever heard of the guy, I momentarily confused him with the author of ”Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” A quick Google search revealed the error, however (the “Mars/Venus” author is JOHN Gray, not Rick), so my (still-foggy) response was: “Never heard of him.”
So who is he???
As I discovered, he’s the author of a “free” e-book: Muscle Overload Training – which is being heavily promoted around the internet. It’s 65 pages long: a pretty good length for a training manual…except that’s not REALLY what it is. Oh sure…there are 27 pages with some fairly banal info on training and nutrition…but the rest is nothing more than a blatant pitch for several muscle-building supps sold at anabolicsecrets.com.
In other words, the book is a supp ad in disguise…which is WHY it’s free.
(If you believe the lame-ass reason rationale given on the “Muscle Overload Training” web site (i.e., it’s free because Rick has to collect more testimonials before the publisher will “promote and sell the book”), then there’s a bridge I’d like to sell you. Unlike hard copy books and mags, YOU DON’T NEED A PUBLISHER to create e-books…anyone with a desktop publishing or word processing program + the ability to create .pdf files can do it. Likewise, Rick could easily sell the book through anabolicsecrets.com, seeing as he’s the President of A.S. Research - the parent company. He has all the marketing infrastructure he needs, already.)
Anyway…I flipped through the copy Si sent me, page-by-page, looking for more info on Rick. Obviously, he markets supps, but that doesn’t translate into any special knowledge. And ANYONE can write an e-book (I’ve created and contributed to several, myself), so before I take an author’s advice on training, nutrition, or supplements, I want to know WHY I should listen to him (or her). Has he won bodybuilding contests? Has he trained serious competitors? Has he studied under other famous strength coaches? Does he have any specialized education or training credentials?
In other words, just because someone CLAIMS to be an expert, doesn’t mean s/he IS one. Like I wrote earlier, an expert is someone with “…experience, credentials and/or training that’s relevant to the subject in question” and “…has some standing in his/her field”. This is especially critical when the “advice” involves spending money!
So, who the hell is Rick Gray? What’s his background? NO idea…the book doesn’t say. The book web site doesn’t say, either. All I found was this:
“My name is Rick Gray. I’m a former hard gainer who finally discovered the secrets to gaining muscle mass FAST… after years of searching for the TRUTH.
Listen, I’m not a professional writer, but what I’ve discovered is so amazing and so effective I wanted to write you myself. So please bare with me and my occasional bad grammar.”
Awwwww….that is SOOOOOO CUTE! Let’s ”bare” with him and his bad grammar, cuz he’s not a professional writer! I’m amazed he didn’t deliberately misspell “grammar” as “grammer” too. After all, clumsy writing PROVES he’s authentic, right? That one would really drive the point home!
(Note to the unwary: you don’t need to be a professional writer to figure out the difference between “bare” and “bear.”)
And what about those supps? Rick’s peddling five of ‘em:
Ultimate Protein ComplexF.S.D.S. (Full Spectrum Digestive Support).Athletic Multi-ViteDessicated LiverHyperGain
There’s a similar-looking web page for each one. Only one, the “Ultimate Protein Complex” displays any ingredient information, however, and it’s nothing special. It consists of calcium caseinate, whey protein concentrate, whey protein isolate and egg albumen. Whoopti-do - you can find a number of similar products over at bodybuilding.com, for less than what this is selling for (nearly $50 US per kilo).
But the supp pushed the hardest in this “book” is “HyperGain” – which is a creatine-based formula. Here’s what his ad says about the main ingredient:
What we came up with BLOWS AWAY plain old-fashioned creatine monohydrate!
We’ve successfully altered the creatine molecule to insure maximum absorption.
Creatine ethyl ester is creatine monohydrate with an ester attached. The attachment of an ester is important because esters are found in the fat tissue of mammals.
But, why is that important?
You see, creatine monohydrate is semi-lipopholic. This means that it inefficiently uses fat as a transport mechanism.
Esterified creatine will use fat more efficiently to permeate the cell wall and exert its positive effects on cellular function.
This means you can use significantly lower dosages but the absorption of esterified creatine will be significantly increased… and the “creatine bloat” will be totally eliminated!
In other words, Hyper Gain allows you to safely take creatine to its full and most potent effects, with only a fraction of previous dosages.
and…
Here’s a shocking discovery we made…
When creatine supplements were tested after mixing with any liquid, most of it rapidly converts to the by-product “creatinine.” That means there is very little pure creatine left to get to your muscle cells where it’s needed.
And it gets even worse…
After the creatine converts to creatinine… it is a toxic substance capable of causing some nasty side effects!
Some of the side effects from increased creatinine levels are stomach cramps, bloating, diarrhea, water retention, dehydration, headaches… and potential liver and kidney problems.
These statements are readily disproved. Rick Gray and his cronies colleagues didn’t ”come up” with creatine ethyl ester (CEE) – it was originally invented by researchers at the University of Nebraska (click here for the patent). It’s been on the market for several years. And – contrary to claims - it is NOT superior to creatine monohydrate. Here’s what a recent research study concluded:
Since creatine ethyl ester supplementation showed a large increase in serum creatinine levels throughout the study with no significant increase in serum and total muscle creatine content, it can be concluded that a large portion of the creatine ethyl ester was being degraded within the GI tract after ingestion. Furthermore, it appears that the skeletal muscle uptake of creatine ethyl ester uptake was not significant enough to increase skeletal muscle creatine levels without significant degradation to creatinine occurring.
Emphasis mine.
And all the crap about the stability of creatine monohydrate is straight out of the Kre-Alkalyn playbook. “We” didn’t make this “shocking discovery” either.
This ad pitch has red flags flying all over the place…right down to the recurring billing program, which is being promoted as a “Preferred Customer Club.”
If I walked up to you in the gym, and told you I’d invented a super-dee-duper, ultra-special, muscle-building supp, but couldn’t show it to you until you gave me your credit card information, would you simply hand it over - no questions asked??? I sure hope not! But that’s no different, in principle, to what you’re being asked to do here. You don’t know exactly what’s in HyperGain, so you can’t compare it to other supps on the market to determine whether it’s worth the $$$ or not. Even worse, bogus ”information” is being used to market the product…which raises questions about the integrity of the folks selling it.
Look, for all I know, “HyperGain” could be the rootin-est, tootin-est, bestest bodybuilding supp in the whole wild West… but the the marketing tells a different story. In the end, someone asking for my money is asking for my TRUST: which means s/he needs to prove that s/he is worthy of it. Is that really so much to ask? So far, I see no good reasons to offer that trust, and several good reasons NOT to.
It all comes back to the question: who the hell is Rick Gray? So far, all I’ve been able to discover is that he’s some guy with a web site, internet marketing connections, and a vested interest in selling me (expensive!) bodybuilding supplements produced by his company. Until I know more, I’m sticking with training information from sources like Charles Poliquin, Ian King, Charles Staley, etc…as well as supps from trusted retailers that I can research before I buy. I suggest you do the same.
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