Final Review:
Weight 238 lbs *a small amount of this may be attributed to rebound from being sick
Ancient Strength is hands down the best creatine product I've taken to date. I saw good strength gains, managed to put on a little weight, and saw diminished water retention.
It took probably about a week before I really felt that ancient strength kicked in for me. At that time, I began noticing my pumps becoming fuller, and a slight increase in the number of reps I could do. Obviously, adding reps means more strength, which was awesome to see so quickly.
After the first week, I began to notice that my skin felt tighter and less watery. I don't know what NTBM put in this stuff, but somehow I began to eliminate my creatine mono bloat, even though these tabs are mostly mono themselves! People were commenting asking me if I lost weight, even though I was about the same as I had been prior to beginning ancient strength.
My pumps throughout the duration of my bottle were AMAZING. Shoulders and biceps were particularly impressive. Normally you can see the big vein there slightly, but on Ancient Strength it really started to pop out (probably due in part to the lower subcutaneous water retention). Also during week 2 I began to notice better recovery, being less sore the day after a serious workout.
During week 3, I wanted to experiment so I went to dosing Ancient Strength both before and after my workout. This is when the product really shined for me. I got the awesome pumps and strength gains that I'd been seeing all along, but I also saw recovery improve even more. Unfortunately this meant that by the end of week 3 I had killed my bottle, but I'm sure I'll be buying more in the future.
One other comment I'd like to make- normally powdered creatine mono tends to make my stomach a little upset and also leaves me needing the bathroom a couple hours after I take it. I noticed that Ancient Strength did not have this effect on me. A couple times I forgot to take it an hour before my workout and took it right before my first set and still didn't see any problems. This was an awesome surprise.
Overall:
Strength: 8/10
Water Retention: 10/10
Pumps: 9/10
Creatine Dumps: 10/10
I definitely loved Ancient Strength! I want to congratulate NTBM on adding such an excellent product to their line. I will definitely recommend it to my friends and clients. As I predicted in my initial post, the sub-q water retention and resulting bloat was almost nonexistent, which makes it an excellent choice for women and precontest athletes as well. I already recommended it to one trainer at my gym who competes in the bikini class for this very reason. I said it before and I'll say it again- Ancient Strength is a BADASS product!!!!!!
