CrossFit Champions Members:

Most of you that have been with us for a while know that at one time we stocked and sold a protein powder called ProtoWhey by a company called BNRG.  We liked it, it was a good product and it tasted good.  But, during this last winter/spring, right about when we moved into the new building, ProtoWhey started having lots of problems keeping product in stock.  With that, we started looking around for a replacement product.  Ultimately, as you know, we decided to get out of the selling supplements/protein powder business for a while.

It’s not that we have anything against nutritional supplements in general.  Some nutritional supplements we consider highly valuable.  But you also know, if you’ve read our recent blog posts on our personal CFC blog, Matt & Pam Munson, that we hate supplement products/companies that market such bulls–t hype that they should be completely ashamed of themselves.  One thing we make clear in those recent posts is that you will never find us, myself and Pam, or CrossFit Champions, carrying, endorsing, recommending, stocking or selling any nutritional product that we don’t use ourselves and that we don’t believe to be the highest quality available.

When we stopped selling protein powders and the BNRG Power Crunch bars, we asked ourselves if a) we wanted to continue to carry and/or sell any nutritional supplements at all, and b) if yes, what would we carry?

Well, the answer is simple, and here is our criteria:

1. Items that we take personally and would not have the slightest hesitation in having our kids take as well (believe them to be safe and effective).

2. Items we believe actually have some benefit to our health and athletic performance (believe them to be safe and effective).

3. Items that are from a company we believe is of the highest quality and integrity (believe them to be safe and effective).

4. Items that we can carry and sell without losing money doing so (we want to be able to offer these products to you at the most competitive price we can) (i.e., believe them to be cost effective).

The nutritional supplements you may find CFC carrying and selling in the future will fall into one of the following categories:

1. Multivitamin/mineral.

2. Specific vitamins or minerals (such as magnesium).

3. Essential Fatty Acids (such as fish oil).

4. Supplemental protein.

5. Creatine and/or other proven athletic performance aids (such as branched-chain amino acids or other specific amino acids).

We’ve spent the last few weeks looking around at various supplement companies and lines, doing quite a bit of research.  In an odd twist of timing, one company I was looking at, Integrated Supplements (and had mentioned in a blog post in the past), contacted me because their site was getting a lot of hits from our site.  The representative spent some time on our website and decided to contact me to see if we would be interested in sampling their products.

I copied our entire email exchange, unedited, into a PDF document and uploaded it here so you can read the whole conversation.

IntegratedConversation

Bottom line, we like this company!  They carry extremely high quality products, using high quality ingredients, backed by real research!
Take a look at some of the label from their Vanilla protein:

- Rich Vanilla Flavor
- All Natural Ingredients
- No Artificial Sweeteners
- No Artificial Flavors
- No Whey Concentrates!
- GMP Produced
- Certified Kosher
- No Lactose
- Ingredients: Provon® Whey Protein Isolate produced by patented CFM® Cross Flow Microfiltration method, Crystalline Fructose, Glycine, Non-GMO Lecithin, Inulin Fiber, Natural Vanilla Flavors, Lo Han Fruit Extract, Fine Sea Salt.

We will be carrying Integrated Supplements’ protein, creatine and magnesium supplements.  I’ll be bringing the box of sample sizes up to the gym so that if you are interested in trying them (please only take the samples if you are serious about potentially ordering products), you can before buying.

I will also have a pre-order sheet at the gym. I’ll place our first order with Integrated Supplements once we have a big enough order.

If you have any questions about how, why or when to use supplemental protein powder, creatine or magnesium, don’t hesitate to ask!

CFCMatt