Best Supplements for Muscle Growth

There are plenty of valid reasons to want to build muscle. Some people want to support longevity and bone health as they age.1 Others may need to strengthen supportive muscles surrounding an injury.2 Still others might need to improve performance in athletic endeavors.3 And, of course, there’s the aesthetic value of increased muscle mass; some people want to improve the way their bodies look.4

But exercise alone doesn’t always get the job done, with genetic factors, lifestyle or environmental challenges, and diet all playing critical roles.5 You can and should do all you can to mitigate those lifestyle challenges and improve your diet, but supplements may offer additional muscle-growth benefits that can significantly impact your results.

The only problem is that there are way too many products for the average human to compare, and many of them support muscle growth in different ways. Our team looked deeply into the science behind muscle growth and compared the available science to the plethora of supplements on the market. We found what we believe is a collection of excellent approaches to boost gains without sacrificing safety.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s a quick breakdown of our findings:

• Most likely to help: Mass gainers
• Next most likely to help: Recovery supplements
• If you have a hard time putting the work in: Pre-workout with caffeine
• If you’re a bad sleeper: Nutritional sleep aids
• If you suspect low testosterone: OTC supplements

Within each of those groups is a litany of products, some better than others. So, we break things down even further into the following recommendations, based on which avenue you’d like to explore:

• Best mass gainer for recovery and growth: Naked Mass
• Best non-mass gainer recovery supplement: Transparent Labs Creatine HMB
• Best pre-workout for energy in the gym: Kaged Pre-Workout Elite
• Best sleep aid for muscle growth: Swolverine ZMT
• Best melatonin-free sleep aid: Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover
• Best for concerns about low testosterone: Innerbody Testosterone Support
• Best muscle-building stack: Swolverine Performance Series

At Innerbody Research, we extensively test each and every product or service we review, including the muscle-building supplements in this guide. Our team has collectively spent more than 500 hours reading scientific journal articles pertaining to human muscle and strength development and the various supplements designed to enhance that process.

We also ordered the top products in these supplement subcategories and tried them for ourselves, so we can report back to you on everything from their ease of use and efficacy to the way that they taste. Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this guide was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy and will continue to be monitored for updates by our editorial team.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

Head-to-head evaluations of some supplements for muscle growth don’t make complete sense, as a powdered mass gainer is meant to work a bit differently than a testosterone booster. But we can still look at some specific criteria when comparing all of these approaches, as these factors might influence where you choose to start. Specifically, we’ll look at effectiveness, safety, cost, convenience, and taste (where applicable).

The winners we’ve selected for each category represent the option most likely to offer the best results for that criterion. For example, we chose sleep aids as the most cost-effective muscle builders, but you could likely find products from every other category that are less expensive than the specific brands we chose for this guide. However, we looked at the cost section as a comparison of the best prices you can find among the specific products we recommend so that our calculus would not be thrown off by inferior options.

Let’s take a closer look at each criterion for more information:

Effectiveness

Winner: Mass gainers

When it comes to putting on muscle, you want to get the most out of a process called muscle protein synthesis, which is when your body takes the building blocks of muscle it has circulating through its system and actually assembles them into muscle.6 You want muscle protein synthesis to outmatch its opposite process, muscle protein breakdown.

Muscle synthesis and breakdown are both important processes, so it’s not about stopping breakdown and only having synthesis. It’s about creating a favorable balance between the two. And if there’s one supplement type that can create an environment conducive to that favorable balance, it’d be a good mass gainer.

Now, mass gainers certainly are not all created equal, and less expensive options on the market can be downright awful for you — liable to build as much fat as they will muscle. But a high-quality mass gainer will provide you with enough calories, a complete assortment of amino acids (including BCAAs), and a proper balance of macronutrients (carbs, fats, and protein) and electrolytes.7

Bountiful research supports all of those elements in the pursuit of greater muscle mass, and no class of supplement delivers them better than a mass gainer.8 Protein powders can provide some similar profiles, but they typically have far fewer calories and an inferior macronutrient balance.

Safety

Winner: Mass gainers

Much in the same way that a mass gainer’s ingredient profile contributes to its efficacy, those ingredients also result in improved safety over other options. The biggest risk that mass gainers pose comes from their intense calorie counts, which can put you into too much of a caloric overload if you aren’t exercising sufficiently to justify those extra calories.9 But if you’re putting the work in, there isn’t a safer type of supplement to employ and still reap benefits.

Let’s compare that with the shortcomings of some of the alternatives in this guide:

• Recovery supplements: a wide variety of supplements that includes everything from comparably safe fish oil to riskier complex blends of high-dose amino acids and botanicals
• Pre-workouts: often rely on caffeine and other intense stimulants
• Sleep aids: Can be too strong and potentially habit-forming
• Testosterone boosters: may contain high doses of numerous exotic ingredients, increasing contraindication potential

By comparison, something like Naked Mass, a vegan mass gainer from Naked Nutrition, offers a clean ingredient bill of plant protein and electrolytes, with added sugar only in flavored options.

Cost

Winner: Sleep aids

Given the various classes of products that can be considered a muscle growth supplement, head-to-head cost comparisons are a little unfair. But if you’re looking to spend as little as possible without regard for the type of supplement you ultimately take — so long as it offers some efficacy — you’d do well to consider how these products compare on a cost-per-serving basis.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the prices for a one-time purchase of our top picks:

As you can see, the prices per serving vary a lot based on the type of supplement involved. There are also additional savings you can find on each of these products by subscribing or, in some cases, making bulk purchases. Here are those best-case scenarios:

In descending order from the most expensive to the least, the organization of each list is identical, with Transparent Labs’ sleep support and creatine supplements being the least costly per dose compared to others. That said, it’s worth noting how some products come much closer to these low per-serving costs when you take bulk or subscription discounts into consideration. For example, Innerbody’s Testosterone Support is 160% more expensive than Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover when comparing one-time purchases, but only 75% more expensive when comparing discounted prices. Still pricier, but a more even playing field to consider.

Convenience

Winner: Sleep aids

While we appreciate the effectiveness and safety that a good mass gainer can offer, the effort involved in nutrient timing — making sure you take in a certain amount of macronutrients for several hours post-workout — can be a pain. Many people would prefer to eat a clean, wholesome diet of foods common to muscle-building meal plans, like salmon, chicken breast, rice, and broccoli.

Other recovery supplements, like creatine or BCAAs, can have you similarly concerned with timing efforts, and pre-workout supplements need to be taken not long before you start lifting — what if you get to the gym only to realize you forgot to take it?

Compared to these regimens, sleep aids seem pretty straightforward. You take them at night, usually a little before you go to sleep. There’s no complicated timing schedule to worry about, and even if you forget to take it until you’re turning off the lights, you can still reap its benefits. It just might take you a hair longer to fall asleep.

Now, the argument over whether a handful of pills is more or less convenient than a drink is a good one, but a few capsules are decidedly more portable if you travel often, and you don’t have to worry about how they’ll taste. Conversely, some mass gainers, recovery supplements, and pre-workout products taste awful (though not the ones included in our guide).

Taste

Winner: Pre-workout drinks

Speaking of taste, we wanted to touch on which class of muscle-building supplement our testing team found to be the most reliably tasty. This was a pretty close race, and it’s certainly a subjective measurement, but pre-workout drinks narrowly edged out mass gainers and recovery beverages.

With mass gainers, the issue is often the caloric density and the protein source. Plant-based protein sources can be a little bitter, and flavor often comes with a lot of added sugar. These drinks can be extremely thick and heavy, and you have to drink a lot of them for them to be effective.

Recovery drinks are closer in design to pre-workout drinks, but they tend to include a lot of high-dose amino acids that often taste bad. You’ll still find amino acids in many pre-workouts, but our research into the market’s offerings revealed that there are typically fewer amino acids in a pre-workout than in a recovery drink.

Getting down to specific flavors, our team liked the Strawberry Lemonade flavor from Kaged. It was a nice balance of sweet and tart, with its sucralose sweetener being not too prominent.

Supplements for muscle growth are any kind of nutritional formula designed to enhance the results you get from resistance training. They are often capsules you take daily or powders you mix to create drinks. That kind of definition leaves you with an enormously wide variety of supplements to choose from.

We find it helpful to look at muscle-building supplements in subcategories based on how a given product is intended to help you build muscle. We’ve narrowed down the field to the following types:

• Mass gainers: calorically dense powders with complete amino acid profiles and balanced macronutrients
• Pre-workouts: energizing supplements containing ingredients that can enhance power and endurance
• Recovery products: typically powdered beverages with ingredients intended to reduce muscle soreness and promote protein synthesis
• Sleep aids: often capsules containing ingredients to help induce and improve sleep
• Testosterone boosters: also typically capsules containing a mix of vitamins, minerals, and botanicals shown to improve testosterone production
• Protein powders and bars: products designed to supplement protein intake (these can contain outlandish amounts of sugar and an imbalance of macronutrients)

Our guide includes each class of muscle-growth supplement from that list except for protein bars and powders. After years of searching, we haven't found a protein bar or powder that could make a difference in muscle growth while offering a clean ingredient bill and a decent flavor. Most people would do better to take a smaller daily amount of a mass gainer and get the appropriate balance of macronutrients that protein-forward products tend to lack.

Perhaps the most hopeful thing about these different muscle-building options is that they aren’t mutually exclusive. You can add one to your regimen or several. Perhaps you’ll take a testosterone booster when waking up, have a pre-workout before hitting the gym, sip on a mass gainer for a few hours afterward, and add a sleep aid at night to maximize your rest. It’ll be important to consider potential ingredient overlap to prevent over-supplementation or contraindications, so talk to your doctor before adding any of these supplements to your routine.

With a handful of different types of muscle-building supplements, an exploration of how the broader category works requires a deep dive into how each one does the job. Ultimately, any of them should help create conditions in the body conducive to improved muscle protein synthesis in response to resistance training.

That last part is crucial; none of these products can help you put on muscle if you don’t do the work in the gym necessary to stimulate that muscle growth. In fact, some might even contribute to fat gain instead if you aren’t putting in the work.

Here’s a concise breakdown of how each of these muscle-building supplement classes works:

Based on our research, you could potentially combine a mass gainer, pre-workout, recovery supplement, and testosterone booster to maximize your muscle growth potential. Specifically, the following combination could prove beneficial:

• Innerbody Testosterone Booster
• Naked Mass Vegan Mass Gainer, Chocolate
• Kaged Pre-Workout Elite
• Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover

This combination could provide you with a general boost in energy, an increase in performance in the gym, shorter recovery times between workouts, and better utilization of nutrients and calories toward muscle production. It also offers ingredients that can mitigate stress and anxiety, lowering cortisol levels in the process.

If you wanted to go with something like Swolverine’s ZMT to add melatonin to your sleep supplement and ensure nighttime efficacy from dose number one, you’d likely want to exclude the testosterone booster, as there’s too much ingredient overlap between the two to recommend it safely.

Should you buy a muscle-building stack?

Some companies that make certain muscle-building supplements will combine them into a stack, which is essentially a bundle of such supplements you can purchase for less than you’d pay to buy them individually. There’s typically a protein powder or mass gainer in the stack, along with some kind of pre-workout and recovery-specific product.

Stacks are generally a great way to save money on a collection of muscle-building supplements you should be able to combine safely, as the companies involved in building them would be on the lookout for over-supplementation or contraindication risks. They don’t always combine the best available products, however. For example, Naked Mass is our preferred mass gainer, but Naked doesn’t offer a muscle-building stack, and other companies certainly don’t include it.

Based on the available stacks from companies in this guide, like Transparent Labs and Swolverine, and on other stacks we’ve reviewed and recommended over the years, we can confidently recommend Swolverine’s Performance Series stack as the best option for an all-in-one purchase. It includes a great mass gainer that’s second only to Naked’s, as well as an effective pre-workout, a hydration and essential amino acid complex for use during exercise, and ZMT, the melatonin-based sleep supplement we recommend as a top sleep aid.

Anyone struggling to put on muscle in the gym would do well to consider a muscle-building supplement to help them along, especially since the field of options is so diverse that you’re likely to find something that could fit into your lifestyle safely.

That said, there are specific populations for whom such supplements could provide particular benefit. For example, if you have a hard time consuming the extra calories necessary to build muscle, a mass gainer could relatively easily fill those gaps. Similarly, someone with subclinical insomnia could benefit from a sleep aid, and good sleep is integral to muscle-building and exercise recovery.

A similar pattern exists for any of the supplement subcategories we discuss here, as there exist reliable products in each that could help those in need to improve their health and build more muscle.

Who might want to look elsewhere?

Supplements for muscle growth can come with complex formulas and contain exotic botanicals with strong effects at certain doses. This makes some muscle-building supplements unsuitable for people with certain medical conditions. For example, the ashwagandha in Innerbody Testosterone Support and Swolverine ZMT might not be suitable for people with thyroid concerns or those on medications that affect thyroid hormone levels.13

The biggest group for whom muscle-building supplements are not ideal are those who aren’t going to put the work in to see results. None of these supplements can cause you to grow muscles just by taking them. Instead, they help create conditions in the body that allow you to add more muscle from the same rigorous resistance training that may otherwise have been failing you.

If you plan to take these supplements daily but only hit the gym occasionally and only put in a moderate amount of effort when you do, you won’t see results. In fact, with certain supplements like mass gainers, you might see more fat added than anything else.

While many muscle-building supplements are relatively safe, each subcategory has its own set of risks you should be aware of, and each also has a subset of products that aren’t well made and that could pose additional risks from inferior ingredients and formulas.

Let’s take a look at a single ingredient you’ll sometimes see in testosterone boosters and other muscle-building supplements like Top Shelf Grind’s King Maker. That ingredient is fadogia agrestis, and studies have shown it can irreversibly damage testicular histology at doses as low as 500mg.14 There’s only 300mg of the ingredient in the King Maker supplement, but we don’t know too many men willing to take that risk. And that’s before delving into some of the even stranger ingredients in the formula that its makers say is “designed to promote Greek god physiognomy.”

That brand is just one example of the shady companies out there selling potentially dangerous products. We’ve weeded those out before you ever got to our page, but there are still some safety risks worth considering before you take even the safest muscle-building supplement.

For example, someone with diabetes might not want to take a mass gainer, many of which rely on high amounts of carbohydrates that could spike your blood sugar.15 And numerous ingredients in testosterone boosters can be unsafe in certain populations, like ashwagandha in those with thyroid issues, as we discussed above.13

Ultimately, you’ll want to talk to your doctor about any of the muscle-building supplements in this guide that you might introduce into your routine.

Best for most people

Of the pillars supporting muscle growth, glycogen replenishment, protein consumption, and caloric intake are among the most important, and mass gainers offer all three.8 The best of these supplements provides a balance of macronutrients that research shows can effectively support muscle protein synthesis while filling you up with clean calories from healthy sources.

To be fair, the worst of these have poor macronutrient balances and are loaded with calories from cheap, low-quality oils and other unsavory ingredients. But the better options out there are likely to outperform the top options from other subcategories in this guide, making them the best choice for most people looking to supplement their muscle growth.

You’ll want to schedule your mass gainer consumption to occur in the first few hours after you exercise. This can be a little inconvenient for some, especially compared to a simple capsule supplement you might take upon waking or before bed, but the nutrient timing here is apparently important. At the very least, there’s some contradictory evidence as to how important that nutrient timing is, but enough of it points toward timing’s importance that we suggest it for maximal results.41

Our mass gainer recommendation: Naked Mass Vegan Mass Gainer

Naked Nutrition focuses its lineup on providing cleaner ingredient labels with a minimum of extraneous components, and its mass gainers follow suit. There are whey- and pea-based options in the catalog, and we prefer pea-based options for their overall nutritional profile and macronutrient balance.

The exact balance of carbs, fats, and proteins varies slightly depending on the flavor you choose, with ingredients like coconut sugar, cacao, or peanut flour causing shifts in certain macronutrients. Here’s how the six flavors compare per scoop:

These are great carb-to-protein ratios that are very close to what studies recommend for muscle-building. The Chocolate flavor comes closer to that ideal ~4:1 ratio than other flavors, but approaching 5:1 shouldn’t be too big a problem for most people.

The best way to take Naked Mass is to divvy up its four-scoop regimen into 1-2 scoops every hour within the first 2-4 hours post-workout.8 That might mean you drink one scoop’s worth every hour, or that you make a two-scoop drink to enjoy over the course of two hours before mixing another. You can adjust this based on your personal preference and macronutrient needs.

If you’re pairing it with a healthy meal that offers a similar macronutrient profile, you might only need two scoops after a workout, not four. Again, you should talk this plan over with a doctor, nutritionist, or trainer who can fine-tune your program.

Naked Mass pricing

You can buy a tub of Naked Mass as a one-time purchase or sign up for a subscription, which knocks 20% off your first order and 10% off recurring shipments. Here’s how that works out:

Your cost per serving can go up or down depending on how you use this mass gainer, and your subscription schedule may change, as well. Each tub contains 11 four-scoop servings, but pairing this product with a diet designed for muscle-building might mean you only need two scoops in the vicinity of your workouts.

Suppose you worked out an average of every other day. A two-scoop regimen would ultimately cost you half as much as a four-scoop regimen. Here’s how the difference plays out:

Finding a way to work a serving of 1-3 scoops into your routine might be easier on your scheduling, as well.

One big issue with Naked’s infrastructure here is that it only offers four-, six-, and eight-week shipping intervals for a product that contains 11 servings. If you lift five days per week, you’ll run out long before your subscription sends you a follow-up bottle. We’d love to see Naked correct this by adding a two-week option. Until then, only people who use smaller serving sizes or set up multiple-bottle subscription orders will be accommodated.

Next most likely to help

Recovery supplements is a category almost as broad as muscle-building supplements. That’s because recovery is so critical to building muscle and comes in so many different forms. Our comprehensive guide to recovery supplements actually lists a mass gainer as our number one pick. It also includes sleep aids, specifically promoting Swolverine ZMT, a top pick in this guide.

But we decided to draw a line between recovery supplements and things like mass gainers or sleep aids for the purpose of this guide, as those other two subcategories are specific enough to warrant individual product recommendations for our readers. It’s also important that we narrow the field of recovery supplements to exclude sleep aids and mass gainers, which allows us to focus more acutely on other high-quality options.

We considered post-workout carb replenishment drinks like Jym’s Fast-Digesting Carbs, as well as fish oil supplements to mitigate lactic acid buildup and muscle soreness. We also looked at different amino acid combinations touted for their recovery potential — L-glutamine, for example. Ultimately, we found a creatine supplement that we felt offered the best mixture of research support, dosage, manufacturing quality, and price.

Our recovery supplement recommendation: Transparent Labs Creatine HMB

Creatine has some of the best research going for it in terms of reducing DOMS and getting you back into the gym in less time.16 A study in 2009 looked specifically at how creatine supplementation can result in greater strength performance after specific muscle damage induced by strenuous resistance training.17 The study resulted in a 10% increase in isokinetic strength and a 21% increase in isometric strength compared to placebo.

To make creatine even more enticing as a muscle-building supplement, there’s also evidence that it plays a positive role in instigating muscle protein synthesis.18

The HMB in Creatine HMB stands for hydroxymethylbutyrate, a metabolite of the essential branched chain amino acid leucine. A literature review from 2022 found that a 3g daily dose of HMB was capable of “reducing muscle-damage-induced inflammation and oxidative stress and promoting cellular cholesterol synthesis by increasing the production of β-hydroxy-β-methylglutaryl-Co-A, a product of HMB metabolism.”19

Transparent Labs Creatine HMB only delivers 1,500mg of HMB alongside 5g of creatine per dose. That may seem disappointing, but some creatine research encourages 10g or more per training day, so you could theoretically double your dose from Transparent Labs and maximize the effect of both substances. The only trouble there is that things would get expensive quickly. Fortunately, the company offers both 30-serving and 60-serving containers, allowing you to save money investing in a higher dose.

Transparent Labs Creatine HMB pricing

Creatine HMB is available in two sizes: 30 servings and 60 servings. You can subscribe to either or make a one-time purchase, but subscriptions reduce your price and provide free shipping without you having to breach the company’s $99 free-shipping threshold. Here’s how the pricing works out:

You can double any of those cost-per-serving numbers if you want to go for the approach of 10g of creatine and 3g of HMB that aligns with several studies. Transparent Labs also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, which should give you enough time to feel a difference in DOMS after several strenuous resistance-training sessions.

Best all-in-one approach

Muscle-building stacks are a great way to get a handful of effective supplements to support your workouts from a single company and to save money in the process. Many companies offer these bundles at a discount compared to the cost of buying the individual supplements on their own.

However, some companies don’t offer subscriptions on their stacks, but they do offer subscriptions (with associated discounts) on individual products. That sometimes creates an environment in which subscribing to a set of products individually can be more cost-effective than buying stacks as one-time purchases.

You’ll often find the following types of supplements in a muscle-building stack:

• Mass gainers or protein powders
• Pre-workout beverages
• Hydration drinks
• Post-workout recovery formulas
• Sleep aids

Some may also include products intended to boost testosterone or containing certain botanical ingredients, amino acids, or other components associated with muscle growth or strength performance. These are less common, however.

Two of the companies offering multiple products in our guide also have several stacks to choose from: Transparent Labs and Swolverine. Other companies we’ve considered in the stack space include Jym, CrazyBulk, and others.

Our muscle-building stack recommendation: Swolverine Performance Series

Swolverine offers numerous stacks, with some dedicated to muscle-building and others designed for things like weight loss, joint health, or general wellness. Its trio of muscle-building stacks includes two vegan options and a whey-based option. Performance Series is one of the vegan options, and that’s not the only reason we chose it. It contains the best combination of high-quality supplements from Swolverine that happen to tick a lot of the boxes we’ve explored throughout this guide. Specifically, it contains:

• Post: a post-workout mass gainer with a lower calorie content than most alternatives but a great carb-to-protein ratio and a clean ingredient bill
• Pre: a caffeine-free pre-workout formula with 5g of L-citrulline malate and a little over 3g of beta-alanine
• Intra: a mid-workout hydration mix loaded with over 4g of essential amino acids
• ZMT: a melatonin-based sleep aid containing several testosterone-boosting ingredients

The smaller caloric load in Post is ideal for people either getting plentiful calories in a muscle-building diet already or trying to build a only moderate amount of muscle with slightly lighter workouts.

Swolverine Performance Series pricing

Swolverine’s Performance Series’ pricing is a little unusual for a muscle-building stack. If you only compare one-time-purchase costs, buying the stack instead of each component individually saves you about $7. That’s not a particularly impressive discount.

But the stack is not offered on a subscription basis. And subscribing to each component of the stack individually actually saves you more money than buying the stack itself. Here’s how that works out:

• Performance Series: $225
• Individual components (one-time): $232
• Individual Components (subscription): $213

Clearly, it makes more sense to subscribe to the individual components than it does to buy the stack itself or the separate components on a one-time basis. But keep your eye out for a subscription discount on the stack if Swolverine chooses to add one. If the company follows the same 15% discount logic it uses on individual components, that would bring the cost down to $191.25.

Swolverine does not offer a money-back guarantee on its products the way Transparent Labs and Naked do. The products have to be unopened, and there’s both a $10 restocking fee and a 2.5% processing fee for returns, plus the cost of return shipping. This is a poor policy compared to the competition.

Best if you have trouble putting the work in

Motivation is a significant issue when it comes to building muscle. That extends beyond the motivation to get to the gym in the first place, which is a big enough challenge for many. It also pertains to the motivation to start that next set or push through that last rep to get the most out of your sessions.

There is evidence that pushing your muscle to the point of failure can increase strength and muscle mass more than targeting an arbitrary set of reps. A review from 2016 points to several articles that support this theory.20 Unfortunately, that same review points to studies that contradict these results.

With the jury still out, anyone determined to get the most out of their workouts should likely consider pushing through to failure, just in case the science supporting that approach is right. This is where a pre-workout supplement can come in handy, though it’s also where a reliable spotter can be essential. If you’re training to failure, you want to have support from a spotter and really listen to your body to ensure you don’t incur any injuries that could hamper future training.

Here, we’ll take a look at a few ingredients that have been shown to increase either the number of repetitions or the strength involved in those reps when pushing to failure.

The pattern here is pretty clear. It illustrates that the types of ingredients typically seen in pre-workout supplements can do more than just provide the kind of energy caffeine can; they can also increase your physical capabilities in the gym.

Our pre-workout recommendation: Kaged Pre-Workout Elite

If you took the three ingredients we discussed above and combined them with a little caffeine, you’d have an incredibly effective pre-workout, especially if doses aligned with those used in studies. Kaged Pre-Workout Elite boasts all three of those ingredients at doses clinically relevant or higher, but it also contains other beneficial ingredients.

The formula is broken up into three groups of ingredients: Pump & Performance, Cellular Hydration & ATP Amplifier, and Energy & Focus. Among other things, you’ll find large doses of L-citrulline and beta-alanine in the first blend, ElevATP and coconut water powder for hydration in the second, and caffeine and brain-boosting alpha-GPC in the third.24

All told, Kaged Pre-Workout Elite delivers better doses of a more comprehensive formula than you'll see from other companies. There is one potential downside to the formula, however: caffeine content.

The formula contains 388mg of caffeine from organic green coffee bean and a branded tea extract. That's about equal to 4-5 strong espresso shots. If you're sensitive to caffeine, you could have a bad time taking that much. Fortunately, Kaged Pre-Workout Elite is available in a stim-free version that's identical to the original in every way but for the removal of caffeine and the reduction of flavor options from four down to one (Cherry Limeade). For those who need a little caffeine but not as much as Kaged includes in its caffeinated Elite, you'll have to have a cup of coffee before the gym.

Kaged Pre-Workout Elite pricing

Kaged prices its Elite pre-workout pretty simply. It’s $59.99 per tub, and you can get 10% off if you subscribe ($53.99). Neither price is high enough to qualify for free shipping, however. If you’re interested in other Kaged products, the company has a convenient bundle builder that can save you 15% instead of 10%, regardless of whether you subscribe or purchase only once. And any bundle should be pricey enough to qualify for free shipping.

Kaged has the best money-back guarantee of the companies included in this guide. You can use the products you order for up to 60 days and still request a refund if you’re unsatisfied. That’s twice as long as the 30-day guarantee from Transparent Labs and more than four times the length of Naked’s guarantee.

Best if you’re a bad sleeper

Sleep is integral to just about every part of human health, and muscle-building is no exception. If you're chronically fatigued, your body is more likely to be in a state of muscle protein breakdown than synthesis as it tries to derive needed energy from wherever it can.

Good rest can also help soothe muscle soreness and reduce inflammation where you’ve worked hard to induce targeted muscle damage. But far too many people in the U.S. get poor sleep. In fact, the National Council on Aging reports that more than a third of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep nightly, while the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society both recommend 7-9 hours.25 26

There are several things you can do to improve your sleep, but sleep aid supplements are a relatively safe and reliable way to go about it. Ingredients like melatonin or valerian root may cause some drowsiness (as in, don’t operate a motor vehicle after taking them), but that’s more or less where significant risks end.

That said, some users report feeling groggy the morning after taking an intense sleep aid, leading a few companies to design sleep supplements that are intended to be taken nightly but without knocking you out.27 Instead, they’re meant to provide support for healthy sleep over time. Ultimately, this is a matter of preference and the degree to which you suffer from sleeplessness.

Our sleep aid recommendation: Swolverine ZMT

If you want something that can reliably get you to sleep and also supports healthy testosterone levels, Swolverine ZMT is undeniably your best bet. We were honestly tempted to promote Transparent Labs’ Sleep & Recover here, as we tend to prefer sleep aids that don’t rely on melatonin. In fact, we recommend the Transparent Labs product over Swolverine if you're planning to combine it with a dedicated testosterone booster. But Swolverine’s other targeted ingredients are outstanding, and it’s a wise choice if it’s going to be the only supplement you take toward muscle growth.

For example, ZMT includes a 422mg dose of magnesium glycinate. This is the best form of magnesium for sleep, and Swolverine delivers it in a hefty dose supported by sleep research.42 ZMT also includes 300mg of KSM-66 ashwagandha, a branded form of the botanical that’s standardized to a specific potency also supported by sleep research.28 What’s more, ashwagandha has been shown to improve testosterone levels, as have the zinc and tongkat ali included in this formula.29 30 31

The two problems with ZMT are cost and convenience. A month’s supply costs $65, which is more than double the cost of the Transparent Labs alternative. And a single dose is six capsules, which is a lot for anyone to take before going to sleep. By comparison, that Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover has a four-capsule dose, and some competitive sleep aids with fewer ingredients require only one or two.

Swolverine ZMT pricing

As we mentioned above, ZMT is a little on the pricey side, with a single month’s supply running to $65 for a one-time purchase. You can subscribe and take 15% off, bringing the price down to $55.24, but that’s still a pretty high monthly cost.

ZMT is also part of Swolverine’s Performance Series muscle-building stack, which we discussed earlier in our section devoted to stacks. But the stack price only offers savings compared to one-time purchases of its components. You’ll pay less for each if you subscribe to all of them individually, including ZMT.

And, as we’ve also mentioned, Swolverine has the worst return policy in our guide, with no money-back guarantee, along with excessive fees and charges to accept a return.

Best if you suspect low testosterone

Low testosterone is a significant concern among men, especially those above 40 years of age. After 40, men lose about 1% of their testosterone each year in a phenomenon sometimes called male menopause.11 These drops in testosterone can result in mood disturbance, low libido, erectile dysfunction, muscle loss, fat accumulation, and fatigue.32

Some men turn to prescription interventions like testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) to resolve the situation, but there are some significant risks associated with such treatments.33 Avoiding those risks is one of the reasons other men look to nutritional supplements like testosterone boosters to improve their testosterone levels.

The best testosterone boosters contain ingredients that work in different ways to increase testosterone. Some components can stimulate the testes to make more testosterone.34 Others might inhibit sex hormone-binding globulin from occupying so much free testosterone, allowing more to circulate to other areas of the body.35

Our testosterone booster recommendation: Innerbody Testosterone Support

This is an area in which the expertise we built up over the years, combined with our frustration with the state of the available boosters on the market, spurred us to make our own supplements. Innerbody Testosterone Support contains more clinically relevant doses of more scientifically backed ingredients than anything else in its class. Here’s a quick peek at the ingredient bill:

• Ashwagandha: 600mg KSM-66
• Fenugreek: 600mg
• Maca: 2,000mg
• Longjack: 400mg
• Vitamin A: 750mcg
• Vitamin D: 1000 IU
• Vitamin K2: 75mcg
• Zinc: 25mg citrate
• Copper: 300mcg
• Selenium: 20mcg
• Black pepper extract: 5mg

Innerbody Testosterone Support pricing

Innerbody offers both bulk and subscription savings on its testosterone booster, allowing you to cut up to 40% off your cost per bottle. Here’s how it looks:

The one-time purchase price for a single bottle is pretty significant, though it’s less than most comparably built boosters on the market. And Innerbody’s discount structure ends up delivering outstanding value compared to those other options. Each purchase is protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee, as well.

Because the field of available muscle-building supplements is so broad, there isn’t a lot to say about potential alternatives. But we wanted to address some of the paths you can take if you’re unsure about supplementation. Also, these concepts aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive to supplementation, so you can execute them and take supplements at the same time to improve your chances of success.

Proper diet

We aren’t going to pretend that a muscle-building diet is a one-size-fits-all solution. Your specific caloric, macronutrient, and micronutrient needs will need to be determined by a professional nutritionist before you know exactly what to eat and when to eat it to get the most out of your workouts.

That said, there are certain tried-and-true foods and portions we’ve seen in numerous diet plans that have resulted in significant growth.36 These often include eating 4-6 daily meals consisting of a macronutrient balance that’s roughly 50-60% carbs, 25-30% protein, and 15-20% healthy fats.37 Protein sources are often things like chicken breast or salmon, with carbs coming from brown rice and fresh vegetables and healthy fats from nuts, seeds, and high-quality olive oil.

Prescription interventions

There are several prescription interventions you can look to that might improve your chances of building muscle, with TRT being among the most popular for men with low testosterone levels. TRT can take the form of testosterone injections or transdermal creams, with injections resulting in the most significant spike in testosterone and also the most significant swings in mood and side effects.38

Other prescription therapies that aren’t technically testosterone replacements are clomiphene citrate and aromatase inhibitors, both of which work in different ways to promote the production or inhibit the conversion of testosterone.39

Among these, our review of the research indicates that clomiphene and enclomiphene citrate have the most favorable side effect profiles without sacrificing efficacy.40 However, which approach you take will depend on your doctor's opinion.