Have you heard of the supplement industry’s dirty secret of "prop blends?” It happens to be one of the most talked about conspiracies in the fitness community and affects real consumers like you.

Many brands use proprietary blends to hide the fact that their formula contains very little of the key active ingredients. Others will create the illusion that they use prop blends to prevent competitors from stealing the details of their “exclusive” formulas. If their formulas were so great, wouldn’t they want customers to see them?

As an innovative world leader in sports supplements with 100% transparent formulas and clinically-dosed ingredients, we are dedicated to disrupting the industry and empowering consumers to be able to choose potent supplements that actually contain what they say they do.

When supplement shopping, many consumers superficially scan labels for buzzwords: specific ingredients that are popular and recognizable. While some products may indeed contain these ingredients, they are often lumped together into an undisclosed blend, meaning that they are likely of a low quality, low dosage potency, or loaded with various synthetic fillers. Known by industry insiders as “pixie dusting,” this method is used extensively by unsavoury supplement companies to hide low inclusion amounts. Companies will take advantage of the current popularity of certain ingredients to boost the marketing hype and increase sales. Since the doses are small, this all happens at the expense of the customer.

This wrongful gimmick has led many consumers to believe that when purchasing supplements one only needs to look for familiar ingredients and benefits on a label. This is simply not the case, but for companies, big and small, this pattern of deception has gone largely unnoticed and unchecked for years, leaving the trusting customer at their mercy.

Proprietary matrices are a collection of ingredients whose respective amounts are displayed as one total number. In other words, the label doesn’t specify the exact dosage of each active ingredient. Since the birth of the supplement industry, a vast majority of companies have hidden behind proprietary blends in order to inflate the value of their products, all the while masking the fact that their formulas contain very little of key active ingredients. This tricky term creates the illusion that the companies are merely protecting their assets, preventing competitors from stealing their “exclusive” formulas. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

It might seem obvious but looking at the actual ingredient amounts when buying supplements is critical to ensure you are getting what you pay for. No matter how transparent a brand is with its disclosure on ingredient inclusion amounts, it MUST be able to back this up with proper and effective dosage amounts.

When you read about the next big exciting ingredient that will help you increase your strength, recovery or muscle growth, remember that to get the results from that ingredient, you require the proper dose. It is the old carrot and the stick approach: promise the key desired ingredient but never deliver even close to the dose you need for results.

How many pre-workouts have you seen with 11 ingredients including citrulline that have 4g serving sizes? Citrulline is a powerful and super versatile ingredient, but only in its clinically effective dosage of 4-6 grams. That’s the entire serving size of the pre-workout you’ve just called to mind. So what about the other 10 ingredients? What about the 2.5 to 3g of flavouring required to make the product taste good?

If a light bulb just went on for you, it means you just realized that you’ve been taken advantage of. How do you avoid this? Simply never buy a product that won’t tell you the dosage of every single ingredient it contains.

For the average person, heavy research would be needed to determine what ingredients or blends work, and whether a product in question has the ability to provide the benefits it claims. Why should customers be left guessing about how products will actually effect things like strength, energy or muscle mass? When it comes to the substances we are putting into our bodies, there is no room for such confusion.

We want to spearhead the greatest shift in the history of the supplement industry by giving power back to the consumers. Aside from providing the highest quality products possible, we are committed to the complete and accurate disclosure of all product information on our labels. This means 100% transparency and better results for our loyal customers.

Working in tandem with consumer needs, we are dedicated to creating innovative hard-hitting, no prop blend formulas that put athletic performance and quality ingredients first. It’s time to put an end to proprietary blends for good!