View Workout (Aaron Lin)
Hydroxycut Hardcore Elite. never again... (near death experience)
August 12, 2013 (Afternoon)
Exercise Type: Weights
Comments:
So yesterday was sunday and of course I woke up terribly late since I was up late the night before. and then during the afternoon, of course once again i took a 2 hour nap cuz on Sundays I'm a lazy fuck. Naturally, sunday night i couldn't fall asleep. So in the morning, I "wake up" at like 6:30am after having debatable sleep. My plan was to take NO-Xplode for the leg workout since I didn't want something too high in beta-alanine cuz I typically only like the tingles for upper body work, especially for back days. but before leaving the house, I saw that sitting on my supplement counter was a small pack of Hydroxycut Hardcore Elite, which is a fat burner. I got that back in March as a sample when I ordered protein from a1supplements.com. i figured, since I'm kind of tired and didn't get sleep, I'll take the fat burner while i'm at home to help me wake up and stack the pre workout on top of that once I get to veale so that I'll have a potent source of energy for the lift. Fat burners and pre workouts are actually very similar in their ingredient profile. both are stimulant based because stims are thermogenic and help you mobilize more fatty acids to burn the fat. the main difference is that aside from energy, pre workouts generally contain more shit to help assist with a pump through various nitric oxide enhancing substances.
So i took that pack of Hydroxycut, which has 270mg of caffeine. "thats nothing" i thought to myself, because i typically do 300mg and feel good on it. i think only when i get about 500 is when i dont feel too good. So at 7:30am I took 2 pills of Hydroxycut. Trouble begins at 7:40am. 10min after i took it i started shaking. it was weird because I don't get that effect from caffeine anymore after months of pre workout. i wasn't sure what it was that was making me shake. while walking down towards veale, I was shaking and actually out of breath, just walking at a normal pace. it wasnt even just my hands that were shaking cuz my whole body was just feeling kind of shaky. like each step wasnt very solid and firm. while going down the elephant stairs, I felt really uncoordinated and my step rhythm was really awkward. my heart rate was starting to go up. I got to veale. and took my bags off in the locker room. i felt cold, really cold. and the locker room isnt even that well air conditioned. but i quickly realized that it wasnt the room that was cold. it was my body that was really warm. my skin just felt hot. my core temperature had risen. i guess that is what fat burners are meant to do. as a thermogenic, it is to raise your core temperature by causing you to produce energy by burning off your stored fat through lipolysis. but i wasn't sure what was causing it cuz i just assumed caffeine was the main ingredient in the fat burner. by now my heart was pounding. i was breathing ridiculously high. my heart rate went up to at least 150 just from trying to put my freakin shoes on. it was actually a really unpleasant feeling, so i was like fuck the NO-Xplode, this should be sufficient energy for the whole workout. i went up to the cardio room to warm up like i typically do by walking for 10min. while walking on the treadmill i had to hold on to the sides cuz i felt like my heart was gonna explode and my body wasn't feeling solid. 10 minutes ended so quick, quicker than usual. went down to the weight room.
first exercise was squats. i had to move the bar i wanted to use into the power rack and that was extremely difficult. i just couldnt coordinate my arms and legs to walk with the bar but with much difficulty i got the bar on the rack. warmed up. felt ok on the warm up actually. 135 felt fine. light. however when i did the 185 warm up sets they felt kind of heavy. that was a bad sign. got the belt on and loaded up 230 on the bar. heres where the trouble started. i unracked the bar on my back and i couldnt really walk backwards away from the rack. i just felt physically retarded like i didnt know how to move my legs or something. i think i almost tripped. and my body was shaking so much that i just couldnt do it. i actually almost dropped the bar off my back which almost tipped me off balance and to regain balance I almost had a seizure. my entire body was just vibrating, everywhere to try to keep balance. after a failed set i sat on the bench and felt like i was having a panic attack. my heart rate was thru the roof, heart was pounding and breathing like a maniac. if u took my blood pressure at that point im pretty sure it would have been something ridiculous like 200/130. needless to say i had to cut my workout short cuz i literally couldnt lift. my whole body was shaking so much that my nervous system just could not regain control. it was like trying to have one lone single policeman bring order to an entire street riot of thousands of people. think of the thousands of people as the thousands of muscle fibers in my body. they were just going absolutely apeshit rioting. my nervous system just could not control them to fire off as necessary for exercise movements. i thought i was gonna die.
i was basically like this for the next 4 hours. it was so uncomfortable, the worst 4 hours ever. i had to find out wtf caused me to feel liek this cuz i can typically take down caffeine like a champ. and looking back at the label of Hydroxycut Hardcore Elite, I figured it out. it was a substance called yohimbe. its a plant extract that acts as a thermogenic and is an MAOi, which is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. so one of its functions is to prevent the reuptake or breakdown of epinephrine, leaving it in ur system for longer. so basically i took a look a dosage, and foudn that that is where i went wrong. they typically sell yohimbe/yohimbine in increments of like 2 or 2.5mg. To take it as a fat burner, you wanna take it over a long period of time starting with a low dosage, 2mg and work ur way up to like 0.2mg per kg of bodyweight. so a 250lb bodybuilder would start with a low dose of 2mg, and over the course of several weeks he would work his way up to a maximum dosage of like 20mg a day, after building up tolerance. me being a fucking dumbass, it didn't really occur to me that Hydroxycut hardcore elite contained yohimbe. but long story short it was my first time taking a product with yohimbe and i took 56mg of it, on an empty stomach. thats like 20-30x the dosage that i was supposed to take. they even say 50+mg of yohimbe a day could be dangerous. ppl died from it.. so i dont plan on messing around with yohimbe ever again lol. the strongest pre workout ive taken, Prosupps Mr. Hyde which i took last week had yohimbe, which was one of the reasons why it felt so strong but it only had 2mg. im an idiot.
so for the next 4 hours i felt so out of it. i was extremely anxious and my appetite was suppressed, felt like puking, and even talking made me out of breath. so stay away from high doses of yohimbe, boys n girls!