This is one of the supplements that got a big push from Bill Phillips back in the mid 90's. Never really took off as planned. Most of the people I've spoke with who took it at the time reported nothing spectacular with regards to lbm gains. For fat loss I knew one guy who said it worked great. But he was following a reduced calorie diet and taking an ECA/yohimbine stack so you can't be sure what was working or not.
There's only been a few studies conducted involving resistance training and CLA supplementation and half have been shown effective and the other half ineffective, so no real conclusion can be made. I'd save my money if I were you.
The Effects Of Conjugated Linoleic Acid Supplementation During Resistance Training.
Craig Pinkoski, et al.
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise,
Vol 38 (2), pp 339-348, 2006
Subjects:
Eighty five healthy men and women, 18-45 years of age, were included in this double blind, placebo controlled study. All subjects were currently active, which is important, as "newbies" tend to see much greater results in the beginning. This was a 7-week study that included a periodized resistance training program that all subjects followed. There were a handful of outcome variables:
* Body weight
* Percent body fat
* Lean body mass
* Fat mass
* Strength
* Peak torque for knee extension
* Muscle thickness
* Resting metabolic rate
* Respiratory exchange ratio
Program:
The resistance training program involved 12 exercises chosen to include all major muscle groups. Each exercise was performed 3x/week, for 3-4 sets of 4-10 repetitions at approximately 75-90% of one-repetition max (1 RM). Basically, this was a fairly intense workout. To measure body composition, the research used a Bod Pod, which I've discussed in a previous article. This is a validated tool to measure body comp, making these results more reliable than if other methods were used. Maximal strength was assessed using the bench and leg press. An ancillary study was then conducted with just a small fraction of the initial 85 individuals; this study was a crossover study, meaning subjects switched groups after a short washout period to ensure any CLA (if they were in that particular group) was cleared from their system.
Results:
Overall, males had a significant increase in lean body mass, where females did not. However, there were no differences between CLA and placebo groups for gender and overall body mass over time. Overall, though, the CLA group did have a greater increase in lean tissue mass, and a greater decrease in fat mass and percent fat compared with the placebo group. This means when all CLA users were pooled together (males and females) vs. all placebo users (males and females) there were no significant differences in strength change among CLA users and non-users. In the follow-up 7 week crossover study, subjects in the placebo group increased body mass, fat mass and percent fat. However, in the CLA group, these same increases were not observed. It's also important to note that there were no differences in side effects for CLA vs. placebo users.
Conclusions
The main findings of the first 7-week study were that there was a significant increase in lean body mass and reduction in body fat mass in those in the CLA group. The authors did note that while these were significantly different, they were still relatively small, questioning their clinical significance.
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