About
This page is here to help you understand who is behind the site and why it was established. Initially just a hobby, it is now a full-time commitment with a team of contributing writers.
By reading this page you can find out about the team, the privacy policy, cookie policy, and how to contact us.
Welcome to TestosteroneJunkie.com
This site was established in 2015 to be a free resource for you to read about fitness and its associated components including the world of supplements, workout regimes, nutrition, and sport.
That’s because the editor and founder likes a wide variety of sporting activities including cycling, weight lifting, rugby, sailing, skiing and is also a member of the Army Reserves. Ben has also successfully run 3 marathons, and completed the ‘Paras 10’, not stopping there, he has his eye on an Ironman 70.3.
As such, this site reflects not just one small corner or niche.
Overall, Ben wants this site to be useful and helpful while also being interesting.
It is a site based upon personal experience, evidence-based reviews, and the expertise of qualified professional contributors.
The content of this website is for information purposes and is not intended as medical advice.
Thank you for visiting and learning about the contributors that keep the site current.
There are a number of people that have written for this site all with different areas of experience that we hope you can learn from.
Furthermore, any comments or ideas that you have can also help our other readers.
The aim of this site is to offer insight into the varying aspects of fitness, supplements, and nutrients so you can make an informed choice to help improve your performance.
Much of the written content is about personal experiences; trial and error but also we look into scientific research on nutrients or relevant topics with supporting reputable references to back up the work.
This way you know that what is being written is supported by evidence and practice not just theory.
Read on for more and take a look at our mission.
Editor
The editor is Ben Bunting.
Ben is currently 35 years old and has been involved in fitness since the age of 6 when he started playing for Chesterfield Rugby Union Football Club (now the Chesterfield Panthers).
Rugby took him on playing tours as far-flung as Hong Kong and Australia which gave Ben a great insight into teamwork, honesty, respect, pride, and camaraderie.
While at school (Mount St. Mary’s College) Ben was an active 1stXV rugby player, was involved in 7’s, and participated in 10’s tournaments playing against some of the finest schoolboy teams in the UK.
When the rugby season had finished for the summer, Ben participated in the cricket teams, was a member of the school athletics team, and also involved himself in the Combined Cadet Force.
One comment that stuck forever within Ben’s mind came from the 1stXV coach who stated that fitness will win games: Fitness can surpass talent and ability.
He embarked on gaining qualifications in physical studies and entered higher education at Leeds Metropolitan University to graduate with a BA(Hons) in 2005 leading on to completing a PGCert in Sport Exercise & Nutrition in the summer of 2021 from the Carnegie School of Sport.
Since a fairly young age, Ben has been a keen gym goer whereby he took an interest in ‘early’ training techniques and how to build long-term muscle growth.
This then spawned a further interest in supplements and how they can be of benefit to physical and mental well-being.
While living in London he gained valuable lessons in a few of the ‘old school’ gyms such as MuscleWorks in Stoke Newington, on the flip side of the coin Ben also gained his Royal Yachting Association Level 1 & 2 Dinghy Sailing qualifications at the North London Sailing Association.
In 2018 Ben joined the British Army Reserve to further develop his fitness and experience in adventure training, he gained his Endurance Training Leader qualification and then became an Army Physical Training Instructor in 2022.
Since joining he has already qualified as a marksman using the H&K L85 SA80 5.56mm along with the Glock 17 9mm pistol and is part of the Regimental Shooting team.
Ben has also entered the U.S Marines Marathon which took place in October 2019 which he TABBED the route in ‘fighting order’ carrying 15kg/33lbs with members of his Regiment.
This was followed up by the Maqnchester Marathon and the Vienna Marathon. Notwithstanding the ‘Paras 10’.
In August 2018 Ben rode the Veloscenic route through Northern France which involves a 450km bicycle ride from Paris to Mont St-Michel.
He completed it on a brake-less fixed-gear bicycle in 4 days, with no specialist clothing or equipment along with his good mate and history teacher Paul.
You can see a link to this bicycle ride that was filmed, here.
His personal aim for this website is to provide a free, high-quality, and useful resource of information.
Additional qualifications include:
- First Aid for Sports
- Obesity: Balanced Diets and Treatment
- Drug Development Process: Combating Pain
- Level 1: Athletes and Efficient Hearts
- Level 1: Health and Safety in the Laboratory and Field
- Level 2: Exercise and Mental Health
- Level 2: Exploring Issues in Women’s Health
- Level 2: Training for Endurance in Sport and Fitness
- Level 2: Training for Speed and Power in Sport and Fitness
- Level 2: Why use Literature Reviews in Health and Social Care
Contributors
Nicola Joyce is a contributing writer for TestosteroneJunkie.com amongst other publications. Nicola is a member of the National Union of Journalists plus a member of the Fitness Writers Association.
Nicola helps by lending her extensive experience of competing in natural and amateur bodybuilding contests holding two amateur world titles, triathlons, powerlifting and even swimming the English Channel a couple of times – no easy feat.
Jason James is a self-trained natural bodybuilder competing in the UKBFF and has a Bachelors’s degree from the University of Bedfordshire. He found his way into fitness through rehabilitation following a sporting injury while playing semi-professional soccer.
He prides himself on being consistent and doing so maintains an offseason 90kg bodyweight with just 10% body fat.
However, not content with self-training he decided that he wanted to help others, in doing so he qualified as a personal trainer attaining the REPS level 2 and 3 grade. He went further to add REPS levels 4 which is an advanced level personal trainer qualification and has also now achieved his level 1 CrossFit qualification. Thus Jason provides certified content for our readers.
Sabrina Coates is a bikini fitness competitor and a UK ambassador for Cellucor.
Sabrina has also represented the United Kingdom for the Mr. Olympia model search.
However, her advice and fitness regime is not without qualification…
Sabrina is a level 3 personal trainer having worked for a number of well-known fitness gyms in the past and now works for a global pharmaceutical development company (PPD) as a safety administrator.
You can keep up to date with Sabrina’s fitness journey here and watch her many helpful workout videos as well as see some great recipes.
Lee Whitmore is a self-confessed rugby fanatic, and, living up to his title of the ‘oracle’, it would be difficult to find anyone with more of a knowledge of rugby union.
He has been playing for the Chesterfield Panthers since the age of 9, played for his county of Derbyshire, and toured to the Southern Hemisphere with the best players from the three counties of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Derbyshire.
Lee still plays for Chesterfield and has his hand in the coaching and development of the younger teams. Any articles revolving rugby union are covered by Lee.
Daniel DeMoss is from Dever, Colorado in the USA.
He is a personal trainer and also holds an MSc in Physical Therapy from NYU Steinhardt. Therefore, Daniel offers qualified advice and articles that have been featured here.
Apart from being a personal trainer, he is a self-confessed home gym nerd (his words, not ours) and runs a website called Dumbbellsreview.com where he offers his view on the best fitness equipment you can buy to help save you money and improve your health.
What we offer
Since the site’s inception over three years ago, there have been over half a million visitors and nearly 1 million page views!
However, over time there has been a lot of content that had become stale, irrelevant, and outdated.
This called for some much need editing.
Anything that did not offer any value to the reader or wasn’t been read had to be culled.
Yet, we’ve streamlined the site to offer a higher level of quality and brought in qualified contributors that can provide certified content that you can read, digest that may prove useful for you to reach your goals.
Of course, the information found here will also be referenced by reputable sources to ensure its reliability and credibility.
Why?
The founder of this site started hitting the gym and becoming interested in weight lifting many years ago; from reading bodybuilding magazines as a child sourced from the best friends older cousin to buying his first York dumbbell and barbell kit doing overhead presses in his parents’ dining room.
Naturally, these magazines had adverts for supplements.
Big, raw glossy pages with muscular men assuring us that taking those products will helps us reach our aspirations.
This hit a chord with the editor who then started to buy his first supplements in his early twenties to improve his size and strength.
However, as for many people at the time, his decisions were based purely on the product name and what the bottle looked like.
Researching products and what goes into them at the time was a complex and exhausting minefield.
All we knew was that many of the ingredients sounded exotic and in most cases were unpronounceable.
Times have now changed, information is much easier to source.
There’s no need to head to your local university library to discover exactly what you’re taking as scientific journals, clinical reports, and university studies are now available, for free, online.
It is now easier to read and learn about the best ways to increase muscle mass and lose fat rather than rely on what advice the biggest guy in the gym tells you.
Again, the studies are freely available for all to learn from.
However, barriers remain – complexity and time.
While many things have gotten easier with progress, researching, understanding multiple studies and papers to choose between one product or exercise compared to another to ensure you get the best from your workout is still time-consuming.
This is where testosteronejunkie.com comes in to play.
We do the hard work for you.
We test, trial and research products to discover what they contain and if the claims stack up with the studies.
This way, you have a free dedicated, and easy to read resource to check something out before you buy it.
How to get the best from this site
You can use the search function on the landing page to find an article of interest or browse through the category menu.
Yet, the site has some key areas that we can direct you to:
Nutrients Guide
There are lots of different products out there that contain many nutrients you’ve probably never heard of but on the flip side, there are more common ones too.
So, what we do is research and write about them individually.
Did you know caffeine can help you burn more calories and improve soldier performance?
Or that metals can increase testosterone?
These guides help you evaluate products better, so you can achieve a greater understanding of what you may wish to buy.
These reviews are based on evidence from publicly available studies rather than anecdote providing you with impartial information.
Workouts
Not only do we provide you with a free workout guide which was devised by our very own qualified resident PT, we also look at different exercises which can improve physical performance.
For too long people sought the wrong advice from the wrong people.
Just asking the biggest person in the gym what they do may not necessarily translate to big gains for yourself.
This can be especially true if that person is using anabolic steroids.
Even popular magazines would publish workout plans that would only enable a person on drugs to benefit.
Those natural lifters may not be able to recover enough to cope with the extra demands placed on their musculature which can leave gym goers frustrated and disheartened.
Testosterone Boosters
Testosterone is an extremely important male hormone, it is also important for women too, in smaller amounts.
However, for either gender, a balanced hormone level is paramount for improved overall health.
A good quality testosterone booster supplement will contain proven, natural ingredients that work to help your body produce and secrete more of its natural testosterone.
Test boosters are not to be confused with anabolic steroids.
It was when the editor of this site started to do his own in-depth research into test boosters that he was looking to buy and use himself which really cemented the urge to establish this site.
Fat Burners
Fat burners are, like test boosters, a mystery for most which is absolutely validated.
Products like these are not bound by any code or practices (they are not medicines or medical drugs), as such the difference in quality and effectiveness can vary greatly.
One thing is for sure, there are studies demonstrating that some natural ingredients available are proven to burn additional calories.
The hard part is finding these products with these ingredients, another hurdle to accept is those fat burners are not miracle workers and are to be used alongside a calorie control diet plan whereby they can enhance your calorie expenditure.
Nootropics
Nootropics are sometimes associated with ‘bio-hacking’.
Biohacking is a term coined with those seeking to become the best version of themselves.
So how does this relate to nootropic supplements?
Nootropics aim to increase productivity and cognitive function by ensuring that your body has all of the required nutrients to be more effective.
There is nothing untoward nootropics, and the reality is, a very strict nutrition plan could provide all that is required, but you would need to be very strict and able to consume a wide variety of nutrients from differing sources that may not be entirely convenient.
Pre Workouts
There’s been a huge boom in pre-workout products available to the market, and the editor remembers the very first one he bought many years ago for an extortionate price.
Thankfully prices are now a little tamer and there’s a huge variety to choose from.
Pre-workout supplements market themselves as being able to increase your gym performance.
But literally that gym session you are about to hit as you take these supplements about 20 minutes before hitting the iron – the clue is in the name.
There’s many nutrients that have come to light which can increase blood flow, energy, and focus.
Again as with all of the other products we look at there’s research into studies to make sure these exotic-sounding ingredients have an actual purpose rather than just baffling the consumer.
Nutrition
Your efforts in the gym will not be fully rewarded without fueling your body with wholesome foods which can improve your growth and recovery.
At the other end of the spectrum, too much of some foods can be a catalyst for disease, hormone imbalance, and overall ill health.
The articles available in the nutrition category use scientific research to help inform readers about the foods we consume to optimize performance.
In the new year, we aim to provide readers with a free nutrition plan from a qualified nutritionist to support your fitness ambitions.
However, while they may be key areas of interest, there are other categories that may pique your curiosity such as:
Feel free to have a good look around.
What else is there?
If you are new to the site and just want to randomly browse, you can read our latest published articles that are listed on the main site landing page.
We are also active on other forms of media so please follow us on there for immediate updates which you can share and comment on.
What are evidence-based reviews?
The mainstay of our product reviews and nutrient guides are evidence-based.
When reviewing a product, I can give my anecdotal evidence, and this is available.
However, there are studies that are available from reputable sources (government, universities, journals) that outline the results of numerous subjects administered ingredients under observation to provide a much clearer and more reliable picture.
As such, published articles, where applicable, will be supported with links to these credible external sources to clarify their effectiveness.
However, we are not just about ‘theory’. Products are tried and tested. Practices are, ahem, put into practice.
Sometimes just because a product or exercise yields great results in a controlled environment such as laboratory testing, it may not offer the same effects out in the field.
This then can provide impartial information for the reader to have a greater appreciation of products and how they may perform for the consumer.
Evidence-Based Analysis
We aim to update the pages on this site as regularly as possible with the latest and relevant studies based on clinical trial evidence from reputable and reliable sources such as:
- https://www.cochrane.org/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
- https://www.guidelinesinpractice.co.uk/nhs-centre-for-reviews-and-dissemination/300454.article
- https://journals.bmj.com/
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/health/index.cfm?pg=projects
This team is ever-growing and looks to include professional personal trainers, nutritionists, neuroscientists and medical professionals.
But we are not just ‘armchair’ critics. Theories are put into practice and we are all involved in competitive sport.
Ben, the editor, is a devoted weight lifter, loves cycling, skiing, playing rugby, and now finds himself being put through his paces with the Army Reserve.
All factual claims are followed by specifically applicable references to provide you with truthful and transparent information.
How is this site funded?
Running and maintaining a free resource is time-consuming – this is the biggest cost.
The site was initially established as a hobby and side project, but as time went on it became clear that to produce quality content more time was required, this meant sacrificing a day job with benefits and security – a big leap indeed!
To make this possible, and to ensure that you have a great user experience, it was decided that ads wouldn’t be suitable.
However, an alternative option was for affiliate links.
This means, that in some cases, clicking on external links may earn us a commission to fund maintenance costs.
However, these would only be for products that are considered to be of the highest quality by responsible companies.
Moving forward…
We will continue to improve existing and create new, rich content, yet, we certainly would like feedback.
We can only improve with constructive criticism. If there is anything you would like to see us write about or investigate feel free to use the contact us page, but please do not worry about us then using your details to spam you.
We don’t like spam, just like we do not like annoying pop-up ads, one goal is to make it as clean and easy as possible to use this site.
Contact
Pages are released frequently so keep an eye out for the latest material on here and on the TestosteroneJunkie.com facebook page.
You can also follow me on twitter, instagram, Linkedin, and Google+ or watch my videos on our YouTube channel.
Feel free to email me: [email protected]
Or use the Contact Us page function.
Privacy Policy
We take your privacy seriously and it is not something we wish to encroach.
Please take a look at our full Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Policy
By now you should be aware of our cookie policy as there is a pop-up to new visitors.
If you are really concerned, interested, or bored out of your mind you can read the Cookie Policy again.
Disclaimer
All posts, pages and content is written by myself or contributors with our own independent views and experiences of products, training programs, and nutrition.
All product reviews are based on my experiences, trials, testing and publicly available scientific studies – links to the sources are provided.
Affiliate Disclaimer
In order to comply with legal obligations and for transparency this site makes use of affiliate relationships to fund the continued development and costs of maintenance.
Any products that have a link to their own site may credit this organization with a commission if you proceed with a purchase.
This form of monetization helps increase your user experience by omitting ads and pop-ups.
Please also be aware that there are only relationships with products that are considered to be beneficial and effective.
These are carefully evaluated relationships with the very best products that are used by myself.
Medical Disclaimer
No information contained in this website should be used by any reader to disregard medical and/or health-related advice or provide a basis to delay consultation with a physician or a qualified healthcare provider.
You should not use any information contained in this website to initiate the use of dietary supplements, vitamins, herbal and nutritional products or homeopathic medicine, and other described products prior to consulting first with a physician or healthcare provider. Testosteronejunkie.com disclaims any liability based on information provided on this website.
Testosteronejunkie.com is operated by Ben as part of Isambard Industries Inc., which broadcasts to the world from a small village called Calverley in Leeds, United Kingdom.
If you wish to join our list of contributors please contact me via the contact page or on the Facebook page explaining a little about yourself, your relevant qualifications, and what you would like to write about.
