A conversation with Momentous' Akwasi Frimpong on label accuracy, NSF certification, and building a wellness routine that actually holds up
Akwasi Frimpong has crossed a lot of finish lines. In 2018, he became Ghana's first skeleton Olympian, and the first Black athlete ever to compete in the event at the Olympics. In 2020, he became the first African to win an elite, US-sanctioned skeleton race. But ask him what he wishes more people understood about that journey, and he doesn't point to the finish line at all.
"People see 'first skeleton athlete from Ghana' and think it was a straight line to the Olympics," he says. "It wasn't."
For over a decade, Frimpong lived undocumented in the Netherlands, chasing a dream he wasn't legally allowed to compete for. He switched sports three times: sprinting, then bobsled, then skeleton, each time hitting a wall, each time looking for another way through. "The part people miss isn't the finish line," he says. "It's how many times I had to start over with nothing guaranteed."
That relationship with endurance didn't end when he retired from competition. Today, Frimpong serves as Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Momentous, a performance nutrition company, a role that carries the same question forward: what does it take to keep performing, long after the finish line.
"I look at everything in my life holistically," he says. "I ask myself: what can I do to perform better at life as a whole? That includes sports. That includes how to be a better father: how I take care of my family, how I play with my kids. I take care of my body so I can have better output. Those are just some of the things, in regards to wellness, that are important to me."
It's a philosophy he now carries into fatherhood as much as fitness. He and his wife, Erica Shields-Frimpong, co-founded the Hope Of A Billion Foundation in 2022 to bring sports, business, and education opportunities to underserved communities, work inspired, he says, by his own childhood and a promise made to his grandmother. But when asked what he wants most his daughters to take from his story, his answer has nothing to do with medals.
"The legacy I want to leave for my girls, and for the next generation of dreamers, isn't just that I made it to the world stage and represented my country and my continent, or that I built a career in corporate America," he says. "It's that they see what it costs to get there, and choose to pay it anyway. Endurance isn't something I talk about. It's how I live. I want my girls to know that giving up was never the plan, no matter how long the odds or how long the road."
Ask him for one piece of advice, and he keeps it simple. "I'd say start with good sleep, good food, and take it one step further to see what type of supplement you need to help you achieve that holistic performance-for-life goal."
At Momentous, that philosophy shows up as a company identity Frimpong describes as the "anti-supplement supplement company," one built, he says, on science over trends. "It's not about trends. It's about truth."
That claim shows up most clearly in the products Momentous is known for. Their creatine, recently reformulated under what the company calls its "Signature Spec" standard, is their flagship, best-selling product, alongside their Whey Protein Isolate. Both carry NSF Certified for Sport® certification. That credibility runs deeper than the product line, too. Momentous products sit in the locker rooms of every NFL team, and the company works with more than 150 professional and NCAA sports programs.
Central to that claim is a certification most consumers have never heard of, but that Frimpong explains whenever he has the opportunity to: NSF Certified for Sport®.
"It's the gold standard for third-party certification," he says. "It's what Olympic athletes and the US military use to make sure there's no lead or other substances that shouldn't be in there."
Because supplements aren't regulated the same way medications are, certification isn't automatic: brands must pass lab testing to confirm their products match their labels and contain no banned or harmful substances, undergo an on-site manufacturing audit, and maintain ongoing inspections to keep the certification current. It's the standard used by Olympic athletes and the U.S. military, and one Frimpong says any consumer can check for themselves, on any brand, by simply flipping the label over.
Frimpong is equally direct when it comes to mythbusting. Asked point-blank whether women should take creatine, his answer doesn't hesitate.
"A woman can definitely take creatine," he says. "Don't take it from me, take it from Dr Stacy Sims, one of our partners. She's very well known for speaking on women's biology, that a woman is not a small man." His advice: look up Sims's research directly for the full explanation of why.
Frimpong's advice, whether about sleep, supplements, or showing up for your kids, comes back to the same test every time: does it hold up when you check it closely? For a label. For a routine. For a life.
Find Momentous at LiveMomentous.com, on Amazon, at select gyms nationwide, and at your local GNC.