Pure Muscle Nutrition

Ricco Carrasco, Owner of Pure Muscle Nutrition

A Veteran Owned, Family Run Nutrition Shop in Albuquerque

Ricco Carrasco's fitness journey started in the military. He's a disabled veteran, and back in his prime he was into heavy lifting, a discipline that really gets hammered in when fitness is part of your daily orders. He grew up on the East Coast and ended up in New Mexico almost by accident, stationed in Clovis before opportunity pulled him to Albuquerque in 2000.

Ricco and his wife started Swole Physique, a fitness apparel brand, close to four years ago. Pure Muscle Nutrition already existed under different ownership, run by friends of the family. When those owners decided to close up shop, they came to Ricco first. He and his wife took over and merged the two businesses into what customers see today. Today Pure Muscle Nutrition is very much a family operation. Ricco and his wife, an avid runner with her own background in nutrition, run the West side location together. His stepson, Jared Romero, manages the East side.

There's a family thread running through that origin story too: Jared's connection to bodybuilding started in high school, and the coach who trained him early on happened to be the same person who owned Pure Muscle Nutrition at the time. Years later, that same coach reached out to Ricco about taking over the store. What started as a coaching relationship turned into the foundation of a family business.

Education Over Quick Sales

What sets Pure Muscle Nutrition apart from other nutrition shops is the conversation that happens before anything gets purchased. Ricco and his team make a habit of finding out why someone wants a particular supplement before selling it to them. Did they see it on TikTok? Are they chasing a trend an influencer mentioned? Or is it actually the right fit for their goals and health history?

That approach comes from watching customers waste money on things they didn't need or weren't ready for. As Rico puts it, "There's no magic pill, no magic injection - you have to work for it," and the team would rather tell a customer that plainly than sell them a cart full of products that won't move the needle. If a customer's managing a condition like diabetes, that gets factored into the recommendation too, because the wrong supplement can do more harm than good.

"We're the bartenders of the muscle building industry... people come to us, we hear stories about coaches, about the supplements they're taking, experiences good and bad, how they did in shows... it's a safe haven in here."

Products You Won't Find at a Big Box Store

A lot of the products on the shelves at Pure Muscle don't show up at Walmart or Target. Many suppliers intentionally avoid big box retailers because they're serving a smaller, more specialized community, and Pure Muscle Nutrition carries what those suppliers won't sell elsewhere. One example is a protein bar out of Arizona with only eight ingredients, all of them pronounceable, twenty two grams of protein a bar, and ten flavors that actually taste the way they're labeled. Pure Muscle Nutrition is currently the only shop in New Mexico that carries it.

The shelves also carry whey, isolate, and plant based proteins for different digestion needs, a creamy rice product designed to refill carbs after a workout, and a flavored liquid egg white protein that tastes nothing like the raw eggs bodybuilders used to choke down decades ago. Every recommendation comes back to the same idea: quality over quantity, and a product that's actually right for the person buying it.

Jared Romero, Manager of Pure Muscle Nutrition's Eastside location

A Trainer Who's Walked In Your Shoes

Jared's own story with fitness didn't start in a gym for vanity's sake. As a freshman he was extremely thin and dealt with being picked on for it, and building size took real, sustained effort before supplements and training turned things around. It's part of why he doesn't judge anyone who walks through the door, whether they're carrying extra weight, trying to gain it, or anywhere in between. He's been on the other side of that struggle, and he wants people to know it's possible to come out the other side too.

"That's what I want everyone to know when they come in here is, I'm not judging you how you look. If you're oversized, if you're underweight, whatever, I've been in your shoes. And it's possible to come out of those shoes. There's a goal for everybody. So don't be ashamed to come in here and tell me 'I'm struggling with this.' Because I can help. I've been there." - Jared

That empathy shows up in how he runs the East side location day to day. He rotates through about five nearby gyms, treating each one almost like a home gym, handing out samples and getting to know the regulars. He also trains clients personally, works alongside IFBB Pro Jordan Moore, the shop's head coach, and leans on his own background in graphic design and social media to keep the store's presence fresh online. There's already talk of spinning the training side into its own dedicated brand.

Bringing Albuquerque's Bodybuilding Community Together

Pure Muscle Nutrition sponsors every major bodybuilding competition in Albuquerque, including multiple OCB and NPC shows each year, and backs individual athletes through a growing group called Team Swole. It's all about pulling together a community that Ricco feels has historically been scattered into small, disconnected pockets. The shop sponsors the NPC Project X competition in September and traveling out to Arizona to support Wings of Strength's Rising Phoenix event, an all female professional and amateur competition they've backed for several years running.

What to Expect When You Walk In

Ask Ricco what he wants a first time customer to feel, and the answer comes quickly: comfortable. Between social media, well meaning friends, and family, most people already have more fitness information than they know what to do with. Pure Muscle Nutrition exists to cut through that noise, whether the person walking in is a teenager trying to make weight for a wrestling season, someone starting their very first bodybuilding journey, or a parent just hoping to feel better before a summer trip. Every customer gets the same thing: a real conversation, and a recommendation built around them instead of around a sale.