What Makes a Good Pre Workout Supplement?

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Hey, again, this is Mike from us for life. And I’m. here to talk to you about pre workouts. That’s going to be the subject of this podcast. Like I said in the previous one, I’ll do a little mini series on different types of supplements. So we already talked about [00:03:00] fat burners and now let’s talk about pre workouts and the next week I think let’s do protein powders next week.

Probably those are the three more popular. people, but I guess post workouts are popular too. So we’ll do protein powder and then we’ll do post workouts after that. So pre workout drinks, if you’ve been exercising for a period of time, you’ve probably tried quite a few different ones. I know I have, now I just use my own obviously, but over the years I’ve.

It’s one of those are, these are the pre workout is one where you have no brand loyalty, almost in a lot of cases, you just tried new things that come out, as I’ve gotten more educated I don’t really even see a need to try anything else. And I’ll talk about why, and that’s not necessarily, I’m not going to say that.

My prework, my pre-workout pulse is the absolute best that’ll ever be made. But when you actually start looking at the formulation, we’re gonna talk about some other ingredients and some things that you’ll find in other pre-workouts. It’s hard to beat the formulation, and that basically boils down to I spend a lot more money to produce that product [00:04:00] than other companies spend on theirs.

And I’ve spoken about this before, but if you haven’t heard, I’ll just recap it. briefly. And the big problem with the supplement industry and the biggest reason why so many supplements suck is their expense. Good supplements are expensive to make. And as we’re going to go over some different ingredients for pre workouts that take something like citrulline malate or beta alanine or beta E.

And these are good ingredients. These are molecules that have quite a bit of human research behind them. They improve performance. It’s true. but you have to take enough and that’s the problem. So it’s sure it’s easy to put a couple grams of citrulline malate and maybe a gram of beta alanine or less or maybe a little bit more than that.

Maybe, 500 milligrams of betaine, no problem. That’s not very expensive, but when you look at. how much you have to take to actually get the effects that you want. And when you look at the research on that, you’ll find that like citrulline malate, if you want to be, if you want to be in the higher end of the clinically effective [00:05:00] dosage, which is really what you want.

You want to take a look at the research that’s available and go, what’s the average dosage used. And malate, that would be six to eight grams. In terms of beta alanine, that would be about five grams. And in terms of beta ene, that would be between two and three grams. So the problem becomes, that’s expensive.

As a company, as a, me, I have to spend quite a bit of money to produce every bottle of Pulse. So much so that the retail model. Simply would, will never work for my company because I would have to sell Pulse. If you take a standard retail model, I’d have to sell Pulse for probably a hundred dollars to make it work.

That’d have to be the retail price to support, to go from the manufacturer to me and from me to the wholesaler and from the wholesaler or distributor To the retailer. And the retailer to you. That’s just how it, that’s how it shakes out and. So that’s really, I hate to just make broad generalizations, but that’s why a lot of the products, if you’re buying your products from retail [00:06:00] locations and if you’re buying from brands that are in retail locations, there’s a very good chance that product is shit.

It’s it sounds bad or whatever. And it sounds like maybe I’m just trying to pitch my stuff, but I’m not, I’m just telling the truth because it just costs. Too much money to make good products and from all the, the markups that need to occur from the supplement company to the wholesaler or distributor to the retailer to you.

It just, pre workouts for instance, most companies are spending three to 5 per bottle for their pre workouts. And when you don’t have that budget and you go, where are we going to put it? And they’re only really a handful of ingredients that have good science behind them, but now you can’t afford to use the right dosages.

So you just do what, you just go, Oh, we’ll put two grams of sit malate, we’ll put, two grams of beta alanine, we’ll put 500 milligrams of betaine, we’ll put some stimulants and we’ll throw some other random shit in there for the, last little dollar that we have left and [00:07:00] and we’ll just hype it up in our marketing.

And that’s what a lot of pre workouts are so much so that you would be probably better off just. Having some caffeine pills and picking up some citrulline malate and some beta alanine and betaine in bulk. You’d be better off doing that and just in dosing it yourself than wasting your money on a lot of the pre workouts that are on the market.

And again, this just comes down to, there’s only, the budgets are very tight to create these products for these companies that are in retail locations. And that also, of course, means that, of course, they’re sold online as well. And that doesn’t just apply to pre workouts. That applies to almost everything.

Protein powders are an area where supplement companies are actually willing to take a hit on pro Their margins are very low on protein powders. In fact, I know some supplement companies, they don’t even make money on their protein. They actually, because of this, you’re looking at the retail the markups that that you want to see basically would be an eight to 10 times manufacturing costs.

[00:08:00] So you know I can tell you for a fact that high quality, like to create a high quality whey protein isolate to, to, a kilogram, 2. 2 pounds of protein. And once you’re all done, if you’re spending, 20, 20 a bottle, You’re doing well. So look, obviously you can go to GNC and you can buy that product for, and let’s say you buy it for 50.

But still those numbers don’t work for retail and where that goes in terms of protein, which we’ll talk more about next week is it’s just different shenanigans. Low quality proteins, protein blends that are actually just trash and amino spiking. And anyways, we’ll get into that stuff next week, but a little teaser for next week, but back to to my point with just, this is the problem.

This is the problem with fat burners. This is a problem with pretty much all products, joint products. Like I can, it’s easy to just to throw some glucosamine in a pill and cause it’s cheap and you sell it for 3 a bottle when it costs you 2 a bottle. But to create a [00:09:00] good joint supplement, you’re not going to see, there’s no, you’re not doing it for 8 a bottle.

So with pre workouts, you’re better off just getting some caffeine pills and buying in bulk, some sit malate some beta alanine and like maybe from bulk powders or whatever. And some getting, I don’t know, you might be able to find bidding in bulk. I’m not sure actually, my point is in the long run, you’re going to save money and you’re going to get a better performance boost out of just making your own then you will wasting money on the latest and greatest crap from the big name companies.

Now, with that being said, what’s let’s actually just take a step back to our pre workouts. Are they necessary? Are they really going to make a difference? No, they’re not necessary. Like all supplements, no supplements are necessary at all. You can get, you’re going to get the majority of your progress is going to come that you’re going to see in your body.

The majority of your muscle gains and your fat loss and your strength progression is going to come from your diet and training. Certain supplements can just help. Then that’s really the bottom line and they’re not going to I, a lot of people, they [00:10:00] just default back to the old 80 20 thing.

I would say supplementation is probably even less than 20%. It depends what you’re trying to do. It depends on the circumstances. So if we were just going to default to that, I could say, it’s probably semi accurate to say somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of everything that’s going to happen in your training and in your body is going to come from your diet and your exercise routines.

And the supplements can help speed things up really is what it boils down to. But you can get to wherever you want to be. You can get strong, you can build a lot of muscle, you can get lean without supplements. Certain supplements will make it faster. That’s really the most accurate way to put it.

So with pre workouts in particular, The reason why I personally like a pre workout and I’ve always used one is because a good pre workout is going to improve your performance in the gym. It will, you’re going to have more energy. You’re going to get more reps in depending on what’s in the pre workout.

You’re going to be a bit stronger. And over time that translates into something. If you also are eating and you’re also working on a good program if you can, increase the weight on the bar a little bit quicker [00:11:00] over the course of Two years, let’s say where you, let’s say made it because of your pre workout, you were 10 percent faster in, in just progressing because you hit your reps, you’re able to add weight.

You hit your reps, you’re able to add weight. Then, there is a real benefit to that. And then there are some ingredients like let’s say beta alanine can, there are some mechanisms where mechanisms whereby it can directly. Influence muscle growth, the research is not conclusive on this and it’s not really something that I went in selling my pre workout, which has about five grams of beta alanine per serving.

I don’t really push that we have it in the copy because there is, I believe one, there are, I think it’s one or one or two studies that we cite there that show that it, there are some ways that it can directly lead to. greater muscle growth over time, but what is very well established is that it can improve your performance, especially with endurance get more reps or just with endurance activities.

So that’s what I like about pre workouts [00:12:00] is just simply. You’re a good one is going to give you better workouts, and there’s also the experiential aspect to where you, if you have better workouts, if you enjoy your workouts more because you have more energy because you’re more focused. There’s value in that.

There’s a lot of that. That’s like similar with diet, right? There’s that old saying, the best diet is when you can stick to there’s truth in that because, so long as you follow the basics of energy balance and you have your macronutrients fairly balanced, at least your protein is up, there are a lot of different ways to get to your goal.

And in terms of exactly like how many carbs are you eating? How many fats can be eating? What types of foods are you going to be eating? When are you going to be eating? How are you going to handle your cheating? So to speak, are you going to refeed? Are you just going to save calories? Are you going to go over you’re just going to go crazy for one meal a week.

So there’s a lot of different ways to get there. And the most important thing is that you choose a way that. It actually works for you that you enjoy it shouldn’t when you’re dieting and same thing with your training, you shouldn’t be dreading, every meal you shouldn’t be dreading every day or you shouldn’t be like, I can’t wait until this stupid diet ends.

[00:13:00] Now I’ll to be fair, cutting does get a bit old after. 68 weeks, but again, all in all, it should be a fairly straightforward almost pleasant experience. And on the training side of things, same thing. You could have the best possible training program ever that is laid out that is programmed.

Perfectly in terms of the scientific side of things, but practically if you can’t stick to the program, if you just don’t like it, if it doesn’t fit your lifestyle, if whatever, then it’s not a good program for you because yeah, you could follow, some great program. For, let’s say four weeks, and then you’re starting to not look forward to your workouts anymore.

You start skipping, compliance goes out the window, and that is, you’re worse off doing that than following a program that’s maybe mediocre. It’s not great, but you enjoy it and you stick with it. Now, obviously, ideally, you find a program that you can do that is well built and gets good results that you can stick with and enjoy.

Over, in my opinion, this is something to be looking at for the longterm future. [00:14:00] I want to still be in the gym, 30 years from now. And yeah, sure. Some things change with age and you had it, you have to make recovery more of a priority and you might have to give some more attention to your soft tissue work to make sure that you don’t run into any problems that are going to then cause injuries or whatever.

But for me, I’m interested in finding something that I’m going to enjoy. Over the long term, not, Oh, I’m going to beat the shit out of myself for six months and then feel like I never want to work out again. So to that point, if a good pre workout makes you enjoy your workouts more than, that’s a reason to, to use it.

If. However, you don’t pre workouts for whatever reason, maybe you don’t do well with caffeine. Maybe you just don’t want to take supplements at all. Then that’s totally fine. You still can get to your, where you want to be. And it’s not not taking pre workout is going to dramatically influence the progress or the process.

So that’s the general kind of overall breakdown of pre workouts. It is one of the supplements that I myself. Use [00:15:00] and will always use and I do recommend and for the reasons that I gave, so let’s talk about a few different ingredients. So we can start with some stimulants first that you’re going to find in pre workouts and obviously the most common stimulant is caffeine and caffeine is great.

I will link an article down below for those watching and then if you’re listening. If you go to muscle for life and search for caffeine, you can find a, an article I wrote debunks some myths about caffeine, that it causes insomnia or it’s bad for your heart or it increases risk of cancer.

There’s a lot of random shit out there. That’s just not true. It’s been scientifically proven to not be true. And in fact, research shows that Moderate use of caffeine. Now this is the key. Moderate use of caffeine can actually improve or reduce the risk of heart disease because it improves blood flow.

That’s one of the things that it does. Now what is moderate use? Again, you can go dive into the article if you really want to get the details, but basically There was one, I think it was made analysis or just a systematic review that concluded basically that about 400 milligrams per day for [00:16:00] the average person, if you keep your intake at or below 400 milligrams a day, you’re at no risk of harming your health whatsoever.

Some people can go quite a bit higher and be fine. And some people can’t, but that’s just a good baseline. number to keep in mind. So caffeine and pre workouts is good in terms of clinically effective dosages of caffeine. You’ll probably want somewhere around a milligram per pound of body weight is a, is a good ballpark figure to, to get the performance enhancing benefits.

That’s what you want. Caffeine can make you stronger. Yeah, obviously it gives you energy, but you can it’ll give you strength. It’ll increase the amount of reps you can do, but you have to take enough. And then where you’ll see really pronounced benefits in that regard is going to be closer to the two milligrams per pound of body weight.

Like my pre workout pulse, it has a 350 milligrams. per serving which we came to base just on the average person that’s going to be using it. And a lot of people, they’ll just do one scoop on some workouts, two [00:17:00] scoops on other workouts and so forth. So caffeine is good. Now, since we’re talking caffeine, I just want to quickly talk about one other molecule that I really liked that works synergistically with caffeine to improve nitric oxide production.

So you’re going to get better pumps in the gym and it improves cognitive performance and mood. And it’s actually noticeable and it’s called theanine. It’s an amino acid that’s found in tea and when you have it with caffeine, usually about a one to one ratio. Like in my pre workout we have it’s a one to one ratio of caffeine to theanine.

You will notice that your energy rush is smoother on caffeine that you don’t crash. And the real thing you’re going to notice. And if you’re like most people, is a dramatic improvement in just in mood. Like it’s actually strange. The first time that I tried it, I almost felt. It was almost like a euphoria type of, I felt like I was on some sort of drug or something but it’s just an amino acid in tea.

And it just when you take enough of it with caffeine, you feel very good. And it also, again, it really, it helps with, smooth out that the [00:18:00] caffeine rush. So it comes on and then you don’t crash. So just a quick. little, it’s not a stimulant, but if you see athenine in a pre workout then that’s cool because you don’t, it’s just not a molecule that you find in very many products.

You’ll find it sometimes in nootropics that also have caffeine, but it, it’s not, it’s just not really out there very much. I guess it’s not really known about it’s also not particularly cheap. So maybe that’s a reason why synephrine is another common stimulant that you’ll find in pre workouts.

Thanks. And sinephrine is a great molecule. It’s similar to a fedrin. It’s just a a weaker form of a fedrin, but molecularly it’s some, it’s similar. And the thing that I don’t quite like about seeing it when I see it in pre workouts is as a stimulant, it’s very weak. You’re just not going to feel it.

Very much. If at all, I have synephrine in my fat burner, which is called Phoenix because it helps you lose fat faster. And it actually works synergistically with caffeine. So it makes sense in a fat loss product. Most fat loss products have [00:19:00] caffeine. Mine doesn’t because I always didn’t like that about fat burners is I don’t want to have to, I don’t want to get my caffeine from a pill.

I want to get my caffeine from a pre workout or, I don’t drink coffee. I don’t like coffee, but a lot of people obviously do. And yeah. That’s one of the things they don’t like about fat burners is they either have to now add another 200 milligrams of caffeine a day or more depending on the product and on top of their caffeine intake or they have to reduce their caffeine intake and both of those are not good.

So I left caffeine out of mine. Put Senefrin in because I know that people that are going to be wanting to lose fat, we’re going to be getting caffeine from somewhere, at least the vast majority of them. I don’t think it’s a bad inclusion in a pre workout sinephrine but in terms of stimulant, you’re not going like caffeine is far stronger than sinephrine.

Just based on feedback from people that have used or that are using Phoenix. The most I hear from people is they feel like they have a little bit more energy. Like it, it peps them up a little bit and keep in mind that’s 50 milligrams of sinephrine, which is quite a bit higher.

Like in most pre workouts you’re going to find anywhere from 20 to 30 milligrams but the proper clinically effective dosage, if [00:20:00] you want to really go by the studies is 50 milligrams. With a full dosage of sinephrine even cat even stimulant sensitive people are, feeling it a little bit.

So that, that gives you an idea. And these are people that get. Amped up on 200 milligrams of caffeine. So RINs cool molecule, but I don’t think it has a great value if it’s in a pre-workout, unless it’s being sold as like a pre-workout for fat loss. And then again, though, it needs to have enough.

Yohi being, let’s talk about Yohi being, because you’ll find this in a fair amount of pre-workouts as well. It is a stimulant. It’s a molecule that. plant that grows in Africa. And I’ll link an article down below. If you’re listening go to muscle for life and search for stubborn fat and read and check out that article.

Cause I dive into the, to the nitty gritty details of how it works in the body. But to keep it simple basically fat cells, they can, you have chemicals in the body that attach to fat cells that either what the point of these chemicals is. To induce the fat cell to release the energy that it’s storing to be burned.

And those chemicals have to bind to what are called receptor sites. And there are two types of [00:21:00] receptor sites on fat cells. One type when these chemicals bind, it causes the fat cells to release the energy that they’re storing within them. The other type of receptor doesn’t it, it the fat burning chemical will bind, but nothing will happen.

So what you’ll him being does, is It blocks the activity of the receptor site that blocks fat loss. In a sense, it’s like taking the brake off of fat loss, basically. Now, like synephrine yohimbine, it makes sense to have in a fat loss product, although you need to know that If you are not in a fasted state, if your insulin is not at that low baseline level, then you’re not going to get any fat burning benefits from yohimbine.

A lot of companies that sell yohimbine don’t really tell you this. They just say you’re going to lose fat faster if you take yohimbine. And that’s simply not true. Unless you are. Really? Two things. One, you want to be taking it with exercise when adrenaline or general levels are spiked and two, it needs to be fasted exercise, which I’ll link an article [00:22:00] down below.

If you go to, if you go to muscle for life, if you’re listening, you search for fasted cardio, you’ll see an article on this that I explained why this is. But so that’s something you need to know for using him being for fat loss. Now, when it’s in a pre workout, obviously that still applies. It’s not going to help you lose fat if you have eaten food in the last couple hours but it still can have a stimulatory effect, him being, it’s not a dangerous molecule but it’s one that you need to be careful with because.

It’s some people don’t respond well to it. Some people get jittery. It can raise blood pressure. So if someone has high blood pressure, then it’s not recommended that they take your him beam and pre workouts 10, if pre workouts are one of the more commonly abused supplements in that. If somebody takes, let’s say you recommend two scoops of this pre workout and they take two scoops and they like it and they go two scoops are good.

So four scoops much must be better. And if it’s just caffeine and then you overload yourself with caffeine for one day, that’s not going to necessarily cause any problems. But if you were to take a ton of [00:23:00] yohimbine. It actually could be a problem like depending on your situation, it could be a big problem or it could just be that you get really jittery, you’ll you can get nauseous and really not feel good.

So I don’t like you him being in pre workouts really for those reasons. I think it really needs to be in a separate product and needs to be dosed low per pill. So you can, or that’s also, it’s it’d be hard to do this with powder, so I like it in a pill form. Per serving, I could say I like to see a low dosage so you can work your way up toward the clinically effective dosage for fat loss, which is about two milligrams per ki 0.2 0.2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

Like I have yohi mean in one of my, it’s really a pre-workout fat burner. It’s called Forge, and I believe there’s two to two and a half milligrams per pill, I think is what we. Decided on so you can work your way up to the amount that you need. Cause I recommend that if you’re going to take your hand being you start at 0.

1 milligrams per kilogram of body weight to assess your tolerance and make sure that, you don’t get all [00:24:00] jittery and that you feel okay. I get a little bit nauseous from your him being about 30 minutes after I’ve taken it. But it’s very minor. I don’t even, it’s hard to even notice.

It’s a very slight discomfort type of feeling. But some people get very nauseous from it, which actually usually goes away in time. So that’s why I don’t really like him being in pre workouts. Another stimulant that is popular right now is higienamine or maybe it’s hygiene. I’m assuming higienamine.

It’s actually hard to find the pronunciation on it, but it’s an interesting molecule that binds to the receptor sites and fat cells. If you just remember what I was talking about with you, him being, it binds to the receptor sites that cause the energy in the fat cells to be released the good receptor sites in that regard.

And that’s why it’s often sold as a fat burner, but there’s just, there’s limited, it’s just not very much evidence that it actually has enough of effect to make a difference. There are, there’s a bit of animal research and a bit of speculative type of research, but. We don’t really have a conclusive [00:25:00] human studies on it.

Like we have with synephrine or ephedrine, which again hegemony is similar to if you want to dive into the scientific details of it, head over to examine. com, look up hegemony and go look at the section on a fat metabolism. And it’s one of these things that when we have human research good in vivo.

Human research, we may see, Hey, this stuff does work. And if that’s the case, then it’s something that I would consider including in my products. But right now it’s an unproven type of thing that may or may not actually help you lose fat faster. So I wouldn’t say that I don’t like seeing it in pre workouts.

I don’t put it in any of my products because I really want to stick. Two ingredients that have good human research behind them, because again, when we’re talking clinically effective dosages with and with hegemony, I believe it’s about 40 milligrams would be the theoretically what you would need.

Again, it’s expensive and also you only have so much space in every serving. Take a citrulline malate. You need eight grams. That’s not only [00:26:00] expensive. That takes up a lot of space in your scooper. So of course, 40 milligrams does not take up space in a scooper, but it can take up space in your budget.

So when I’m looking at, and I when the, I’ve worked with with a few other people when we’re looking at, okay, what are we gonna do with this formulation? A big part of our consideration is how much money can we spend on this product and where can we put that money to we want to put that money into ingredients that we know are going to work based on the research we try to stay away from speculative ingredients.

Because that’s not personally what I would want. I want something that I know is going to work and that’s what I want to spend my money on. All right. Let’s move on now to beta alanine. Beta alanine is an amino acid that increases the amount of an, of another substance called carnitine in the muscles and that improves performance.

There’s quite a bit of research in beta alanine. It works. It’s good. You just have to take enough and enough is about five grams. That’s there was a meta analysis that was done, I think they reviewed about, it was in the twenties, somewhere [00:27:00] between 20 and 30 studies done on the performance enhancing benefits of beta alanine.

And that was the conclusion is the average effective dosage that you find in all this research is about five grams. You’re not going to find five grams in most pre workouts because again, it’s expensive. Most pre workouts have between two and three grams, which would be the low end of, you’re going to.

That will probably make a bit of a somewhat of a difference in your training, but it’s not going to be nearly as much as as the companies are claiming in their marketing. Probably. If you want to claim the benefits that are seen in these different studies, you have to use the same dosage.

Beta alanine is good but you need to take about five grams. All right, next is citrulline. Citrulline is another amino acid and it breaks down into the amino acid arginine in the body which then has different performance enhancing benefits. Citrulline does work and it’s actually more reliable than arginine.

So a lot of companies, they’ll use arginine in their pre workouts or just in like their nitric oxide type of products because one of the [00:28:00] benefits is it improves blood flow. So you get better. pumps. But arginine is just, it’s an unreliable molecule in some people’s bodies. It has the desired effects and in other people’s bodies, it doesn’t.

Similar to CLA actually, like I used to recommend and take CLA, but then as more research came out, it showed that it CLA is for fat loss, right? It’s usually sold as a fat loss product, not for pre workout. But that it’s just unreliable like arginine, some people are going to take CLA and it’s going to help them lose fat a little bit faster.

And some people are going to take it and it’s not. So I stay away from those types of ingredients. Again, I want something that there’s no reason why this shouldn’t work for everybody. That if it doesn’t work, it’s the strange non responder. Like sometimes people, they don’t get any benefits. They notice nothing from creatine.

That’s very unusual. Most people, if you take five grams of creatine a day you’re going to notice an increase in strength within the first week or two. And and you’re going to build muscle faster as well. That’s not always the case a hundred percent of the time, but I don’t like going with an ingredient that works maybe [00:29:00] 50 50 percent of the people are going to notice a benefit and 50 percent of people are not.

So citrulline is a better. Alternative to arginine because and again, if I, there’s, I, if you go check out, if you go to legionathletics. com and go check out the page for pulse or pre workout, you can go look at the studies that that that were done on citrulline to, if you want to dive into the details, but it’s metabolized into arginine, which then, which raises arginine levels.

more reliable, more reliably than taking arginine directly. And then the effect of that is it improves your performance, your physical performance. And again, this is particularly for endurance. You’ll find that you have more muscle endurance and more cardiovascular endurance with citrulline now. You have to take enough.

And again, I’ve said this several times about eight grams. I’d say six grams is okay. Eight grams is best. If you’re, if your pre workout has two grams, that’s not very exciting. That would be quite a bit lower than the clinically effective dosages so much so that you probably wouldn’t find any studies really that are [00:30:00] showing any.

physical performance benefits at two grams, another performance enhancing ingredient. You’re going to find in a lot of pre workouts it’s popular these days because enough research has accumulated on it is betaine. It’s a molecule found in beets and it can improve strength and it can improve muscle endurance.

It’s a good, it’s a good molecule. It works. There’s good research on it. Clinically effective dosages are about one and a half to two and a half grams with two and a half being the safer. And that’s what I included my pre workout. That’s what I want personally. When you look at just the body of research on it, if you’re taking two and a half grams, it’s like creatine, you’re going to get something out of two grams.

But you’re going to get a lot more out of five grams. So with betaine, it’s about two to two and a half grams is really the dosage that I like to see in pre workouts. And yes, it’s good. It acutely improves performance, which is what we want. So now let’s talk creatine. I’m sure you’ve heard of creatine.

It’s a peptide, which is two amino acids bound together. Probably the most researched molecule in all of sports nutrition. It works. There’s no question. Creatine helps you build strength and build muscle faster. It improves muscle [00:31:00] recovery as well. You have to take enough about five grams a day is the standard dosage.

You can load it. You don’t have to loading it. We’ll just get it to accumulate in the body faster, which loading protocol is usually like 20 grams a day for five days. Then you go to five grams a day. You don’t have to cycle creatine. It doesn’t shut down anything like steroids or anything like that.

Of course it’s effects are not nearly as pronounced as steroids, but that’s obvious. Now as good as creatine is I don’t like seeing it in a pre workout for a couple reasons. One is there’s some research that shows there are two or three studies that I’ve seen that show that it is more effective when taken after a workout.

So that’s a simple reason why it’s in my post workout supplement, which is called recharge and it’s not in my pre workout. And also there’s some research, I believe there’s two studies now, two that I’ve seen that show that caffeine may actually interfere with some of its benefits and the mechanism is not fully understood but the effects were seen.

So for those reasons, I just don’t include it in the pre work in my pre workout. Also, you have to take five [00:32:00] grams to get benefits. And five grams is quite a bit when you look at it in terms of a serving size. And again, you’re coming down to with a powder. You only have so much room per serving and also financially they have so much room.

So I think it’s creatine makes more sense in a post workout, which is why it’s in my post workout and not in my pre workout. But I wouldn’t say that, it’s not something when I see creatine in a pre workout where I’m like, Oh, that’s bad. But I think it’s better suited to a post workout.

All right. So those are the main performance enhancing ingredients you’re going to find in pre workouts. So let’s talk now about some nootropics. First would be alpha GPC. You’re going to find that. That’s a, it’s a supplement that contains a molecule called choline, which turns into a subtle choline in the body, which is a neurotransmitter.

And there is some research that shows that it can improve cognition, but it’s at about three, I think it’s three to 600 milligrams is the clinically effective dose. And I know because I’ve one I’ve taken it separately. Just bought some, just taking it to see if I notice any effects, which I didn’t personally, I don’t know.

I’ve [00:33:00] tried different new tropics and didn’t really notice much, but. But there is research that shows that 600 milligrams can improve cognitive function. And I actually wanted to put it in my pre workout because, just because, I didn’t notice anything doesn’t mean that the research is invalid and there are a lot of, there are a lot of people out there that swear by alpha GPC and that they do notice a difference.

The problem though is it tastes terrible. I couldn’t get it to taste. It’s really bitter really sour. So I did try to put it in at 600 milligrams. And but, I it’s one of those things that if sometime we can figure out the flavor system, then I would put it in but for now it’s not there.

And if you find alpha GPC in another pre workout, it’s not going to be at 600 milligrams, I guarantee you, because it’s expensive and there’s no way the companies are going to want to spend as much as it costs to put it in at the proper dosage. So it’s one of those things, just know that if you see 50 milligrams or a hundred or 150 milligrams of alpha GPC.

You’re probably not going to notice anything whatsoever from that. And there is one study that showed that I [00:34:00] believe it was 600 milligrams increased power output in people that were working out and increase the growth hormone production from the workout, which the growth hormone production is really a, whatever, it sounds cool, but it’s not really gonna make a difference.

terms of anything. But an increase in power could be cool as one study. When I was wanting to put it in pulse, I wasn’t really even, I didn’t even, I wasn’t sure if I was even going to cite that study cause it’s one standalone study. I’m not totally convinced that’s going to be reliable enough to really like.

Cognitive enhancing properties. Again, though you have to take enough, another cognitive enhancer that you’ll see as Hooper ZIN. A Hooper ZIN also turns into a set of cooling in the body, which is a neurotransmitter. And like alpha GPC, there’s good research in humans that shows that it does have these cognitive enhancing properties.

Again, I’ve tried it. It’s actually, I was, so I’ve tried alpha GPC Hooper seen a, and Ooh, there was another one, one or two others. I tried them separately. Didn’t really notice anything. I tried them together and really all I got was crazy, weird, bad dreams. [00:35:00] And also I just started feeling weird. I don’t know.

It was actually strange. I guess it’s messing with brain chemistry. Anyways I tried these, just to see if I, cause my, my, my work is thinking and writing and I thought, Hey, if I can get a little bit of a mental edge, sure, that, that would be great. Didn’t really notice much other than I started getting weird nightmares, like bizarre I think some of these might be also people that are into lucid dreaming might take them.

I don’t know. I’ve never really been into that myself, but anyways, Hooper’s DNA is if I were. Going to make a nootropic, which I don’t really plan to. I would be looking at Hooperzine A. Again, its effects are mild. And same thing with Alpha GPC, just so you know, the effects, even at the proper clinically dose, clinically effect dosage, it is going to be mild.

And that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t made a nootropic yet, because I don’t feel like I could make that great of a product. The molecules that I like the most already in my multivitamin, become a Bacopa minieri is very good for this, but it’s in my multivitamin. So I’d be double dipping on the multivitamin, which doesn’t quite make sense in terms of dosage of [00:36:00] Huperzine A.

It’s very small, 50 to 200 micrograms per day is what you’ll see in the studies. And again, Personally, when I’m looking at creating products or going over formulations, I like to be in the middle or higher range, a higher end of the clinically effective dosage range, unless I have a good reason to be on the lower end.

And that would be normally where if research shows that you’re not going to see much more in terms of benefits on the, if you go above let’s say 10 milligrams you’re going to have, whatever you’re going to see. 90 percent of the benefits are going to occur in that 10 to 15 milligram range, but there are a couple of studies that show if you go up to, if you double that, you might be able to squeeze a little bit out, a little bit more out of it.

Then there’s a, you just, I have to weigh, is it worth that extra money to get an extra 10 percent out of this ingredient? Or should I take that money and then I can include a completely different ingredient that provides different benefits or benefits that are synergistic or stack with it or whatever, [00:37:00] which by the way, watch out for companies that use that as a pitch where they’ll say, yeah we only, yeah there’s only two grams of citrulline, but you don’t need more than that because all the benefits are at the two gram or two, three gram.

That’s not true. The, all the dosages that I’ve talked about so far. That’s what you want to see. So in terms of Hooper’s DNA and really alpha GPC in, in a pre workout or just nootropics in general in a pre workout. I like the idea. I like the idea of something that can improve focus really.

That would really what we’d be going for, right? It’s not like we’re not taking a test when we’re in the gym, so we don’t need our memory to work better or different cognitive functions to necessarily work better or ones that related more to learning, but focus, improved focus is is a nice benefit, which is why I have.

Something called CDP choline, which again, it’s a choline supplement breaks down into a subtle choline in the body that’s in forge. And that’s in that because forge you have to take you, it’s for fasted training. And one of the downsides of fasted training is your workouts can suck. You can just be mentally not quite with it.

[00:38:00] Because when you’re carved up, you have a lot of energy. Carbs are a nootropic. So I put CDP choline, which has some good research behind it showing that it has these cognitive benefits. That’s in my, my fasted pre workout product. So the idea of having nootropics in a pre workout, I like the problem.

And I can tell you from. Per from firsthand I know, is that it’s expensive to do. I was willing to spend that money on Alpha GPC ’cause I would like to get one more ingredient in pulse. We’ve tried Alpha GPC couldn’t get it taste right and and I it tasted bad. It just was , it was out of the question.

It’s expensive, so just know when you see something like hooper A or Alpha GPC or Ace Alcarnitine, which we’ll talk about next Al Car. Just know that good ingredients, but I guarantee you the underdose cause they’re very expensive. So let’s talk about Alcor, Acetyl L carnitine, a form of carnitine that has good research, good human research showing it does have cognitive benefits.

And that’s another one. That’s what I’m working on actually right now to put in a [00:39:00] pulse. It doesn’t taste good. It has a weird detergent type of aftertaste to it. So we’re working on it. We’re trying to, it’s. I’d be willing to sacrifice a little bit of flavor for Alcar, but it can’t taste like detergent, which is where it’s at right now.

And just as a random aside, flavoring is a bit of an art. It’s actually interesting. Obviously I’m not doing it myself. I, the manufacturer I work. people, but it’s not something you go to school for and just learn how to flavor stuff. It’s something that like you learn from somebody who did it for 30 years and he learned from somebody else and it’s you yourself come up with your own concoctions and ways of doing things.

So some people can be, really bad at it. I’ve gone through so many samples of so many things with so many different companies and been amazed at how disgusting some of their, like, why would they even send this? It tastes so bad. Why would they even send this to me to even try it? Do they have taste buds?

Do they actually think anybody would buy this and not immediately just spit it out? And same [00:40:00] ingredients. Versus manufacturer that I’m with they have a very good flavor team where he makes stuff taste good. Like we’re coming out with this new protein soon. That is delicious. I guarantee you it’s the best all natural protein powder that you’ve ever tasted.

It’s so good. And I think it stands up to even the stuff that’s full of chemicals and that has quite a bit of fat and carb as well. That some of these proteins that are out there, they taste like milkshakes and water because there’s, there’s just so much flavor and so much crap in there to make it taste good.

I would be willing to say that the new protein that’s coming, which will be here in about four weeks it can go toe to toe with even that stuff. Flavoring is tough. So we’re working on Alcar. The clinically effective dosage of Alcar is a wide range. I think there’s studies as low as about 600, 500 milligrams and then up to about two and a half grams.

You want to be in that two gram range. We’re looking at how really what we can do on the taste. Two and a half grams would be the top. I’m not sure we can make that taste right, but I also don’t think we need [00:41:00] that much to get the benefits that we want out of it. So we’re playing with it. Again, so Alcor it’s a good ingredient.

It’s a good thing to see, but keep that dosage in mind. Cause you’re, again, you’re not going to find. I’ve never seen a pre workout that has even two grams or maybe I don’t even know if I’ve seen one that has one and a half grams because again, it’s expensive. All right. So now a couple of the random things you’ll see BCAAs in a pre workout.

BCAAs are very overrated. They obviously they’re very popular and they’re sold like they’re going to help you. Almost like they’re like natural steroids or like they’re like, like they’re creatine or something. And it’s just not true. I wrote an article on this, which I’ll link down below.

And if you’re listening, go to muscle for life. com and search for BCAA and where I just debunk the BCAA craze where they’re actually useful is if you’re going to be training fasted. Then having leucine, which is an amino acid that stimulates protein synthesis before your fasted workout makes sense because muscle degradation is higher during fasted training [00:42:00] and the leucine will counteract that.

But the problem with BCA is getting your leucine cause it’s branching amino acid. That’s BCA. It’s leucine. Isolucine, baleen, three amino acids. Really all you want is isolucine is very weak in its stimulation of protein synthesis and baleen does basically nothing. So you’re paying for three amino acids when all you want is one.

And so that it just gets expensive. And also leucine does have a slight insulin response. It’s not very high. It’s not like food. So that’s me being just nitpicky. Like personally before I had the product that now I use, which is. Again, it’s my own the pre workout fasted, that fasted pre workout fat burner which has instead of leucine, cause I used leucine, I would just buy bulk leucine.

I would take about three grams before my faster training. And that was it. HMB though, is a metabolite of leucine means it’s a molecule that when your body metabolizes leucine, one of the things that it breaks it down into is HMB. And HMB again, is a different [00:43:00] supplement. It’s very overhyped. It’s not going to help you build muscle faster.

It’s not going to. It’s not like creatine where there is good research and what is well established is it’s very anti catabolic, which is what we want before our fasted workouts. And it has no insulin response and you don’t need very much of it. About two and a half grams or so is what you need. And that’s why it’s in my fasted pre workout fat burner and not Lucina, not BCAs.

So BCAs in a pre workout. Is stupid. Basically, there’s no reason for them to be there. They’re just cheap and people associate BCAs. It’s just BCAs have been well marketed. So people hear it’s one of those things like it’s protein powder. Of course it works like BCAs, they work creatine, it works.

So it’s more just a marketing play to put BCAs in a pre workout because then you can just throw something else in your copy and be like, and it has BCAs and you don’t even have to necessarily even claim all that much. Because a lot of people are they’re indoctrinated to think that BCAs are good.

So you put some in your pre workout, it’s cheap and it [00:44:00] gives that, another bullet point to sell. So there are a few other random things you’ll see like taurine and tyrosine, which really have no reason to be in a pre workout. I won’t even go into them just don’t even pay attention to them, pretend they’re not even there.

So that’s everything. Obviously you’re going to find some other random type of things in pre workouts, but the more popular ones we’ve pretty much covered everything that they really bank on, that they say that’s what makes their stuff really good. So I hope this helps you make better decisions in your pre workouts again.

If you want to check out my pre workout, it’s called pulse. You can just Google legion pulse, or you can just go to legionathletics. com. And go look at it there. And I’ll link it down below for, people that are watching this. And if you don’t want mine, that’s cool. I recommend that you just make your own just know though, even bulk aminos, they are expensive.

You’ll see that it’s not cheap. Even if you were to go recreate pulse it’s going to cost you more to buy it and actually recreate it in bulk. Then it will cost you to get it from me just because they’re expensive amino acids and you are getting [00:45:00] as a consumer you are paying, a premium for.

For pure amino acids, but that’s just because there are large dosages in impulse. But if you want it to scale it down, let’s say you didn’t have every ingredient that pulse has and you went something simple, caffeine, citrulline malate, and beta alanine. That’s where I would say if that’d be like the bare minimum pre workout, if you were to do that caffeine is up to you depending on how much you weigh and depending on your tolerance, anywhere from 200 to 400 milligrams, eight grams of sit malate and five grams of beta alanine.

And maybe mix in some zero calorie sweetener because it’s not going to taste good because citrulline malate is gross. Just warning you that would be a good base for a pre workout. All right. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you found it helpful. And next week we’ll talk about protein powders.

So I will see you then.