If you’re looking for a pre-workout supplement, you want to consider your options. Many pre-workout formulas offer different benefits, but at the same time, they’ll have some similar ingredients to actually maximize your workout and provide you with both energy and nutrients. In this guide, we’re going to give you some quality tips for getting the best pre-workout supplements out there.
Table of Contents
What’s in the Ingredients?
As you may notice, there will be a high amount of vitamin B’s, some caffeine, and even amino acids in a pre-workout formula as compared to the normal workout shake you’re used to consuming. These are geared to mainly give you a healthy boost of energy, not protein. The best ingredients that you may find in a pre-workout shake is caffeine, creatine, essential amino acids (like taurine), and even beta-alanine and betaine. You may even find some nitric oxide compounds (no, not nitrous oxide) to give you some of the strongest boosts.
How Often Should I Take a Pre-workout Formula?
The key to this is to take it about 10-20 minutes before you actually begin to start pumping iron or do your workout routine. You’ll want to often eat these with a healthy meal or snack, or even in conjunction with your protein supplement so you can get the most nutrients. You have to keep in mind, that these aren’t designed to fill you up, they’re designed to pump through your body so you can get a swift kickstart to get you going. With that being said, you want to have something that can help you to absorb the numerous nutrients that are in your pre-workout formula.
What Does Each of the Ingredients Do?
This is a very common question, but here’s the answer in a nutshell. The caffeine is to give you a little bit of stimulation, just like it would if you drank a cup of coffee. It’s also extremely effective during resistance and endurance training exercises. You’ll want to do your homework and make sure that it delivers about 3-6mg of caffeine per kg of body weight when you pick your best one (that’s about 300mg if you weigh 180 lbs.
Creatine is an amino acid that helps with enhancing performance and energy as well. Amino acids help you build more protein so you can pack on lean muscle. Nitric oxide is actually helpful to increase the blood flow to deliver all of the nutrients and even your protein shake’s nutrients into your body.
Betaine is an ingredient in some that help our bodies increase our own nitric oxide and creatine production in our bodies. This also helps when provided in some generous doses to increase the amount of training you can peak at and give you a high-quality punch so you don’t wear out quickly.
Conclusion
If you’re wondering if you even need a pre-workout formula, we’re going to tell you that’s a definite yes – especially when you’re trying to do high endurance and weight training. This can help give you the boost you need without actually crashing. Of course don’t forget to stay hydrated and always do proper cool-down exercises when you’re done, as well as eat something like a veggie or healthy low-sugar fruit when you’re done exercising.
