The clients I work with and people who have asked to know my stance on supplements is that you don’t need them.  They are beneficial in many ways to help you toward your goals but being an industry that is non-regulated (in the US), the number of supplements that the body can ACTUALLY benefit from pales in comparison to the number of products on the market.

Avoiding going into every detail, I was questioned specifically about my take on Pre-Workout – would I recommend it or not?

First let me start by saying, I do not recommend any sort of supplement as necessary without consulting your physician, and I am not affiliated to any specific supplement brands.  Any products mentioned in this post are based solely on my own experiences and products that I have or currently do use.

Like any question you’d ask to a good trainer, the real answer to, “Should I use pre-workout or not?” is:

“It depends.”

It depends on… your level activity; intensity of your training; goals; sensitivity to caffeine; sensitivity to other ingredients in pre-workout; desired effect; etc.

Let’s take a step back for a minute and address the question of what pre-workout is and what is it for/what it does.

Pre-workout is a supplement designed to help boost your energy, blood flow, and focus prior to a training session to help you achieve optimal results.  The main ingredients are typically caffeine, beta-alanine, creatine, niacin, and a series of other random ingredients depending on what that products manufacturer decides it wants to add.

Focusing on those main ingredients, caffeine is typically the most common at about 200-250mg per serving in most pre-workout products.  Caffeine is a stimulant designed to increase your energy levels and clear fog from your brain to allow focus on the task ahead.  Beta-alanine is a vasodilator which means that it increases the size of blood vessels to allow for a large flow of blood through the body.  This helps training sessions as your blood is able to move more oxygen into the muscles to help them maintain work and continue pushing even when you want to quit.  Creatine is the main component of muscle building supplements and helps our bodies avoid atrophy.  It doesn’t make you bulky but can cause you to retain a bit of water.  If you are on a muscle building or toning program, creatine is a great supplement to incorporate to help build strong, sexy, toned muscles.  Finally, Niacin works also as a Nootropic supplement focusing the mind and boosting energy. 

Beyond those, there can a ton of other filler ingredients that get advertised as helping you, but ultimately probably don’t do much.

In rants I’ve made countless times, there are only about 3-4 supplements that I would recommend someone take if they were interested (of their own volition) that would aid their training – caffeine, creatine, protein, multi-vitamin, maybe a couple of others.

As you’ll notice, caffeine and creatine are on that list – 2 of the biggest players in most pre-workouts.

The reason I support those 2 ingredients is that they are the only supplements that have conclusive evidence of working for those who take them in addition to regular training.

The problem with pre-workout products isn’t the ingredients that work, it’s all the filler that’s unnecessarily added. 

As I mentioned earlier, the supplement industry is largely unregulated in the US and with that, companies will make claims of ingredients being in their product but the factual amounts they claim could be skewed.  Often seen as a “proprietary blend” they will throw random amounts of ingredients together in the bottle so they can claim they are in the product, but without having to disclose how much.  Also, they do not have to be pure substances and often these bottles of product are filled with artificial flavors and ingredients.

So going back to the original question – should you use pre-workout or not – I would say that you can if you feel like you need an extra boost to get through your training sessions.  It would be beneficial to those who train in the morning, but be wary of later training sessions especially with pre-workouts that use caffeine as it could disrupt your sleep patterns, which we don’t want to do.  Thankfully they have started making less potent or stimulant free products which primarily utilize Vitamin B12 (or Vitamin B Complex) to provide energy, but be aware that an over intake of any vitamin can be detrimental.

I personally DO use pre-workout, and though I’ve used many different kinds with varying results, the one I continually come back to is Pre-Kaged by Kaged Muscle.  It’s a product I’ve followed since its inception 5-7 years ago and believe works best for me.  They use natural flavors and no artificial additives.  It’s pricier than most products – but like anything else, the higher the price, generally the better the quality.

If you are sensitive to caffeine, niacin, or any other ingredients, I recommend not taking it – there are other alternatives and unless you are training extremely hard on a regular basis or professionally, a cup of regular coffee (black, no added cream, sugar, etc) has enough caffeine to get you through.  There is a movement by many fitness/health “guru’s” I have seen via Twitter of eliminating caffeine all together and switching to local honey as their stimulant, but honey is basically just natural sugar which gives you an energy boost like caffeine would.

If you’re not sure if you should take a pre-workout or have questions about ingredients, you can always consult your physician to be sure.

Need an extra boost in the gym and not a coffee or energy drink consumer, maybe give pre-workout a try, but know you don’t NEED it, but it can help push through tough training sessions.  Just be careful of ingredients and going overboard with caffeine later in the day.

Have any other questions about supplements or ingredients you’ve seen on your pre-workouts, drop them in the comments and I’d be happy to answer!

Special THANK YOU to my client Terry D for posing the question in the first place.