You’ve probably considered buying a pre workout for yourself if you are a beginner or a regular at the gym or play a certain sport.
You may have heard of the legendary effects of a pre workout supplement from a friend, trainer or athlete and wondered if it is actually true that pre workouts can boost your performance or if the effects are largely exaggerated.
To answer your question; pre workouts definitely enhance your performance and can provide you with more stamina for your particular sport so that you can take your skillset to the next level.
Let’s explore how to choose the best pre workout for sports.
What is a Pre Workout
Pre workout supplements are a special formula that contains a blend of ingredients designed specifically to boost your performance for physical activities, including sports.
They come in the form of a flavored powder that mixes with water to produce a drink that can be consumed before exercise or sports.
There are thousands of formulas that exist, each with their specific ratio of ingredients that produce stamina-enhancing effects that can prolong and boost your sports activities.
Many athletes consume pre workout on a regular basis and get used to its effects, which improve your training or sports sessions by a significant margin.
The main ingredients found in pre workouts include caffeine, amino acids, beta-alanine and creatine, and many brands offer a different ratio of these key ingredients that are known to improve performance.
However, you should be careful when choosing a particular pre workout because many brands do not offer the best quality, and you may feel some side effects if you choose the wrong one.
Which Ingredients Determine The Best Pre Workouts
Many of the pre workout ingredients improve your focus and enhance blood circulation, resulting in greater pumps and better muscle activation.
Nitric Oxide Precursors
Nitric oxide is a substance produced naturally by the body to dilate blood vessels and improve blood circulation.
Pre workout supplements often contain pre cursors to nitric oxide that your body can use to produce nitric oxide.
These pre cursors include L-arginine, L-citrulline, and other sources of nitrates like beetroot juice.
Adding these compounds to a pre workout has been known to boost exercise performance, indicating that nitric oxide levels certainly rise significantly.
Caffeine
Caffeine is a stimulant that is added to pre workouts in order to boost energy levels and increase focus.
Many of the top athletes often take caffeine before their training sessions, either in the form of coffee or pre workout. It has been known to enhance alertness, memory, and performance.
Some studies also provide evidence for caffeine being a natural fat burner that can boost your metabolic rate.
Creatine
Creatine is another substance that is naturally produced by the body, but in lower quantities than is available in a pre workout.
It is stored in muscle, where it breaks down to Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), which plays a significant role in providing energy and muscular strength. Creatine is also available as a standalone formula, which many bodybuilders and power lifters use to increase their repetitions at the gym.
Sports athletes also benefit greatly from creatine in pre workouts because it allows them to recover faster from running and sprinting while providing more energy to do the activity in the first place.
Supplementing this ingredient on top of your pre workout can ensure that you are benefiting from the increased muscular endurance that carries over extraordinarily well to your sports performance.
Creatine normally has phases where you take up to 10 grams daily to store enough of it in your body, and phases where you ‘cycle it off’ so that your body doesn’t develop a tolerance or becomes completely reliable on the ingredient.
Beta Alanine
Beta alanine is essentially an amino acid that is used a lot in pre workouts because it prevents the buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, allowing them to work harder and for longer durations.
Normally, your body experiences a lactic acid buildup, which can be felt as a burning sensation in the muscle when it is being overworked, and it is produced to counter the effects of a lack of oxygen available to the muscles.
Lactic acid buildup creates an ‘oxygen debt’, which basically means that the body cannot complete the process of respiration and remove this lactic acid, resulting in a lowering of performance.
Oxygen debt refers to the amount of oxygen needed by the body to remove the lactic acid, and replenish the body’s lost reserves of oxygen.
Beta-alanine effectively prevents lactic acid from saturating in the body, and leads to the characteristic tingling sensation that most pre workouts with beta-alanine produce.
It is completely harmless, which is something beginners should know so that they can actually learn to enjoy it and think of it as a cue to indicate the effects of the pre workout supplement.
Branched-Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs)
Many pre workout formulas often contain a blend of branched-chain amino acids that are known to be useful in preventing muscle loss and reducing effects of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
BCAAs are also available as a standalone product with different ratios of leucine, isoleucine, and valine, the main BCAAs responsible for noticeable effects.
There was some controversy back in the day that branched-chain amino acids do not have significant enough effects that many supplement companies were claiming through their research, and accusations were made stating that supplement companies were funding research to exaggerate the results of BCAAs to sell the product.
The cheapest BCAAs formulas you can find contain a ratio of 2:1:1 for the three main BCAAS listed above.
The more expensive versions boast a ratio of 8:1:1, with leucine supposedly being particularly helpful in preventing muscle loss, which made it a favorite for many who were dropping weight and aiming to preserve as much muscle mass as possible.
Final Verdict
Pre workout supplements are an excellent addition to your training sessions for sports and the best pre workout can be found from some of the reputable brands selling the product.
It is interesting to note that a very famous pre workout called Jack3D was banned because it was found that some of the ingredients in the supplement were MDMA derivatives.
Many experts agree that oxyshred pre workout has been known to produce dramatic results in sports athletes looking to boost their exercise performance.