What’s the best pre-workout?
A question we get asked a lot is “What is the best pre-workout?” And the answer is…… IT DEPENDS!
There are 2 main reasons why you would want a Pre-Workout, and those are:
1) Stimulants
You want an energy boost of some kind, whether it be because you’re working out early in the morning, or you just want a little pick me up. These are things like Caffeine.
2) Nitric Oxide Boost/Pump
More nitric oxide means more blood flow, better performance, and improved cognition. It has a hand in your cardiovascular, nervous, immune, and GI systems. Helping improve the performance of all of them.
L-Citrulline is one thing you’ll find in any pre-workout that boosts Nitric Oxide. Usually all you need is about 4g. And don’t confuse that with L Citrulline Malate, where the Citrulline comes in a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 with Malic Acid. You want 4g of PURE L-Citrulline at least.
There’s other ingredients like Glycerol or Betaine that increase water retention in the muscles to get bigger & better pumps as well.
But here’s the catch! It’s hard to get the best of both worlds. Stimulants are vasoconstrictors, this means they constrict your blood vessels and make it harder for blood/oxygen to move into the muscles and brain, which is the direct opposite of what Nitric Oxide does. This is why it’s common to have increased blood pressure from stimulants like coffee/caffeine.
The more stimulants, i.e. higher than 150mg of Caffeine, the more vasoconstriction there is. And it’s not like taking more nitric oxide boosting supplements/ingredients will completely counteract this effect either.
So when you ask, “What is the best pre-workout?” You have to ask yourself, what do you care more about? Feeling energized or getting the nitric oxide boost/pump?
If you don’t care for stimulants, then you can go for a non-stim like Ectoplasm by Black Magic or Neuro Pump by Innovapharm. Both even have some nootropics for extra focus, cognitive enhancement, and mind to muscle connection. The nootropics can help be a replacement for the stims without the vasoconstriction.
Or maybe you want just a little bit of stim? There’s pre-workouts like Pump & Focus 4.0 by Like a Pro carrying 150mg of Natural Caffeine (about 2 cups of coffee worth) and clinically dosed Nitric Oxide boost/pump ingredients. Or Prolific by PEScience if you want something a little cheaper & more basic, but still dosed high enough with the Nitric Oxide alongside 160 mg of Caffeine. They even have L-Theanine to help calm down the jittery anxious effects from stimulants, as well as protecting the brain from stimulant damage.
Maybe you want to go more midway like 250 mg of Caffeine? There’s MVPre 365 by Innovapharm with 10g of L-Citrulline. You can even half scoop it and still get a decent pump if you want to use it as a low-stim.
Then we get to high stim territory, and that’s things like BZRK by Black Magic or The One Pre by Alpha Supps where you get 350 mg of Caffeine and some nootropics. You still get a little pump, but obviously it won’t overwrite the vasoconstriction from all the Caffeine. There’s even the new MVPre 3.0 by innovapharm that upped their L-Citrulline to 10g and still has nootropics.
Then there’s REALLY HIGH STIM like 9Volt by Like a Pro, which has 400 mg of 3 different kinds of caffeine and a hefty dose of dopamine inducing ingredients like L-Tyrosine. Or Mother Bucker by Bucked Up, which also has 400mg of Caffeine.
Conclusion
There’s no such thing as “the best pre-workout”, it really comes down to what your goal is and what you want to use the pre-workout for. You go high stim if all you want is some energy, and you don’t care as much about the Nitric Oxide Boost/Muscular Pumps. You go low stim or no stim if you don’t care about the stimulants. Or you go about medium if you want to try and get more of both worlds.
Most pre-workouts use generally the same ingredients. Just pick the one that’s dosed correctly and aligns with your goals!
If you want to check out our stim Pre-Workouts, click here
Non-Stim, click here