How to Make your own pre-workout
WHAT THE SUPPLEMENT COMPANIES WON’T TELL YOU
The truth is that every top-rated pre-workout product on the market has nearly the exact same core ingredients in each category.
Those are:
Enhancement and Recovery: Beta Alanine, Betaine
Pumps and Lactic Acid Removal (NO): Citrulline, Agmatine
Delaying Fatigue and Heavier Lifting: Creatine, Taurine
Energy*: Matcha/natural caffeine
Electrolytes and Minerals*: Pink salt, epsom salt (magnesium)
*Although we didn’t use them in the video, these are great additions.
THE REAL PROBLEM
These ingredients and their dosages vary slightly by each company, but the main parts just don't change. Contradictorily, if one company does actually modify their formula based on some "new research" and are able to gain marketshare, others will often add that same change with little to no research into the subject. So then it becomes a worse idea to go sampling the newest products out there unless you're willing to either waste your money or be a guinea pig for these formulas!
One example of this is Nitric Oxide (NO). Science has told us for a long time that there are 4 NO-affecting chemicals found in the body: L-Arginine, L-Ornithine, L-Citrulline, and Agmatine (an L-Arginine metabolite). About 12 years ago the top rated NO product in most pre-workouts was L-Arginine. Then it switched to L-Ornithine, then L-Citrulline, then Agmatine and Citrulline, and today nearly every top product now uses an assload of either just Citrulline, Citrulline Malate, or Citrulline Malate and Agmatine. What's very funny about this example is that all of the sudden a couple years ago, there was a short fad of beet-juice extract being used in place of the NO-booster because beets contain high levels of Arginine. However, the amount of Beets that someone would need to achieve the levels of Arginine typically supplemented with would far outweigh any cost benefit a company would receive from adding it to their product. So the amount these companies were adding didn't do a thing except turn the powder blood-red and stain your clothes.
But the hype was so real that other companies adopted it without demonstrating it's effectiveness. Rather, most of them just added such a huge amount of Citrulline that any NO effect was from the Citrulline alone, while people thought that they were getting the "best pump ever" from the new combination.
We should have known better! The human body doesn't change much. Real research knows which chemicals do what. Such as with the NO example, those 4 chemicals mentioned are known to affect NO in the body. No other chemicals can have those same boosting effects unless they are chemically similar in structure and have been rigorously tested and proved better (and we would hear about it). So any supplement with a new NO boosting capability or claim must have at least one of those chemicals, or a pre-cursor that will lead to a higher level of ONE or more of those chemicals when consumed by your body. If it doesn't, throw it in the trash. It's worthless.
This same fact holds true for each of the main ingredients listed earlier. So why would anyone want to spend their money on the "next big product" that has essentially the exact same 5 or 6 chemicals that they could buy for so much less? Not only that, but all these pre-workout supplement mixes are filled with artificial colors, flavors and sweeteners! Not only are you spending a ton of money unnecessarily, you're also putting in terribly worse chemicals than should be in any actual fitness supplement.
Sometimes they'll even try to sound scientific and cutting-edge by using chemical names or plant species like 1,3,7-Trimethylpurine-2,6-dione or Rubiaceae Canephora.. which are really just caffeine and a coffee plant. Why would anyone want to buy a product with deception like this written all over it?
Some of you may even remember the brandname “CRAZE.” That company went hard in their pre-workout formula.. 7mg of pure amphetamine in every scoop! That definitely wasn't on the label! No wonder it sold so well!
MY POINT
You should only use what you know works: single ingredient powders purchased directly from suppliers or resellers. Amazon is a good place for competitively priced, decently-sized amounts of powder. Of course you can buy bigger bulk from suppliers for even cheaper, and that's exactly what the pre-workout supplement companies are doing.. except they buy them from the cheapest sources possible to increase their profit margins. Don't forget, when you buy a pre-mixed pre-workout supplement, and this is assuming the company has the highest ingredient sourcing standards, you are using the same main chemicals regardless of which one you buy. They are just in varying amounts.
Put simply, doing it yourself is simple, it costs much less, it’s customized just for you, and it’s healthier all around! The blatantness of this realization is so searing that it actually pains me to think about!
But now that you know what to do, just make sure to take all that powder with Blate Papes so you don’t have to worry about that flavor (or lack thereof)!