The Best Pre-Workout Supplements For Bodybuilding

odybuilding is a competitive endeavor where success can be achieved through consistent, dedicated, varied training routine, employing a proper nutritional regimen, adequate hydration, and consumption of dietary supplements.

While there are endless nutritional interventions (protein, amino acids, carbs, vitamins, electrolytes), they fall under the two groups pre-workout and post-workout supplements. Both pre and post-workout supplements help you get the best out of your training, the post-workout supplements aim at facilitating recovery and are taken post-workout. Pre-workout supplements aim at boosting energy and are taken pre-workout.

In this blog, you’ll get a list of the top best pre-workout supplements and an overview of how they affect the athlete’s peaking process to achieve their bodybuilding goals.

What Exactly Does Pre-Workout Supplement Mean?

A pre-workout supplement is a generic term used for a range of supplements taken before training. Pre-workouts are either a blend of performance-boosting ingredients or a single ingredient the function of which amplifies your performance when taken before training. A pre-workout supplement can be either in the form of capsule, powder, tablet, bar or ready to drink beverage. Pre-workout supplement on its own does not favour any bodybuilding results, but will give you the energy boost required to endure a challenging workout.

What Is the Best Time To Take Pre-Workout? How To Use The Pre-Workout Supplement?

As per studies, it takes 20-30 minutes for the pre-workout supplements to kick in. You’ll likely see the effects of pre-workout supplements within 30 minutes.

Pre-workouts are generally in the form of powder, which can be easily mixed with water or juice and consumed before the workout. Some Pre-workouts are in the form of capsules too.

CREATINE MONOHYDRATE

Creatine’s chief role in the body is to boost the potential energy (ATP) required to enhance muscle performance. Creatine supplementation amplifies the pool of intracellular creatine. In the body, creatine gets converted into phosphocreatine by creatine kinase. Phosphocreatine’s high-energy phosphate bonds facilitate immediate ATP replenishment. The faster ATP regeneration between resistance training sets allows athletes to maintain higher training intensity and muscle strength and improve the quality of a workout.

Creatine benefits exercise training adaptations and exert positive ergogenic effects on single and multiple bouts of short duration, high-intensity workouts.

Creatine is mainly suitable for sprinters, weightlifters, and team sports athletes who need short bursts of speed and increased muscle strength.

Related Article: Does Creatine Make You Gain Weight?

BETA-ALANINE

Intramuscular acidosis; is attributed as one of the major causes of fatigue during intense exercise. The accumulation of H+ ions in the muscle has been shown to disrupt the resynthesis of phosphocreatine. Carnosine plays a crucial role in muscle pH regulation. When you supplement with beta-alanine, carnosine is synthesized in skeletal muscle from the amino acid L-histidine and beta-alanine. By improving muscle carnosine content and total muscle buffer capacity, beta-alanine improves tolerance to fatigue and boosts performance during multiple bouts of high-intensity exercise and in single bouts of exercise lasting more than 60seconds.

Beta-alanine is mainly suitable for athletes performing repeated high-intensity exercise bouts like HIIT workouts, rugby, football, swimming, cycling, rowing, and middle distance running.

Related Article: Beta-alanine – An Irreplaceable Tool For Optimized Performance

AMINO BLEND

Some pre-workouts offer a varied blend of amino acids like arginine, creatine, citrulline, beta-alanine, taurine, carnitine, caffeine, and NAC, with some vitamins. The amino blend provides your muscles with the elemental ingredients that ensure peak power output for the whole gym session. Creatine enhances the phosphocreatine stores to be used for ATP generation, arginine works as a precursor to nitric oxide which helps in pumping up nutrients and oxygen to the working muscles. Caffeine stimulates the basal metabolic rate, and promotes fat burning, L-Carnitine fosters muscle endurance by increasing the potential for fat metabolism. Taurine improves time to exhaustion, and exercise tolerance, NAC increases serum cysteine and glutathione levels, attenuates fatigue, vitamins restore working capacity, and help the muscles recover rapidly.

The amino blend is suitable for resistance training, aerobic exercise, endurance training, or HIIT.

Related Article: The Ultimate Guide To Essential Amino Acid Supplement

CAFFEINE

Caffeine acts on the central nervous system as a competitor for adenosine in its receptors and inhibits the negative effects that adenosine induces on neurotransmission, excitation, and pain perception. This way, caffeine boosts mental alertness, and focus, and speeds up reaction time as you push through intense workouts. Caffeine increases time to exhaustion by boosting energy through increased lipolysis and its effect on sparing muscle glycogen stores. Caffeine has a hypoalgesic effect that decreases the perception of pain and effort during exercise; this effect possibly produces a more sustainable and forceful muscle contraction.

Caffeine increases sprint power, forehand stroke peak, total weight lifted and is suitable for aerobic performance, endurance workouts, HIIT workouts, and power performance.

Related Article: Caffeine Boosts Endurance Performance – Know How?

BEETROOT POWDER

The nitrate content in beetroot powder can enhance endurance performance by increasing time to exhaustion, increasing maximal oxygen uptake, and enhancing muscle contraction. Nitrate gets reduced to nitrite in the body by anaerobic bacteria in the oral cavity. Nitrate is then converted into nitric oxide in the stomach which induces several physiological functions in improving skeletal muscle function. Nitric oxide improves vasodilation of the blood vessels ultimately increasing blood flow to working muscles. This attribute of nitric oxide increases oxygen kinetics and nutrient uptake during exercise. Nitric oxide in beetroot powder improves the efficiency of oxidative phosphorylation, mitochondrial efficiency and reduces the breakdown of phosphocreatine.

Nitric oxide benefits aerobic training, cycling, swimming, treadmill workout, and anaerobic training like resistance training.

Related Article: Beetroot Powder Can Improve Athletic Performance – Know How?

Safety Tips On Pre-Workout Supplements

Not every pre-workout will offer the same combination of ingredients. It is crucial to read the label carefully before buying the supplement.

Make sure there are no stimulants added in your Pre-workout.

Drink a lot of fluids when on supplementation to avoid side effects like bloating, indigestion, dizziness, and fluid retention.

Consume the pre-workout as per the recommended dosage, do not exceed the recommended dose. 

Individuals suffering from hormonal disorders should consult a physician before embarking on supplementation.

A Pre-workout containing caffeine may interrupt sleep when taken in the late evening.

Pre-workout supplements help scale you to your goals faster by boosting energy, focus, motivation, strength, reducing muscle soreness & preventing the faster onset of fatigue… 

Whether you aim is to build muscle mass, achieve weight loss, improve your athletic performance, or burn body fat, we have outlined the best pre-supplements to take on board…

Also read: 5 Best Workout Supplements For Faster Muscle Recovery

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