What to do before a workout?

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Creatine L-Citrulline β-Alanine caffeine sodium Exogenous Ketones Branched Chain Amino Acids baking soda collagen Is there a Primal pre-workout supplement?refer to

A pre-workout supplement is a supplement or combination of supplements, usually in powder form, that is taken before a workout to improve your performance and enhance training adaptations. As fitness culture has grown and grown by leaps and bounds, so have pre-workout products that promise to improve your workout performance.

Pre-workout supplements claim to:

Improve energy efficiency
Increases muscle protein synthesis
Enhances anabolic response
Fueling your muscles
Improve performance

But do pre-workout supplements really work? Let’s take a look at some of the most popular and common pre-workout supplements to see if they really work as advertised.

Creatine

Creatine Helps us store more creatine phosphate in our muscles, which is one of the most effective and fast-acting energy systems and is suitable for high-intensity and fast-paced exercise such as weightlifting. Taking creatine:

Improve performance on every lift studied, especially the more complex, multi-joint, compound lifts like the squat and deadlift.
Improves strength and muscle growth, even for older adults.
Improve your sprint performance.

Creatine works. It improves performance in strength training, and it’s one of the few supplements I take on a daily basis. Creatine is especially important for vegans and vegetarians who can’t get any dietary creatine from meat and fish.

L-Citrulline

L-Citrulline is an amino acid that increases nitric oxide synthesis and improves endothelial function. In short, it improves blood flow. This enhanced blood flow to the heart and muscles:

Improves performance during strenuous activity.^Thirteen
Improves the “pump,” the feeling of muscles filling with fluid and blood. Important subjective feedback that makes lifting weights more enjoyable. Arnold Schwarzenegger once famously compared the pump to the sensation of sex. The importance of the pump is often downplayed by exercise scientists, but I’ve found it to be strongly correlated with better workouts and better fitness.

L-Citrulline works. Improving blood flow to all parts of the body can go a long way toward improving athletic performance—all over the place, not just in the weight room.

β-Alanine

Beta-alanine works best in longer workouts. In workouts lasting less than 60 seconds, it doesn’t seem to help. In workouts lasting more than 60 seconds, beta-alanine starts to have a beneficial effect on performance and ability.¹⁴

You know the beta-alanine is working when you feel a “tingling” in your muscles. This feeling isn’t necessarily pleasant, but it does mean you’re ready to start training, and if you train well, you’ll learn to appreciate that tingling feeling. Given the overall modest effects of beta-alanine in the literature, I’d wager that the tingling feeling acts like a placebo, sending a psychological signal to your muscles that they’re ready to work hard. That’s not to disparage them.

caffeine

Caffeine is probably the most effective pre-workout supplement in the world. It is certainly the most common. I wrote an article about Caffeine before exercisebut what can it do for you before a workout? Here are the gist:

Improves women’s upper body strength.¹⁵
Increase the desire to exercise.¹⁶
An interesting demonstration of the effects of pre-exercise caffeine supplementation was provided by a study that found that a ketone/taurine/leucine combination had no effect on exercise performance unless caffeine was added. Sounds good in theory, but to be effective, you need to add the boring caffeine.¹⁷

sodium

Salt is the most important Electrolytes The human body has a high salt content, and exercise increases the body’s need for salt. When you sweat, your body loses salt. When you lose salt, your muscles can’t contract effectively. When your muscles can’t contract, your body loses strength and mobility.

Instead of waiting to sweat out all the salt in your body, add a pinch or two (or three) of salt to your water before your workout.

Exogenous Ketones

Ketone supplements are a way to have your cake and eat it too. The idea is that you can eat whatever diet you want, take ketone esters or salts, and get the benefits of ketones without having to follow a strict diet. There is some mixed evidence that exogenous ketones can help achieve peak endurance training performance, but it’s unclear how helpful they are for the average exerciser. They can still be useful for many different health conditions. For more information, read my post Exogenous Ketones.

Be careful though. Some ketone supplements can send you running to the bathroom if you take too much. It’s hard to work out in the gym if you have to go to the bathroom every half hour.

Branched Chain Amino Acids

Branched-chain amino acids (leucine, isoleucine, and valine) are powerful stimulators of mTOR, a pathway for growth, anabolic recovery, and muscle gain. Most people don’t need BCAA supplements, either before or after a workout, but they can help some people.

BCAAs are most useful for those who train on a fasted stomach, as they preserve muscle, prevent muscle loss, and improve mTOR signaling after a workout.¹⁸ ¹⁹

BCAAs are also helpful for those who don’t eat animal products, as meat, eggs, and dairy are the best sources of BCAAs.

baking soda

Baking soda reduces lactic acid accumulation and acidity in your muscles, allowing you to train longer and harder without fatigue. Lowering muscle acidity also improves energy transfer, allowing your muscles to contract more powerfully. Take baking soda half an hour before training or competition, and you’ll enjoy a variety of interesting effects:

Reduce time to fatigue. You can exercise longer and harder. One study found that baking soda reduced time to fatigue by 20-30 seconds while cycling.²⁰
Improved recovery. Reducing muscle acidity allows your muscles to recover faster.
Increase repetitions. Baking soda has been shown to increase the number of repetitions that weightlifters can complete.^{twenty one}
For all runners, baking soda may reduce the runner’s high by inhibiting the release of endorphins, which have been shown to be a response to acidity.^{twenty two}
Baking soda definitely works. To minimize GI discomfort, take smaller doses throughout the day, 1-2 teaspoons total, at most, and avoid taking it after meals.

collagen

While this isn’t a classic pre-workout supplement that can significantly enhance athletic performance, collagen Taking 60 mg of vitamin C before a workout does improve collagen deposition in connective tissue. It is more of a pre-workout supplement with the long-term goal of increasing tissue elasticity and strength.

Is there a Primal pre-workout supplement?

If I were to schedule a pre-race workout, I would do this. Do:

Fill my bottle with 32 ounces of water. I usually use Mountain Valley Spring water and a stainless steel bottle.
Add a packet of LMNT. This is a great electrolyte supplement that provides one gram of sodium along with magnesium malate (which has an energizing effect) and potassium. Great taste and great results. A must have for the Miami Heat.
Add a scoop of creatine. About 5 grams.
Add two spoons Collagen Peptides.
Shake it well and sip it before and during your workout.

Baking soda is a good choice if you can tolerate it. You can add caffeine, but I prefer coffee. I occasionally add 20 grams Whey Isolate If I’m in the middle of a particularly hard, energy-intensive workout and haven’t eaten yet, I’ll take the powder. It’s a quick and dirty way to get BCAAs (and it tastes terrible).

That’s it. I’m not into crazy pills and powders – those days are gone. What about you? Do you take supplements before a workout?

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