Best Pre-Workout Supplements Buying Guide

When you’re needing that awesome boost of energy throughout your heavy workload, or even more often – your workout routine, you’ll probably opt for some sort of pre-workout supplement, no matter whether it’s in powder form or grabbing a Red Bull®. Unfortunately, those energy drinks and even pre-workouts have a constant debate on whether they’re healthy for you. 

What’s important is that you’re getting the right ingredients and only following maximum dosage guidelines. Don’t need such a powerful kick in the rear to get going? You can take half a dose. For energy drinks, consuming more than three energy drinks are bad for you because they’re often linked to being high in glucose, leading to an unwanted “crash” or sugar rush. Therefore, you can greatly benefit from pre-workouts instead if you follow our pre-workout guide.

What Should You Look For in a pre-workout?

First off, you need to know what ingredients are the most important. Of course, many of these have doses of up to 500 mg of caffeine, and if you don’t have a high caffeine tolerance, this can be dangerous. Most of the best pre-workout formulas on the market have about 300-400 mg of caffeine, which is a pretty safe result.

Another thing you want to make sure of is that you’re not getting “special blends” of trademarked nutrients in which you don’t know what’s in them. Those can actually have a lot of fillers and may not be healthy for you. What you do want in your pre-workout though is essential amino acids, and make sure that it has nitric oxide boosting ingredients (like beetroot powder for example) as well as creatine to kickstart your workout performance and endurance.

Consider the Cost Vs. Doses Available

Some pre-workouts are indeed better for you (or so they seem), but the downside is that you’ll only get 15 or 20 doses while paying more for them. What you want to look for is the dosages available vs. the price in order to calculate the price per dose. Those with a lower price per dose are often viable options as long as you follow the ingredient guidelines.

Avoid False Marketing

Aside from the marketing agents like company blends that they market that we mentioned above, pay attention for things like instant energy and other items which aren’t true. Pre-workout supplements should be taken about an hour or two before you work out, and they’re going to be working at their peak performance around these times, so don’t think that you should buy something that states it will give you instant energy (even vitamins that you buy from a store take a while to start working).

Also beware if your pre-workout has vitamin B12 in it in the form of methylcobalamin. This ingredient is synthetically made B12 and it can actually lead to possible false positives should you face drug tests at work and take this in high amounts.

Conclusion

If you follow all of the guidelines that we listed above, then you should have no problems finding the right pre-workout to help you get into the swing of things. Remember to not take it more than once a day and enjoy a maximum boost with optimum gains in your everyday routine.