5 Common Pre-Workout Red Flags

Let’s face it, some pre-workouts leave you feeling flatter than a witch’s tit.

That’s mainly because it’s too easy (and too profitable) for supplement brands to create terrible products when the general public don’t really know how to tell the difference between a good pre-workout and a bad pre-workout until it’s too late (e.g. after paying for it!).

I want to end that confusion in this article, so I’m going to show you five things which I consider red flags. If your current pre-workout makes any of these big mistakes, switch to a better product.

When you’ve finished this article, it’s also worth checking out my great pre-workout list.

🚩 It’s A Proprietary Blend

Many brands hide their formula behind what’s known as a proprietary blend.

This means you’ll see a list of the ingredients without the dosages.

The law which enables this was created during the early 2000s, when pre-workouts were fairly new to the market and brands were wary of rivals stealing their formulas.

It’s not really something we see nowadays, because we know that if a rival brand wants to discover a formula they can simply take a product to a lab and have it tested.

We’ve known this since 2006, when i-Satori released the ground-breaking H-Blocker. This was the first world’s pre-workout to use beta-alanine, and they slapped a proprietary blend on it to stop competitors from stealing their idea, only for beta-alanine to appear in tons of new pre-workouts later that same year!

Fast-forward to now and the proprietary blend technique simply gives manufacturers a shady way to hide an under-dosed formula from customers. This can be a way for them to charge premium prices for very poorly made products which are dirt cheap to create.

The loser is the customer.

🚩 It Contains Taurine And Caffeine

These two ingredients provide some great training benefits, but they should never be used simultaneously.

A study published in Pharacology, Biology & Behavior showed that taurine is an antagonist of caffeine, which can make you feel sluggish and fatigued when consumed at the same time. Ever randomly felt tired after drinking a pre workout? This is most likely why! (1, 2, 3, 4)

“When taurine and caffeine are consumed simultaneously, taurine appears to reverse caffeine’s effects on vigour.”

That means you’ve gotta choose one, and considering caffeine offers such vast training benefits, I recommend prioritizing that.

Look for a pre-workout which contains 200-400mg caffeine, and then if you also want to use taurine you should grab a separate product and use it at later in the day.

🚩 Motherfucking BCAAs

Bodybuilding.com is gonna hate me for saying this, but BCAAs do not belong in a pre-workout!

Don’t get me wrong, they’re not bad for you.

It’s just that when we consume them as part of a pre-workout they often get in the way of other, more important ingredients and prevent them from doing their job properly.

For example, research from the University of Texas found that leucine (the main muscle building BCAA) actually blocks l-tyrosine from entering the brain. This is awful because l-tyrosine assists in the production of dopamine, and it can lead to early central nervous system fatigue. We don’t want that. (5, 6)

🚩 Concentrated Formulas

This strange trend popped up in the early 2010s.

This was a crazy time where everything was getting smaller, from mobile phones to the average household income, and supplement companies decided that their pre-workouts should also shrink!

This led to the development of so-called “concentrated formulas”, which claims to give you all the bang of your usual pre-workout in a much tinier scoop.

There’s just one problem; it was total bullshit!

You see, the reason most pre-workout scoops are 20 grams (or more) is because we need large doses of certain ingredients in order to unlock their training-related benefits. For example, we need sizable doses of citrulline malate (6 grams), and creatine monohydrate (5 grams), and beta-alanine (3.2 grams).

So how do you squeeze 20+ grams of active ingredients into a 5 gram scoop?

The honest answer is you don’t, and supplement manufacturers were just flat-out lying to their customers while charging them premium prices for what was essentially just caffeine.

🚩 It Claims To Have Found “The Next Big Thing”

There are only a few pre-workout ingredients which are 100% proven to increase performance.

We’ve known about those ingredients for 20+ years, but supplement companies are always trying to find “the next big thing”, and this often leads to them including ingredients which are untested, unproven, and occasionally downright dangerous.

We can see good examples of this with DMAA, N,a-DEPEA, and DMHA.

DMAA (1,3-dimethylamylamine) is the stimulant which shot to fame via the Jack3d pre-workout in the mid-2000s. This thing made you want to crush dumbbells and headbutt walls! However, the manufacturers (USP Labs) should have waited until more research had been done on the safety of long-term use before releasing it to the public – but they didn’t, and it caused the death of several people.

It was eventually banned worldwide, and Olympic champion Usain Bolt was famously stripped of a gold medal after a relay teammate tested positive for it.

Soon after, in a moment of classic fitness industry dumbfuckery, supplement companies quickly went in search of the next next big thing and found N,a-DEPEA (N,a-diethyl-phenylethylamine).

This exotic stimulant was used in the popular Craze Pre-Workout (DS Sports), which was everywhere in the early 2010s until it was later discovered that it’s fucking methamphetamine!

WHAT?!

And still the fitness industry did not learn a damn thing and went in search of the next next next big thing, leading to the discovery of DMHA (dimethylhexylamine 2-aminoisoheptane).

This was essentially a watered down version of the original DMAA, and the entire body of research for behind this product consisted of just one single study dating all the way back to 1969. Spoiler; it is also now banned. (7)

Can you see where I’m going with this? These ingredients often lack any research with regards to their safety or effectiveness. They’re usually just a gimmick, but in many cases (all of the above) they throw the product into a grey area where athletes can be flagged on drug tests and labelled “cheats” for something they had no idea about.

Fuck that with a capital fist.

Further Reading:

If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also like reading these.

>> How To Make Your Own Pre-Workout From Scratch
>> Russ’ Guide To Supplements
>> Never Use An Energy Drinks As Your Pre-Workout

References:

1. Kim S., et al. Taurine Induces Anti-Anxiety by Activating Strychnine-Sensitive Glycine Receptor in Vivo. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism (2009).
2. Moloney M. A., et al. Two weeks taurine supplementation reverses endothelial dysfunction in young male type 1 diabetics. Diab Vasc Dis Res (2010).
3. Giles G. E., et al. Differential cognitive effects of energy drink ingredients: caffeine, taurine, and glucose. Pharmacol Biochem Behav (2012).
4. Peacock A., et al. Energy drink ingredients. Contribution of caffeine and taurine to performance outcomes. Appetite (2013).
5. Walker D.K., et al. Exercise, amino acids, and aging in the control of human muscle protein synthesis. Med Sci Sports Exerc (2011).
6. Choi S., et al. Oral branched-chain amino acid supplements that reduce brain serotonin during exercise in rats also lower brain catecholamines. Amino Acids (2013).
7. Hedman K. Studies on Orchidaceae Alkaloids. XV. Phenethylamines from Eria jarensis Ames. Department of Organic Chemistry, University of Stockholm (1969).