Have you ever seen the words “proprietary blend” on your pre workout?
I hope not.
When a supplement company uses a proprietary blend it means they’ve chosen to hide the dose of each ingredient. This industry law was originally created to prevent rival brands from copying the formulas of other products, but nowadays it’s mainly used as a shady technique to sell below-par supplements to unsuspecting customers.
It grinds my gears when companies do this type of thing.
I mean, fuck, if you’re going to make a joke out of your formula, at least make it a good one:
“I had a dream last night that I weighed less than one thousandth of a gram. I was like 0mg.”
According To Supplement Brands
A supplement manufacturer’s excuse for using a proprietary blend goes as follows:
“Our product uses a proprietary blend in order to prevent rival companies from stealing out cutting edge formula. This protects you, the customer, from being misled by brands offering poor rip offs of the real deal.”
Sounds convincing, right?
That’s because when this law was first introduced it was for these very reasons. Back then, in the early days of pre-workout supplements, the majority of brands kept their formulas top secret because they figured that if somebody copied their product, then they would lose out on sales.
It’s the same reason Coca-Cola keep their formula so secret.
However, in the world of bodybuilding supplements in 2024, this is total bullshit!
Meanwhile, In The Real World…
It didn’t take us long to realize that proprietary blend stickers just don’t work.
You see, if a rival brand really wants to copy a certain product all they need to do is just take it to a lab have it analysed.
We can see a prime example of this with i-Satori H-Blocker, which was released way back in 2006. This legendary pre-workout was the first ever pre-workout to contain beta-alanine, and they slapped a proprietary blend over it to stop competitors from figuring out their awesome new discovery. However, almost every new pre-workout which hit the market towards the end of that same year was packed with… you guessed it!
That was nearly 20 years ago (!), so any brand who continues to use proprietary blends nowadays has a different motive. They do so because it enables them to hide an under-dosed formula from the public.
This means they can create dirt cheap products which contain very little except caffeine, then slap some over-the-top hype on the tub, and sell it to unsuspecting customers for a premium rate.
They also use a supplement industry tactic called “fairy dusting”., where they’ll sprinkle tiny amounts of different performance-boosting ingredients into the formula (e.g. beta-alanine, citmal, creatine) so that it legally allows them to make all of the claims associated with those ingredients (“more muscle! more energy! more fat loss!”) even though they’re in such small dosages that those results are fucking impossible.
Misleading as fuck, huh?
So take my advice; if a pre workout is as good as it claims to be, it will never use a proprietary blend!
Supplement companies are well aware of the fact that a strong formula is the best marketing tool of all, so they will only hide it if it’s shit. Now slap that proprietary blend bullshit outta your shopping cart and go pick up a better pre workout supplement!
Further Reading:
If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also like reading these.
>> Common Pre-Workout Red Flags
>> How To Make Your Own Pre-Workout From Scratch
>> Russ’ Guide To Supplements That Actually Work