Pre-workout supplements, also called “pre-workouts,” are meant to give you energy for when you exercise. The main ingredient in most of them is caffeine. These supplements often come in pill or powder form. Some of the ingredients in certain pre-workouts can be good for your health and your workouts.

What Pre-Workout Supplements Do

You take the supplement before your exercise. Its purpose is to help you recover and ease the fatigue of an intense workout. 

Some common ingredients in pre-workouts are:

Caffeine. Product makers say pre-workouts can keep you focused, give you energy, and improve your overall performance. The main ingredient behind these promises is high levels of caffeine. 

Pre-workout supplements have a range of 150 mg to 300 mg of caffeine per serving. This equals about three cups of coffee. That’s a lot. If you’re sensitive to caffeine, you may want to take a smaller amount or find natural ways to boost your energy before a workout.

Beta-alanine . This ingredient is meant to help you do high-intensity exercises. It may help buffer your muscles during intense workouts. Beta-alanine has been shown to lower fatigue and enhance recovery in sprinters. 

Creatine. When combined with exercise, this substance helps you gain strength. Creatine works to replenish your ATP stores, which gives your muscles energy to contract. Creatine can also help you increase your levels of lean body mass. 

Amino acids. Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) in pre-workout supplements help increase lean body mass. BCAA has also been shown to promote muscle growth. BCAA helps reduce damage to your muscles after an intense workout. 

Tips for Taking Pre-Workout Supplements

As with any supplement, you need to talk to your doctor before you take a pre-workout -- especially if you have any health conditions or you take any medicines. They’ll let you know if these supplements are safe for you to try. If they give you the green light, here are some tips on how to use them:

Take a pre-workout 20 minutes before you exercise. This gives the supplements time to kick in.

MusclePharm® is an award-winning, worldwide leading sports nutrition & lifestyle company offering branded nutritional supplements. Its portfolio of recognized properties include the MusclePharm® Sport Series, Essentials Series, and recently-launched Natural Series, as well as FitMiss™ – a product line designed specifically for female athletes. MusclePharm® products are available in more than 100 countries globally, with its Combat Protein product lineup being the company’s most popular.

The Athlete’s Company – as it’s known within the sports nutrition world – has a reputation for high-quality, safe, effective and clinically-proven supplements, helping athletes everywhere achieve goals related to strength, lean muscle growth, endurance, weight-loss, rapid recovery, athletic performance and general wellness. MusclePharm® products have been developed through a six-stage research process, utilizing the expertise of leading nutritional scientists, physicians and universities, and have been rigorously tested for banned substances by the third-party quality assurance program Informed-Choice.

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At MusclePharm®, we promise to develop and bring to market the safest, most effective and rigorously tested nutritional and sports supplementation products possible. The purpose of every MusclePharm® product is to enhance an athlete’s performance and health – all without the use of banned substances.

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