Nowadays, you will find so many pre workout supplements that it often becomes quite the headache trying to find the right one for you. There are so many advertisements and marketing dollars pumped into the supplement industry. Don’t fall for all these gimmicks. You need to understand what you’re putting into your body. To find the best pre workout supplement for men and women, you need to look for specific ingredients.

The proper pre workout supplements will:

• Boost physical and mental energy
• Increase muscular strength & power output
• Increase muscle mass & vascularity
• Increase anaerobic endurance
• Increase aerobic endurance
• Create a powerful muscular pump
• Delay muscular fatigue so you can train harder & longer

In order to get the above effects, you need the following 4 ingredients:

Caffeine

Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system by blocking adenosine, a neurotransmitter that normally causes a calming effect in the body. The resulting neural stimulation due to this blockage causes the adrenal glands to release adrenaline, the “fight or flight” hormone. Your heart rate increases, and it releases glucose into your blood stream for extra energy. Caffeine is going to extend your endurance, make you more powerful, and it will have an ergogenic effect on muscle.

Beta-Alanine

When we exercise, especially when it’s high intensity exercise, our bodies accumulate a large amount of hydrogen ions (H+), causing our muscles pH to drop (become more acidic). As a result, this can decrease your strength and cause you to fatigue faster. These limitations stop you from adequately overloading your muscles and forcing new muscle gains. Beta-Alanine prevents the drop in pH within our muscle by boosting the synthesis of another amino acid Carnosine. Carnosine helps stabilize muscular pH by soaking up hydrogen ions (H+) that are released at an accelerated rate during exercise. Beta-Alanine can increase Carnosine concentration by 65%.

L-Arginine

L-Arginine is a vasodilator — that is, it dilates the blood vessels, allowing more blood to pass through at once. Arginine stimulates protein production. It also helps your body manufacture Creatine, which contributes to muscle mass and power. L-Arginine is necessary to get rid of waste also so it’s going to flush out toxins and it will help the body get rid of Creatinine, the waste product associated with the process of manufacturing Creatine.

Creatine

ATP molecules are the main fuel for the enzyme motors of the muscle in initial high-intensity muscle activity. During muscle contraction, ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) loses a phosphate molecule to create energy and gets converted to adenosine di-phosphate (ADP). Now in order to produce more energy, ADP must be converted back to ATP. Now when ATP is depleted, Creatine acts as a source of phosphate and converts the ADP molecule to ATP molecule. The more Creatine that is available to the body, the faster the body can produce ATP molecules, so that more and more energy is available for the muscle contractions. This is how Creatine acts as a great energy source for short bursts of exercise such as sprinting, bodybuilding and other athletic activities. These increased amounts of Creatine slow the possibility of fatigue and enhances recovery. In addition, Creatine helps promote muscle growth and development because it increases the number of satellite cells and nuclei in the muscle. You can’t grow bigger muscles without additional nuclei being recruited to take care of the extra muscle. Creatine intake, along with training, has been shown in many studies to cause a substantial increase in the number of satellite cells and myonuclei compared to strength training alone, and strength training with protein intake.

As mentioned above, if you want the best pre workout supplement, you should focus primarily on finding products with Caffeine, Beta-Alanine, L-Arginine and Creatine. Most importantly, we recommend speaking with your doctor before taking any supplement and make sure you follow the proper dosage information.