I’ve written many posts about what supplements high school athletes would get the most out of and what they should be taking. (check out the link below if you want to see what I recommend).
Every time I make a post about it, send and email out or make a video I have never included pre-workout supplements in there. Yet it is one of the most commonly used supplements by high school athletes. Frankly I think all high school athletes should not be taking any of the popular pre-workout supplements. It’s filled with stimulates and chemicals that get banned by the FDA once their on the market for some time.
All pre-workout does for athletes is crack them out, get them excited for their workout to replace the fact that their overly tired from playing sports, not sleeping enough and poor pre-workout nutrition. Once the pre-workout wears off they crash, leaving them more tired for the rest of the day and even into the next day due to poor sleep causing a cycle of relying on pre-workout to train.
All that said I would be a hypocrite to say that I haven’t used pre-workout supplements and still do on occasion. While there is no real scientific benefit to using pre-workout other than from caffeine and creatine, the athletes who are going to use it are going to use it whether their coaches and parents tell them not to or not. So, I’m, making this news letter to give you some guideline to have a cleaner pre-workout supplement that will help you focus and feel ready to crush your workout yet also avoid all the crap all the other pre-workout supplements give you.
1. First if you take a pre-workout before every workout you’re too reliant on it to do you workout and you need to phase it out. Not every workout should start with pre-workout and you should be able to crush your workout without it.
2. Do not take pre-workout after 3pm, it will ruin your sleep and recovery and your workout will be all for nothing
3. If you’re under 17 just avoid pre-workouts all together
4. Stop taking the overly marketed powdered pre-workouts and just take 50mg-100mg of caffeine with the amino-acid L-tyrosine (1000mg), some BCAA’s in your water, 300mg-600mg of Alpha-GPC, and 2.5-5 grams of creatine. Using this you will have a much more effective and cleaner pre-workout. In my personal experience when using this it has a much better performance enhancing effect and there is really not crash at all.
All this said, if you don’t sleep well, drink enough water and eat consistently a pre-workout supplement will do nothing for you. If fact it would have a negative effect on performance in the long term.
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