02/15/2022
The ingredient list on the back of pre-workouts can be confusing to many people. Let me try and help you out by giving you some things to look for to help you determine whether or not your pre-workout is any good or not.
The first thing you want to look for is to make sure that all of the ingredients are individually labeled with their dosages. You don't want to see any form of a blend that labels all of the ingredients together in a long list and gives a total dosage for everything together. If a pre-workout does this, there is no way for you to know what the dosages are for each individual ingredient and 9 times out of 10 all of the ingredients are under dosed and will have no effect on your workout.
Ingredients like Beta-Alanine, Creatine Monohydrate, and Betaine Anhydrous are great supplements on their own and are considered daily use supplements. However, they are useless ingredient for a pre-workout because they don't have any immediate benefits for your workout. Each of them require a saturation period of several days up to a couple weeks in order for you to start receiving the benefits from them.
The main ingredients you want to look for are Caffeine Anhydrous, L-Tyrosine, and L-Carnotine. but you do want to make sure that each of them are properly dosed. L-Tyrosine should be dosed at a range of 500mg-750mg and L-Carnotine should be at 3g-5g. Caffeine Anhydrous is more based on your personal preference and tolerance. If any of these are dosed higher than this, that isn't a bad thing per say, you will still get the intended benefits from the ingredient but after a certain point it won't increase the benefits the more it is dosed. But if they are dosed less than these than that is a sign of a bad pre-workout. You will not receive the benefits that is intended if they aren't dosed enough.
Most importantly with all of this being said. Do your own research! You should at least look into what the products that you are putting into your body are meant to do. You shouldn't just take a bunch of stuff that the guy at GNC sold you to make a commission off of because most likely you are just wasting your money.