Pre workout supplements can be a great boost for workouts. They can quickly become expensive if you buy them every day you go to the gym.
Instead, making your own pre workout can both save you money and give you greater control over what you’re putting into your body. Plus, you’ll actually better understand where the energy boost is coming from!
Why Should You Learn How to Make Your Own Pre Workout Supplement?
There are a few main reasons to learn how to make your own pre workout supplement rather than buying one from the store each time. For starters, it’s much more cost-effective. You’ll save money in the long run by buying your own ingredients and putting everything together.
For another, you can control the portions more directly. This is great for planning your day and caloric intake. Let’s go through the best staples and teach you how to make pre workout supplements.
What Effects Are You Looking For?
In general, a great pre workout supplement will have some shared effects with every other of its kind. These are energy, endurance, and muscle preservation. If your pre workout supplement can accomplish these three effects, you can consider the mixture a success.
You want the pre workout to give you a little boost of energy so you can jump into your routine with vigor and enthusiasm. At the same time, good pre-workout supplements will also provide you with endurance so you don’t get hungry or distracted in the middle of your workout.
Finally, good pre workout supplements will help your muscles remain focused and keep their integrity throughout the exertion.
A great pre workout supplement has the capability to supercharge your next workout.
The Best Ingredients
Let’s get into the details. Your exact mixture might vary slightly from another person’s. The best pre workout supplements will have these ingredients in common.
- Caffeine: this is the energy boosting ingredient that gets you focused and ready to work out. It also dulls your exhaustion sensors in your brain and allows you to push yourself further and harder before you become too tired to continue. If you start with your workouts in the morning, it’ll help you wake up from a good night’s rest. Recommended Amount: 200mg
- Creatine: this is an organic acid that helps your cells retain and gain new energy. This allows them to divide more properly and expel energy more efficiently. Put in layman’s terms, it lets your muscle mass work harder and further, improving your strength and stamina. You’ll be able to more confidently lift heavier weights with this ingredient added to your mix. Recommended Amount: 2g
- Citrulline Malate: here’s an amino acid that has two effects. For one, it improves your overall muscle performance, potentially allowing you to get one whole extra set in per muscle group. This can lead to incredibly improved gains over time. For another, it can also help soothe your muscles and relieve soreness, increasing your overall endurance when you attempt that extra set. Recommended Amount: 6g
- Beta-Alanine: finally, this is a chief ingredient that helps you improve your endurance. It’s an amino acid that keeps your muscles going for longer and harder without failing. While it doesn’t necessarily let you suddenly lift heavier, it will stop your muscles from feeling as exhausted or burning as intensely, allowing you to continue all the way to the end of your assigned sets. Recommended Amount: 4g
Once you’ve have all four of these ingredients, you have the basic building blocks of a great pre-workout supplement. Everything else is secondary, although these extra ingredients help make it your own or improve the flavor.
Extras
You can add things like Gatorade powder to give your pre workout supplement an actual taste, instead of just having to drink a watery powder. You can also add things like chocolate powder.
Although with any extra taste-focused ingredient, you need to be aware you’ll be adding carbs and sugar that should be accounted for in your nutritional plan.
When Will You See Effects?
You might be wondering how long it takes for pre workout supplements to kick in? This is reliant on the ingredients included in the pre workout, specifically caffeine.
As you might know from drinking coffee, it takes caffeine about 45 minutes to really reach its peak effectiveness for your body.
However, caffeine only has effects for a full four hours before you won’t feel any more effects at all. This range can increase if you have a much higher level of caffeine in the pre workout than most adults.
So, it would seem that, if you really want to maximize the time that you feel the caffeine improving your performance, you’ll want to drink your pre-workout about 30 to 45 minutes before you enter the gym.
This allows you to have as much time as possible under the influence of the caffeine and the other ingredients as possible.
How Long Does it Last?
Similarly, you might be wondering how long it will stay in your system. This doesn’t exactly follow caffeine’s effectiveness, as the other ingredients will be absorbed by your body and used up much more quickly.
In general, you can expect to receive the benefits from the other supplement ingredients for about 1.5 to 2.5 hours. After this point, you might still feel a slight energy boost from caffeine. Usually, the other effects won’t really be present anymore.
However, this is still fine because most full and intense workouts don’t take longer than three hours anyway. This means that as long as you take your pre workout supplement at a good time, you should be able to do most or all of your work out within its most effective time period.
Conclusion
There you have it! With these basic ingredients, you have all you need to make the best pre workout supplement. If you add a little flavor powder it’s basically the same thing you get on the shelf except it costs a lot less.
Remember to drink it with plenty of time to spare before you hit the gym and you’ll be set for the best workout of your life!