Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Workout Wednesday #4

Intro:
     Pre-Workout supplements are supplements you take before your workout which will give you more energy and a much better pump giving you a better workout.  Having a better workout could be doing more repetitions or even moving up in weight on what you are working out.  Moving up the latter for weights would mean you are getting stronger and size will increase.  Other pre-workout supplements aim at weight loss rather than focusing on your muscle gain and will cause your body to heat up and make you sweat more than you usually do and are usually called thermogenic fat burners.  Some use these to help define their bodies or for competitions.  Whatever your goals are, with the supplements your taking, you are hoping to get the most out of your workout and you hope to have your workout time be more effective.

     Most pre-workout supplements have some sort of stimulant in it which is usually what people who take them "feel" when they consume them.  The problem with that is that your body will eventually build up a tolerance for those ingredients and the product will seem to have become less effective.  One of the biggest ingredients in these products is caffeine and that name alone will have some people not wanting to take supplements or comparing pre workout supplements to generic store energy drinks.  Most products will tell you on the label itself to "cycle off" for a week after you run out of the product before you go back and use it again until you run out.  Some people do not like the idea of having to take supplements to workout and do not need it since they can find the drive to workout on their own while others need that extra push to workout hard.
     I personally use the supplements to help me out with getting more repetitions at the end of the day each day or to allow me to move up in the amount of weight I am doing or have been stuck in or if I have "plateaued".  Many times in the past I have found myself to be stuck at a certain amount of weight for a long time with myself not being able to move up and do more weight which is what was holding me back.  I would try many of the tricks people around me told me to try.  For example, some would tell me to take some time off, and then go back at my workout.  I did see a bit of an improvement since I gave my muscles time to repair themselves, yet it wasn't much of an improvement and eventually and quickly I seemed to have plateaued again.  I started taking a product called Jack3d and after that I literally broke the plateau I was at and kept climbing. 
     Whenever I do take a new product or am considering it though I will usually look it up extensively until I know whether to take it or not.  I don't only look up reviews of the product but I will try to look up other articles written about them or the ingredients in the product.  Being well informed on what you put in to your body is always going to be the biggest part of being healthy.  Its always better to be informed on ingredients too so that way when you look out for new products, you will see ingredients you already recognize and you will now how the product works.
     I also recommend following what the labels say when it tells you how much to take maximum.  I have read many articles about people complaining that they don't feel the effects of their products so they simply up the dosage of the products they take or will mix their products and take them with other products.  That could be hazardous and problematic to your kidneys due to the ingredients being in the products.

Products I have taken:




 White flood was one of the products I first started using.  It is pretty effective and I would recommend others to take it.  Serving size however is much lower than other products I have taken when you compare the price of it.  It is around 35 to 40 dollars and comes with something like 30 servings. Taste wasn't the best flavor out there but definitely tolerable.





Jack3d is the other pre workout I took when I started taking supplements and to date, remains as my favorite supplement.  It suggest you take 1 to 3 scoops for your workout but I recommend that you don't take more than 2 scoops so you can save the powder and save some money.  Cost wise, it is one of the cheaper products available and effective too.  It only cost around 25 dollars but you can find it for a cheaper price and comes with 45 servings(one scoop per serving).  I like the taste of this product too and it comes in many flavors(my favorite being grape bubblegum)



Animal Rage is my product of choice right now and so far has been super effective at getting me to workout even harder.  This product is fairly new out there and many people are starting to follow this product a bit more.  Animal has a history of making great products (mainly vitamins and weight loss supplements) and I have been a customer of theirs in the past.  This product comes in both capsule form(a small baggy of pills) or powder form for those who can't take pills.  I actually prefer the capsule form because the taste of the powder isn't good at all.  they suggest you only take it with 4ml of water which makes it out to be a shot of this product basically.  It works great but I found myself to build a tolerance after the first tube of this stuff.


Conclusion:
     If you are trying to take your workouts to the next level then I suggest you look into getting a pre-workout supplement.  Do your research on the products, the companies, and the ingredients in it and choose the product you think will work out great for you.  Do not always listen to the commercials on television when they tell you about rapid weight loss and do the research first.  These products may contain ingredients such as caffeine which some people just out right refuse to take or are allergic to so looking into the product is very important.  I like to suggest www.bodybuilding.com for information and articles written by users their on the ingredients and products too.

12 comments:

  1. The only one I've tried of those is Jack3d.

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  2. I think I'm gonna try Animal Rage

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  3. Y'know, I'm a HUEG Muscletech freak, but mostly when it comes to the creatine. I haven't actually branched out into any other Muscletech supplements...

    But I gotta admit, I'm pretty...no, REALLY skeptical, almost cynical, when it comes to pre-workout supplements! I mean, how long have these been around? Why am I suddenly just recently seeing these pop up everywhere?!

    For the past two years, I've been either bedridden or going through hellish pain just to learn how to walk. Now I'm back at the point where I'm working out on the regular, focusing mainly on recovering my lost muscle mass rather than cardio (some might say I should do it the other way around, but I'm comfortable doing it like this, y'knowwhatImean?), and I dunno...it's been suggested to me before to try a pre-workout supplement.

    Reckon I have no real point to this post, but I'll at least end it with a question: how good are such supplements compared to, let's say, wheat grass shooters with orange slice chasers? I was at my best with those, but even then I always used them after a workout, not before.

    Just askin' for personal experience and suggestions here.

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  4. Makes sense, lets you push yourself further so you can get past where you were stuck.

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  5. @That Bastard from Bellingham

    To tell you the truth, if you have the drive to keep pushing yourself every time you go to the gym then and you feel like you don't need them then you don't need them. Pre workout supplements are generally for people who have reached a plateau in their workout or for people who just don't have the same drive to keep working out.

    It is good to be skeptical about anything you see around especially when it comes to something you are going to intake. It gives you the opportunity to look stuff up and look for other people who have tried these things and gotten results instead of having to rely on what the paid actors in the commercials told you.

    Now from personal experience, I can tell you that these products do actually work for me. Now, did i actually need them? not really. Did they give me a boost in my workout and helped me reach goals I set out for myself faster? absolutely.

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  6. I don't like that kind of things, but well i don't exercise at all, damn :(

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  7. Yeah, I think that there is a lot of crap out there among the good stuff.

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  8. Lucky me to read this. ^_^
    +followed you :)

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  9. I just started a thermogenic, would have been nice to see this beforehand though. Nice information

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