Should You Take A Pre Workout | How To Use Pre Workout Supplement

YouTube, what's going on? In this video, you and I are going to be covering everything you need to know about pre-workouts. Once again, I have come up with every single question I have ever been asked about pre-workout, and hopefully this video is going to cover everything you need to know. It's going to answer all of your questions, and you will leave this video, I promise, I promise you, you will leave this video knowing if you should or should not take a pre-workout, if it is or is not worth it, which one to buy, which— what should you be looking for in a pre-workout, because there's a million fucking pre-workouts out there. You'll learn everything. All right, the only thing I ask of you is just watch all the way through. If you watch all the way through, you're going to learn everything, and you will leave this video knowing exactly what— you'll be the expert. On pre-workout by the time you leave this video. Okay, so without further ado, let's just dive right into what— damn it— what does a pre-workout do? You know, kind of like what it sounds like, a pre-workout is meant to give you some more energy before your workout. A pre-workout is meant to give you some more stamina in your workouts, give you some more endurance in your workouts, give you some more blood flow in your workouts, which is important for, you know, strength and muscle and all those great things. It's also supposed to help give you good mental focus during your workouts. You can kind of get in the zone, so to speak. So it's basically just a supplement. And by the way, it's a supplement to your already good— I would hope good training program and good nutrition program. It is a supplement to that. And actually, before I go into anything else here in this, again, this thing is not going to like make or break your workouts. Could it potentially help? Absolutely. And we'll talk more about that here in a second. But this alone, or any supplement out there alone, is not going to make or break your workouts. You need to make sure you have your bases covered, your foundational base set up first. You need to have a solid training program. You need to have a solid nutrition program. You've got to be getting your sleep. You've got to be getting your water. You've got to be getting your protein intake in. You gotta cover all of your bases first. This pre-workout is gonna give you like the extra 2, 3, 4, 5% in your workouts. It'll help you kind of, you know, we talked about what does it do, right? I talked about energy, stamina, endurance, mental focus. It's gonna give you all of those benefits, right? And the way I like to kind of like tell people and what a pre-workout is gonna do essentially is it'll give you that extra like 2, 3, 4, 5%. I said, you know, it'll help with your strength gains, for example. Yeah. But like, you're not going to take this and go into the gym and, you know, if you're benching, you know, 200 pounds in the bench press, you're not going to automatically bench press 300 pounds. Or if you're squatting 200 pounds, you're not going to go from 200 pounds to 250 pounds just from taking fucking pre-workout. But what it can do is, for example, let's say you're doing 200 pounds on squat and you're doing it for 5 reps. Usually you take something like a pre-workout, for example, it'll give you an extra rep here and there, or you might be able to go and add in 5 or 10 pounds to the bar. So let's say you do 205 for 5, or let's say you do 200 for 6 reps instead of 5. It's these little things here and there that kind of add up, add up, add up. Or another great way I like to tell people is let's say you are doing 200 pounds for 5 reps. And let's say you're supposed to do 3 sets of that, but by set 3 you're kind of like gassed and you don't have as much left in the tank. And so you have to drop down your weight to let's say 185 and you get that for 5. If for example you take a pre-workout, maybe that last set you'll still be able to keep that performance up to allow you to do that 200 pounds for 5 reps for all 3 sets instead of just doing it for 2 sets. And so when talking about taking a pre-workout, it's these little extra things here and there, but You know, especially as you get more towards the, like, you know, later beginner to intermediate to advanced stage, all of these little things are going to add up. Because if you're doing 5 more pounds here on this exercise, if you're doing 1 more set or 1 more rep on this exercise over here, and you count that up over the course of the workout, but also the course of the week's worth of workouts, then yeah, all these little things start to add up, add up, add up, add up. And that's how it can help you make better progress over time. The long haul. So if you're somebody who's looking for like a quick fix or something to like just magically increase your gains, you know, tenfold in the workout, this might not do that. If you get a good one though, it will. I say like a quick fix, it will make you feel really good, like heading into the workout. Like I said, you'll have more energy, stamina, focus, like all that good stuff, kind of get into the zone a bit more. So it will kind of make you feel good. But in terms of like seeing progress, it will help you see progress, but it's not going to be some magic pill thing. Which, to piggyback right on top of that, again, before I go into all of this stuff, you don't necessarily need to take this pre-workout. Remember, it is a supplement, okay? It is supposed to supplement your current diet and training program. But if you are somebody who cares about getting that little extra 3, 4, 5% increase, if you are somebody who does care about heading into your workouts feeling really good, you know, feeling focused, Feeling good energy, then let's now talk about the rest of what's on here. Right? So the second question I get after kind of like explaining what pre-workouts do and what they are and the benefits and so on and so forth, I get asked, should you take it every single day? And here is, there's a few things you can talk about when you're talking about this specific question. Number one, no, it is not inherently bad to take it every single day. So let's say you're working out 4 times a week. Should you take it all 4 of those workouts? I personally take pre-workout in all four of my workouts. Yes, but here's the little caveat. So this is the brand I work with and the brand I trust. One of the pre-workouts has caffeine, and one of the pre-workouts does not have caffeine. Me personally, I don't drink actually any caffeine outside of taking a pre-workout. So what I will personally do is for two of my workouts, I will do caffeine. For the other 2 workouts, I will do the one without caffeine because with this brand in particular, it's the same exact fucking thing. It's just one has caffeine and one does not have caffeine. The rest of the pre-workouts— this is the one with no caffeine— the rest of the pre-workout has the same thing. It has all the same things for stamina, all the same things for endurance, all the same things for blood flow, uh, mental focus, literally everything else. It's just one has caffeine and one does not. So for me personally, I do 2 days with caffeine and 2 days without caffeine. Now, that's not what you have to do, but if you are somebody who does drink a lot of caffeine throughout your day, if you're having Starbucks coffees and you're having energy drinks, if you are somebody who is doing that, I might just be mindful of maybe on your workout days you don't have that extra cup or 2 of coffee because you're having your pre-workout that does have coffee. Or vice versa. Maybe you do get one without caffeine, which we'll talk about that here a little bit later in a second. Maybe you get one without caffeine, you drink the rest of your caffeine throughout your day, and you know, it really won't be a problem, right? But let's just say, so this has 300 milligrams of caffeine, which is about like amount of caffeine inside of a pre-workout. Let's say you take this once a day for 4 days. You're working out 4 days a week, right? If this is all the caffeine you're having in those 4 days, then yeah, I would see no issue with taking this every single day, especially if on your rest days you're not having a ton of caffeine as well either. Then yeah, I really wouldn't see much of a problem with that. But again, if you do drink a lot of caffeine throughout your day, maybe just kind of like manage that. And then again as well, I like to kind of mix it up and, you know, keep it fresh quote unquote because I'm somebody who I am very caffeine intolerant, I think is what I'm trying to say there. Uh, caffeine intolerant in the sense of like caffeine doesn't do a ton for me. So for me, I like to keep it fresh by like not having as much caffeine throughout the week. So when I do take the one with caffeine, I can really feel the difference there. And again, we will talk about, you know, if you are sensitive to caffeine or not sensitive to caffeine and all that kind of stuff a little bit later here in the video. So stick with me for that. But that is about should you take it every single day. I would also say if maybe you're feeling really good one day and like you're just like rocking and rolling and like you feel like you're doing great, feel like you maybe don't need it, then I wouldn't say you have to take it. Me personally, even if I am like, if I wake up, cause I work out early in the morning, even if I wake up and I'm feeling really good, I will definitely still take the one without caffeine or the one with caffeine to be quite frank with you because like I just want that little extra bonus. Right. But I know some people like to take the approach of like, well, take it when you need it kind of thing. So you can also take that approach to it as well. Almost feeling like when you need it, when you need that extra boost, the extra kick in the ass, take it then. And maybe on days where you already feel pretty good, maybe don't worry about it so much. So you could also take that approach if you wanted to, but there's no real right or wrong. Now, number 3, I've gotten asked this question and I believe I've actually said this in some of my earlier videos. Um, is it the same as just drinking caffeine? I'll be honest with you. Yes and no. If you only cared about like the, um, the energy aspect of it, like just getting some like quick caffeine in you, then like, yeah, that would be the same as like drinking caffeine, right? But caffeine isn't going to provide the endurance benefits. Caffeine won't provide the stamina benefits. Caffeine won't provide the strength benefits. Caffeine won't provide the blood flow benefits as well. Actually, if you just drink caffeine, it actually kind of like restricts your blood vessels to a degree. Whereas again, something like this pre-workout, for example, is actually going to help promote blood flow during your workouts. It might not give you as much like mental clarity, mental focus, uh, aspect to it as well. So again, it just kind of depends on what you're looking for in the pre-workout and what you want the pre-workout to do. Because like I said, if all you care about is the energy, well then, I mean, maybe yeah, like maybe you would only just drink the cat— uh, drink the coffee or whatever it is, and like that's your pre-workout. And by the way, that's totally fine. But again, for someone like myself, I don't— I've, by the way, never had coffee in my entire life. I know it's fucking crazy, but, um, I'm taking it for all of the other benefits as well. So I'm gonna take a pre-workout for that reason. But it just kind of depends on what you're taking the pre-workout for and what are you trying to benefit, to gain from the pre-workout. And then again, you know, maybe you do get one that is— it's called stim-free, the non-caffeine one. Maybe you do your coffee for the caffeine. Maybe you do this for all the other benefits. You could also do that As well. Or what I'll also say to this as well is maybe let's say you're working out later at night. Maybe you work out at 4:00 PM, 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM. You might not necessarily want to be drinking coffee that late because it might keep you up and then it'll impair your sleep. And then like, you know, you'll get all the negative side effects from not sleeping a ton. So again, if you get one that is without caffeine, then you might be able to take this at night, whereas you might not want to drink a cup of coffee or 2 cups of coffee at 7, 8 PM at night. So that's something to think about as well. Now, number 4, let's talk about some of the negative side effects from a pre-workout. The main one I'm going to talk about— well, there'll be a couple, but first and foremost, I want to talk about the itchiness. A lot of people say they take pre-workouts and they get itchy, their scalp itches and this, that, and the other, and they think they're having a negative side effect, a negative reaction to it. This is going to sound weird, but it's actually normal to feel a little bit itchy when you take pre-workouts because there's 2 main ingredients that cause this inside of the pre-workout, and that is going to be something called beta-alanine and something called niacin. And again, both of those 2 ingredients kind of like help with endurance and stamina and all that kind of stuff. So it like— beta-alanine is one of the best ingredients you can have inside of your pre-workout, which this one does. Um, but beta-alanine is one of the best ingredients you can have inside of your pre-workout, but it does make some people feel a little bit itchy, Especially the first couple of times you take it. I will say the more you take it, the more you'll get used to it. So in three months or six months or nine months, like the more you will kind of get used to it. Like when I take these, there's a little bit of that, but not much. You do kind of get used to it as it goes on. But you know, for the most part, and you know, I'll do the little like I am not a doctor, so please feel free to check with your doctor. I don't want to tell you. You know, I'll let you and your doctor can talk about if you want to. But for the most part, I'm not having a negative reaction or side effect to it. It's just kind of like a part. Part of the pre-workout. And again, some people fucking hate that, which maybe you would just get a pre-workout that doesn't have the beta-alanine in it or the niacin in it. But some people like either don't mind it, or once they understand it's normal, it's okay, or they enjoy it like myself. I actually enjoy it. When I first started taking it, it like got me so amped up and I really appreciate it. But some people enjoy it. So whatever one of those 3 spectrums you are, just know it is normal to kind of feel a little bit Itchy during your, uh, when you take your pre-workout and like, it doesn't mean you're gonna— well, again, I'm not a doctor, but from what I know and from my experience, it doesn't mean you're gonna die. But you know, again, check with your doctor if you want to. Now, number 2, and this kind of ties right into the other side effect of this, um, should you be eating, you know, with taking a pre-workout? Um, I would say especially if you are gonna take a pre-workout, the one that like with caffeine, if you're taking a pre-workout that has caffeine in it, I would definitely try to eat anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes pre-workout. And this is because a lot of times what can happen is if you take caffeine and then go into your workout, might leave you like a little bit lightheaded. So what I would say is if you are going to take one that has caffeine in it, I would definitely try to eat some sort of protein and some sort of carbs roughly 30 to 90 minutes pre-workout. I know you're probably going to ask me, well, Eric, what if I work out in the morning and I take it for the energy in the morning? Totally fine. Um, I'm not saying you can't take it on an empty stomach. You can, like if you work out first thing in the morning, I would definitely say I still think you can get in something small, even something like half a banana or even something like a Greek yogurt or something like a protein shake, for example, like even just something small before your workout or just make sure your dinner the night before Really is kind of like high in carbohydrates and high in protein because when you go into that workout the next morning, you'll make sure your body's kind of fueled up. Now again, if you're taking the one without caffeine, you don't have to have to like eat before your workout. Again, you can take either one like on an empty stomach, but I would especially say the one without caffeine, it's less important. The one with caffeine, it's a little bit more important. Now when to not take pre-workout, I just want to throw this in there really quickly. So again, we talked earlier about like your caffeine intake levels. If you're somebody who, you know, you're already doing, you know, 3 cups of coffee a day and you're doing espressos and you're doing energy drinks and all these kinds of things. No, maybe I would not recommend, or at the very least I would recommend you doing the one without caffeine, right? Or you're gonna have to change your other like dietary intake throughout the day to allow yourself to get in, you know, the pre-workout that's in right there. So keeping that in mind, uh, number 2, I typically would not take it If you're doing some kind of like, uh, like a HIIT bootcamp or something like that, I wouldn't recommend really taking it before that because again, that style of training is really, really, really going to like increase your heart rate to begin with. So a lot of times if you mix that with taking a pre-workout, I used to see this all the time when I trained people in person. People would come in on an empty stomach, jacked up on pre-workout, and then they would go and do the workout with like, there was super high intensity. And like, you're gonna get lightheaded, you're gonna get, uh, fatigued, you're gonna get exhausted, you're gonna get nauseous. Like, all these things will probably start to happen to you. So if you're doing like that style of training, again, I might just do the one like without caffeine, um, or just maybe just again make sure you eat beforehand. That could help it as well. So if you are doing that style of training, you should definitely eat beforehand, uh, either way, no matter what. But eating beforehand might help mitigate that, but you just want to be aware of that and be conscious of that if you're doing That style of training. The third part, when to not take pre-workout, again, we kind of just talked about it, but eating before your workout. If you have not eaten for a very long period of time before your workout, I might lay off, especially the one with caffeine, because again, you're probably going to mess with, like, you know, you might not feel the best, you might feel nauseous, lightheaded, all that kind of stuff. So those are the 3 main reasons why you might not take it, or maybe the 4th one, like we talked about earlier, if you're already feeling maybe Pretty good. Maybe you don't take it because you already— maybe you don't need it. Like, you want to take the approach of take it as you need it type thing. So maybe that would be the 4th one. But it kind of flows into the next point right here, which is like, if you are sensitive to caffeine, should you take pre-workouts with caffeine? And again, I think this all depends on, number one, your overall caffeine intake for the day. So I haven't said this yet in the video, but your overall caffeine intake for the day, for the most part, I kind of recommend staying around that like 300 to 500 milligrams per day, like somewhere around that range, maybe up to 600 per day. I typically don't recommend going above 600 milligrams per day. That's a, that's a good amount of caffeine per day. So again, you know, if you are sensitive to caffeine, you would check your overall caffeine intake for the day. But then also like, let's just say for example, this one has caffeine, right? For 2 scoops, It's 300 milligrams. Okay, cool. Maybe if you're sensitive to caffeine, maybe you only take one scoop, for example, or maybe you do one scoop of this and then one scoop of this, right? Like maybe you just kind of mix the two because that way you don't have to have as much caffeine. The other thing I'll say to that as well is if you are sensitive to caffeine, eating beforehand will help with that because if you do not eat beforehand, it's going to hit you a lot harder than if you ate Beforehand, even like 30, 60, 90, 120 minutes beforehand. So if you are sensitive, maybe either get half of whatever you're going to like, half of the serving. So if it calls for, you know, 1 scoop, do a half scoop. If it calls for 2 scoops, do 1 scoop. Um, or again, you can mix it with a non-caffeine one to still get a lot of the same benefits and ingredients without having to, uh, you know, have as much high caffeine or eating beforehand. Now, you know, some people will ask me, is the one without caffeine worth it? And again, here's what I'll say. It's not gonna hit you like it would as a caffeine pre-workout, right? Because it just doesn't have the caffeine, so it won't hit the energy, right? But again, I told you earlier, I take this 2 times per week, and I still personally feel like I get good blood flow, I get good energy, I get good mental focus, I get good mental clarity, I get good endurance and stamina and all those things. And again, whether it's even like sometimes a placebo or not, I feel good when I take it, and I have really good workouts. And so I'm I'm just going to take it. Again, do you have to take it? Is it worth it? I don't want to tell you how to spend your money or not spend your money. I think that's a decision you have to make for yourself. Me personally, yes, I do think it's worth it, but again, that would be a decision that you can take for yourself depending on how— I don't want to say how serious you are about it or not, but just on if you think you want to spend the money on it or not. That's up to you. Cool. Then last but not least, what to look for in pre-workouts. Honestly, I'm not going to go super in-depth here because there's— I mean, this could be a whole separate video in and of itself. Here's what I will say. So when you're looking for a pre-workout, one thing I like to make sure of, and I don't know if you'll be able to see this in the actual thing, but there is the ingredients listed on the back, right? Notice how every single one of these ingredients has the exact amount listed right next to it. Like it says 300 milligrams, 350 milligrams, so on and so forth. What a lot of companies will do sometimes is they will make these proprietary blends where like you'll see it says proprietary blend and it has like 16 different ingredients and it just says, oh, the whole blend is 5,000 milligrams, but you don't actually know how many milligrams is in each specific ingredient. And this is really important because when you talk about like, so we'll take beta alanine for example, right? Usually like the beta alanine that you need in order to actually get the benefit of beta alanine is going to be somewhere around that like 3, 3.5-ish grams mark. So like for example, this has 3.6 grams of beta alanine. Now let's say, uh, you know, this was in a proprietary blend and it just said beta-alanine and it didn't tell you how much. Well, if there's only a gram of beta-alanine, then you're not actually going to get the benefits of that ingredient because it's not dosed properly. So one of the biggest things I look for in supplements is do they actually lay out how much of each ingredient is inside of the supplement, which is again one of the reasons why I like you know, working with and using this brand because they obviously do do that. There's no proprietary blends in this particular product. So that would be probably my biggest thing to look for in like, is it a good pre-workout? And because there's just so many out there. And again, I'll tell you, like, this is the brand I work with, this is the brand I trust. If you want to try it out, you certainly can. Again, I'll put a link here below in the video to try it out if you want to try it out. But You can also use my code at checkout, Eric. It's just E-R-I-C. I think you'll get like 20% off or something. But this is the brand I work with, right? I would encourage you to try this brand. But here's the thing, like, there's a fucking million brands out there, right? So you don't have to take this one. This is the one I recommend, but you don't have to take this one. There are going to be other companies out there. And again, I would just look for like, do they have all of their ingredients listed out? And if not, like, can you reach out to them and see like how much of each ingredient is actually in the blend that they have, because that's one of the biggest ways people get you is by like, yeah, here's the ingredient, but it's not actually dosed properly because we didn't want to spend the money to put it in there properly and so on and so forth. Right. So that would probably be my biggest thing to look for. And then again, you know, deciding between a caffeine one versus a non-caffeine one, again, just a decision you'll have to make. I'm not going to sit here and tell you, you got to buy both like I do, like, because I, That just might not be realistic for you. That's totally fucking fine. But just decide caffeine or non-caffeine. And then really after those 2 things, that's basically it. So that is all on pre-workout. Hope this video helped you. If it did, please feel free to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. I also have more videos like this if you want to check those out. I have a protein one, I have a creatine one. I have a video entirely on all of the supplements that I recommend you take or don't take. Take, which is worth your money, not worth your money, so on and so forth. So if you want to check it out, please feel free to go check it out. Other than that, thank you for watching, and we will chat soon. Okay.