[quote]Grizzly_Mark wrote:
[quote]osu122975 wrote:
Pre-workouts are a waste of $. Get yourself a couple Monster Java’s and eat food all day long. It will work much better than ANY pre-workout and you won’t have to worry about being disqualified.[/quote]
With most commercial ones I would agree. Too little of what you really need, too much of stuff that will long term hurt you (typically burn out your adrenals, raise your BP…). The reason that I’m asking is that after trying a few of them I started doing some research and mixing my own, which the guy who is competing has been using. My conditions on the stuff:
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natural, I’ve removed almost all the artificial sweeteners, have figured out how to get rid of the rest (roughly about 7% of what you’d have in most commercial products), but the people that have tried it have been thrilled with the results so I’m tempted not to mess with it
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nowhere near the caffeine and other stimulants of commercial ones (I wasn’t thrilled with that when I tried them, and found that a good fraction of the people I’ve been working out with actually have high blood pressure and similar side effects), a serving of my stuff is around 60-80mg of caffeine.
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gets you the right amounts and combination of vasodiolators
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the right and sufficient amounts of recovery and energy transport agents
(what blew my mind was that there is no way that you could get the last 2 from any of the commercial products, they just don’t have the volume in a serving, my serving ends up being 3+ scoops of a typical pre-workout scoop)
For a competition type setting I honestly don’t know, the problem is that it’s a few single lifts over a 5 hour span. Less volume over a longer period than what you would typically take a Pre for. Thinking it out my conclusion was that:
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He’s used to lifting on it, he gets more consistent performance with it, so I don’t think he should change what he’s doing at a meet.
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Since most of what I put in it is to get you going and to have better muscle recovery and store more usable energy in the muscle that could be useful in his lifts later in the meet. It’s funny because he stopped using it for a while and came back to me that it took a few workouts till he noticed it out of his system, and at that point it didn’t hurt his max lift, but he needed a lot more warming up to get there and he had a lot less left in him for accessory motions after that lift (both significant, and both more pronounced than expected for a 20y/o)
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we plan on jacking the caffeine a little just for the event. It is one of the simplest, most effective and cheapest performance enhancing substances out there, and a one time use isn’t going to hurt him. I plan on keeping the caffeine separate so he can take it depending on how he feels, 4 x 50mg servings so he can’t just decide “I’m going to take it all” and end up jittery and mess up his timing
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the plan is also to take a full serving 30-60min before his squat attempts, and then half servings trying to get similar timing before the deadlift and bench press
That pretty much sounds like response I got from the director/promotor[/quote]
You never know when you will be up at the meet. Trying to time when you’re gonna take the stuff is difficult. That’s why I advocate just getting in your Monster Java’s or some other caffeine and eating all day long. You’ll always be ready. I used to make protein shakes w/ coffee, ice and creamer before lifting. People will say you don’t need protein before lifting, but the process of rebuilding muscle is on going - it’s not just after a workout.
My favorite food at a meet is a bucket of fried chicken tenders and potato wedges along w/ some sort of Monster Java’s and water. Power baby!
No matter what, you’ll have to figure out what works for you.