Jonathan Steedman (00:01.122)

Hey food groupies, this is gonna be, the goal is the ultimate pre-workout chat. I specifically mean pre-workout supplements, by the way, not other foods. We might touch on that. Yeah. I have put off doing this for a long time, because it's quite a big topic, but here we are. I'll try and smash through it as quickly as I can. The first thing that I would say is even just defining a pre-workout supplement, the tricky thing is...

the range in the what we call the formulations so ie what you can see in one pre-workout to another the ingredients that it has the amounts of those ingredients it can vary so wildly between all of the different supplements and so it's tricky to say pre-workouts are good or pre-workouts are bad because it is super dependent on which product we're talking about so I'm gonna go through today some broad stuff to be mindful of across pretty much every pre-workout supplement but then also

highlight some key ingredients that may be beneficial for you. And so if you have a pre-workout supplement that you are taking, or if you're looking to take one, you can look to make sure that it has these ingredients. And if it doesn't, or it doesn't have them in the right dose, which I'm also going to talk about, then you may be know that you need to keep looking. So I've even got an outline because, which is pretty rare for me to be honest, but there's a lot of stuff and I want to make sure that I cover it all. So.

Look, the first thing that I would say, it's really important. It's not a necessary thing for everybody. Even if you're really keen and you're really interested in your training, like a pre-workout doesn't make you a serious athlete or seriously committed to your training. There are plenty of people, I have tons of clients, I know tons of people who don't take a pre-workout at all, and they're very serious about their training. They get amazing results and they're super crazy fit and all of these things, So we've definitely, these supplements have been pushed as this essential part of your training program where you don't need them. I've gone.

Personally, not that I'm a serious athlete with amazing results, but I personally grow months at a time without taking one, depending on what I'm doing and just kind what I feel like doing. yeah, I'll talk about what I take at the end if anyone cares, but please don't feel like, I'm getting more serious about my training. I guess I need a pre-workout. No, they are to plug potential gaps or more importantly, maybe just add that sprinkle on top if you've got everything else dialed in. Okay, so that's the first thing.

Jonathan Steedman (02:21.567)

I'll just go through the ingredients now, right? Basically, unfortunately, what you'll find is most pre-workouts are either missing important things or they're under dosed or they're overdosed. what I mean by that is even if they have ingredients that we think are potentially pretty beneficial, they either have too much of them or not enough of them, which is not great either, right? So the first ingredient I'm going to touch on, the star of the show is caffeine for most pre-workouts, right? And that is

by far the thing doing the most heavy lifting in every pre-workout supplement, okay? Any legal pre-workout, the number one thing that is making you perform better or feel better when you perform is caffeine. It's also the thing that potentially makes people feel like trash when they take a pre-workout. So if you are very caffeine sensitive, I would stop listening. Don't use pre-workout. You don't need it. If you are gonna use a caffeinated or what they might say, a stimulant pre-workout, then please check the caffeine levels.

they have gotten bonkers. I'm seeing like 400, 500 milligrams, which is like the upper level of what we say is like safe daily caffeine consumption. So that's the other thing to be mindful of, not just how much is in your pre-workout, but if you also like a coffee or two, or you like an energy drink, if you are having that on top of a highly caffeinated pre-workout, just be mindful of your overall total daily caffeine consumption. And then of course, like any caffeine consumption,

just be mindful of when you're taking that pre-workout in relation to your bedtime. So to be perfectly honest, if you train after lunch, I don't think you should be having a stimulant or a caffeinated pre-workout. Even the, I think the lowest one I've ever seen is like 150 milligrams, which is still pretty much two shots of coffee. You really want that at least 10 hours away from your bedtime. Okay. So be mindful of that. Definitely with caffeine, the huger.

dosages and then mindful of when you're going to have that in the day. The next ingredient I see in pre-workout all the time, so I will mention it, is something called creatine, which I'm sure you've heard me talk about. It is great. It is beneficial. I would say though, firstly, you don't need it in your pre-workout. It doesn't matter when you have it at all in the day. You can have creatine right before bed. can have it in the morning. It's all going to, sorry, school holidays, kids at home. You might hear some stuff in the background. It doesn't matter when you have your creatine at all. So if it's in your pre-workout, okay.

Jonathan Steedman (04:42.71)

but you don't need it then. And that's extra important because virtually outside of a couple of rare pre-workouts, most of the creatine is significantly underdosed. I'm seeing like a gram of creatine, which even smaller human beings are gonna want probably two to three at least, right? So I wouldn't be looking for creatine in my pre-workout. I would be taking that separately. So you can be confident of the dose and you can just have it whenever you want. If you wanted to add it to your pre-workout that you're gonna have also totally fine, right?

But yeah, just wanted to touch on creatine. The other probably most evidence-based supplement that you might find in there is something called beta alanine or beta alanine. I think it's beta. I don't know. It looked like we've got good research for it. It's just a little bit more niche in terms of it's mostly helpful for those of you doing 30 to 90 second kind of sprint or repeated interval sort of thing. So if you are doing CrossFit or, you know, HIIT style training, it could be beneficial.

That being said, some people can run into trouble having like a giant hit of caffeine before they go to a really high adrenaline, high cardiac output session. So be careful with that. The one, two things to be mindful of with beta-alanine as well. Again, it's typically underdosed, like creatine. Again, it's not something that has a time-based effect. You can top it up as you go. And so you don't specifically need it right before you train.

And so there's that. And then there is the other downside of if it is well-dosed, like there's enough of it in the pre-workout, you're probably gonna get the tingles, right? If you've had pre-workout before and you've had that, it's called parathesia, ants crawling on your skin, perfectly safe. I often have people being like, oh yeah, that chemical crap in the pre-workout gave me tingles. It's just beta-alanine, it's just an amino acid. It's fine, don't panic.

But for a lot of people that is not a pleasant feeling. You can avoid that by splitting your beta-alanine dose up into multiple times throughout the day. But of course that's hard to do if it's in your pre-workout. you know, think about what you need there. Three other ingredients that are nice to have. I'll gloss over these a bit more quickly because less evidence for them. I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a couple of years I've changed my mind about these. At the moment, these are the three I'm kind of like interested in and they seem kind of cool.

Jonathan Steedman (07:06.602)

Citrulline malate, again, you want about six to eight grams of that. Rare to find that much in a pre-workout, but if you want to trial that six to eight grams, that is time-based. like caffeine are good. You want to have that 45, 30 to 60 minutes before you train. So that would be a good thing to have in a pre-workout if you wanted to take it. Citrulline, sorry, I just said that. Alpha GPC is another one that again has a time-based effect. So can help with peak power output in particular. So if you're doing...

quite like heavier weights, one RMs or three RMs, that sort of stuff. GPC could be helpful there, time-based. So again, better to have in the pre-workout rather than later in the day. And then beta-ing is another thing. I, yeah, again, I think it's seems interesting. I wanna see more research on it, but it's interesting, not time-based. So you can have that whenever. I do find it a bit tricky to just find it in general outside of pre-workout. So you might wanna look for a

pre-workout supplement that has that. Hopefully that all made sense. What else? That's right, I wrote down here ingredients that don't matter. Literally anything I haven't mentioned. Right? There's pretty much if I haven't mentioned it, it hasn't been an accident. It's because it doesn't really matter. Okay? And I don't even just mean matter as pre-workout. More means like it's probably crap. It's probably a waste of your time. So.

Okay, if you're gonna take a pre-workout, you've decided you wanna take a pre-workout, go through those ingredients, make sure that they're there, make sure they're in those doses I mentioned, and be mindful of things like when you're have that pre-workout. Please remember that a pre-workout supplement does not give you fuel. It might give you the illusion of energy or like it gives you a stimulation, but it doesn't give you fuel to burn. And so this does not replace eating before you train. If you wanna get the most out of your training.

I strongly recommend you have at least a carby snack. How much you should have, what you should have and when you should have it varies wildly based on the person and the type of exercise that you're doing and your goals. But pretty much any goal and any person should at least have something, okay? Got lots of options on Instagram about that. So I'm not gonna go into that now, but a lot of people go, could I just have a pre-workout instead of eating a snack? Totally different things, okay? You need.

Jonathan Steedman (09:26.376)

you personally for peak performance, I'd probably get you to have both. So cool. Now, just on that note, you may also decide that you're gonna get a pre-workout, but you're gonna save it for certain sessions. That's typically how I use, or have used it in the past for me, if I've had a really high stim pre-workout, I'll use it once, maybe twice a week. So I'll use it before heavy squats and heavy deadlifts. And then for the rest of my week, I know that, look, I can probably get through this session and do really well and perform as I want with.

maybe just a coffee, right? Or an energy drink or like just a little spike of caffeine or if it's later in the day, not having caffeine, right? If you can only train by consuming vast amounts of caffeine, that's a problem. You're probably a power lifter. so, which is, yeah, fair enough. But just, you don't have to have pre-workout before every single training session. It's okay to time it as well, if you'd like. What else do I need to say? yes, okay. So,

I would also just be really careful with your choice of pre-workouts. I'm not going to go through all of the brands because I can't, I would be here forever. I would say of all of the classes of supplements, these are the ones that seem to be more at risk of dangerous ingredients or like contamination. Okay. So just be a bit choosier about the brands, do a bit more research.

about the brands and the company itself potentially looking for something that's third party tested. So looking for has to certified or informed support certified, particularly if you're competing in anything that requires drug testing or if you want to be extra careful. Pre-workout supplements definitely are more risky than like a protein powder, for example. So just be mindful of that as well. You can absolutely build your own pre-workout going through the ingredients. I just went through having a source of caffeine from

no-dose coffee, energy drink, getting some creatine and beta-alanine powder, getting some citrulline malate powder. You can kind of just build your own. Nothing wrong with that at all. I've done that for many, many years. I'm just a bit lazy and time poor, which is a terrible combination at the moment. So what I am currently using is something called Primabolics Grind. It is non-STIM, which I used to laugh at at a pre-workout and most non-STIM pre-workouts are done. It's just that this has citrulline malate, beta-alanine, beta-ene,

Jonathan Steedman (11:50.798)

and Alpha GPC. I think it's even got creatine. I take it separately as well anyway, but creatine all of those in the proper dosages, which is wild. Okay. So it is still absolutely a luxury that I don't need because I can absolutely build all of that myself and have done in the past. Like I said, just right now, that's what I'm using. Cause it's just, I get two scoops and away I go. Okay. So it's easy for me to do that. I like that it's non-STIM because I really like coffee and energy drinks. And so I would prefer to get my caffeine from those. I also have to...

I've been trained at weird times of the day thanks to kids and I don't, I wanna be able to have a pre-workout at 8 p.m. if I'm doing a session that would benefit from it, right? So that's what I'm using. Just in case anyone's sitting there going like, I knew this was a thinly veiled ad, I'm very confident that Primabolix do not even know that I exist. I buy it from a supplement store like anybody else. So I promise you there is no brand agreement. I'm not getting any kickbacks at all from this. I'm just sending them my money and then they send me a pre-workout. I think that's it.

I that's helped. If you've got more pre-workout supplements, questions, let me know. Look, mostly I don't like talking about pre-workouts because I think most people don't need them. Like almost everybody doesn't need them. However, I also feel like a huge hypocrite when I say that because I use them and I get it. They're a bit fun. They can make you feel like you're a bit more committed. And if that works for you and that gets you out the door, it gets you training harder, then they are beneficial.

If you don't really want to have one, but you just feel like you should, hopefully this podcast has talked you out of that. You know that you don't need one. You can find these ingredients elsewhere. And even then these ingredients are nice to have, they're not essential. If you have decided that you want one, hopefully this has helped you figure out what matters and what doesn't and can help you make a more informed decision about it. Until next time, which will be next week, of course. Get stim.

my goodness. I should have thought of signing this. Anyway, I hope that's helped. Let me know if you have questions. Bye.