Today we’re going to take a dive into a
stimulating new research on the matter of preworkout supplements. That thing that gives you that extra jolt
and jitter right before you finish your 18th set of calf raises. Let’s be honest though, those calves still
ain’t growin. In this video, we’re going to dive into
a new study that looked into the most stimulating preworkout ingredient of all, and whether
if it actually makes a difference in your heavy lifting. With the goal of performing at your best,
a preworkout provides an assorted concoction of supposed helpful ingredients that can turn
that 1-rep squat max you hit two days ago into a 5-rep max… using only one leg. Or, at least somewhere in between. But as many unpronounceable ingredients a
preworkout might have, it is commonly believed that the ergogenic, performance enhancing
effects of a preworkout is largely, but not entirely, attributed to one very common ingredient. Quite a play by the preworkout industry considering
the industry raked in a measly fifteen billion dollars last year. That common performance-enhancing ingredient
is… caffeine, the most widely used stimulant in the world.
As we know, caffeine has quite stimulating
properties, promoting wakefulness, increased energy, and reducing fatigue. Prior research also showed that this energetic
entity could indeed affect our physical performance. However, in this new study, the findings might
just challenge how meaningful caffeine truly is when it comes to heavy lifting. Is it possible that caffeine doesn’t play
much of a role at all, or maybe zero-caffeine preworkouts can be just as effective? In this new study, 24 college-aged, resistance
trained participants with an even split of men and women, completed three different training
sessions.
For those sessions, using a randomized crossover
design, each participant either consumed a multi-ingredient preworkout beverage containing
350 milligrams of caffeine, an identical multi-ingredient preworkout beverage that contained no caffeine,
and a placebo punch-flavored beverage. The beverages were all placed into opaque
containers that are double-blinded to the researchers and the subjects. In other words, neither subjects nor researchers
knew which beverages the subjects were consuming for any given day.
Multiple exercise tests were performed, aiming
for outcomes in upper and lower body strength and endurance. Additionally, they tested isometric strength
and rate of force development in the squat. Good measurements overall to see exactly if
and where caffeine might make a difference. Let’s now move to the results. In both upper body strength and endurance
tests via the bench press, the caffeinated preworkout not only did not fare better than
the non-caffeine preworkout, it also had no significant benefit over the placebo beverage. The same goes for lower body strength and
endurance via the leg press, where again no improvements were observed with taking either
caffeinated or non-caffeinated preworkouts. Surprisingly, for the leg press 1 rep max,
the non-caffeine preworkout beverage actually fared worse than the placebo. For the squat measures, both preworkouts do
seem to increase performance in the isometric strength test and initial rate of force development.
However, in the case of initial rate of force
development, the non-caffeinated preworkout in this case did better than the caffeinated
beverage. To summarize it all, for the most part, caffeine
or not, preworkouts did not have much of any effect when it comes to lifting. Especially for the common lifts like the bench
and leg presses, improvements simply were not there. That’s kinda surprising. Previous recent research and analyses have
consistently found at least some performance benefits with caffeine, especially for lower
body performance. That might explain the improvements for isometric
squat strength we saw in this study, but then, the non-caffeinated preworkout improved that
as well. So, it’s definitely interesting. There might be an off chance that caffeine’s
effects might be overstated. Or… maybe not when you consider some caveats
to this study. The first caveat is caffeine tolerance. In my opinion, the researchers did the right
thing by choosing participants that are habitual caffeine users, as that’s probably the most
representative population for those that are interested in taking preworkouts in the first
place. Young, frequently exercises, and jacked up
on Starbucks. However, tolerance is still a big question
mark.
Although we do not have sufficient evidence
on caffeine tolerance and its effect on physical performance, it’s not uncommon to hear people
say that it’s harder to feel the effects of caffeine after taking a lot of it for a
long time. Also, the researchers measured subjective
feelings. And from that, they found that subjects did
feel more energetic, less fatigued, and more focused when consuming the caffeinated preworkout. Although it did not influence performance,
we have to consider these subjective changes. Keep in mind that these tests were done in
a lab setting with controlled times, prep, and warmups. In a normal setting, people will be in a more
comfortable, familiar environment, working out at a time they feel best, and have their
own personal warmup routines. Pair these with those feelings of more energy,
more focus, and less fatigue, it can very well make a difference to your training. And finally, don’t ever forget that this
is only one study. As good as the info might be, our decisions
should never be made based on single findings, but rather through personal experience and
findings with abundant evidence.
Altogether, I think the findings here do make
sense based on the environment the researchers created, but accounting for real-world differences
and also existing conflicting research, I wouldn’t recommend throwing out your expired
preworkouts just yet. In the end, the choice is yours and how you
feel about it, just remember that if you really wanna grow your calves, eat enough protein
and… look for another goal cause it’s still ain’t happenin. If you enjoyed this video, please make sure
to give it a stimulating-thumbs up and share it with your caffeine-loving friends. Subscribe for more. As always, thank you for watching and don’t
forget to get your protein! Does caffeinated protein exist?
