What Is A Pre-Workout And What Does It Do For Bodybuilding?

Bodybuilders need to maximize the potential of every piece of nutrition they take in. Pre-workout nutrition is an integral part of this because, without it, your body doesn’t have the required nutrients to function at optimum levels. To make the most of their performance every single day, professional bodybuilders turn to pre-workout supplements. But what are these supplements and do they work? Read on to find out.

Understanding the Bodybuilder’s Pre-Workout

It’s not just bodybuilders who want to make the most of their exercise time, pro athletes all over the world are known to engage in a little pre-workout supplementation. Supplements nowadays have nothing to do with the old anabolic steroids we knew of in the past. Popular modern supplements are healthy, suitable for specific activities (like boosting strength or enhancing endurance) and help the professionals workout with the right ingredients in their bodies.

So what is a pre-workout supplement? Consider it like this: you skip breakfast and go to the gym. Soon after you start, you get tired, weak, and maybe even nauseous. Breakfast, before you left, would have been a pre-workout supplement, provided it had included optimized foods like oats, beetroot or eggs if you’d added a protein shake to that then all the better. A supplement ‘supplies’ the body with the nutrition it needs to work hard for a while. 

What Types Of Pre-Workout Are There?

Let’s assume that we are having breakfast and taking a few natural boosters as well, to make sure we are doing our best for our bodies. If we take too much, the chances are that our bodies will naturally flush out the excess – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow the dosage exactly. So if we were taking these boosters, what is the best pre-workout supplement to take? 

The Top Five Pre-Workout Supplements

There are four brilliant pre-workout supplements that we here at CrazyMass recommend. These are:

1. Nitric Oxide Booster – Nitric Oxide opens up the blood vessels and allows nutrients to travel around your body faster. It is excellent for heart health, can lower blood pressure, and helps you make measurable gains in the gym. Try adding a protein shake with a little nitric oxide to your breakfast around 45 minutes before you work out.
2. Whey Protein – A perfect pre-workout shake requires whey protein to set you up for muscle growth. Whey protein is easily digestible, so your body will take what it needs and pass what it doesn’t. Since protein is essential for muscle synthesis, you should always shake before you lift.
3. Beetroot – Without a word of a lie, beetroot is one of the best pre-workout foods you can eat. Dietitians say it helps maximize oxygen input and energy output. Who knew?
4. B Vitamins – B Vitamins are all tailored to suiting a specific function in the body. Better yet, most of them produce red blood cells, build bone, retain calcium, build muscle mass, and generate new tissue. They also eliminate free radicals from the bloodstream, so in winter when we aren’t getting enough sunlight, they become even more essential. You can find B vitamins in fruit and vegetables, but snack on seeds, nuts, and dried fruit in the morning for the best impact.
5. Oats and Grains – Oats, grains, nuts, and seeds are all nutrient-packed and perfect for pre-workouts. They contain just about every vitamin between them – but more importantly, they provide a vast mineralogical base of goodness that can keep you in peak performance at all times. Not only are the great pre-workout food, but they are also great all day long.

Other Supplements to Support A Pre-Workout Routine

As we all know, eggs and avocados are an excellent food source for pre-workout if you are bulking – but what if you are cutting? Your diet, and therefore your pre-workout supplements, should change slightly according to your cycles. Primarily, when bulking, you are focusing on foods with high nutritional value and calorific content. When cutting this focus should shift to maximum nutrition, with less emphasis on the massive calorie intake. 

Remember, if you are using bulking or cutting stacks, there is a high chance that some of your performance enhancing supplements will need to be taken alongside your morning supplements. 

The Best Breakfast for Bulking

Several functional bulking foods fall into the breakfast category. Try cottage cheese alongside hard-boiled eggs. Add oats, flax seeds and a scoop of all-natural yogurt. If anything needs to be sweeter, use honey instead of sugar. A handful of dried fruit and nuts will also make sure you get the best nutritional value while bulking. Feel free to add a little extra nutty goodness at this point in your cycle.

The Best Breakfast for Cutting

Take the focus away from the high carb, high-calorie breakfast items, and turn to the wheat germ, rice cake, and fresh fruit kind of meal. When cutting all cereals are great, but don’t overdo it and keep away from the sweet stuff. Yogurt is still acceptable but don’t use sweetened ones. Bananas, berries, and grapefruit are high because they don’t contain quite as much sugar as other fruits do.

Anyone interested in making sure that their body is getting the right supply of nutrients ought to know a little more about L-Arginine. Also, sometimes known as Nitric Oxide, L-Arginine is a neurotransmitter that helps the brain and body function harmoniously. Evidence has shown that Arginine is excellent for improving circulation and improving heart health – but can it be applied to support a bodybuilder make gains?

At CrazyMass, we went on a mission to find out.

What is L-Arginine? 

Before we dive into how L-Arginine can help a bodybuilder, let’s examine precisely what it is, and summarize the scientific effect it has on the body. L-Arginine is the prerequisite of Nitric oxide; this means that the body needs L-Arginine to create nitric oxide naturally. Arginine is an amino acid that, once digested, will be converted into either nitric acid or insulin or a few other useful bodily substances.

Once converted, the body will use this new nitric acid to widen the blood vessels, which will improve circulation. It stimulates the release growth hormones and can be used for a variety of health conditions. As well as being available in supplement form, L-Arginine is found in the foods that we eat. Some of the most common foods to contain high levels of this amino acid include turkey, pork loin, and pumpkin seeds.

L-Arginine has risen in popularity in recent years as more and more athletes turn to it to enhance performance. It is a safe supplement, not considered to be a steroid. You do not need to supplement to get the benefits of this compound. All you need to do is research the best foods to eat to maintain a steady supply of nitric oxide. If you are seeking to build muscle fast, though, NO is a great option.

L-Arginine Dosage

No standard amount can be taken or is recommended but generally up to 30g is acceptable.  Use caution, though because side effects like nausea and diarrhea can occur.  Start at a low dose for the first week of taking this supplementation and gradually increase where you see results but not the possible side effects, at that point; you have reached a proper dosage for your body.  Use should use a flow cycle where you take it for a while and then don’t take it for a while.  Possibly on or taking it for three months then off or not taking it for two months so that your body doesn’t get used to it and to give your body a break.

As with any supplementation that you might take for any reason you will want to consult with your doctor before taking this.  They will discuss your overall health, any medicines you take that might interact with this supplement, and if it is right for you to choose.

The Benefits of L-Arginine

L-Arginine wouldn’t be a supplement if it weren’t beneficial to the health. It is thought that most of the health benefits found in this particular supplement come from the body’s conversion of the amino acid into nitric oxide. That being said, some of the known health benefits include:

• Improves heart health. It has been used to treat angina, ease the symptoms of chest pain from clogged arteries, and even help with the level of oxygen in your blood.
• It can be used as an aid to control blood sugar in patients who have diabetes. This is thanks to its ability to produce insulin, as well as nitric oxide.
• Soothes inflammation and helps wounds heal faster.
• Can be used to treat erectile dysfunction. The oxygen in the blood flow can sometimes be the cause of ED; nitric oxide may have the ability to prevent this.
• Has been shown to relieve symptoms of high blood pressure.
• It can enhance exercise performance.

These are just the health benefits derived from the use of L-arginine supplementation specifically. Let’s examine what Nitric Oxide does to the body next.

The Benefits of Nitric Oxide

Primarily nitric oxide widens those blood vessels and allows more oxygen to travel around the system. This makes it an excellent supplement for heart conditions, and even conditions where low blood oxygen levels are a significant side effect. The fact that nitric oxide also relieves inflammation well known. It also helps the body to recover from injury faster, recover from muscle stress better, and even has a positive impact on the endorphin system.

Is Nitric Oxide Beneficial To Bodybuilders?

Yes! There are many ways in which it helps bodybuilding specifically. For starters, all that extra oxygen in the blood improves vasodilation, meaning that you get the better pronunciation of any veins in the muscle. The rate at which it increases the blood flow helps keep oxygen traveling around your system as you work out, meaning growth hormones, nutrients, and other vital compounds reach your muscles faster. The reduction of blood pressure is also helpful for bodybuilders since it can help keep you working for longer.

According to Health Guide, nitric oxide has three main benefits for any given bodybuilder. They claim that significant research showed improvement in promoting the extension of your workout, triggering muscle growth and recovery, and increasing the recipient’s overall strength and stamina. Nitric Oxide supports the link between blood flow and the skeletal structure. This allows for more support during extended workout sessions. When you use Nitric Oxide, you should be able to pump harder, for longer.

Science has shown that L-arginine and nitric oxide can both be used in the field of bodybuilding. They have proved to increase strength, make endurance easier, and even speed up injury recovery times. L-arginine has anti-inflammatory and healing properties that we will explore in more detail, below.

Are There Any Side Effects of L-Arginine or Nitric Oxide?

There may be a few side effects from using L-Arginine. Nitric Oxide can cause kidney troubles when used for prolonged periods. It has also been known to cause much milder symptoms, such as:

• bloating
• abdominal pains
• diarrhea
• low blood pressure
• dizziness
• allergies or in very extreme cases, airway inflammation

If you follow the instructions given on the bottle, then you should not expect to suffer any severe side effects. It is not recommended that you take L-arginine for extended periods. It is also suggested that you check with a doctor if you are on any other medications. You should always stop taking any supplements if you suspect you are having an allergic reaction to them.

Where Can I Buy NO?

If you are wondering where you can buy Nitric Oxide or L-Arginine to try for yourself, then we have the answers. Here at CrazyMass, we supply only the highest quality of laboratory tested NO. Our supplements are clean, clear, and come in stacks suitable for all occasions. Nitric Oxide supplementation is available through our expert formulated NitricBOOSTER Max Elite Series product.

As well as finding the most reliable Nitric Oxide supplements available online, we also provide tips and tricks to help you attain the best body possible. We focus on our customers – and our customers want to grow! Now you can grow with CrazyMass, and never be short of vital bodybuilding supplements, ever again.

Pre-Workout Supplements from CrazyMass

Of course, we do our own range of supplements! With specialist knowledge like ours, why wouldn’t we? Our supplements are all safety vetted, laboratory tested, and specifically designed to enhance your workout performance, across the board. We supply cutting stacks, bulking stacks, and strength and endurance enhancers that are all legal, all-natural, and all excellent. Visit our shop today and start making the most of your gains.