Pre-Workouts: Mostly Caffeine

Walk into any supplement store and the pre-workout aisle dominates the front. Bright colors, aggressive names, lengthy ingredient lists. Pull back the marketing and almost every effective formulation comes down to one ingredient: caffeine, usually at two to three hundred milligrams per scoop.

The other listed ingredients are a mixed bag. Beta-alanine produces a tingling sensation and offers a small, real performance benefit at sustained daily intake. Citrulline malate may help with the muscle pump and minor fatigue resistance. The rest, the proprietary blends, the obscure herbs, the tongue-twister stimulants, are largely either inadequately dosed or unsupported.

A cheaper, more transparent alternative for most people is a strong coffee, five grams of creatine, and a handful of dates or a banana for fuel. You get the performance benefit without the marketing markup or the ingredient list you cannot pronounce. Save the pre-workout tubs for when the ritual genuinely matters to your training mindset.