Pre-workout Drinks

Pre-workout drinks: Making lazy kids motivated and disrupting sleep quality and recovery since the airing of those first N.O.-Xplode advertisements.

By: Tony Cates, CPT, PES

We have all heard of them. Those drink powders containing various combinations of amino acids, stimulants, electrolytes, and herbal extracts. They can turn almost anyone who is tired and unmotivated into a raging mule in the weight room. In an aspect of life where a commitment to consistent hard work is the only means for success, they give hope to the overpopulated crowed searching for shortcuts and instant gratification. Though I will agree, imperfect action, or action with the assistance of chemical substances, is generally far better than perfect in-action, the abuse and addictive nature of these glorified energy drinks is something I feel deserves to be addressed.

The primary goal of a pre-workout drink is to give you more strength, power, energy, and endurance during a workout than you would otherwise have. What could be wrong with that? Better workouts lead to improved fitness and faster results, right? Generally, I might agree with this statement, except for the fact that better workouts are only being achieved through artificial means. What most pre-workout drinkers fail to take into consideration is that recovery from workouts is arguably more important than how much work is actually done during the workout. For instance, if I train more in one session than I am able to recover from, I will not be getting the full benefits of my hard work. This is where I find the primary problem with pre-workouts drinks.

Not only do pre-workouts allow users to train beyond their capacity to recover, they further prevent recovery by hindering proper sleep patterns. Caffeine, the primary stimulant in most pre-workout drinks, negatively affects the sleep cycle. The degree to which this is done depends on the time, relative to bedtime, that the caffeine is ingested, as well as the individual’s tolerance to stimulants. Whether you notice it or not, caffeine is likely disrupting your sleep, and with sleep being one of the most critical aspects of recovery, it is hindering not only your ability to recover, but your ability to progress, as well.

By taking a pre-workout product, people not only have a greater ability and desire to train beyond their capacity to recover, they actually reduce their ability to recover at the same time. This in turn leads to increasing numbers of people over-training and suffering injuries related to over-training and over use.

Perhaps it is time to re-think what actually makes sense when it comes to pre-workout fuel.

Tony Cates is a business management major at Edgewood College in Madison, WI. He is a certified personal trainer, performance enhancement specialist, and the S&C Coach for Edgewood College Men’s Basketball. He can be reached at catestony@gmail.com or (608) 852-7433.

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