I’ve been in the fitness and nutrition industry for 10 years at this point, and when I look out into the vast sea of pre-workout supplements out there are a few things I notice. First, companies LOVE to talk about how their formulas are “scientifically proven”. They will include dozens of ingredients and cite scientific research to back each one of those ingredients. However, once you dig a little deeper you will reveal that the research they cite are either tiny sample sizes or cherry-picked positive findings that ignore other non-significant findings (Exhibit A). Second, when brands do include the few ingredients that have real scientific support, they are included in severely underdosed amounts. This is done so that the ingredient can be advertised on the label, without the company having to pay for an effective dose(Exhibit B). Lastly, proprietary blends are still commonly used in many formulations. There are no secrets in sports nutrition, the only reason to use a proprietary blend in a formulation is to hide how underdosed your product is or to give the illusion that you have some sort of secret sauce (Exhibit C).
At Tier 1 Supplements, we wanted to do things just a little bit differently. When it comes to pre-workout ingredients, there are really only three of them that have the sort of scientific backing that make them worth your money. We call those ingredients “The Big 3”, and those are the ones we’ve included in our pre-workout, nothing else.
The Formulation
Creatine Monohydrate (5000mg)
To produce energy, your muscles breakdown ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate) into ADP (Adenosine DI-Phosphate). The accumulation of the metabolites associated with this process is one of the main causes of fatigue in things like weight lifting or high power-output efforts. In order to continue producing energy your body needs to turn ADP back into ATP and it needs creatine in the form of phosphocreatine to do so. We naturally have stores of creatine (which is just a nonessential amino acid, meaning it can be produced in the body), but supplementation with dietary creatine can increase creatine and phosphocreatine concentrations in the muscle by 20-40%. What that means is that we have a greater stockpile of creatine to re-generate ATP during intense exercise and therefore exercise harder and longer.
The Research
Proper Dosage
Practically all the research showing positive effects of creatine monohydrate are with doses between 3-5g. A loading stage of 20-25g for a few weeks before switching to a 3-5g maintenance dose is sometimes recommended, but not necessary. A loading stage does get muscles saturated more quickly, but it also increases the chances of gastrointestinal issues. Creatine works by keeping your muscles saturated over the long term, so getting your muscles to the point of saturation 1-2 weeks faster is not really going to make a difference in long-term outcomes. That is why put 5g of pure, unadulterated creatine monohydrate in this product.
Beta-Alanine (3600mg)
Most people know beta-alanine as the ingredient that gives you that skin tingling sensation in your face and skin, also known as paresthesia. While this is true, that is merely a side effect and not the thing that provides a performance advantage. Beta-alanine supplementation works in a chronic manner, similar to creatine. But instead of saturating your muscles with creatine, it saturates them with a naturally occurring compound called carnosine. Carnosine acts as a buffer, meaning it prevents the build up of acidic by-products that result from anaerobic metabolism. This is super useful for efforts where we use anerobic energy as one of the main sources of energy (Crossfit WODs, high rep lifting sets, 400m-800m running, intermittent sprinting, etc.).
The Research
Proper Dosage
One interesting thing about the beta-alanine research is that we have not quite found an upper limit of beneficial dosing. It seems like higher and higher doses continue to provide more and more benefit, up to ~9g per day have been studied. The limiting factor here is the paresthesia (skin tingling) we mentioned earlier. At some point that side effect becomes so strong that it is not worth the performance benefit. For this reason, we’ve chosen to dose our product at 3600mg as that seems to be the sweet spot between performance benefits and minimizing unwanted skin tingling. If you want to try higher doses, or if you just LIKE the skin tingling side effect, feel free to experiment with and extra half or full scoop!
Caffeine (200mg)
Caffeine supplementation has been shown to affect practically every aspect and type of athletic performance from endurance sports to strength and power sports. The main mechanisms of action that caffeine is thought to exert a beneficial effect are through an increased central nervous system drive, increased catecholamine release, reducing subjective feelings of pain and exertion, and an increased skeletal muscle contractile capacity.
The Research
Proper Dosage
Caffeine dosing can be tricky. While the majority of the literature shows a performance benefit with between 3-6mg/kg of caffeine, as little as 2mg/kg has been shown to benefit aspects of performance. To complicate matters even more, there is a ton of variation between individuals both in the dose that provides a performance benefit and the dose that provides unfavorable side effects. Genetic-based variation in caffeine response is thought to be caused by variations in the CYP1A2 and ADORA2A genes. The CYP1A2 gene has been shown to determine the rate that an individual metabolizes caffeine, while the ADORA2A drives overall caffeine sensitivity.
Due to this variation, we settled on 200mg per serving which meets the 2mg/kg threshold for anyone weighing under 220lbs. This allows for you to experiment with different dosing strategies that work best for you.
Third Party Testing
The supplement industry is in a bit of a “wild west” in terms of regulation at the moment. While the FDA technically does regulate the dietary supplement industry, supplement companies are not required to submit evidence of safety and efficacy prior to distribution on the open market, but rather are subject to post-market surveillance. So basically if there are a string of adverse reactions of some sort from a specific supplement, then the FDA can step in and take action. With this being the case, you can see how the market could be flooded with supplements that either don’t have what they say on the label, or have additional potentially harmful ingredients that are not listed.
In fact, a 2023 study tested 634 non-hormonal dietary supplements (things like creatine, pre-workouts, protein, etc) and found that 15% of them contained anabolic androgenic steroids or steroid derivatives. Another study included in this review looked at 875 supplements and found that 26% of them contained testosterone or other anabolic steroids and 9% of them contained FDA and/or WADA banned stimulants.
This is why third party testing is so important when it comes to supplements. When you are browsing supplements, you want to make sure they carry one of these logos:
These third party organizations are well known for rigorous batch testing, so you can rest assured that you aren’t taking anything you do not intend to. If you’re supplement does not have one of these logos, you are taking a risk.
I’ll let you in on a little industry secret. It is not very expensive for a company to get this done, each batch test can be as little as $800-900 dollars and for companies that routinely produce batches of 10,000+ units this cost is miniscule. So if a company is not doing this and they are marketing to competitive athletes, they are just pure lazy.
At Tier 1 Supplements, all our products are Informed Sport certified. We will never put something out into the public unless we are certain that we have done every bit of due diligence possible to provide a safe and effective product.
