Pre-Workouts and Nitric Oxide Boosters
Nitric Oxide Booster: Ideal Pre-Workout Supplement
My first experience with nitric oxide boosters was back in 2008. My colleague had brought some pre-workout into the gym with him for us to try. He brought both he and I a shaker full of it, so we downed it pretty quickly and waited…
The pre-workout tasted absolutely foul (he had gotten the mixture wrong and had doubled the recommended dose) and vowed never to touch it again. It tasted like crap and made me feel weird for a while afterwards. It was also a lesson when it comes to buying cheap supplements.
If I think about it, I can still remember the taste of a double-dose of cheap pre workout!
I’d written off pre-workouts and nitric oxide boosters from then, but a lot of people I knew still used them. I needed more convincing and a better brand before I started using them again.
A couple of years later, research around the nitric oxide boosting properties of cherry extract, beetroot juice and coffee became popular. There was a suggestion that these were all great nitrate donors in the right doses and could actually be a beneficial supplement to exercise and sports performance.
My mind was changed when I tried a particular coffee that was said to be an effective nitrate donor.
Before the workout I was tired, not feeling like I had a good session in me. About 30 minutes after drinking the coffee, I noticed significant improvements in energy, far beyond what could be attributed to my normal coffee (which does very little in terms of a boost for me – I’m not very sensitive to caffeine).
So that was it, my mind was changed. Nitric oxide boosters (pre-workouts) were back on the menu.
How does Nitric Oxide work?
Well there are a number of benefits to nitric oxide, but I’ll stick with the immediate benefits for the purposes of this article. The benefits of nitric oxide that help you during your workout.
I’ll also use this opportunity to explain that a pre-workout doesn’t contain nitric oxide, it contains ingredients to allow for increased production of nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide is a vasodilator
Vaso-what-er? Vasodilators help relax the arterial walls, improving blood flow and therefore oxygen delivery to the muscles and other tissues. The more oxygen your muscles can acquire, the harder you can work. Medically, vasodilators are used to treat problems such as ED and high blood pressure.
Nitric oxide reduces recovery time between sets
A knock-on benefit of vasodilation is that the faster the rate of oxygen delivery to the muscles, the quicker you recover between bouts of effort. Essentially this means more work can be done during a session, which naturally translates to better, more effective and productive workouts.
Nitric oxide leads to improved endurance
If you are a cardio person, nitric oxide supplementation will help you out also. By improving oxygen delivery to the muscles, you’ll be able to work for a longer period of time and fatigue at a slower rate. The benefits you see from nitric oxide during strength training are arguably more pronounced in steady-state cardio training.
Finally, a few thoughts on selecting a pre workout…
Most pre-workouts are full of stimulants. There’s a feeling that a pre-workout should be about stimulating you and ‘waking you up’, which I don’t subscribe to. If you’re so tired that you need a pre-workout to train, you’ll do yourself more good by getting some rest.
If you want a pre-workout supplement that contains no stimulants but still gets the job done, try this from Blackstone Labs.
By the way, if you suffer with blood pressure or other cardio vascular issues, consult your doctor before using a nitric oxide boosting pre-workout.
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