Atop the supplement podium with whey protein and creatine are pre workout formulas. Pre workouts make up a greater proportion of the supplement market than ever before. Every major supplement brand has a pre workout.
Popular products like C4 can even be found in grocery stores and popular retailers, making them more accessible than ever.
With many supplements comes crossover in terms of benefit. For example, creatine (a component of many pre workout supplements) is used to get stronger, but can also build muscle.
A pre workout is mainly used for energy in the gym, but the benefits can exceed just providing a quality workout.
A pre workout with the right ingredients can help to mobilize and burn body fat when used in conjunction with exercise.
To illustrate this, it’s important to understand how body fat is burned in the first place.
The process of beta oxidation (fat burning) is a long, multi-step affair. For the purpose of this article we will simplify the process as it relates to pre workout supplementation.
Fat is stored in adipose tissue throughout the body in the form of triglycerides. To burn fat we must first mobilize fat from this storage tissue. Only then can it circulate the blood to be burned off (oxidized) as energy.
The concept of mobilization is important to remember, as some of the pre workout ingredients discussed play a role in the mobilization of body fat. There are exceptions, as certain ingredients can increase body heat, also called thermogenesis.
The fat burning itself, for the context of this article, is mainly done through exercise. This is why it’s important to use a pre workout as the name intends, immediately prior to exercise.
Some will say that pre workouts aid in fat loss simply by improving performance and increasing calorie burn in the gym. This is true, but there are ingredients commonly found in pre workout supplements that have a direct impact on fat burning independent from exercise.
Pre Workout Ingredients for Weight Loss
Knowing what ingredients to look for can help you discover if your pre workout not only improves exercise performance, but helps lose fat as well.
The ingredients showcased have varying levels of research regarding their impact on fat loss. It’s important to not only know the ingredients, but also know what an efficacious dose is. Many supplement ingredients have data that proves they work in some capacity, but only if a certain dose is included.
Caffeine
Stimulants are effective in increasing adrenaline, which helps to liberate fatty acids from stored adipose tissue. Caffeine is the most popular stimulant not only in pre workout formulas, but in terms of general consumption in coffee, energy drinks, and tea.
You can assume every pre workout contains caffeine as the base of its formula. In fact, there is an entire separate category called non stim pre workouts due to this assumption. Caffeine content is often the first thing advanced supplement consumers will look for when shopping for a new pre workout.
A recent meta-analysis showed that caffeine significantly increased fat oxidation rates compared to placebo. Participants in these studies ingested caffeine then performed a specific exercise bout. These were crossover studies, where individuals served as their own control. These types of studies are preferable since sometimes you can get a hyper-responder to a certain supplement or training program which throws off the average.
Whether this was due to increased fat mobilization or an increase in actual fat oxidation itself was unclear. Frankly, most people probably don’t care too much about the mechanism so long as the studies showed an increase in fat oxidation overall.
Caffeine doses in research studies are often based on body weight. Rarely will all participants receive an arbitrary amount of caffeine. The participants in the meta-analysis received between 2-7 mg of caffeine per lb of body weight. The effective minimum dose seems to be about 3 mg per lb of body weight in order to see results.
For example, an 80kg male (about 176lbs) would need to ingest 240mg of caffeine pre workout. Nowadays, most pre workouts contain about 300mg of caffeine per serving, so this is no issue. Even if it is less, you could simply take a scoop and a half or two scoops to reach that threshold. Again, it’s dependant on your own personal body weight, so be sure to do the math yourself.
Caffeine is also an appetite suppressant, making the dieting phase of fat loss easier.
It’s important to note that over time you will build a tolerance to caffeine. The research seems to indicate that as this tolerance is built, the fat oxidation effects diminish as well.
Yohimbine
Yohimbine is a stimulant, just like caffeine, also found in some pre workout formulas. The fat loss effects of yohimbine found in research is pretty impressive, with some studies even done in competitive athletes.
It’s normal to find fat loss benefits in obese populations, from the sheer notion that they have more fat to lose than a non-obese individual. But this study on yohimbine done in soccer players showed notable fat loss results. Obviously, a high level soccer player will have a normal, if not low, body mass index so it shows that the effects of yohimbine do not diminish when used by lean individuals.
The only downside of yohimbine is that some individuals do not like the way they feel when supplementing with it. Some people feel totally fine, while others feel anxious and uneasy. If you are predisposed to that sort of thing it may be an ingredient to avoid or take at a very low dose to assess tolerance.
Yohimbine is way more potent than caffeine. While a typical caffeine dose in a pre workout is 200-300mg, a standard yohimbine dose is 3-5mg.
Rauwolscine
Rauwolscine is molecularly similar to yohimbine, and provides a similar fat burning effect. Rauwolscine is interesting in that it does not enhance fat burn, but rather inhibits mechanisms that may slow it down. This is akin to certain proteins that have more of an anti-catabolic effect rather than a strong anabolic effect.
Rauwolscine may have mood enhancing qualities as well. Since it is a relatively new compound, there is no definitive data on what constitutes a clinical dose.
L-Carnitine
L-Carnitine works differently than the other compounds listed to this point. Carnitine is a transporter that helps fatty acids get burned off for energy. This step in the fat burning process is considered the rate limiting, or slowest, step in the process. The theory is that supplementing with L-Carnitine can make this rate limiting step of fat oxidation more efficient.
Beyond that, the benefits of L-Carnitine are nearly limitless. L-Carnitine supplementation has been shown to improve workout performance, markers of inflammation and even mental health.
Unfortunately, L-Carnitine is typically underdosed in pre workout formulas, or is part of a proprietary blend that does not show the actual amount. A proper dose of L-Carnitine is 1-2 grams. L-Carnitine may be listed as one of its alternative forms, like L-Carnitine L-Tartrate or Acetyl L- Carnitine.
Green Tea Extract
Green tea is a commodity that has a myriad of health benefits. It is actually the catechins, specific molecules found in green tea, that provide these benefits. The most notable is EGCG. In fact, when you take a supplement that contains green tea, it will likely be listed as EGCG on the supplement facts panel.
The fat loss benefits of EGCG appear to be minor, so it’s best to consider it a nice throw in as part of a pre workout rather than something you go out of your way to look for.
The ingredients listed thus far are the fat loss ingredients commonly found in pre workout supplements. If you were to buy an actual thermogenic fat burner you would likely find other fat loss compounds like synephrine, capsaicin, and green coffee extract.
| Supplement | Caffeine | Yohimbine | Rauwolscine | L-Carnitine | Green Tea |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RedCon1 Total War | x | x | |||
| MuscleTech Shatter Elite | x | x | |||
| Hyde Xtreme | x | x | |||
| SuperPump Aggression | x | x | |||
| Ghost Energy Drink | x | x | |||
| Gold Standard Pre | x | x | |||
| STIMUL8 | x | x | x |
Can You Take Pre Workout With a Fat Burner
People looking to optimize fat loss through supplementation will likely take an actual fat burner. But perhaps they may already take a pre workout and wonder if they could stack the two together.
A pre workout supplement can be stacked with a fat burner so long as they are taken separately, about 4-6 hours apart, since both will contain caffeine.
Timing is critical when taking two supplements containing caffeine. You want to space it out so that you are not taking too much caffeine at once, but at the same time you don’t want to take caffeine too close to bed time.
In an ideal situation you may take a pre workout supplement at 8am if you work out in the morning, then a fat burner at 1-2pm in the afternoon. This allows adequate time between doses, while also giving ample time between the second caffeine dose and bed. Caffeine has a half life of about 6 hours, but this varies by individual.
Even if there is some crossover with the ingredients between the two supplements, they should be fine to take in the same day. In fact, since underdosed ingredients are the norm in supplements, stacking two products with similar compounds will likely make it more effective.
This protocol is obviously less relevant if taking a stimulant free pre workout, stimulant free fat burner, or both. However, due to the positive research associated with caffeine and fat loss, it is recommended that at least one supplement contain caffeine, provided you can tolerate it.