Pre-Workout Ingredient Showdown (WHICH WORKS BEST?) – ATHLEAN-X™

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Pre-workout supplements are among the top three most used supplements by those that work out and take their training seriously. In this video, I’m going to show you the best pre-workout ingredients and which you should be looking for if you are going to look to benefit from a supplement prior to training.

This battle pits L-Arginine vs. Citrulline Malate as to which is the better pre workout supplement ingredient. Both of these are chosen for their ability to provide muscle pumps during training, with the Citrulline Malate giving you the additional benefit of improved muscular endurance and power. When it comes to the pump however, it is important to first understand that this is not a totally benign effect meant to feed your ego while you train.

The muscle pump has the effect of delivering more blood and water to the working muscles, allowing them to train harder by helping to keep them hydrated while removing muscle waste product more efficiently. That said, the way these ingredients work is through their effect on nitric oxide.

Nitric oxide has a vasodilation effect on your arterial walls that are feeding your skeletal muscles. When the nitric oxide relaxes the arteries you get increased flow of blood to the working muscles and the pump is increased.

That said, arginine has a significant problem when it comes to effectively leading to the production of nitric oxide and that is that when taken orally it becomes subject to much more breakdown than citrulline malate. L-Arginine is not efficiently converted to nitric oxide because it becomes susceptible to the arginase enzyme in the digestive tract and liver. This leaves you with far less assimilation of the original arginine that you thought you were taking. This can happen at up to a 70-99% percent loss depending on other health factors like cholesterol levels.

On the other hand, citrulline bypasses the gut and liver and converts much more readily to arginine. From here it can be converted to nitric oxide at a much more efficient clip. In fact, many studies suggest that you can get up to a 300% higher net absorption of nitric oxide via this pathway than the previous.

Additionally, the citrulline in it’s citrulline malate form is even more beneficial because it provides additional energy for better muscle endurance. The malic acid bound to the L-Citrulline feeds the Krebs Cycle which lets you produce more cellular ATP (the metabolic currency of energy).

For a pre-workout backed by sports science with no proprietary blends, be sure to use what the pros use and head to to get the ATHLEAN-Rx supplements. Our pre-workout, post-workout, muscle recovery stack is the one counted on by serious lifters to maximize the gains they see from their hard training.

For more supplement videos covering pre workout reviews, post workouts and supplements to help you build muscle, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at

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