Pre-Workout Supplement

I have a secret weapon…and it’s the “Liquid Mojo” that gets me out of bed early in the morning for my workouts and helps me push harder, recover faster and just plain smile at 5 am!

 

GEEKS, Read ON!

The Science Behind My Pre-Workout Supplement “Liquid Mojo”

Whether your goal is to improve your overall health, lose weight, gain muscle, become stronger, or perform better, nothing beats exercise and a healthy, well-balanced diet. That said, select supplements taken at the appropriate doses, in the appropriate forms, and at the appropriate times have been shown to provide additional benefit.

With that in mind, Beachbody Performance supplements have been formulated with clinically tested doses of some of the most widely studied ingredients in sports nutrition research. In my pre-workout supplement, Energize, they’ve combined three key ingredients (beta-alanine, caffeine, and quercetin), individually shown to help boost energy, enhance exercise performance, or delay fatigue (or all three).

These ingredients have been researched for years (decades even), but we weren’t content to simply rely on previous studies of individual ingredients. We wanted to test the effects of Energize itself. So independent sports nutrition experts at the University of Exeter, in England, measured the effects of Energize on exercise performance and perceived effort in a study of 13 male and female cyclists.

The Study

The Energize study was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study — the gold standard design for clinical trials of this kind. “Placebo-controlled” means that we tested the effects of Energize against a taste-, color-, and calorie-matched placebo. (In other words, it looked and tasted like the real thing, but lacked the active ingredients.)

“Crossover” means that we tested Energize and the placebo in the same study participants on different days. “Randomized and double-blind” means that the drinks were tested in random order (i.e., some participants received the placebo first, while others received Energize first), and that neither the study participants nor the researchers knew which drink was administered until the study was completed.

Study participants completed four testing visits, each of which was separated by at least one week. To minimize interference from prior food and beverage consumption, participants were asked to fast overnight prior to all visits. During each visit, the participants:

1. Consumed one study beverage (Energize or placebo) and then rested for 30 minutes.
2. Consumed a second study beverage (Energize or placebo) and then completed 30 minutes of vigorous steady-state cycling.
3. Consumed a third study beverage (Energize or placebo) and then completed a 15-minute exercise performance test known as a cycling time trial.

During the 30 minutes of steady-state cycling, participants exercised at 80 percent of their VO₂ max (i.e., maximum aerobic capacity). At 10-minute intervals, perceived exertion (i.e., how hard the participants felt they were working) was evaluated using the Borg Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale.

The scale ranges from six to 20, with six corresponding to little or no effort (e.g., resting comfortably) and 20 corresponding to maximum effort (e.g., sprinting up a steep hill). Exercise performance was assessed during the cycling time trial, when participants were instructed to cycle as hard as they could for 15 minutes while the researchers recorded their power output and total work done.

The Energize Study Findings

When the study participants consumed Energize 30 minutes before steady-state cycling, their RPE was significantly lower than when they consumed the placebo. In other words, even though they were exercising at the same intensity, they reported that exercise felt easier after consuming Energize.

During the cycling time trial, participants’ exercise performance was roughly 5 percent greater when they consumed Energize 60 minutes prior to the test than when they consumed the placebo. That is to say, the study participants were able to perform more work in the same amount of time when they consumed Energize.

For elite athletes, a 5 percent improvement in performance can mean the difference between winning an event and not even placing. For the rest of us, it can mean being able to push harder during a workout, and working out harder can simply mean burning more calories and working more effectively toward our goals.

Practical Recommendations

Collectively, our findings indicate that consuming Energize roughly 30 minutes before most workouts (or 60 minutes before all-out efforts) can help improve exercise performance, boost power output, increase total work done, and reduce perceived effort.

All-Natural Ingredients

Energize uses a synergistic blend of three key ingredients — beta-alanine, quercetin, and caffeine — to help delay exercise-induced fatigue and boost energy, focus, power, and athletic performance.

“Many supplements on the market today contain a cocktail of ingredients that lack synergy, and may even conflict with one another,” says Nima Alamdari, Ph.D., Director of Scientific Affairs and co-creator of the pre-workout formula, Energize. In short, choose the wrong one, and instead of boosting performance, you may very well sabotage it.

What You Don’t Want To See On The Label
Answer: a lot of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, preservatives, or other ingredients that are excessive, unnecessary, counterproductive, or (in some cases) illegal. Take stimulants, for example: Some products combine the equivalent of up to five cups of coffee with other powerful stimulants like yohimbe, increasing your risk of side effects ranging from nervousness and irritability to headaches, chest pain, and arrhythmia. Sometimes there’s also extra caffeine or additional stimulants that aren’t printed on the label. Occasionally you might even see banned substances — a product called Jack3d was targeted by the FDA in 2015 for containing DMAA (a banned stimulant).

Energize, by contrast, contains just 100mg of caffeine (the equivalent of about one cup of coffee). “Low doses of caffeine have been shown to enhance performance in a wide variety of exercise, athletic, and sporting situations with few (if any) side effects compared to higher doses” says Alamdari.

Other ingredients you won’t find in Energize include synthetic sugars and sugar alcohol. “Avoid maltitol, sorbitol, and xylitol, in particular — they can cause gas and bloating.

Testimonial

Don’t just take my word for it. Dr. Marcus Elliot, founder of the Peak Performance Project (P3), explains to Beachbody President and CMO Jon Congdon how it has enhanced the training of some of the country’s top athletes at his applied sports science facility in Santa Barbara, California.