6 Best Foods to eat before a workout

The food you eat has a major effect not just on what you look like yet in addition on how you perform. By eating the right foods you'll have more energy a clearer mind and you'll also perform significantly better at the gym. What’s more, to lay it out plainly there are numerous correct ways that you can set up your pre-workout meals.

Usually, the most common approach is to combine protein and carbs before a workout. By eating something like chicken and rice or scrambled eggs Ezekiel bread and veggies or oatmeal combined with a scoop of protein powder. And berries but instead of listing out all the healthy protein carbs and fats that you can eat before your workout. That you probably already know about I want to go over 6 very special foods and beverages that are proven to have very interesting effects on your performance. If consumed before your workout.

Hot Peppers:

Some very unique effects are hot peppers capsaicin is actually the compound that makes chili peppers hot. According to research consuming that compound before a workout increases the number of reps that you can do per set. I realize that may sound insane however it's true the researchers had 10 trained men do squats on two separate occasions.

Both of these times the participants did four sets using a challenging weight load. And they rested for one and a half minutes between sets the only difference was that on one event they took 12 milligrams of capsaicin 45 minutes before starting the workout. The other time they took a placebo instead. Surprisingly enough the participants took capsaicin before the workout. Were able to complete more reps during their sets compared to taking the placebo. and there are three possible explanations for how capsaicin is able to improve performance.

The first is that it may raise your pain threshold capsaicin is for example used as a pain reliever for neuropathic conditions. which are usually diseases that affect the nervous system and cause pain. its ability to increase someone's pain threshold may explain why the participants reported feeling like they didn't struggle. as much when they took capsaicin as opposed to the placebo. this heightened pain tolerance may have been what allowed them to complete more reps.

Another explanation for its ability to increase performance can be traced back to the effects. it has on calcium being released from muscle cells and the boost that that provides to your central nervous system. now to actually feel these benefits you should eat a lot of bean chili peppers. so for many people, a supplement might be a better option. nonetheless, on the off chance that you wouldn't fret zesty food sources, I recommend going with oleoresin red peppers.

Because they have a high capsaicin content in fact the study found that there are 60 milligrams of capsaicin in a gram of olive resin red peppers. which implies you'll just need to eat a quarter of a gram to feel the benefits. of course, regular chili peppers and red peppers are still also an alternative. however, in the event that you go to that course, you'll have to eat a lot more of them since chili peppers only have about .1 milligrams of capsaicin per gram and red peppers contain about 2.5 milligrams per gram.

Beet Root:

We have beetroot people who often take l-citrulline before a workout to improve blood flow. but very few people know that beetroot works just as well or maybe even better. that's because beetroot contains nitrates and nitrates are natural chemicals that get broken down into nitrites inside your body. which can then get turned into nitric oxide. now nitric oxide is a molecule that stimulates vasodilation. meaning it relaxes the inner muscles of your blood vessels.

this leads to an improvement in blood flow that's why consuming beetroot before a workout can actually help you get a bigger pump. plus it can also improve workout performance. studies show us that nitrate supplementation improves aerobic endurance energy output muscle recovery between sets and potentially also anaerobic endurance. Now the one problem is that it might be hard to eat enough beetroot to get the required amount of nitrates for it to be effective.

but fortunately, there is a solution you can turn raw beetroots into beetroot juice and drink it about 500 milliliters of beetroot juice is enough to feel the benefits. and that's usually the amount that's utilized in examinations now on the off chance that you need to attempt this it's best to drink the beetroot juice two to three hours before your workout because the evidence shows us that blood nitrate levels peak within about two to three hours after having the beetroot.

Casein:

Moving on to the next category is casein, there are a number of studies that show that eating protein alone or with carbs before exercising increases muscle protein synthesis. And one of these studies found a positive muscle-building response after consuming 20 grams of whey protein before a workout. according to this study in order to reap the benefits of a pre-workout protein shake you need around 30 grams to do the trick.

so it's very common for weight lifters and bodybuilders to get their pre-workout protein in the form of whey. most people believe that since whey digests faster than casein it must be better than casein before a workout. but that's not actually true while whey does produce a more significant spike in muscle protein synthesis it doesn't enhance the muscle protein synthesis for as long of a time as casein does. so over time, the total increase in muscle protein synthesis between whey and casein tends to be the same.

Meaning in that regard one isn't better than the other. but with that said whey is not as good as casein at preventing muscle protein breakdown. this makes casein the better pre-workout protein for gaining strength and muscle when compared to whey and we can see this being confirmed in a study that looked at the changes in body fat and muscle mass in overweight police officers. as they followed a calorie deficit diet with a high protein intake while also lifting weights throughout. the week they divided the cops into groups and one group had a casein protein product.

while the other group had whey instead and after 12 weeks the casein group gained on average almost 9 pounds of lean muscle mass while the whey group only gained around four and a half pounds. the casein group was also able to increase their chest shoulder and leg strength by 59 percent over the course of the study. while the whey protein group only increased their strength by 29 which is a significant difference.

The researchers believe that this significant difference in body composition and strength is most likely due to improved nitrogen retention and overall anti-catabolic effects caused by the peptide components of the casein. to put it simply casein was better at preventing muscle protein breakdown. making it a superior choice pre-workout since your workout will drastically increase muscle protein breakdown. so maybe consider having some casein before your workout and combining it with something like oatmeal and skim milk.

Oatmeal:

The thing is that current research is mixed on the topic of pre-workout carbohydrates. some research suggests that they aid performance while others show no benefit at all. and while training clients I found that individual response is also mixed some people benefit from consuming carbs before their workout while others don't. so feel free to experiment however given that healthy carbs have no real adverse effects on your workout. but they may possibly have some beneficial ones you may want to try having a carb like oatmeal before your workout especially if you're dieting.

that's because a calorie deficit reduces your muscle glycogen stores so when you're dieting there will be less energy available for your muscles to use. by having pre-workout carbohydrates you can somewhat replenish that glycogen which may improve performance for example a 2017 study compared a group of lifters that had 28 grams of carbs before and after training. to a group of lifters that had 28 grams of protein without carbs before and after training. and the group that had the carbs experienced improved muscular endurance even after eight weeks of calorie-restricted dieting so carbs can help but you may be wondering why are oats in particular an excellent food to eat before workouts.

well, there are two main reasons first they contain a decent amount of fiber. which hinders the rate at which the carbs get absorbed as a result the glycogen gets released into your bloodstream gradually. this prevents mild symptoms of low blood sugar during training that you might experience if you have faster-digesting carbs instead of fruit juice or honey for example. the second reason why oatmeal is an especially great pre-workout carb is that unlike most other carbohydrates it also contains a decent amount of protein. according to data from the u.s department of agriculture 100 grams of raw oats has 13.2 grams of protein.

Coffee with l-theanine:

Many people think that pre-workout formulas are super complicated but the truth is that caffeine happens to be the workhorse. that's responsible for almost all the acute effects of most pre-workout supplements. so to feel most of these short-term stimulatory effects you could just drink coffee and save yourself some cash. especially since most pre-workout supplements use low doses of lesser proven ingredients to piggyback off of the effects of the caffeine. So you might be wondering how caffeine is so beneficial for your workout performance.

Well, it's proven to help with suppressing fatigue while increasing focus strength power, and endurance. Studies researchers generally have participants take between three and six milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight before exercising. so if you weigh about 80 kilograms which is about 175 pounds. that would be between 240 and 480 milligrams of caffeine. now, most people aren't going to stand there measuring the amount of caffeine in their coffee and the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee can vary based on how it's made. but there is about an average of 95 milligrams of caffeine in an 8-ounce regular cup of coffee. that would mean you would need to drink two and a half to five cups of coffee to reach the clinical amount of caffeine that's used to study its pre-workout effects. keep in mind that an eight-ounce cup is much smaller than the mug or cup that you probably use for coffee so don't go overboard. either way, it may seem like a lot and I'd say for many people that haven't built up a tolerance to caffeine it may definitely be too much and can cause anxiety and jitters.

so instead one to two average size cups of coffee are generally enough for a regular person who doesn't have a huge tolerance to caffeine. now to get the absolute most out of your coffee consider adding l-theanine to it. l-theanine is an amino acid found in tea leaves and studies show that l-theanine enhances caffeine's positive effects while reducing the negative aspects like increased anxiety increased blood pressure and reduced sleep. the general recommended ratio of caffeine to l-theanine is one to two so for every average cup of coffee add 200 milligrams of l-theanine. that should be a good ratio for most people although if the l-theanine calms you too much you can instead do a one-to-one ratio.

So 100 milligrams of l-theanine per cup also an important thing to keep in mind is that caffeine will only enhance performance if you haven't built up a tolerance to it yet. that's why it's best to limit caffeine intake to once or twice a week if you want to use it to really boost gym performance if you have it more often than that it tends to lead to tolerance. luckily if you feel that you've already built up a tolerance to caffeine you can abstain from all caffeine sources for two weeks. which should be long enough to reset your tolerance.

Watermelon:

I'm not going to spend too much time on watermelon because it has many of the same benefits as beetroot and can actually be used as an alternative to beetroot. watermelon is actually considered by many to be the world's best source of citrulline. which like we talked about earlier is an amino acid that boosts nitric oxide production. when you consume citrulline your body converts it into arginine which then gets turned into nitric oxide and that nitric oxide improves blood flow. research indicates that citrulline can actually improve your gym performance in three different ways. that's by increasing blood flow to your muscles helping your muscles clear out the ammonia which happens to actually be a marker of muscle fatigue and increasing your energy levels while reducing lactic acid accumulation. which is that burning sensation that you feel when fatigue starts setting in.

So those are the six unique pre-workout foods that you can eat to boost performance and in turn get better results.