Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout (By PLab)
0.00Pros
- Great Price
- Quality Ingredients
- Great Synergy Between Ingredients
- Works fantastically with other Performance Lab Products
- Great brand reputation with GMP facilities and a clean label
Cons
- Piperine would be a great addition
- Only available from the official manufacturer’s website, though it does offer discounts for bulk buy and free worldwide shipping for orders over $200
Introduction: What is Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout?
Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout is a product designed to support better workout performance. It’s a classic type of supplement: pre-workouts have been on the market for decades, constantly evolving and improving.
This product sets out to provide benefits at every level;
- Strength
- Muscle pumps
- Endurance
It’s got some pretty clear ideas about this and there’s a coherent philosophy to this product which we think is really important.
Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout Ingredients: What’s in here?
Below is the full list of ingredients in Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout:
- Creatine (Creapure® pH10) – 1250mg
- Setria® Performance Blend – 2200mg
- CarnoSyn® – 800mg
- Himalayan Pink Salt – 350mg
- Pine Bark Ext. (standardized to 95% Proanthocyanidins) – 100mg
- Iron – 2.5mg (Growco)
What’s in the product determines what the product is going to do.
As a result, we’re going to take you on a quick tour of each of the key ingredients in Performance Lab Pre, what they can do for you, and what we think of them.
Creatine
Creatine fills several roles in this product: strength support, improved muscular growth, and a powerful hydration aid. This is why it’s one of our favorite supplementary ingredients and one of the most important compounds you’re going to see on the market.
Creatine is one of the raw materials in producing ATP – the high-energy fuel used by your muscles. The result of taking in more creatine as a supplement is a deeper pool to draw from when it comes to pushing yourself. It improves performance in strength-endurance and helps fight off fatigue.
This improvement to muscular energetics is also a key player in keeping them healthy, reducing excessive muscle damage, and supporting muscular growth. These changes are important if you’re looking to be bigger, stronger, or perform better in a sport.
Finally, creatine is a powerful osmolyte. This is a pretty cool compound because it draws extra water into cells, helping them to hydrate. Combined with the Himalayan Pink Salt, this makes Performance Lab’s Pre a strong hydration and muscular health product.
The combination of these benefits is great – especially with the other compounds in this product. They do a lot of good work: your muscles are performing better, recovering better, and the increased water uptake means better recovery, reduced damage, and could even boost muscle growth because of cell volume.
The combination of compounds in this product have a very tight connection and idea of what they’re working towards.
CarnoSyn: Beta-Alanine
If creatine boosts short-term performance and citrulline/electrolytes support endurance performance, beta-alanine is the missing link. It buffers acid build up in cells – and the effects of metabolic ‘residue’ in the muscle cells during exercise.
Creatine is primarily useful in exercise under 60 seconds, citrulline boosts repeated bouts, and electrolyte supplementation boosts long-term endurance. Carnosine fills the gap: it supports performance in the 60-240 second region, making it an underrated and effective choice.
Beta-alanine boosts the carnosine in the muscle itself, which is going to produce significant performance improvements on its own. The combination of this product with creatine and Setria’s performance blend is even better.
Synergy between the active ingredients in this product allow it to do even more without adding significant quantities to each serving. The result is a product that covers everything from the shortest to longest bouts of exercise in your training.
Setria Performance Blend
This is a combination of two key compounds: glutathione and citrulline. We’re going to discuss citrulline first because it’s a key player, then break down the components of glutathione and what they can do for you.
This is effectively all the benefits of citrulline with additional secondary benefits from glutathione. You can expect a positive effect, since citrulline alone is a quality supplementary ingredient.
Citrulline
This is the best nitric oxide boosting ingredients you’re going to see in any supplement. It’s a superior form of arginine because – unlike arginine – it can be absorbed effectively. This improves serum arginine, which means better blood flow.
The increased blood flow to muscles is actually more multifaceted than you think. First, it improves muscle pumps which we’ve already discussed as being a potential factor for better muscular recovery and growth.
Secondly, it boosts your endurance – especially in repeated bout training. If you’re performing HIIT or circuit training, citrulline is going to be your best friend for improving results and performance. This is also useful for regular endurance training – but you’re not going to see as drastic results.
Citrulline’s contribution to blood flow also has some interesting implications for muscular recovery/growth. It’s not as significant as creatine, but increased delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the muscles could seriously improve your clearance of metabolites and muscle-damaging calcium.
What is the end result? Better endurance, better pumps, and potentially better recovery/growth.
Glutathione
Glutathione is a quality antioxidant that is made up of three compounds bound together: glutamine, cysteine, and glycine. It’s a popular antioxidant and provides some interesting benefits on the grounds of each compound.
Glutamine
This is a conditionally-essential amino acid, and it has some interesting roles. It’s not going to produce the same kind of results as creatine or citrulline, but it contributes in a protective role.
The main benefit of glutamine is that it can be an anti-illness, anti-stress compound for those performing high volume training. This is a seriously useful secondary compound for you if you’re looking to stay healthy and contribute to your overall wellbeing.
It’s not a muscle builder, but it’s a nice little bonus. This is especially important for vegetarians and vegans, who are likely to struggle to get enough glutamine from diet alone.
Cysteine
More dietary cysteine can reduce homocysteine production, which is a great way to keep cells healthy and combat DNA damage. It makes glutathione a potent antioxidant, which protects from all kinds of negative risks: from cancer to aging.
Glycine
This compound is primarily involved in the brain, where it can support awareness or help you wind down. These are initially competing, but the overall result is towards anti-fatigue in the short term, as well as better sleep quality.
Himalayan Pink Salt
This is a quality source for various forms of salts – the kind that are going to improve your performance and ensure proper electrolyte balance. It’s a mixture of 84 minerals, so there’s a lot going on.
This is a key factor in maintaining proper endurance performance. You’re going to be losing these key electrolytes during exercise and replenishing them before/during/after a workout is key to proper recovery and future performance.
By providing a quality electrolyte support blend, you’re going to see some good changes to endurance and recovery. Getting the head start on these changes is a big deal when it comes to improving comprehensive performance.
Combined with creatine, Setria, and beta-alanine, this product is covering all your bases for prolonged exercise. It paints it as a good generalist, that’s for sure!
Maritime Pine Bark
The active ingredient in this extract is Pycnogenol, which is a nitric oxide synergist. It’s in this product because it has some benefits to the use of citrulline itself, resulting in a better result without adding more citrulline or increasing serving size.
It may also combat systematic stress, but the research so far has only shown this to be effective in those with autoimmune diseases. The mechanisms seem to make sense for the rest of us, but it’s still in the experimental stage for general health/wellbeing/anti-inflammatory effects.
What we do care about is that 100mg of this product is enough for significant synergy with citrulline. This makes it valuable alone, especially since it takes up so little space in the capsule with 100mg. It’s a great compound if you’re looking at how it stacks up with alternative secondary ingredients!
Iron
Iron is a key compound in proper energy balance and it’s a crucially important mineral – especially for women. For most of us, iron deficiency is a common reality and a significant problem. Addressing this kind of deficiency can rapidly improve mental and physical performance.
The changes seen in response to iron extend from wellbeing to performance so we’re big fans. This approach, with a foundation in health and the knock-on benefits to performance, is the most responsible way to improve performance.
It’s not specifically a pre-workout compound but it will contribute to better workouts in general.
Preformance Lab Sport Pre Workout: How could it be better?
We’re big fans of this product, but if we really had to suggest a few small tweaks to improve the formula , we’d add a couple of extra ingredients to capitalize on the strong foundation of Performance Lab Pre. They include:
- Piperine
This is one of the best synergists around – it improves the absorption of nutrients through the intestinal wall. This makes basically everything in the product more effective – which is always a good thing.
While Performance Lab are doing well with their synergists, even 50mg of piperine would be the cherry on top!
- Electrolytes
We’d like to see a more pro-active approach to electrolytes. Himalayan pink salt is a good choice, but it’s not going to provide the levels of potassium, sodium, and calcium that would optimally support performance.
Adding a few of these small additions to the product could make a huge benefit to the existing effects. All of that said, we’re mostly splitting hairs on this one.
Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout Side Effects – Is it safe?
You’re not likely to run into any side effects with this product. Of course, it’s always possible that you have a personal intolerance, but there are no inherently risky compounds in this product.
It’s a stimulant-free compound, which offers you complete control over your own stimulant load. This makes it a great product for those who are trying to limit caffeine intake for medical or personal reasons.
It also means that Performance Lab Pre is not going to be a problem for those workouts later in the day, where caffeine can interrupt sleep quality/quantity.
If you experience any side effects, cease use and contact your medical professional as soon as possible. It’s not likely, but you still need to take care of yourself!
Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout: Additional Notes
There are a few key points about this product that have nothing to do with the nutrients, but still provide serious value…
Clean Label and Customer Service
For example, all Performance Lab products are designed with a clean label. This means a few things: complete freedom from common allergens, all vegan ingredients, no soy or GMO, and other assurances.
One of the things that we love is that they’re also produced in an FDA-approved ‘good manufacturing practices’ lab. This is about as much peace of mind as you can get that you’re getting what you’ve been promised, and everything’s being taken as seriously as possible.
The reputation that comes with this product and this brand is also very important for your peace of mind. The brand you’re working with provides a context for the product itself: you’re going to be dealing with the company if there’s anything wrong and they’re the main source of your peace of mind.
Performance Lab are well-respected for this kind of customer support/concern, which we think is important. It’s great to see that a company has a legitimate stake in your goals if you’re considering spending your money with them.
Cross-Product Synergy
The design of this product is also intended to fit into the context of the whole Performance Lab line. For example, the things we mentioned we’d like to see – such as piperine – are present in products like the Performance Lab Fat Burner (seen here).
The product stands on its own two feet pretty well, but it is best used in combination with other products from the line. They have cross-product synergy and that’s a great benefit if you get the chance to combine products for your specific goals/needs.
Where to Buy Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout
Performance Lab’s site offers the best prices for this product, as well as direct customer support if you need it. It’s only available direct.
Prices
The price of this product is pretty standard for the market at $35 – an economy price point you probably didn’t expect from a top-quality product. We think this provides a great value for money since you’re not spending tons of cash, but you are getting a premium product.
This also gives you a much better opportunity to work with more than one Performance Lab product for the synergy we’ve already mentioned.
The most obvious choices (to us) are the Performance Lab SPORT Fat Burner if you’re looking to shed some extra pounds. Alternatively, the pre-workout combines really well with the Performance Lab SPORT Post-Workout supplement (seen here). It’s the same level of quality but completes the comprehensive perform and recover roles.
Performance Lab SPORT Pre Workout Summary
We really like this product. The capsules are convenient, the ingredients are tightly coordinated for a comprehensive boost to performance, and the synergies are great. On top of that, it’s got a ridiculously good price point for the level of quality you can expect.
Our main final thought is that this product is offering a lot for a little and – while there are some tweaks that we think could improve it even further – it’s a great choice for a generalist pre-workout. Even more so if you can combine it with other products like the SPORT Post-Workout supplement. We love the fact that we have a great effective choice for a non-stimulant pre-workout.
If you’re looking for a product that you can scale up with the whole range, that offers great benefits from a relatively simple selection of quality ingredients, and comes at a fantastic price, this could be the pre-workout supplement for you.