Pre-Workout Before A Baseball Game: The Pros And Cons

Pre-workout in the modern days is a big trend, and there is a reason for it. It can boost your performance, make you more awake, and decrease the amount of fatigue you will feel during your sport session, training, and so on.

I take pre-workout before my gym workout (not at night) as I can feel the energy boost, which leads to a better workout, leading to better gains!

As pre-workout can be used for increased performance, it raises the question of whether it is allowed to be used before a baseball game.

Taking pre-workout before a baseball game is legal as it contains mostly caffeine, electrolytes, creatine, and similar ingredients. If you feel fatigued before a baseball game, between innings, or want an extra boost for performance, you can take pre-workout.

Everything that can be taken doesn’t necessarily mean that you should, especially when talking about sports such as baseball. Now, let’s learn whether you should take pre-workout before your baseball game.

Should You Take Pre-Workout?

Now that you know you can take pre-workout before a baseball game, the following question is, should you? Each person has a different view on pre-workout, and if you feel like you are in peak performance, you probably don’t need it. However, if you feel fatigued and want an extra boost, pre-workout is a valid option.

To decide whether you should use pre-workout, you need to reflect on yourself and weigh the pros and cons. Let’s start with the advantages!

Advantages of Pre-Workout

You gain various incredible benefits from using pre-workout for baseball and other activities.

1. Boosted strength: Pre-workout boosts your strength, maximum performance and makes you able to push harder.
2. Increased stamina: Pre-workout increases blood flow and delivers more oxygen to your muscles, improving your stamina quite a bit.
3. Improved focus: Pre-workout contains many ingredients that affect your mental performance, such as caffeine. This can improve focus, mental alertness, and even memory.
4. More motivation: The combination of beneficial ingredients that pre-workout contains (More on that later) improves your motivation as you are stronger, have more endurance, and before all, a more energetic mental state.
5. Higher energy levels: Overall, pre-workout increases your energy levels, so you feel better and happier to push a bit further.

What this means in terms of baseball is that you can swing harder and more accurately, run bases faster, and have a better overall game IQ during your performance boost.

Disadvantages/Side Effects of Pre-Workout

Even though there are great benefits to pre-workout, there can be some serious cons and side effects you should know about.

1. Addiction: If you take pre-workout regularly, your body gets used to it, especially the caffeine. This can cause addiction for it. Well, it’s more of dependence as you won’t get any symptoms by not taking it. Nonetheless, it won’t have the effect it once had, and you feel the need for it which isn’t good.
2. Dehydration: Certain pre-workouts are designed to pull water and pass it, which can cause dehydration. This can be beneficial for weight loss; however, in regular and excessive use, you can get dehydrated. There are many other side effects of dehydration, such as headaches, sleepiness, and low blood pressure.
3. Insomnia: One serving of pre-workout can contain caffeine anywhere between 2-5 cups of worth. Add that to the coffees, energy drinks, teas, and other caffeine drinks you may drink in a day, and that’s a huge amount of caffeine. As a result, you may experience insomnia as caffeine can take up to 6 hours to clear from your system.
4. Energy Crash: When you boost performance with pre-workout, your energy, strength, endurance, and mental state goes to an overdrive. When the effect starts to wear off, you will naturally feel more fatigued without it, and in some cases, it can be severe. This is also called ”caffeine crash”.
5. Indigestion: Pre-workout may increase the release of stomach acid, which can cause indigestion issues and so on.

As you can see, the side effect list is as long as the benefit list, and when you dig deeper on the side effects of the side effect, it’s probably longer. However, you shouldn’t be too concerned if you pre-workout it as it’s intended.

If you use pre-workout the right way, it is a powerful tool to use, not something to rely on. I know it’s true as I use it as a tool myself. As the saying goes, ”Everything In Moderation” is especially true with pre-workout. You can dodge most of the side-effects by using pre-workout for situations that can benefit from it, not every morning to get you out of bed.

What Does Pre-Workout Contain?

Have you ever read the ingredient list from the side of a pre-workout container? It is filled with a lot of them that often can be unfamiliar for those that haven’t been educated about them.

Anyways, below you can find some of the most used ingredients that pre-workouts contain. Most pre-workout contains caffeine, and the other most popular ingredients are creatine and BCAAs.

Note that every pre-workout won’t include every ingredient on this list.

1. Caffeine: Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant, meaning it increases activity in your nervous system and brain, making you more focused and energetic. Caffeine is the main ingredient in most pre-workouts. There is 2-5 coffee cups worth of caffeine in a single pre-workout serving depending on the type.
2. Creatine: Creatine monohydrate is an organic compound, and most of it is stored in the skeletal muscle in your body. Creatine allows a consistent energy supply, improves strength, increases lean muscle mass, and boosts recovery.
3. Beta-Alanine: Beta-alanine is a natural amino acid produced in your body. However, when you increase it in the form of pre-workout, you increase carnosine production, which increases muscle endurance in intense exercises.
4. BCAAs (Branched-chain amino acids): BCAAs are essential amino acids, including leucine, isoleucine, and valine. The benefits of BCAAs include muscle building, decreased muscle fatigue, and reduced muscle soreness. The most popular BCAA product is NOCCO, as you might know.
5. Nitric Oxide: Nitric oxide is often found in pre-workouts as it can boost exercise performance, reduce muscle soreness, lower blood pressure, and even treat erectile dysfunction.
6. Sodium Bicarbonate: Natural buffer, part of your body’s acid-base balance. Sodium bicarbonate helps clear acid out of your muscles when you work out, restoring the optimal pH. As a result, you may gain a boost in performance, and you will train for longer.
7. Vitamin B12: Vitamin B12, also known as cobalamin, is well known for all vegans and is one of the eight B vitamins. B12 keeps your body’s blood and nerve cells healthy and helps generate DNA! Other benefits include the prevention of megaloblastic anemia, which is a condition that makes you weak and tired.
8. Citrulline Malate: An organic salt generated in your body as its own. Taking some in the form of pre-workout may increase oxygen content in your muscles, improving performance. If you want to get citrulline malate from food, eat watermelon, and you will have lots of it!
9. Electrolytes: Sodium, calcium, potassium, chloride, phosphate, and magnesium are all electrolytes. You can get them all from food and drinks. Electrolytes are often included in pre-workouts. They are very important for our body and help our muscles contract, balance blood pH, regulate blood pressure, control fluid balance on the cell level, and much more.

There is a lot of science behind the ingredients found in pre-workout if you want to dive deeper into the subject, as it is quite interesting. However, what the average consumer want’s to know about is how it will increase the performance and in what way.

How Long Before a Game Should You Take Pre-Workout?

I regularly see people at the gym drinking their pre-workout, and I made the mistake of drinking it minutes before arriving at the gym when I was starting. However, that’s not the right time to take pre-workout. But what is?

Generally, you should take pre-workout 30 to 60 minutes before your game or workout. The pre-workout won’t start working right after you consume it as it needs to absorb into your body. If you should go to sleep from 6 hours after taking the pre-workout, you shouldn’t as it will affect your sleep.

As you know, pre-workout contains a lot of caffeine that makes you more alert. If you take pre-workout a couple of hours before bedtime, you risk losing sleep that night as caffeine can linger in your body for six hours. This takes us to our next subject.

How Much Caffeine Is In Pre-Workout?

As you might have noticed, pre-workout has an unusually high dosage of caffeine because that’s the main ingredient improving your performance. So, how much caffeine is in pre-workout?

Generally, 10 grams of pre-workout has 150-300mg of caffeine, 210g on average. A serving of pre-workout can be anywhere between 10-30grams, depending on the pre-workout itself and its nutritional value.

I use a pre-workout called Off The Hook by Chained Nutrition. It has 206mg of caffeine per 10g, and the serving size is 17 grams, which makes 350mg of caffeine per serving.

I compared five popular pre-workouts from Amazon and learned that the average caffeine amount per 10g is 211g. Note that the pre-workouts are different and meant for different types of people, so not all pre-workouts are the same, by a long shot.

Pre-Workout	Caffeine Per 10g
Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard Pre-Workout	175mg
RSP Nutrition AminoLean Pre-Workout	143mg
NitroSurge Pre-Workout	209mg
Six Star Explosion Pre-Workout	332mg
Alani Nu Pre-Workout	200mg

Why Does Pre Workout Tingle?

Most pre-workouts will make your skin itch and tingle. That sensation can be energizing in small doses; however, the itching will easily go overboard, making you lose focus and get irritated. What is the cause for that sensation?

Beta-Alanine makes you tingle after consuming pre-workout. Beta-Alanine in doses higher than 2g will likely make you itch, which can be exhilarating or irritating,d depending on how you like it. If you don’t like the itchy sensation, I suggest getting pre-workout with no or low Beta-Alanine content.

I don’t get irritated from the itchy feeling if it isn’t excessive. However, the limit gets easily crossed, and then I can’t focus on anything yet focus on everything a the same time…

I wouldn’t recommend high beta-alanine dosages for baseball as the itchy feeling will throw your focus off or at least diminish it.