What is in our new PhD Pre-Workout + Collagen?

And why should you take it?

Pre-workouts are a great way to give yourself a much-needed boost to support your performance during your next workout, whether that’s an intense weightlifting workout, a high-intensity interval training session, or a long endurance session on the bike or running.
However, to ensure your performance improves, you need to choose a pre-workout that contains science-backed ingredients, provided in sufficient doses to deliver the ergogenic effects claimed; something many pre-workouts fail to deliver.

Our new PhD Pre-Workout + Collagen provides several ingredients selected to maximise both your physical and mental performance during your workout and support your recovery afterwards. We’re going to take you through the ingredients in our new pre-workout and highlight how these can benefit both your performance and recovery.

The Benefits of Caffeine

Caffeine can exert ergogenic effects on exercise performance by acting on the central nervous system by blocking adenosine receptors in the brain. Caffeine enhances focus, alertness, reaction time, and concentration⁽¹⁾ and reduces the perception of effort and pain during exercise. It’s also well established that acute caffeine supplementation at a dose of 3-6 mg/kg body weight enhances various aspects of physical performance, including power output, time to exhaustion, sprint speed, repeated sprint performance and strength^(1,12,13). PhD Pre-Workout + Collagen (with caffeine) provides 200 mg per serving, a dose shown to be effective in the scientific literature.

Benefits of L-Taurine

Taurine is an amino acid that plays a role in a range of physiological processes that can influence exercise performance, including calcium handling, ATP turnover (the release of energy), and the reduction of blood pressure. It’s been shown in several studies to enhance endurance performance and reduce muscular fatigue during strength exercise when consumed at a dose ranging from 1-6g daily⁽¹⁵⁾. PhD Pre-Workout matches this dose by providing 1g of l-taurine per serving.

The Benefits of Collagen

Collagen represents one of the most abundant proteins in the human body and is a predominant component of muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissues. Given its role as a building block in these tissues, supplementation with collagen has been explored within sports science for a range of potential athletic performance benefits.
To date, randomised trials found improvements in tendon properties⁽⁴⁾, accelerated recovery from exercise-induced muscle damage⁽³⁾, and improvements in joint pain and function⁽⁸⁾ with chronic collagen supplementation.

Benefits of Leucine

Leucine represents an essential amino acid that plays a key role in stimulating muscle protein synthesis, a process, alongside muscle protein breakdown, that determines changes in muscle mass. Leucine should be consumed in a range of 700-3000mg⁽¹⁶⁾ in a meal or drink with other essential amino acids to maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Our new PhD Pre-Workout + Collagen contains 3000 mg of leucine per serving to have a potent effect on stimulating protein synthesis.

Why a Caffeinated and Non-Caffeinated Version?

PhD Pre-Workout + Collagen comes in two versatile versions to bring you the best of two worlds:
The caffeinated version is perfect for those early and mid-day workout sessions, where the extra caffeine provides an additional boost in mental and physical performance.
The non-caffeinated version is better suited for evening sessions when you still want to perform, but without the extra boost that may negatively impact sleep quality, and therefore, recovery.

References

1. Hogervorst, E.E.F., Bandelow, S., Schmitt, J., Jentjens, R.O.Y., Oliveira, M., Allgrove, J., Carter, T. and Gleeson, M., 2008. Caffeine improves physical and cognitive performance during exhaustive exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 40(10), pp.1841-1851. 

2. Becque, M.D., Lochmann, J.D. and Melrose, D.R., 2000. Effects of oral creatine supplementation on muscular strength and body composition. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 32(3), pp.654-658. 

3. Bischof, K., Stafilidis, S., Bundschuh, L., Oesser, S., Baca, A. and König, D., 2024. Reduction in systemic muscle stress markers after exercise-induced muscle damage following concurrent training and supplementation with specific collagen peptides–a randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in Nutrition, 11, p.1384112. 

4. Jerger, S., Centner, C., Lauber, B., Seynnes, O., Sohnius, T., Jendricke, P., Oesser, S., Gollhofer, A. and König, D., 2022. Effects of specific collagen peptide supplementation combined with resistance training on Achilles tendon properties. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 32(7), pp.1131-1141. 

5. Haskell, C.F., Kennedy, D.O., Milne, A.L., Wesnes, K.A. and Scholey, A.B., 2008. The effects of L-theanine, caffeine and their combination on cognition and mood. Biological Psychology, 77(2), pp.113-122. 

6. Suzuki, T., Morita, M., Kobayashi, Y. and Kamimura, A., 2016. Oral L-citrulline supplementation enhances cycling time trial performance in healthy trained men: Double-blind randomized placebo-controlled 2-way crossover study. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 13(1), p.6. 

7. Brancaccio, M., Mennitti, C., Cesaro, A., Fimiani, F., Vano, M., Gargiulo, B., Caiazza, M., Amodio, F., Coto, I., D’Alicandro, G. and Mazzaccara, C., 2022. The biological role of vitamins in athletes’ muscle, heart and microbiota. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(3), p.1249. 

8. Kviatkovsky, S.A., Hickner, R.C., Cabre, H.E., Small, S.D. and Ormsbee, M.J., 2023. Collagen peptides supplementation improves function, pain, and physical and mental outcomes in active adults. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 20(1), p.2243252. 

9. Cox, G., Mujika, I., Tumilty, D. and Burke, L., 2002. Acute creatine supplementation and performance during a field test simulating match play in elite female soccer players. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 12(1), pp.33-46. 

10. Volek, J.S., Kraemer, W.J., Bush, J.A., Boetes, M., Incledon, T., Clark, K.L. and Lynch, J.M., 1997. Creatine supplementation enhances muscular performance during high-intensity resistance exercise. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 97(7), pp.765-770. 

11. Cooke, M.B., Rybalka, E., Williams, A.D., Cribb, P.J. and Hayes, A., 2009. Creatine supplementation enhances muscle force recovery after eccentrically-induced muscle damage in healthy individuals. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 6, pp.1-11. 

12. Southward, K., Rutherfurd-Markwick, K.J. and Ali, A., 2018. The effect of acute caffeine ingestion on endurance performance: a systematic review and meta–analysis. Sports Medicine, 48, pp.1913-1928. 

13. Mohr, M., Nielsen, J.J. and Bangsbo, J., 2011. Caffeine intake improves intense intermittent exercise performance and reduces muscle interstitial potassium accumulation. Journal of Applied Physiology, 111(5), pp.1372-1379. 

14. Bailey, S.J., Blackwell, J.R., Lord, T., Vanhatalo, A., Winyard, P.G. and Jones, A.M., 2015. l-Citrulline supplementation improves O2 uptake kinetics and high-intensity exercise performance in humans. Journal of Applied Physiology. 

15. Waldron, M., Patterson, S.D., Tallent, J. and Jeffries, O., 2018. The effects of an oral taurine dose and supplementation period on endurance exercise performance in humans: a meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 48, pp.1247-1253. 

16. Jäger, R., Kerksick, C.M., Campbell, B.I., Cribb, P.J., Wells, S.D., Skwiat, T.M., Purpura, M., Ziegenfuss, T.N., Ferrando, A.A., Arent, S.M. and Smith-Ryan, A.E., 2017. International society of sports nutrition position stand: protein and exercise. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 14(1), p.20.