Review: Pulse V4 sour apple

I really wanted to go back to using pre-workouts and I wanted to try this Sour Apple flavour for ageeeeeees so I went ahead and picked this up from Myprotein.com for a reasonable £19.99.

First thing, the flavour is actually pretty good for a pre-workout.  It's never going to taste as good as something like BSN No Xplode Green Apple which tastes AMAZING.  But for the price i'm really not disappointed at all with the taste.  I think it tastes better if it's super cold, so use ice water or mix it and put it in the fridge for a bit.

Now, the important stuff.  What the hell is in it?

The ingredients list looks like this:

Perform and Pump blend (Creapure [4g], AAKG, Beta Alanine, Citrulline Malate) 9.2g
Focus and Energise Matrix (L Tyrosine, Taurine, Guarana Extract, Caffeine) 3.8g.  A 17g serving of Pulse® contains approximately 168.4mg of caffeine.

What you want to stay away from is proprietary blends in pre-workouts.  This hiding under-dosed ingredients behind the term "proprietary blend" to mislead the consumer.  Luckily, we don't have that here.  You can quite clearly see from the label what you are putting into your body.  

Creapure is a Creatine Monohydrate product that is meant to be more pure than standard Creatine Monohydrate (99.9% pure) and is therefore more expensive.  Whether that product is supperior to standard Creatine Monohydrate, I have my doubts, but still.  A nice bonus.  It probably bumps up the price of the product though!  According to Antonio and Ciccone (2013) Creatine and resistance exercise can increase lean muscle mass and strength.  It is widely recognised as a supplement that anyone who is active should take, and I side with that too.  But the minimum dose should be 5g per day so at 4g you're coming short.  So on top of my pre-workout i'm still gonna have a scoop of creatine at some other point in the day.  

Arginine Alpha-ketoglutarate is also known as AAKG or simply arginine.  This ingredient is said to improve muscular endurance and strength, but the research I have done doesn't seem to like it at all!  Wax et al (2012) found no correlation between acute ingestion of arginine and improvement in muscular endurance and strength, but they did say that that may suggest that a loading phase would be necessary.  I don't think it'll hurt taking in arginine, but I'm dubious on it's effectiveness.  

Beta alanine is the ingredient that can produce the "fizzy face" associated with pre-workouts.  But what does it actually do?  It is basically a stimulant that can help increase performance.  Hobson et al (2013) found that beta alanine increased the speed of performance in rowers.  A similar study was run by Ducker et al (2013) that found that there was a "very likely" chance that runners supplementing with beta alanine would improve their 800m race time.  So if you're doing sprints rowing I imagine this supplement will positively affect your results.  I would also imagine that this will help with power movements in weight lifting, so might help with that big surge of power required when sitting at the bottom of a squat.

Citrulline Malate is notorious for being a fighter of fatigue, especially for endurance athletes.  Lopez et al (2012) carried out a study on the effects of citrulline malate on fatigue for high performance athletes and found that the supplement allows for a better recovery of blood lactate and of fatigue therefore promoting recovery and improving the chance of further high intensity exercise.  

The remaining ingredients (L Tyrosine, Taurine, and caffeine) are all there to help with alertness and as stimulants.  

I actually feel they are underdosing all these ingredients a little.  After the 4g of creapure are taken off the 9g in the "Perform and Pump blend" you are left with 5 g of AAKG, Beta Alanine, Citrulline Malate and I really would prefer to have 3g of each ingredient in my pre-workout.  When I first tried the pre-workout about 2 years ago I felt the effects massively, but since then my body has got used to the ingredients so when I tried this supplement I didn't feel a massive stimulant effect like I would expect.  I think if I upped the dose, or reduced the caffeine in my diet, I would see great results using this product, especially for the price.

Price 8/10
Taste 7/10
Performance 6/10

References

Antonio, J and Ciccone, V. (2013) ‘The effects of pre versus post workout supplementation of creatine monohydrate on body composition and strength’ Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 10:36.

 

Ducker, KJ., Dawson, B., Wallman, KE. (2013) ‘Effect of Beta-Alanine Supplementation 

on 800-m Running Performance’ International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, Vol. 23 pp554 -561.

Hobson, RM., Harris, RC., Martin D., Smith, P., Macklin, B., Gualano, B., Sale, C. (2013) ‘Effect of Beta-Alanine With and Without Sodium Bicarbonate on 2,000-m Rowing Performance’ International Journal of Sport Nutrition & Exercise Metabolism, Vol. 23 Issue 5, pp480-488.

Wax, B., Kavazis, AN., Webb, HE,, Brown, SP. (2012) ‘Acute L-arginine alpha ketoglutarate supplementation fails to improve muscular performance in resistance trained and untrained men’ Journal Of The International Society Of Sports Nutrition, Vol. 9, pp6.