Pro’s
- Contains Citrulline Malate
- L-Carnitine is a key pre-workout ingredient
- Sensible dosage of Caffeine
Con’s
- Citrulline Malate is underdosed
- Missing key pre-workout ingredients
- Beta-Alanine causes paresthesia (see side effects)
- Not good value for money
See Your Best Options In Our
– Top 3 Pre-Workouts Page –
About The Product
Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped is a supplement made by Six Star Pro Nutrition. It’s a budget product that costs under $20 for 30 servings, making it one of the cheapest products we’ve reviewed. So it’s no surprise to see that many ingredients have been under-dosed here.
But there’s one thing we don’t like in this pre-workout – a proprietary blend (we’ll explain what this is below).
Proprietary blends are mixtures of numerous ingredients that’re only shown to you as 1 quantity. As you can see from the ‘Advanced Amino Blend’ in this pre-workout’s ingredient list, the overall amount is 500mg – but you’re not shown the dosages of each ingredient inside such as L-Arginine.
This increases your risk of side effects, and also makes it uncertain whether Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped will actually work. For this reason, we try to avoid any supplement that contains proprietary blends.
Anyway, now that you know we don’t like proprietary blends; we’ll take you through each ingredient inside this product – so you can see how effective this pre-workout really is.
Here’s Everything You Need To Know:
Beta-Alanine
We always have mixed opinions about this ingredient; Beta-Alanine has shown to improve your muscular endurance, but it can also cause a side effect called paresthesia.
What’s paresthesia? Well, it’s a tingling and itching on the skin of your face and body – something that distracts us from our gym sessions personally.
As we just mentioned, we don’t like this side effect. So we try and avoid this ingredient when choosing a pre-workout supplement. But this is personal, and you might not find paresthesia as distracting as us – so you can try it and see how bad it is for yourself.
Personally, we prefer Creatine Monohydrate as studies show it’s more effective at enhancing your muscular endurance (as well as strength) in the gym.
Arginine Alpha-Ketoglutarate
Also known as AAKG, this is the salt of the amino acid, L-Arginine and Alpha-Ketoglutarate. Basically, it’s been added into Pre-Workout Explosion, because it’s believed to enhance your muscle pumps by raising your nitric oxide levels.
However, as Arginine has a poor absorption rate, it’s not actually reliable at delivering this benefit (due to being mostly ineffective when orally supplemented).
For this reason, we consider AAKG to be an ineffective ingredient in Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped.
Caffeine Anhydrous
If you haven’t been checking the ingredient list for supplements, then you might be wondering what Caffeine Anhydrous means. Well, it simply means that caffeine has been dehydrated into powder form, so it can be added into supplements such as Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped here.
We’re glad that Caffeine hasn’t been added to the ‘Advanced Amino Complex’ proprietary blend, as you should always know how much you’re consuming – to stay safe from side effects such as jitters and energy crashes.
Simply put, we always advise you to consume under 200mg Caffeine per serving to avoid side effects. Six Star Pro Nutrition has done a good job here by dosing Caffeine sensibly at 135mg per serving.
Good job by this company here, and this means you won’t suffer from jitters or energy crashes when taking Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped.
Choline Bitartrate
Choline is one of the worst ingredients you can find in supplements. Why? Because it can cause your breath and sweat to smell fishy, without offering any benefits to help improve your gym session.
That’s right, Choline Bitartrate is a useless ingredient that causes a side effect. Something you’ll want to avoid – unless you don’t mind smelling like salmon while pumping iron in the gym.
L-Tyrosine
L-Tyrosine is a ‘brain boosting’ ingredient that’s shown to be effective at improving your cognition (focus, memory, mental alertness). This is why we consider L-Tyrosine to be a key Nootropic ingredient.
However, we never understand why companies add L-Tyrosine to their pre-workout supplements; Caffeine offers enough of a boost to your focus to enhance your gym sessions, so there’s no need for L-Tyrosine here.
Saying that, there’s nothing bad about having L-Tyrosine here, as it hasn’t shown to cause any side effects. But we would have preferred Six Star Pro Nutrition to have added Creatine Monohydrate here instead (which has shown to enhance your strength & endurance in the gym).
L-Carnitine
L-Carnitine is a great addition to any pre-workout, as it’s proven to reduce muscular fatigue and damage, while being able to strengthen your mind-muscle-connection while lifting weights.
For this reason, we consider L-Carnitine to be a key ingredient in pre-workout supplements. But the problem is, L-Carnitine has shown to be most effective when consumed in dosages of 500mg-2,000mg.
Unfortunately, Six Star Pro Nutrition has only added a 250mg dosage of L-Carnitine in Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped – meaning it might not work.
Ultimately, this is a great example of why dosing ingredients correctly is so important.
Green Coffee Extract
Green Coffee Extract is a key ingredient in any fat burner supplement; it’s an effective thermogenic that’s proven to boost your metabolism and help you shred body fat.
However, the main problem we have with Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped is that it’s marketed as a ‘fat burning pre-workout supplement’.
Basically, studies have shown that you need to consume fat burning nutrients 3-4 times per day, in order for it to work. As you’ll only be taking pre-workouts once, it’ll be much more beneficial taking a fat burner supplement, if your main goal is to lose body fat.
Advanced Amino Complex
This is the first proprietary blend inside this product. It contains 3 ingredients; Taurine, Citrulline Malate, L-Citrulline and L-Arginine.
We’ve already explained why proprietary blends are bad (because you can’t see the exact dosages of each ingredient inside). For this reason, we can’t see whether any of these ingredients are going to actually work or not.
Taurine
This is an organic acid containing sulfur, not bull’s urine like some people think. Some people also believe that Taurine can boost your energy levels, as it’s inside energy drinks – but studies have shown that Taurine doesn’t deliver this benefit.
So what does it do? Well, Taurine has shown to help reduce cramping, but as this is easily achieve by keeping yourself hydrated, we don’t consider Taurine to be a key ingredient inside Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped.
Citrulline Malate
It’s a shame that this is part of a proprietary blend, because it’s one of our favorite pre-workout ingredients.
Simply put, Citrulline Malate has proven to raise your nitric oxide levels, which increases your blood flow – resulting in enhanced muscle pumps in the gym.
However, studies have shown that it only works in dosages of 6,000mg or above. As Citrulline Malate is part of a proprietary blend, no-one knows how much is inside (meaning you can’t see whether it’s been effectively dosed or not.
We believe that a company will always show you the dosage of an ingredient if they dose it effectively (why spend money on something you’re not going to advertise). For this reason, we believe that ingredients are under-dosed when hidden in proprietary blends – meaning it’ll be ineffective in Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped.
L-Citrulline
We should have explained this before; Citrulline Malate is basically a mix of L-Citrulline and Malic Acid.
The Malic Acid offers increased strength and endurance, as it’s essential in the your body’s production of ATP. As a result, if we had to choose between a pre-workout containing L-Citrulline or Citrulline Malate, we believe Citrulline Malate would be the better choice of ingredients.
For this reason, there’s really no need for a company to add both of these ingredients into the same product; they’re just trying to add more ingredients, to fool you into thinking Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped is better than it is.
But luckily for you, you’re doing some great research by reading this review – so you won’t be fooled by this tactic. Good job, and remember to avoid supplements hiding ingredients in proprietary blends like this.
L-Arginine
Right, so you just learned that Citrulline Malate boosts your nitric oxide levels, which enhances your muscle pumps. Well, to save you from confusion, we didn’t tell you this; Citrulline Malate converts into Arginine in your kidneys, which is the reason why it boosts your nitric oxide levels.
So why not take L-Arginine directly? Well, studies have proven that L-Arginine has a poor absorption rate, meaning it’s mostly useless when orally supplemented.
As Citrulline Malate has a great absorption rate, Citrulline Malate has shown to be the much better option in pre-workout supplements. Again, remember that companies add unnecessary ingredients simply to make their products look better than it is. Well, this is the case here.
See Your Best Options In Our
– Top 3 Pre-Workouts Page –
or
– Top 3 Fat Burners Page –
Side Effects
There are 2 ingredients inside Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped that can cause side effects; Beta-Alanine and Choline Bitartrate.
Just to quickly summarise, Beta-Alanine has been reported to cause paresthesia (a tingling & itching on the skin of your face and body), while Choline has shown to leave your breath and sweat smelling fishy.
It’s important to remember that there are pre-workouts that don’t cause side effects – so we recommend you choose one that doesn’t leave you with itchy skin or smelling like a salmon in the gym.
Here’s the potential side effects from taking Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped:
- Paresthesia (Beta-Alanine)
- Fishy breath and sweat (Choline Bitartrate)
Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped Review Conclusion
As we mentioned before, we don’t like that this pre-workout contains a proprietary blend – we always advise you to avoid supplements containing these blends, to stay safe from side effects and wasting your money.
Ultimately, you need to know whether ingredients have been effectively dosed to see whether the product is worth trying overall. Unfortunately, when a supplement contains a proprietary blend, it doesn’t allow you to do this, as companies use them to hide ineffective dosages of nutrients inside.
Think about it, if a company pays extra money to optimally dose their ingredients, they’ll be sure to include it in their advertisements and clearly label it on their product. When an Football or Soccer club spends cash on buying a key player, they make sure that everyone knows about it!
Not only that, Pre-Workout Explosion Ripped puts you at risk of suffering from side effects. Simply put, if you’re spending valuable money on a gym supplement, you want to experience benefits to help improve your body – without any side effects.
For this reason, we advise you to search for pre-workouts that don’t cause any side effects and contain optimal dosages. This will ensure that you get the best value for money.
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