Sport Performance clinical trials

Pre-workout Supplementation and Basketball

Pre-workout supplements (PWS) consumption in recreationally or physically trained males lead to many performance-enhancing benefits, including improvements in mean power output during single and repeated sprints, agility, reaction times, lower body muscular endurance and reduced fatigue. PWS ingestion also improves anaerobic performance and prolongs time to exhaustion during high-intensity intermittent exercise. However, PWSs' effectiveness is not constant, as they do not alter anaerobic power, jumping performance or blood lactate concentrations after a training session, at least in recreationally trained males and strength-power athletes. Moreover, the effects of long-term PWS supplementation, where some nutritional agents were combined (e.g., β-alanine, creatine, citrulline malate, etc.) to assess endurance-trained runners or elite cyclists' performance, are mixed and less clear. Even though the popularity of PWS use has increased among trained/professional athletes, most of the data in this area are derived from recreationally and not from well-trained athletes of a competitive level (especially in team sports). Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the acute and chronic effects of a PWS, containing 200 mg caffeine, 3.3 g creatine monohydrate, 3.2 g βalanine, 6 g citrulline malate and 5 g BCAA per dose, on shooting, jumping, sprinting, agility, aerobic and anaerobic performance in well-trained basketball players.