I Was Stacking Citrulline, Arginine And Beet Powder. I Still Faded On The Last Set.

There's a better way that I hadn't considered, and it changed everything.

By Wes Carrick · Sponsored Content

Boulder, CO · Updated this week · 6 min read

The Set Where My Stack Stops Working

I am 35. I train five days a week and have done so for most of my adult life. Lately, I've been bothered with a recurring problem.

Set five of the last movement. Same weight I moved cleanly on set two, same rest between sets. Somewhere in the middle of it the pump goes flat, bar speed drops, and I finish on effort instead of on capacity.

That is not a motivation problem. It is a supply problem. And I had already spent years buying products meant to solve exactly that.

What Was In The Stack, And What Each One Was Actually Doing

If you train seriously your pre-workout drawer is not empty either. Mine had four things in it and I had never audited any of them against the others.

Citrulline malate. Six grams most days. Citrulline is a precursor, which means it has to convert to arginine before it does anything you actually care about. Your body has to make that conversion before you get anything, and even when it does, you are still only working one pathway.

Plain L-arginine. I ran this for a year before I moved to citrulline. Most of it breaks down before it reaches your blood. What does get through is small, and it fades fast.

Beet powder. Beets work through nitrates, which is a real pathway. How much you get out of it depends on your own gut bacteria and on the batch you bought, so some days it does a lot and some days it does very little. And mixing a beet drink at six in the morning gets old fast.

Stimulant pre-workout. This is the one that took me longest to be honest about. Caffeine changes how the set feels. It does not change how much oxygen arrives at the muscle doing the set. Those are two different problems, and I had been paying for the first one while complaining about the second.

Added up: three products aimed at roughly one pathway, one product aimed at my nervous system, and a fade on set five that none of them moved.

Three Questions I Started Asking Before I Bought Anything Else

Most labels tell you what is in the bottle. Very few tell you whether it will work. So I stopped reading labels for what was on them and started reading them for three things.

One. Form. Is this the version of the ingredient that survives digestion, or the cheapest version wearing the same name?

Two. Dose. Is this the full amount used in the published research and printed on the label, or a fraction of it hidden inside a blend?

Three. Pathways and duration. Does this work through more than one pathway, and does it last as long as my session does?

Most of what I had been taking cleared one. Almost nothing cleared all three.

What Cleared All Three

BloodFlow-7® Nitro XXXL is the maximum-strength formula. It is what I take now, and it is the only thing I looked at that answered all three questions without me having to be generous about one of them.

Nitrosigine® at 1,500 mg. Nitrosigine® is an enhanced arginine built to stay in circulation rather than break down early, and 1,500 mg is the full dose used in the published research, printed on the label. It gives sustained arginine support for up to six hours, which is longer than any session I run.

S7®. A blend of seven plant extracts, clinically shown to raise nitric oxide by up to 230%. BloodFlow-7®️ Nitro XXXL carries 150 mg of it. The plant polyphenols in it cut down the oxidative stress that breaks nitric oxide apart before your body can use it, so more of what you already produce stays in play.

Trans-Resveratrol. Improves arterial dilation by up to 62%, so oxygen rich blood reaches working muscle with less resistance. This is the ingredient that answers my third question, and it is the one nobody puts in a pre-workout.

BioPerine®. Black pepper extract. It helps more of the other three actually reach your bloodstream.

You feel it working in about fifteen minutes. It is stimulant free, so it works on oxygen delivery rather than on your central nervous system, which is why it does not compete with coffee and does not cost me sleep after an evening session. I take it every day, whether I'm training or not.

This Is No Ordinary Pre-Workout

What Actually Changed On Set Five

The clearest difference is the end of the session rather than the start of it. A pump that is still there on the last set instead of only on the second one.

The second thing is the day after. The second hard session of the week used to be the one I talked myself into. Across a year that is a meaningful number of sessions I would otherwise have skipped.

Why I Still Take It On Rest Days

Circulation is a daily discipline. The same oxygen delivery that adds output to today's session is what keeps you training hard years from now. I am 35 and I intend to still be doing this at sixty. That is not the argument that got me to buy it. It is the argument that keeps me on it.

★★★★★ From People Who Train

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Wes Carrick

Health & Performance Contributor

Wes Carrick is 35. He lifts four days a week, runs two, and has spent more money than he would like to admit on things that turned out to be one ingredient at a quarter of the studied dose.

This article is sponsored content. Daily Health Briefs may receive compensation for purchases made through links in this article. Juvenon.com is a private dietary supplement company. Statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.