Villarreal 1

Roberto I. Villarreal

Professor Briones

English 1302

30 January 2023

Protein Withdrawal Before a Workout and The Effects It Can Have

Introduction

It is commonly known amongst several nutritionists, gym rats, and other types of athletes

or exercise enthusiasts that taking a supplement or pre-workout before a workout helps a person

achieve their goals. Pre-workout is one of many supplements designed to enhance athletic

performance. As the name suggests, people take pre-workout before exercise or sport. They do

this to boost energy levels and improve strength and endurance. The popular supplements come

in various forms, including pills, powder, and liquids. The purpose of this experiment was to

discover how refraining from taking a protein shake or other type of pre-workout before a

workout affect the performance and results of said workout.

Participant and Experiment Information

To begin with, general information about the participant in the experiment will be

provided to help the reader better understand the types of effects the lack of pre-workout has on

this body type. As stated by Morrison et al., “Differences may exist in the choice of supplement

depending on age, gender, or reason for exercise” (482). For this experiment, the participant was

an 18-year-old freshman college student, male, weighed 162 pounds, and was 6’1. There were

not really any supplies needed for this experiment since the participant was refraining from
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taking their protein shake, and the location of which the experiment took place was the

Recreational Center at Texas A&M International University. The type of protein that the

participant had to refrain from taking was Whey Protein, which is a mixture of proteins that are

isolated from whey, a liquid material created from cheese production. The way that the

participant would consume this supplement was in a shake due to the supplement being in

powder form. The purpose of this experiment is to discover how a withdrawal of pre-workout

affects the performance of the participant and how it affects the results of the exercises. I

believed that the results were going to be that the participant would have a harder time at the

gym without some type of pre-workout.

Day 1-2

Before the participant in the experiment started feeling the physical changes, they first

had to experience the psychological changes. In Kaczka, et al’s article, it is said that “The

physiological effect of a training session is dependent upon the quality of the work undertaken.”

For the participant, on their first and second day of withdrawing from the pre-workout, they

started noticing a change in energy levels and motivation. Getting out of bed at 6:00am was

becoming more of a challenge. Not only would they experience a decrease in motivation, but

they would also experience more of a decrease in energy throughout the day. Aside from the pre-

workout being used to help muscle growth, it also acted as the breakfast meal of the day. The

participant found themselves more tired and sleepy throughout the day. As stated in their journal,

“I feel less motivated and driven to get out of bed because I know that I will not be able to take

my protein shake which is my source of energy in the mornings” (Villarreal 2).

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Day 3-4

As the week progressed, the participant not only experienced psychological changes, but

they also experienced physical changes. It is stated in Martinez, et al’s article, that a pre-workout

supplement “has been shown to enhance performance for endurance sports by increasing time to

exhaustion, preserving muscle glycogen content, delaying perceptions of fatigue, and decreasing

perceptions of pain and effort.” At first, the participant did not notice the changes in strength and

endurance until the third and fourth days. As the workouts progressed, the participant would feel

more exhausted and sorer after each exercise, thus leading to more muscle fatigue. Additionally,

the participant would have to exert more force and energy into every exercise to maintain proper

form and technique. This would cause the participant to have a much harder time performing

tasks throughout the day as they would be feeling more pain in their muscles. “My body feels

sorer because now I have to use double the strength and energy to stay consistent with my

workouts from when I would take my protein shakes,” the participant wrote in their journal.

Day 5

At the end of the fifth day, the results of the experiment were documented. It was learned

that a lack of pre-workout not only made the daily workouts harder, but they also made the

participant less focused and less motivated to continue working out. As mentioned in The Effects

of a Pre-Workout Supplement on Measures of Alertness, Mood, and Lower-Extremity Power, an

article by Curtis, et al, “Creatine supplementation has been shown to enhance cognitive

functioning and work as a neuroprotective supplement.” After the results of this experiment were

noted, the participant would rather go back to taking pre-workout in the long term to help build

more muscle, as well as to build more endurance both physically and mentally. At the end of

their journal, the participant wrote “This week was much more tiring and it made me understand
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why people that go to gyms and professional body builders take some type of supplement before

working out. The effects afterwards are so devastating that they make me feel weak” (Villarreal

4).

Conclusion

In conclusion, refraining or withdrawing from taking some type of pre-workout before a

workout will have a negative impact on both the performance during the workouts, and on the

results after the workouts. The answer to the question that prompted this experiment would be

that refraining from taking a protein shake or pre-workout before a workout would negatively

impact an individual. It would cause less motivation, more fatigue, slower muscular growth, less

endurance, and above all else, more pain. The effects might be more or less severe, depending

on the person and body type. When it comes to wanting to build muscle, build endurance, and

have a boost in energy, there is no greater way to do that than to take some pre-workout before a

workout routine. However, there are some limitations, such as how much one can exert

themselves without pushing themselves past their limit, there are often times where a person can

work out more than what they can eat. That imbalance could actually reduce muscular growth.

Nevertheless, it may also be seen as a good thing for people who want more of a challenge at the

gym and who do not think that supplements are the only way to get stronger.
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Works Cited

Morrison, Laura J., et al. “Prevalent Use of Dietary Supplements Among People Who Exercise

At a Commercial Gym.” International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise

Metabolism, vol. 14, 2004, pp. 481-492. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsnem.14.4.481. Accessed 10 February 2023.

Kaczka, Piotr, et al. "Effects of Pre-Workout Multi-Ingredient Supplement on Anaerobic

Performance: Randomized Double-Blind Crossover Study." International Journal of

Environmental Research and Public Health 17.21 (2020): 8262. ProQuest.  Web. 17 Feb.

2023.

Martinez, Nic, et al. "The Effect of Acute Pre-Workout Supplementation on Power and Strength

Performance." Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 13 (2016)

ProQuest.  Web. 17 Feb. 2023.

Curtis, Jason, et al. "The Effects of a Pre-Workout Supplement on Measures of Alertness, Mood,

and Lower-Extremity Power." Cureus 14.5 (2022) ProQuest. Web. 17 Feb. 2023.

Participant’s personal journal