Animal FURY: The Straight-Shooter’s Pre Workout

Note: This article has been updated in 2021 with new research since it was first published.

Animal Fury is bringing simplicity back to pre workouts, but don’t mistake simple for lame. This pre workout hits all the right notes!

Every consumer has an opinion about what makes for a perfect pre workout supplement. Some want nothing other than a cup of coffee, others want a pre workout with 20+ clinically-dosed ingredients. There’s nothing wrong with complex formulas, but there’s something to be said for simple, streamlined formulas that deliver everything you need immediately preceding your workout.

Animal Fury: Old School Strong

Animal Fury is simplicity defined, and still brings all the pumps, energy, and focus heading into your workout. This is well in line with the “old school mentality” that we love seeing out of Team Animal, one of the longest-lived and most trusted supplement brands alive.

So get ready to feast your eyes on perfection of a different sort of pre workout — done the Animal way.

We’ve got the rundown just ahead, but first, take a moment to check the best deal and sign up for alerts from PricePlow:

Fury Ingredients

As we mentioned above, the Animal Fury formula is straight and to the point. There aren’t 20+ ingredients to dig through, just an easy-to-understand list of proven ergogenics to power you through workouts day in and day out.

• Citrulline Malate – 6g

  

  Animal Fury is open label, clinically dosed, and packing the “juice” necessary to dominate your workout!

  You want pumps? Fury brings ’em right out the gate with a solid 6g dose of citrulline malate. A combination of L-Citrulline and malic acid, citrulline malate is a much stronger elevator of nitric oxide (NO) than L-arginine due to its enhanced bioavailability in the body.^[1]

  Interestingly, citrulline converts to L-arginine in the system, but does so in the kidneys,^[2-5] which is why it’s better than supplementing L-arginine itself — the gut would have broken down L-arginine before it could generate a ton of NO. But with citrulline, we get the effects we want from arginine more efficiently.

  Higher N.O. levels increase circulation and vasodilation,^[6] which means PUMPS! Additionally, more blood and nutrients are transported to your muscles, which helps them function at higher outputs as you get deeper into your workout. Perhaps best of all, citrulline malate increases ATP production, allowing you to perform more work faster, and accelerates recovery.^[7-9]

  The 6g dose is right at the clinical level,^[10] yielding roughly 3g pure citrulline.

  The 2020 meta analysis on soreness

  Since this article was first published, the scientific community has collected so much more data to confirm citrulline’s use in supplements. A 2020 meta-analysis that was published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science showed that citrulline’s blood flow improvements and ability to remove metabolic waste bring real benefits. After analyzing 13 studies, the researchers concluded that citrulline significantly reduces post-workout soreness and perceived exertion.^[11]

• Instant 2:1:1 BCAA Blend – 5g

  

  Fury makes sure you NEVER skip leg day!

  The next proven commodity in Animal Fury is a solid 5g dose of 2:1:1 ratio branched-chain amino acids, or the three essential amino acids known as BCAAs. That means each scoop of the new pre workout contains 2.5g Leucine and 1.25g each of Isoleucine and Valine.

  BCAAs are definitely something to consider during your pre, intra, or post workout nutrition as they provide both anabolic (elevated protein synthesis) and anti-catabolic (muscle-sparing) benefits.^[12,13] Even better, consuming a solid dose of BCAAs speeds recovery and prevents DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness.^[14,15]

  Training fasted? Consider BCAAs

  This one’s here for those Animals who are coming in early in the morning and are fasted. Or similarly, hitting it after a work shift, but don’t have a full meal on them. If you’re training on an empty stomach or are just one of those kinds of animals that wants any amino acids you can get any time, then this is a great addition to have in your pre workout supplement.

• Beta Alanine – 2g

  

  Feeling the need for even more pumps? Check out our article on Animal Pump Pro

  Up next is the king of endurance boosters, beta alanine. This tingle-inducing amino is well known for its ability to increase endurance for athletes of all kinds, from boxers to rowers to tri-athletes.

  Once ingested, beta alanine binds to histidine to form carnosine, a powerful intracellular buffer.^[16] Carnosine shuttles away lactic acid accumulation in skeletal muscle which staves off the inevitable burning sensation that sets in during extended work sets.

  The end result from BA supplementation you’ll experience is greater stamina, prolonged endurance, and greater power and strength output.^[17-19]

  As we always note, it’s best to get ~3.2g per day to hit the same doses as the clinical studies, but it’s also best to spread those doses out throughout the day. So adding some raw beta alanine (or another supplement that contains it) on the opposite end of the day would be beneficial.

  Meta Analyses confirm endurance boosts

  

  Beta alanine leads to more work done,^[17] which can lead to gains if you take advantage of them!

  Just after this article was originally published, a meta-analysis came out with more data. Brazilian researchers poured through 40 studies based upon 65 different exercise protocols and 1461 total participants.^[19] First, they noted that beta alanine has a significant overall effect in terms of endurance. It works.

  But further, when digging deeper into the data, they found that the best effects were from 30 seconds to 10 minutes long!^[19] This covers a myriad of exercises, many of which a lot of Animals are participating in.

  The meta analysis even shows that studies with highly trained athletes still had benefits!^[19] They’re of course to a lesser extent than “rookie gains”, but beta alanine still works even for them. This is good news for the elite-performing Animals out there.

• L-Tyrosine – 1g

  We’re done with the primary ergogenics in Fury for the time being, so now it’s time to bring the focus element into the picture with Tyrosine. This non-essential amino acid increases production of two vital neurotransmitters in the body, noradrenaline and dopamine.^[20] This dynamic duo of neurotransmitters work together to improve focus, cognition, and overall mood.

  

  Train like the Animal you are

  Another benefit from increased production of these two powerful neurotransmitters is reduced symptoms of stress and anxiety.^[21,22] Not only does this help eliminate the feelings of “edginess” from a tough day at the office, but it also will translate into more focused, productive working sessions.

  Improvements if sleep-deprived?!

  Since this article was originally published, we’ve learned a lot more about L-tyrosine. One of the most important things to note is that L-Tyrosine can greatly improve performance when sleep deprived.^[23,24] A half-dozen studies have investigated tyrosine’s effects on cognition when exposed to stressful conditions, and they’ve all showed favorable effects.^[23]

  A systematic review on military personnel goes so far as to state “Nonetheless, we suggest that tyrosine or caffeine could be used in healthy young adults in a military context to enhance cognitive performance when personnel are sleep-deprived.”^[24]

  This is relevant to Animal, because let’s be honest – many of you are grinding too hard too long, and aren’t always sleeping enough. Get your sleep… but when you’re not, expect the caffeine/tyrosine combination in Fury to help.

• Caffeine Anhydrous – 350mg

  Last, but never least, we have the hallmark of all excellent pre workouts: energy. Too often, modern pre workouts try to produce a rather complicated blend of stimulants that sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t. Animal isn’t screwing around with fancy beta agonists or trendy new age stims. Fury’s energy comes with a serious 350mg dose of pure caffeine.

  

  Boost your immune system with the Universal Animal Immune Pak!

  You want energy, there it is, in all its unbridled, uncomplicated glory!

  Not only is caffeine great for energy, it also helps improve focus, mood, alertness, and performance. 350mg is a little outside of our sweet spot of 250-300mg, so this will be especially interesting for our team to see how they like the higher caffeine dose sans other stims.

  What’s interesting is that there are no other stimulants here. Just good ol’ caffeine, for those who want something they can 100% trust and put to the test.

  On the caffeinated strength gains

  The biggest thing we’ve analyzed since originally publishing this article in 2016 are the studies regarding caffeine and strength. Two different reviews have shown that a dose of 5-6mg/kg of bodyweight can significantly increase strength.^[25,26] For the average Animal, this would actually be higher than what’s in Animal Fury, but you’re well on your way to experiencing effects.

  The average 185lb would have to take 415mg-498mg of caffeine to hit those numbers, and we’re not far from that here, depending on the athlete’s size, so we expect some level of strength return at 350mg. There’s generally a law of diminishing returns (and subsequently negative returns) when going over 6mg/kg body weight.

A bit more on the formula…

One thing we saw across the various forums when Fury hit the wire was the amount of kickback it got from some of the public for it’s overly “simplistic, boring” profile. Apparently, some of you out there were hoping for some type of over the top 20+ ingredient profile formula from the guys at Animal.

So, we contacted the bigwigs at Animal HQ to get some insight into the reasoning behind the newest Animal pre workout:

“Animal Fury was formulated based on consumer and retailer feedback that people want a simple formula with proven ingredients in efficacious dosages and a transparent label. This is not replacing Animal Rage XL, which is a concentrate with 17 ingredients as opposed to Fury which has 5. We did an extensive Alpha Testing program where we sent the product out to a lot of athletes and consumers to use and give us their feedback. We didn’t rush this to market, we had to make sure that it worked in the real world and tasted great. It’s an effective product without any shady ingredients from a company that people can trust. We don’t play any games, what is on the label is true and accurate.”

— Team Animal (Emphasis ours)

Coming back to that quote five years later… it was right, and the product is standing the test of time.

Flavors Available

Find a better branded tub. You won’t be able to do it.

Animal Fury originally launched in two flavors on Bodybuilding.com in the US and to everyone else internationally, but has expanded well beyond that now.

You can see a dynamic, up-to-date list of flavors below:

Takeaway

Are you an animal? Because this is the “Animal” way of pre workout

Fury’s formula is simple, potent, and no nonsense. Sometimes “less is more” and a lot can be said of that in today’s age of increasingly more complicated pre workout formulas. In its truest sense, a pre workout should give you what you need going into a workout, not your daily doses of saturation-based ergogenics like creatine, betaine, etc. Fury is exactly that, it supplies what you need, when you need it.

This pre workout makes total sense for the Animals out there, who know what they want and what they need. What’s interesting is that since it’s come out, more research has been published confirming what Animal already knew. It works perfectly for their demographic.

Article originally published Nov 15, 2016.