Genius PRE Workout: Train Smarter AND Harder

Genius Pre is a clinically dosed, stimulant free pre workout that enhances cognitive function but won’t leave you feeling bottomed out from a rush of caffeine.

We recently featured a brand taking a more enlightened approach to supplement formulation named The Genius Brand. In our blog post, we detailed how the company was born out of a group of individuals sick of the endless scandals, FDA raids, and ineffective products that dominate the supplement landscape.

Genius is committed doing things the right way and that motto is plainly evident when you see Genius Pre — an extremely well dosed pre workout featuring 600mg Alpha GPC shown in human studies to increase strength!

We’ve got more info on the product below, but first, take a moment to check the best deal and sign up for alerts from PricePlow:

Genius Pre Ingredients

Genius has certainly loaded their pre workout with a hefty helping of nootropics that will not only enhance your focus and cognition during workouts, but also your mind muscle connection and power!

Note: Servings listed below are based off 1 serving (i.e. 2 scoops = 17.7g)

• Citrulline Malate 2:1 (6g)

  

  Genius packs a punch in terms of nootropics and ergogenics without the worry of being over stimmed.

  Don’t make the mistake that Genius is all brains and no brawn. They’ve got plenty of muscle pumps headed your way, headlined by a whopping 6g of 2:1 Citrulline Malate. This powerful ergogenic is first and foremost a strong nitric oxide booster that significantly enhances vasodilation, blood flow, and most noticeably, PUMPS.

  Its vastly superior to L-Arginine, due to improved bioavailability^[1], and on top of that, citrulline malate is also great for performance, endurance, and energy production.^[2,3,4]

  At a 2:1 ratio, this gives you 4g citrulline, and 2g malic acid. It’s the 4g l-citrulline that we’re after here!

• Beta Alanine (3g)

  If you do lots of eccentric, endurance, or high rep bodybuilding training, then beta alanine is right up your alley. It is a powerful ergogenic that improves endurance by elevating carnosine levels in the body.^[5]

  Carnosine is an intracellular buffer that prevents lactic acid accumulation in skeletal muscle, stunting the burning sensation that could inhibit your higher rep training. Furthermore, beta alanine boosts strength, endurance, athletic performance, and fatigue resistance.^[6]

  The clinical dose is 3.2g, and you’re getting pretty much all of that here…so be forewarned you may be in line for some fairly strong tingles if you’re not already BA saturated.

• Betaine (2g)

  

  Beatine isn’t just for power, it also enhances the effects of creatine.

  Betaine, a.k.a. trimethylglycine, is another “daily muscle builder” like our previous ingredient. Betaine works in tandem with creatine to improve the body’s creatine production as well as enhance overall ATP production.^[7,8]

  Additionally, betaine also supports hydration, power, strength, and endurance.^[9,10,11] This greatly enhances your workouts which ultimately yields more muscle!

  However, those above claims can only be made with the clinically-studied 2.5g dose. We’re obviously close here, but if you want to make sure, you might need to find a bit of other betaine in your diet somewhere, whether it’s from beets, spinach, or another supplement.

• L-Tyrosine (1g)

  

  No stims in Genius PRE? No problem. Add Genius Burn or Genius Caffeine to the mix!

  The first of several brain-boosting ingredients in Genius pre is a hefty 1g dose of L-Tyrosine. It helps bolster focus, cognition, and mood. Aside from the nootropic benefits, Tyrosine also relieves stress and anxiety.^[12,13]

  This is a significantly greater dose that we see in most pre workouts that use Tyrosine — typically we’re lucky to get 500-750 in most others.

• L-Arginine (1g)

  L-Arginine is the O.G. nitric oxide booster that was touted for years as the premier way to get enhanced pumps and vasodilation during your workout. However, most research has definitively shown that it’s not all that bioavailable and won’t yield much in the way for elevating N.O. levels.^[14]

  Something doesn’t add up when looking at this ingredient’s inclusion in the formula when viewing the profile as a whole. So, we reached out to Genius HQ to find out why in the world Arginine is included:

  ” In complete transparency here, we just used it to counterbalance some of citrulline malate taste effects! When our flavoring team suggested adding in a gram to help the taste, I had no objections :) When discussing the science behind the product, we really don’t mention arginine.”

  There you have it….Arginine is included for balancing flavor, NOT for any N.O.-boosting benefits. But with that said, some users still enjoy it when paired with citrulline, so absolutely no complaints there.

• Taurine (1g)

  Taurine is a multifaceted conditionally essential amino acid that improves hydration, cognition, and cellular swelling. It’s acts as an osmolyte in the body which supports water-based pumps (due to cellular swelling), but also improves focus since vast amounts of taurine are also found in the brain.^[15,16]

• AlphaSize Alpha GPC 50%(600mg)

  

  Results showed statistically significant improvements on the isometric mid-thigh pull in the test subjects using 600mg of Alpha GPC.

  Alpha GPC is known as one of the top forms of choline (along with CDP-Choline), that greatly enhances focus, cognition, and the mind-muscle connection.^[17] But, what we’re really intrigued by here is the fact that Genius has included a whopping 600mg of AlphaSize Alpha GPC which has been shown in research to significantly boost strength as well!^[18]

  Note: The Alpha-GPC here is at 50% ‘strength’ (it’s often bound to silica so that it makes a nice powder). Genius includes 600mg of 50% Alpha GPC (thus making it 300mg).

  This is still a solid dose, and one that’ll definitely enhance focus during your workouts, but not so much strength.

• HICA (500mg)

  HICA is fantastic, but seems to have gone away from supplements lately. It’s a metabolite of leucine, the most important of the essential amino acids when it comes to building muscle tissue. HICA basically acts like leucine, but it’s even more concentrated, so you can get by with a smaller dose as compared to Leucine.

  HICA is anti-catabolic and has been well-researched in athletes who do regular high-intense cardio training. The landmark study on HICA showed that even when soccer players in training were allowed to eat all the calories they desired, they still lost muscle mass after weeks of intense training — not the case when supplementing with HICA!^[19]

• Rhodiola Rosea (100mg)

  

  Genius Pre isn’t loaded with a bunch of cheap stims that will have you crashing soon after taking it. If you do need a mild energy boost, pick up Genius Caffeine for long-lasting, sustained energy and ZERO crash.

  Increasingly found in more and more pre workouts is the powerful adaptogen, Rhodiola Rosea. This herb helps the body process all sorts of emotional, psychological, and physical stressors. Adaptogens like rhodiola also improve endurance and alertness while lowering mental fatigue from stressful situations.^[20]

  Additional research indicates that rhodiola may even elevate cognitive function and memory due to its interactions on the dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin and acetylcholine neurotransmitter production systems.^[21]

• ElevATP (150mg)

  The great ingredients in this Genius PRE just never end!

  Another newer ingredient gaining popularity in pre workouts as of late is the ATP-boosting elevATP. Developed by FutureCeuticals, elevATP is a patented combination of apple and “ancient peat” (fossilized plants) extracts turning quite a number of heads.

  Preliminary research showed that elevATP did indeed help increase the “intracellular ATP in blood cells.”^[22,23,24] However, not the latest research on elevATP did we have hard proof it produced significant gains in strength, power, and performance in trained men.^[25]

• Theobromine (30mg)

  Theobromine is another xanthine-like molecule (like caffeine) that’s found in Theobroma Cacao. It’s structurally similar to caffeine, but doesn’t give the same energy “pop” that caffeine does.

  Theobromine does improve energy levels, but its effects are smoother and more sustained.^[26] On top of that, it also improves energy, focus, vasodilation, and, breathing.^[27] It’s a great “add on” stimulant to have in a pre workout.

• AstraGin (25mg)

  

  Need to add some energy kick to Genius Pre, stack it with the sustained release Genius Caffeine for long-lasting, jitter free energy.

  AstraGin is a patented extract of highly fractionated astragalus and panax notoginseng developed by NuLiv Science. It’s not all the common in pre workouts, but studies using it document improved bioavailability and absorption of ingredients commonly found in pre workouts, such as citrulline.^[28]

• Huperzine A 1% (10mg)

  Our last ingredient is yet another powerhouse nootropic. Huperzine A indirectly increases it by inhibiting acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that degrades “the learning neurotransmitter” acetylcholine.^[29]

  Huperzine stunts the actions of acetylcholinesterase leading to more available acetylcholine — ultimately yielding greater focus. Furthermore, huperzine defends the brain against the “neuron death molecule” glutamine^[30], and may even help create new brain cells thereby making it “neurogenerative”.^[31]

On the Stim-Free Formula

Many will scoff at Genius Pre without ever trying it simply for the fact that there is no caffeine or “aggressive” stims like. We asked Genius why they decided to go the caffeine free route when formulating Genius Pre:

”It sounds cliche but we are really trying to change the way people think about pre workouts. There has been a clear shift toward non-prop blends and clinical doses but we wanted to go even further and say LOOK!! YOU CAN STILL HAVE A TOP NOTCH PRE WORKOUT WITHOUT THE STIMULANTS!! We just think the whole idea of what “pre workout” is, is completely off. You don’t need to “feel it” to have an effective pre. The general idea here was just to try & change the general consensus of what pre workout is & what should be.”

Flavors Available

Genius’ products are naturally sweetened with stevia and contain no artificial colors, dyes, flavors, or sweeteners. As you may expect, flavoring is rather difficult when taking on that task, but, speaking from personal experience, the flavoring if extremely well done and is definitely one of the better tasting natural products on the market.

“Huge shoutout to @dalelrose for giving Genius Pre a chance!!”

Only flavor of Genius Pre is currently available: Grape Limeade.

It definitely delivers on taste and is a welcome addition to a market saturated with boring flavors.

Takeaway

How’s that for a brain and brawn boosting pre workout?!

Genius Pre is an incredibly well dosed pre workout that will have you making significant gains both in your workout and outside of it, due to the considerable doses of nootropics contained in it.

You probably noticed there’s no significant energy component to Genius Pre… that’s by design. The Genius Brand also developed their own sustained-release caffeine, aptly titled Genius Caffeine which perfectly pairs with this and gives users the option to include additional energy if they truly want more during their workout.