Man Sports: BlockBuster

Blockbuster is the explosive pre-workout by Man Sports that focuses on augmenting the experience of the pump and providing a surge of energy that’s never been seen before prior to training. When using this product, the feeling of the pump is insane and it makes your muscles look fuller and bigger compared to normal. The clean energy it also provides is unrivalled and you can train for twice as long, while being able to maintain a constant high intensity through-out the work-out.

Taste

The taste on this product is amazing and Man Sports have gone for natural flavours in the form of apple juice and glacier blue razz. Some products can provide a really sweet taste to it due to the artificial ingredients used, but blockbusters taste is spot on and is a joy to drink before a workout. Man Sports have kept it simple with the flavours and have definitely nailed it as some other pre-workouts may go for extravagant sounding and tasting flavours that are hard to pull off.

Pump

Man Sports have really put a lot of thought into formulating blockbuster. Where some other pre-workouts fall down is that they contain proprietary blends and don’t provide the correct dosage of each ingredient or lack focus on what they want the product to do. Blockbuster only contains ingredients that focus on improving the pump sensation and providing a clean surge in energy with laser focus and precision. For enhancing the pump during training, there are four key ingredients in blockbuster.

Beta-alanine

Beta-alanine enhances intracellular buffering capacity by increasing muscle carnosine and attenuating fatigue making it of special interest to individuals engaging in anaerobic exercise. It is of particular benefit to enhancing exercise  capacity in tasks lasting 60-240 seconds making it perfect for resistance training (1).

Taurine

Taurine is an amino acid found in mammalian cells and acts as an osmotic regulator, antioxidant, a cell repair membrane stabiliser and regulates inflammation. The benefits it provides to resistance training include improving protein synthesis, cell hydration and metabolism. The role it plays in cell hydration is important to resistance training as it helps to increase cell volume. The expansion of the muscle cells allows greater protein synthesis and hydration, while also increasing muscle fullness.

Arginine

Arginine is converted to citrulline in a reaction catalysed by the enzyme nitric oxide synthase. As nitric oxide is an important vasodilator, arginine supplementation increases blood transport and muscle performance during exercise. Arginine has also shown to have an important role in the synthesis of urea, cell growth and production of nitric oxide. Moreover, it has a beneficial effect on the regulation of the body’s ability to metabolise nutrients to enhance lean tissue deposition.

Glycerol

When taken before training, glycerol has the effect of being able to improve your hydration state. Glycerol helps to increase total body water and plasma volume, which helps to prevent dehydration, improve thermoregulation and enhance endurance (2).

Clean Energy

Blockbuster contains four ingredients that provide clean energy over multiple hours and no crash at the end of it. Once again, the ingredients are correctly dosed and are focused on providing that much needed motivation and focus on training and nothing else.

Choline Bitartrate

Choline bitartrate is one of the main ingredients - an essential nutrient, this accounts for multiple functions in the body and brain. It can significantly improve cognitive and locomotor performance as well as reduce oxidative stress and enhance cholinergic neurotransmission and monoamine levels in the brain (3).
 
Choline plays a role in building DNA, neurotransmitters and cell membranes that are essential for muscular contraction. This ingredient has been shown to be a neuroprotective agent influencing acetylcholine, dopamine, glutamate neurotransmitter systems, serving as an intermediate in phospholipid metabolism and enhancing the integrity of neuronal membranes when used as a dietary supplement. Its ability to provide a safe neuroprotection means that it can help to shut out distractions from the outside world and allow you to give your workout the maximum attention it deserves.

Tyrosine

This is a proteinogenic amino acid, is one of the amino acids used to synthesize proteins. This amino acid has also shown to support cognition during stress sensitive focus tasks. This provides additional mental support during prolonged exercise and can enhance focus and concentration (4).

Caffeine

Caffeine is a naturally occurring alkaloid that is found in the beans, leaves, and fruits of more than 60 plants. Some common sources of caffeine are found in kola nut, cacao bean, yerba mate, although roasted coffee beans and tea leaves are the most commonly consumed sources of caffeine.
 
Caffeine is beneficial to sports performance and resistance training as it helps improve cognitive function and reduces the risk of cognitive decline with aging as well as being beneficial to multiple disciplines in sport- from explosive events such as powerlifting or sprinting to long distance event such as running a marathon.

Theanine

Theanine is commonly found in the tea plant (Camellia sinensis), the basidiomycete (Boletus badius) and Guayusa tea (Ilex guayusa). It is synthesized from glutamine and ethylamine in the tea root and then transferred to the leaf. Theanine enhances cognitive functions through increasing the concentration of brain neurotransmitters such as dopamine, 5hydroxytryptamine (5-TH), glycine and GABA (γaminobutyric acid) resulting in improvements in cognition, mood and anti-fatigue properties (5,6).